The Infected (Book 4): Death Sentence

by Zuko, Joseph

  Sara reached out to grab him by the shoulder, but stopped when she noticed how much blood was on her hands. “Don’t talk like that. We had no idea what was going to happen.”

  Frank gnawed at his bottom lip.

  Sara pointed at his revolver. “Think about this, if you shot everyone you aimed at you’d have killed the three of us back on Government Island.”

  Frank nodded as he mulled it over. “You’re a smart young lady.”

  Sara almost smiled. “What’s the next move?” She kept her emotions at bay and her features hard as marble. Frank stood up and straightened his back. Both of his hands were coated in Devon’s blood. He spotted the garden hose next to the sliding glass door and stepped to the faucet. He cranked it on and the hose bulged as it filled with water.

  He lifted the spray gun and spritzed off his mitts, cleared his throat and said, “We should unload the bags of guns from the car.”

  Sara moved in closer to the water. Frank kept the water coming as she rubbed at the dark red crust covering her alabaster skin. “What about Cliff?” Sara splashed the cool liquid onto her face. She found a chunk of Devon’s skull in her hair and came damn close to vomiting, but her empty stomach had nothing to purge.

  Frank took a moment and thought about her question, “There’s nothing we can do for him.”

  Leon stood with his back to the recently chopped pile of body parts in Penny’s front yard. He’d never witnessed an atrocity of this magnitude. Dead bodies lay in every direction, the street, the lawn, the van. The old guy and young girl had carried one to the backyard. This little suburb of Vancouver had become a warzone. The pad of Leon’s thumb scraped against the hammer of the .38 special in his hand. At the edge of the property sat the motionless man starring off into the void. He’d turned the gunmen into a pile of diced meat with some kind of an improvised weapon. The saw blade was still buried deep in the skull of his last victim.

  Victim? Is that the right term? Leon scanned the van once more. The windows were covered with sheet metal, designed to keep infected people from getting in, but not to keep bullets out. The vehicle looked like Swiss cheese it had so many bullet holes. The side door was left open and even with the insane amount of blood coating the interior, Leon could make out the three little bodies with pink hoodies on.

  They were the real victims.

  The pile of red goo on the ground behind Leon seemed like maybe they had earned their violent deaths. Maybe.

  Less than an hour ago I was happily making flapjacks for my new family. Leon ran a hand through his thick black hair.

  I should check on Karen.

  Leon began to argue with himself. No wait, Jim’s in there. It might be awkward.

  Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.

  If anything, I can rub his nose in the fact that I’m the one who kept his family alive while he was farting around with these other friends.

  Leon continued to flip flop back and forth, but he never moved, he just kept watching. He did it out of fear. He was terrified if he stopped looking at the man sitting in the grass he might continue his killing spree and Leon didn’t want that psycho coming after him next.

  Cliff could feel the warm rays of the early morning sun. He felt the wetness of the dew covered blades of grass under his butt that soaked the back of his pants. The dirt in the yard was soft and squished under the heels of his boots. A cool breeze raced over his buzz cut scalp. It was a beautiful spring morning outside and he could feel the sensations of his surroundings, but his insides felt nothing. He was a black, empty pit. His mind had gone blank and he wasn’t streaming a constant coherent thought anymore. It was closer to a recently erased hard drive, like someone wiped the memory and operating software from his computer. A doctor would have easily diagnosed it as shock, but to Cliff he believed he was shutting down and maybe, if he was lucky, he wasn’t going to power back up. His hands shook as if he were freezing to death so it seemed logical his body was powering down alongside his brain. Cliff’s only reasons to keep breathing were ripped from him. In the outside world he could hear the squawk of a radio coming from the gunmen’s truck, but he didn’t give a shit what it had to say.

  The radio’s noise caused Leon to spin on his heels.

  “What the hell was that?” he said as he faced the black truck parked in front of Penny’s house. The passenger’s window was rolled down and from the C.B. radio attached to the dash a male’s voice was speaking clearly.

