The Infected (Book 4): Death Sentence

by Zuko, Joseph

  Michael thought about that as the infected doctor drew near.

  How much pain will its bite cause?

  There was no more time. The infected was almost on top of him. Without thinking Michael swung his rifle at its head. The force of the strike sent the thing tumbling to the ground, but it wasn’t dead. Michael drove the butt of his rifle into its snarling teeth.

  Bones broke. Features shifted, but it was still coming for him. He reared back with his foot and drove the heel of his dress shoe into the bridge of its nose. The thing’s sniffer went concave and its limbs fell to the ground.

  I did it! I killed it without shooting the blasted thing!

  Michael looked up from his handy work to find three more infected heading his way.

  “Shit!” he cursed as he turned to run.

  Paul was having a full blown panic attack. His team couldn’t shoot the infected fast enough and there was nothing he could do to slow them down. It was a matter of time before the beasts busted down the doors and devoured the children. They needed a miracle, but Paul couldn’t pull one out of his bag of tricks. His hand fumbled through the tote bag as he searched for a full magazine. Only ten loaded mags remained.

  “Damn!”

  His people raced for the church, shooting back at the horde as they ran. Bullets pinged off the bus under Paul’s feet. A few of his flock were getting dragged to the grass as groups of the infected fed on their flesh. The day seemed lost.

  How can I possibly save them?

  Michael dropped his empty gun so he could run even faster. Thirty people were in a dead heat race for the closed and most likely locked backdoor to the church.

  How many could squeeze into the opening while the others were chomped to death?

  Would Lindsey open the door and let them in?

  Was she willing to risk the lives of the children inside to save their parents? These were excellent questions and he was about to find out the answers.

  The door to the church swung open and Lindsey was there with a rifle tucked into her shoulder. She aimed through the large scope mounted to its top and opened fire. The bullets passed feet from the living church members and entered the skulls of the pursuing horde. She knew the risk of firing with her friends downrange, but she was willing to take that chance. Lindsey grew up on a ranch in southern Oregon and she was one hundred percent comfortable with firearms. On top of that, she had selected this rifle because of its impressive scope, which made sighting in diseased skulls child’s play.

  She quickly picked off ten of the closest infected and gave the slower church members a chance to escape. On top of being scientifically minded, she was a math whiz kid all through school. As she fired at the infected people chasing her congregation, Lindsey did some fast math.

  Only thirty-five percent of them would make it.

  She aimed at the closest beast. Halfway through the squeeze of her trigger the thing she had been aiming at was suddenly eviscerated. Limbs blew from its torso and its skull popped like a balloon.

  From around the corner of the church came a roar of a massive V8, fuel injected, diesel engine. A Hummer bounced from the driveway up onto the field. Mounted to its roof was a machinegun turret. As it rocketed toward the battle, the .50 caliber opened up and let loose a flurry of rounds. It was like swatting flies with an electrified tennis racket. The infected didn’t stand a chance. The military vehicle slaughtered the dead where they stood.

  Paul couldn’t believe it. His prayers had been answered.

  God sent us the National Guard. Upon further investigation he noticed they weren’t military personnel. They were Ranger Three, the team he had sent to check out the local base this morning and it looked like they hadn’t come back empty handed. They ripped across the field, running over the bodies they didn’t shoot. In the blink of an eye they cleared the yard.

  Paul reloaded and kept the pressure on the infected racing by the fallen evergreen. More and more of the diseased creatures poured in off the street and stumbled through the treeline.

  The hummer will help, but is it enough? Paul wasn’t sure. If the military hadn’t survived this, what were the chance they would make it?

  From a block away Paul heard the unmistakable sound of a semi blowing its horn. Above the treeline Paul was able to see two exhaust stacks chugging out gray smoke. Someone was picking up speed and heading straight for the hundreds of infected that clogged the street behind the church.