  “This is dispatch, Ranger Two, you were due back to base an hour ago, over.”

  Leon moved closer to the open window.

  “Ranger Two, this is dispatch, I need a status update, over.” Leon hadn’t paid any attention to the black truck since he’d gotten back. The tail end and bed were shot to hell, but the engine compartment was untouched and all four tires had air.

  This thing is still a good ride.

  The bed of the truck had boxes of ammo to feed the five automatic rifles laying on the ground next to the pile of limbs.

  “Guys… It’s Scott, answer the darn radio… Eric?” Scott yelled, “Eric?” then he paused for only a moment. As he continued he sounded like an irritated parent. “Brother Paul wants you back at base right now… over.”

  Chapter 2

  Morning sun peeked through stacks of smoke bellowing into the Vancouver skyline. They appeared in all directions to the man standing at the apex of the building’s roof. The soles of his boots scratched at the sandpaper surface of the shingles under his feet. He stood inches from the edge. The ground spun thirty-feet below him. “Fuck, I hate heights,” the man grunted as his tongue pushed a toothpick to the corner of his mouth. A bulging set of muscular arms raised a scope to his eye. Through the lens he sighted an infected woman. At nearly a thousand feet away he could clearly make out the ladies black eyes. She relentlessly chewed the toes off a human foot.

  The person standing next to the rifleman asked. “Why the hell would you pick a foot to chomp on? Hey Dallas, what part of the body would you eat first?”

  The big man’s tongue wiggled the toothpick back to the other corner of his mouth. “Blaine?”

  Blaine dropped the binoculars from his face and turned to look at Dallas. “Yeah?”

  “Shut up.” Dallas squeezed the trigger and seconds later the back of the woman’s head exploded all over the sidewalk behind her. Dallas lowered his rifle.

  Blaine looked quickly back through his field glasses to investigate the carnage. “That is nasty.” Blaine scratched the side of his closely shaved head, then ran his hand over the longer chunk of hair on top of his scalp. His movement was more like a nervous tick than an attempt to fix his hair.

  “Once the crew is done securing the main floor we’ll need them to build a sniper platform with a rail. My guts are doing cartwheels up here.” Dallas took a few steps from the edge. He towered six inches above Blaine when on a flat surface. The pitch of the roof made him a full foot taller than his friend.

  Blaine scanned along the street as he said, “What we really need is suppressors. Every damn shot is like ringing a dinner bell.”

  Below were patches of congealed blood on the pavement. Multiple piles of fresh bodies littered the gutters and a bullet hole riddled, burnt out Honda Civic straddling the dotted line in the center of the road. Finally he spotted one.

  “There,” Blaine pointed at a gangly teen sprinting between two homes. Its mouth coated in fresh red. Eyes black.

  “Got it,” Dallas slid back the bolt and readied a new round. The scope’s crosshair chased the deceased across the street.

  “Can you believe, as a group, we fired six thousand rounds in the last twenty-four hours?” Blaine kept the binoculars glued to his sockets as he followed the infected.

  The rifle cracked and the infected teen stumbled to the concrete. “We’ll get better. People were nervous and emptying full magazines into just one of those things.” Dallas cycled another round. Something moved in his peripherals. The rifle whipped in its direc
tion. Its haggard face filled the lens of Dallas’ scope. The toothpick snapped.

  “What’s wrong?” Blaine spotted the infected seconds later.

  Dallas lowered his gun. “It’s Rena.”

  The creature shuffled onto the front yard of a neighboring home. Blaine zeroed in. The woman had a rats nest of blonde hair and wore a stained t-shirt with the name, Tony’s Bar, on it. She had a bite taken out of her cheek and her right arm swung like it didn’t possess a single bone in it.

  Blaine snarled from the repulsive sight. Then his memory kicked in. “Didn’t she used to get you free drinks back when-”

  The blast of Dallas’ rifle cut Blaine off. The shot drilled her right between the eyes.