  When the semi hit the first row of infected bodies, it made a crunching sound that reminded Paul of when he would spend summers on his grandparent’s farm. Granny would call out to Papa, ‘I want a chicken for dinner.’ Papa would grab one by the head and swing it like it was a party favor. The cracking sound of their little necks always made eating supper that night very difficult for Eric and Paul.

  As the Mack truck tires rolled across the clamoring horde it sounded like a hundred chicken necks snapping at once. The magnificent vehicle cut the horde in half and continued to rumble down the street. Parts of the Mack peeked through the trees until it passed where the evergreen had fallen and Paul could see it was pulling a white trailer. The words WinCo, were painted on the side. When the rig got to an intersection it made a hard right.

  Now we have a chance.

  The Hummer worked its way out of the half circle of vehicles that made up the perimeter line and started in on the remaining infected. The rest of Paul’s flock reloaded and took back their positions on the front line. The Browning .50 cal mounted to the top of the Hummer turned the monsters into pathetic bags of blood. It had the power to absolutely liquefy them.

  The Mack truck rounded a corner a block away and was headed back toward the street. The driver laid on the horn and the infected lined up for the massacre. Paul wondered who was in the truck.

  Was it Ranger Six? Paul had sent them to search for more food and they were instructed to hit a distribution center at the edge of town. WinCo was a local grocery store.

  Did they succeed?

  Whoever it was managed to slay three hundred infected in only two passes. The dead trickled from the treeline. It was a matter of time before they had the battle won. Paul reloaded his gun and tallied their loss.

  Six.

  Half a dozen were taken from them. In this war where one person could make all the difference in the world, having six people stolen from their little community would be very painful. He immediately needed every remaining person to start building a wall around what was left of the property.

  Another horde like this one might wipe us off the map.

  The Hummer passed in front of his command bus. The driver stomped on the gas and as the chunky wheels sped on top of the fallen bodies, it threw up a ten-foot tall rooster tail of meat and gore behind it. The hillbilly genes in Paul’s blood thought it was one of the coolest spectacles he had ever witnessed. The rest of him couldn’t have been more disgusted. A few of his flock let out a mighty cheer as the body parts flew through the air. Paul was thrilled he wasn’t alone with his excitement.

  He felt a hand squeezing him on the shoulder. Paul glanced at his side and found Dana giving him an approving nod.

  “We did it,” Dana screamed above the chaos.

  “It appears we have.” Paul smiled back at her. Less than twenty infected remained.

  This is what generals must feel after their solders win the day. An overwhelming sense of Pride. Paul thought to himself.

  Dana swung the rifle on to her back. She ran her hands through her hair as she surveyed the destruction before her. “This is gonna take forever for us to clea-!” Dana’s sentence was cut short when she screamed out in pain.

  Brother Paul turned his back on the warzone to see what she was yelling about. His heart filled with dread when he looked down at Dana’s feet and saw one of their own grabbing at her leg. The thing stood on the ladder that leaned against the bus. Teeth marks covered the infected lady’s arms. She was one of the fallen, lost to the horde and no one had finished
her off. Her eyes were black and she seemed to be grinning as she chewed a mouth full of Dana’s calf.

  Chapter 19

  Leon carefully placed a strip of duct tape around the broom handle as he fastened the kitchen knife to its tip. He tugged at the blade and it held firm.

  “This will do the trick.” He was eager to get up on the roof and see if he could kill the infected faster than Jim. It was a stupid thing to be competitive about, but he didn’t care. He wanted to show everyone, especially Jim, that he wasn’t a joke.

  Leon’s imagination ran wild. The idea that he would be the best at killing those infected people grew and grew. He fantasized that down deep inside him were untapped ninja skills. Ancient fighting powers, the likes of which had never been seen, welled up inside of him, for he was the chosen one.