  The sound of Dallas’ gunfire echoed from outside the cramped office. A construction crew worked feverishly as they secured a length of lumber to a window frame. The team of two quickly blocked up the rest of the window with a sheet of plywood and made a substantial amount of noise as they fortified the inside of the building.

  At the center of the office was a stern looking man. His head was tilted forward ever so slightly, both eyes closed, his forearms rested at the edge of the table with his fingers interlaced out in front of him. His lips moved quickly as he whispered to himself. The high backed leather chair he sat in was weathered from years of use. An ocean of paperwork spread before him and his desk looked like a Goodwill reject. A set of hyper colored orange plugs were jammed into his ears to block out the hustling and bustling noise around him.

  A woman with a sidearm strapped to her hip entered the cramped office. She headed straight for a man sitting at a corner desk with a stack of folders tucked under her arm. The man wore a large headset and stared through thick glasses at four computer monitors. This guy was the eyes and ears of the whole operation. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he entered data. A GPS tracking system displayed on one of the screens showing a map of Vancouver, Washington. It had six blue dots moving slowly toward the same location. Another five dots remained motionless. The other screens were occupied with news websites. Every one of them reported on the infection threatening to swallow the entire globe.

  The woman straddled up next to him and yelled his name loudly over the construction noise. “Scott!” His fingers came to a stop and she handed him the stack of folders. They both appeared exhausted, clearly they hadn’t slept a wink in the last twenty-four hours. Her hands came to rest on her hips as she talked. “Here’s the updated status of bus four’s new arrivals. Any word yet on bus three?”

  “Nothing. They made it south on the 205, but I lost contact with them once they hit Mill Plain.”

  “Are we sending a team?”

  “We’re stretched too thin and rangers two, three and six haven’t reported back.” Scott thumbed through the pages and glanced up at the woman. “Lordy Dana, you look dead on your feet. Go get some rest.”

  She playfully tapped Scott’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “I wish I could, but I’ve got to figure out how we’re going to squeeze thirty families, plus our support staff into this building.” Dana’s tone was that of a mother hen protecting her baby chicks while a dastardly fox skulked around the coop.

  Scott nodded to the stern looking man with the earplugs. “I heard him talking about commandeering some of the neighboring houses to handle the overflow.”

  Dana rubbed her tired eyes. “We had barely enough coverage for this building last night. We can’t protect anymore until all of the teams are back, permanently. We did a lot of planning for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, but there was no way to plan for…” She motioned at his computer screens.

  “…this.” Dana leaned forward and cleared a headphone from one of Scott’s ears. She whispered so no one else in the room could hear her. Her eyes motioned to the praying man sitting at the center in the office. “Has he made contact?”

  Scott whispered back. “I don’t know. He’s been quietly praying all morning.”

  “I hope Brother Paul gets some answers, quick.”

  The stern man’s eyelids flung open as he loudly spoke a single word, “Amen.” He removed both earplugs and tucked them away in his tan shirt pocket. He glanced around the room. His features softened once he spotted Dana. “The mother to us all, Mrs. Fletcher, how is our flock?”

  Her smile lit up the room and suddenly she appeared less sleepy. Dana stepped across the office to the front of his desk. “They’re strong, as always.”

  “Good to hear.” Brother Paul rose from his seat and extended a friendly hand. The two shook for a little longer than custom. “Any concerns I need to be made aware of?” He broke off their handshake as he stepped around his desk and headed for the office door. “Walk with me if you can, I need to make the rounds.”

  “Hygiene is going to be number one if this infection stretches for longer than a week.” Dana walked shoulder to shoulder with Brother Paul as they exited the office. “We have one-hundred thirty seven people total and the number keeps growing. Our onsite facilities were designed to handle a fraction of that.”

  Brother Paul nodded as the two of them wound down the corridor. “What do you suggest?”

  “Send teams to find a handful of port-a-potties and building materials for outdoor showers. Otherwise we might have a dysentery outbreak.”

  “A war on two fronts?” He smiled briefly at his little joke.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll move it up on the list. Anything else?”

  She stopped him at the edge of the next room. The space was filled to capacity as people worked at different tasks. A group filled empties as citizen soldiers entered to grab the freshly loaded magazines to feed their assault rifles. Nurses and a doctor tended to the injured.

  Dana faced Brother Paul. “I know we are being…tested…” Dana patted Paul on his shoulder as her gaze darted around the overflowing, makeshift medical slash armory room they recently entered. “… but is there any indication of how long-”

  He cut her off with a raise of his hand. “The answers will come in good time. It’s our job to keep the faith.” They shared a brief moment before Dana broke eye contact. Someone was doing something wrong and it caught her attention, she turned and left Brother Paul’s side as she barked, “Don’t stack those there. Food supplies go to the kitchen.”

  Brother Paul watched for a moment as his people diligently worked at their tasks. His gaze rested on a woman. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she sported a white lab coat. She sat at a desk in front of a microscope. The look on her face was smack dab in the middle of concerned and bewildered. She was in her late thirties, attractive and looked as serious as a mortician. Her fingers adjusted the fine focus of the device as she looked into the eyepiece. She paused for a moment, then scribbled something down in her notepad.

  Brother Paul side stepped a few people and gave each one a proud smile, a comforting touch of the shoulder or an approving nod. Each gesture of kindness was not lost on his flock. He stood next to the woman in the lab coat with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “How goes the research, Doctor Bryant?”

  Without looking up from her microscope she said, “Slowly.”

  “Have you made any conclusions?”

  “I have two.” She set her pencil down in her notepad, turned from the microscope and slid her glasses up onto the top of her head as she faced Brother Paul. “We need to talk in private.”

  Brother Paul stepped from the back door of the church and entered a field filled with a fleet of cars, trucks and buses. The vehicles were in a semi-circle around the back of the building. Men and women stood on top of the tallest rides armed with assault rifles. They picked off the infected as they stumbled from the treeline at the edge of the property. The early morning sun was in full bloom and the day was going to be a hot one. The smell of the dead hung heavy in the air around him. He watched two people drag a third person to a stack of infected dead bodies. The pile had doubled in size since last eve
ning. They tossed the body onto the top of the pile. It was a grisly sight and not one Brother Paul wanted to see so early in the morning.

  Doctor Bryant followed him into the field. She kept her arms crossed and pulled tight to her chest. They were surrounded by members of the church, but no one was in earshot and gunfire popped loudly every thirty seconds. This was as close to ‘in private’ as they were going to get.

  Brother Paul resumed his posture as he faced the good doctor. “What have you discovered?”

  Bryant’s lips were pressed into a thin line as she struggled to find the correct words. The sun forced her eyes to squint and it exaggerated just how exhausted the Doctor really was.

  “Well?” Brother Paul took a step closer.

  “Obviously this is something we have never seen before.”

  Brother Paul nodded in agreement. “Obviously, but what have you discovered?”

  She held up an index finger, “One, we are all already infected.”

  Brother Paul’s brow dropped. “How’s that possible?”

  “I have no idea. I ran test after test all night long and every one of them came to the same conclusion.”

  “And that is?”

  “We have changed on a microscopic level somehow and as a species we are all infected.”

  Brother Paul’s composure cracked for a second. This was clearly not the news he was expecting, but like a pro he regained his strength. “And number two?”

  Her middle finger joined the index on her hand, “I believe there can be no cure.”

  He didn’t let the news break him this time. He remained still with no emotion, like a commander in the army, whose orders come from the top brass. He’s been instructed to risk the life of every man, including himself, to hold the line. Does he whine or cry like a baby? No. He salutes the general and barks, ‘Yes, sir!’

  Brother Paul stepped passed Doctor Bryant and put his back to her. “How many people know?”