  Leon envisioned himself dancing across the heads of the horde, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style, as he effortlessly slayed the beasts at his feet. He did a perfect backflip and landed a killer pose in the middle of the street. He was instantly surrounded by the dead. They closed in around him, blood thirsty teeth chomping, and razor sharp claws ready to peel the flesh from his bones. He swung the bladed bow staff, forged by Ginsu, the master of deadly can cutting knives. The weapon swished through the air in a perfect three hundred-sixty degree arc, and with the mighty swoop of his spear he decapitated half of the horde.

  Karen and Sara watched from the rooftop as he performed the deadly martial arts. The concussive blast of his powerful swing blew both of the women’s tops clean off. Their glistening breasts heaved in the spring sun as they cheered, somehow in perfect unison. “You’re the man, Leon! Kill them all! Also, have sex with the both of us!”

  Leon called up to his women, “Don’t worry ladies, I will.” Leon spun through the air and cried, “Hi-ya!” as he split an infected in half, the long way like a hot dog.

  Karen’s pathetic and weakling husband cowered at the edge of the roof. Piss poured out of his little boy panties. Jim cried like a big fat baby and the wussy man knew he couldn’t compete with the awesome manliness of Master Leon, Zombie Slayer. Jim couldn’t stand it anymore. He decided to take his own life and fell onto his spear, ass first.

  Leon enjoyed his little daydream so much that he didn’t hear Troy and Sara entered the kitchen behind him.

  “Nice spear, buddy.” Troy patted Leon on the back.

  It made the Zombie Slayer flinch and Leon snapped out of his fantasy. He came rushing back to reality and had to face the fact that he had a raging boner bulging in his slacks. He pressed his hips against the kitchen counter to hide his shame. It was getting close to eleven in the morning and that was when Leon would normally fire up the computer for some hardcore porno. He guessed his body was accustomed to being erect at this time of day or it was the fantastic daydream he was having. As he smiled at the two people standing next to him, he wondered.

  Was it the naked tits or Jim getting a spear in the ass that got me so hard?

  He shook off the thought and noticed that each of them had a dowel in their hands. His voice cracked as he asked, “You guys making some spears too?”

  Troy slid the last two big knives from the block on the kitchen counter and handed one to Sara. “Yeah, Frank says we only have about a thousand rounds, so we have to clear them the old fashioned way.”

  Leon shifted his hips. Being pressed against the wood cabinet wasn’t helping put his Johnson to sleep, it was only making it worse. He needed to keep talking and get his mind off the damn thing so it would go away. He remembered he had seen some extra ammo that morning.

  “Outside in the bed of that black truck I saw boxes and boxes of bullets. I’d guess two or three thousand, maybe more. I’m not sure.”

  Sara laid her dowel on the counter and picked up the tape. “We’ll get them cleared, grab the boxes and we’ll have enough to get us out of Dodge.” She yanked a strip of tape from the roll.

  Jim moved from the garage’s roof to the main part of the house. Below him lay a pile of fifty dead bodies. The rest of the horde shifted to congregate closer to him. Jim’s face was covered in sweat and he gave himself a quick stretch. He raised the spear above his head and leaned to the side to give his aching shoulders a little relief. Cliff moved to the main house and joined Jim as they faced the front yard. Cliff attached his rope to the chimney and checked it three times to make sure it was going to hold before he moved to the edge.

  Jim leaned to the other side and groaned. “My whole body is a mess. I’d been hitting the gym and trying to get into shape, but I wasn’t ready for all of this running, climbing and stabbing.”

  Cliff set his rug on the shingles and knelt at the edge. He started right away and plunged his blade into a skull.

  Jim wasn’t sure if he should keep up the small talk or shut his mouth. He didn’t know much about Cliff and it wasn’t like they were friends. They didn’t choose to hangout. They were thrown together by tragic fate. Jim couldn’t figure out why he was so compelled to make the poor guy feel better, but he was. The awkwardness of the situation kept Jim babbling.

  “Man, a cold beer would taste pretty good about now.” He got to his knees and stabbed an infected. “I doubt there’s any beer in the fridge. We’ll have to hit these houses and see if we can find some cold ones.”

  Cliff stayed as quiet as a monk and his vow of silence was getting to Jim. It was like a scab Jim couldn’t stop picking. Death made him so uncomfortable. He hated it when he would be at work and a customer would bring up that their spouse had recently passed. Of course he felt sorry for them, who wouldn’t, but what do you say?

  What can you say?

  Why the hell did they even bring it up in the first place?

  Did they want to make him feel bad for them and like a typical privileged male, Jim found a way to make it about him and turn himself into the victim instead of sympathizing and feeling empathy for the person who was actually suffering.

  Jim continued to yak, “A few more weeks of this and we’ll be shredded, bro.” Jim recoiled at his own words.

  What the hell am I talking about?

  Cliff extracted his spear from the skull of an old woman. He took a long deep breath as he looked at Jim. “Please stop. I know you are trying to make me feel better. I get it. My family is dead and you don’t know what to say, but you sound like an idiot. Let’s get through this. Clear the yard and hit the road. I’m not mad at you for trying, but my van is right there.” Cliff pointed with his spear. His ride was less than thirty-yards away.

  Jim couldn’t stop himself from looking. Through the blood stained glass he could see the outline of Tina’s frame. Behind her were the children. Along with Cliff’s mother, Morgan, and Rich, the mechanic they met last night. All of them were frozen in their last moments of horror.

  Cliff swallowed the lump in his throat. “So forgive me for not being talkative.”

  Jim nodded. He wanted to say something, anything to make this better, to say he was sorry, but that was not what Cliff wanted and he needed to respect the man’s wish.

  Leon popped his head through the hole in the roof. He had a length of extension cord draped on his shoulder, he raised his own spear into the air and said the joke he had been preparing for the last five minutes. “Hey guys, I hope you saved some for me.” Leon’s crooked smile was met with blank, mournful stares. Under his breath he cursed, “Assholes.” He climbed out on to the roof and headed to a corner. He used the extension cord to anchor himself, knelt at the edge and got right to work.

  A minute later Sara and Troy emerged from the hole with their own spears and rope.

  Troy glanced at the front yard. “Holy Jesus girl, you weren’t fooling when you said we were in a pickle.”

  “I never exaggerate my stories.” Sara took his hand as Troy helped her get her feet steadied.

  Troy looked at the pile of dead ones directly below. “Dang it boys, you do good work.”

  Leon became instantly jealous of how Troy was able to
produce smiles of pride on Cliff and Jim’s faces. He muttered to himself as he mocked Troy.

  “Golly shucks, y’all, you two da best zombie killers in da world.” He shook his head, “Jerks didn’t laugh at my funny joke and they’re all grins for the hillbilly.” His lips wiggled as he cursed them in a hushed tone. He wished and wished for his ninja skills to kick in so he could show these bastards what he was made of.

  It didn’t take long for Sara and Troy to get themselves set up. They sat in silence as they cut away at the beasts.

  Sara piped up, “Tell me a story to get my mind off what we’re doing.”

  “What kind of story?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. Tell me one of your adventures or if you were ever in love. I need something to occupy my brain.” She struck gold and gouged out an infected eye.

  “I’m afraid there are not a lot of adventures to tell. Well, nothing I’m going to tell a lady on the first day I meet her.” Troy stabbed his spear into the snapping mouth of a zombie as he thought for a moment.

  “Any juicy gossip or crazy relationships? Those are always fun to hear?”

  “I was married once.”

  Sara’s ears perked up. “Give me all the dirty details. I haven’t had internet access for a full day.”

  Troy readjusted his hat as he recalled the story. “We met on a blind date. I was so nervous I begged the people that set us up to join us and make it a double date. It seemed like a good idea. You know, have a solid couple there to keep the conversation rolling in case I got tongue tied.”

  “Seems like a good idea.”