The Infected (Book 1): Jim's First Day

by Joseph Zuko

  “Wake up!”

  His eyes pop open. Waking up Devon reminds me of when my Dad would wake me and my brother up to get ready for school. I was ten at the time so Don would have been eight. It would be early in the morning, dark outside and Dad would open our bedroom door and turn on the light. “Get up!” is all he would say. It worked every time.

  “What happened?” Devon sits up quickly and then feels how much his body hurts. He lets out a groan that wakes up Sara. She screams right away.

  “You’re okay. Calm down,” I tell her. I hold her as I undo her seat belt. It releases and she falls down into my arms and I help her get upright. Devon makes his way to the busted out back window. I let Sara go first and she follows him. I find my spear but the blade is buried deep into the dash. I have to work it back and forth to get it free. I slide out the back of the Bronco and get to my feet.

  When I get upright I give my body a good once over to see if anything is broken. I pull the blood soaked napkins from my nose and toss them to the ground. I look around. The bridge is gone. The plane crashed south of Government Island and took out a hundred and fifty foot chunk. The full width of the bridge is gone. I walk out to the edge and Devon and Sara follow me. We stand about ten feet from the crumbling asphalt and concrete. We are thirty feet in the air and there is no way across. The plane sticks partially out of the water of the Columbia River. I pull my phone from my pocket, kick it on and realized we were knocked out for a couple minutes.

  “What should we do?” asks Devon.

  “I don’t know,” I answer grimly.

  “Should we try and get a boat?” asks Sara. I look back down the bridge into Portland. There is a massive horde about a thousand strong, moving quickly up the 205 freeway killing everyone, and adding to their numbers. I swipe my phone on and dial Karen. It rings a few times before she picks up.

  “Jim, thank God! Are you okay? Where are you?” she is panicked. I have never heard her like this before. I don’t want to make it worse so I have to choose my words carefully.

  “Karen, I’m fine. I’m on the 205 bridge. Are you and the girls safe?”

  “Yes. We are okay.” I hear it in her voice. She chooses her words to not upset me. We do this when I know my paycheck is going to be light or if she has spent too much money that month. We try and dance around it so that we don’t scare each other.

  “Jim, bro!” Devon gets his spear ready to fight the growing horde.

  “Baby, I’m coming home. You kiss those girls for me and tell them that Dad’s on his way,” tears build up in my eyes.

  “I will. Jim, please hurry home. People are going...nuts.” The infected are only fifty feet away and moving fast. Devon and Sara are freaked out and want me off the phone.

  “I love you so much. I’ll see you soon.”

  “I love you too.” I hang up the phone and slide it back into my pocket.

  I take off and sprint as hard as I can. Like I said I hate heights and the only thing worse than being up on something high is jumping off of it. This is much higher than the jump we did onto the van. As I approach the broken edge of the bridge all of my fear and anxiety about heights bubbles up into my brain. It tries so hard to talk me out of this. It lists everything that can go wrong. Broken bones and drowning are the top two that my brain keeps repeating.

  I jump, holding my spear tight as I brace for the impact of the water. It feels like forever. My body wants to shit itself. I am not sure about the best way to land. I keep my legs aiming straight down. I know I don’t want to land on my back or my face. I clench every hole I have. Then I hit the water. It is much colder than I thought it would be. I hit so hard that my sinuses are blasted with what feels like five gallons of liquid. I swim for the surface. Being fully dressed with a backpack on and a spear in one hand, I start to panic. I am not a strong swimmer. This climb to the surface pushes me to the breaking point. It takes forever for me to breach, I am going to run out of air.

  I gasp a lungful when my head breaks the surface. Seconds later Devon and Sara hit the water next to me. I swim for Government Island. Sara and Devon have surfaced and they follow me to the island. The current in the Columbia River is strong. It pulls me quickly to the west. I live on the east side of Vancouver. I have to get to this island. If I miss it then it will be a very long swim across the river. At the rate the water carries me I might end up miles downriver and have to walk back that much farther. So I fight and push myself across. It takes everything I have to keep going. My nose kills me every time I take a breath in. My legs and arms feel numb. This water is less than sixty degrees and it is murky. You can’t see more than two feet into it.

  “Damn, this water is movin’ fast,” Devon fights hard to make it.

  A wave smacks Sara in the face. “I hate this river,” she coughs and spits.

  The thought occurs to me that if someone drowned on the plane they will turn and come back as an infected. When I was a kid swimming at a lake called Round Butte, I had the fear that something was going to grab my leg and pull me down under the water. I think I saw it in one of the Friday The 13th movies. Jason reaches up from the water and pulls his victim to their death. It is all I can think about. A hundred Jasons grabbing my ankle and pulling me under. I also have an irrational fear of freshwater sharks so this is the most nightmarish swim of my life. I am halfway to the island when I hear it. I look back at the bridge and the infected are falling from the edge. My nightmare has come true; the monsters are in the water. I don’t see any of them surface, but they don’t need air. I push hard until I get my feet to solid ground.

  I climb out of the water and up onto the small sandy beach. We are a couple hundred yards down the river from the bridge, but we made it. The island is shaped like a giant joint if you looked down on it from a plane. We landed at one tip of the joint. We need to walk to the other tip before climbing back into the water. If we don’t we will end up miles away from my family. Our apartment sits east about four miles from the 205 freeway we jumped from. I lay on the sand trying to catch my breath. The only thing worse than running is running soaking wet. Even though I am drenched I take another drink of water. Devon and Sara join me on the beach. They are zonked.

  “Come on guys. We have to keep moving,” I don’t sound very convincing when I say it.

  Devon holds up two fingers, “Two minutes bro.” My kids pull this same move when we have to leave some place and they are having fun.

  “We don’t have two minutes. You saw them fall into the water. They could climb out onto the beach any second. Let’s move,” I hold out my hand and help Devon up first, then Sara. We start jogging in the sand.

  “We need to get to the north side of the island,” I say over my shoulder to them. To get to the north side we will have to cross through the forest. I see the start of a trail so I head in that direction.

  The infected continue to fall off the edge of the bridge, but they don’t pop back up to the surface. They must sink straight to the bottom. Maybe they won’t be a problem. The current is so fast I hope the river takes them all the way to the ocean.

  “When we get to the north side, then what?” asks Devon.

  “We swim,” I huff and puff up the sandy beach.

  “It’s an even further swim to Washington,” Sara chimes in.

  “I know it. We don’t have a ton of options,” I have to stop talking as I run or I am going to pass out.

  We get to the opening of the trail and I slow down. My eyes adjust to the dark. If this was a normal day and I walked through woods like this I would be fine, but after everything I have seen today, these woods are absolutely terrifying. It is so dark and hard to see. I lead the way, Sara follows and Devon watches our backs.

  “It’s spooky,” Devon whispers.

  When I was twelve we moved north of Battle Ground, Washington. It was five acres of forest out in the middle of nowhere. We had deer in the front yard and stars in the sky at night. “God’s country,” as my Dad called it. I lived out ther
e for eight years, but I would not call myself an outdoor man or a country boy. I don’t know how to hunt nor fish, we just shopped at the local Safeway. I can’t call this the deep woods, the city is behind me and Vancouver is peeking out from the trees ahead.

  The trail we jog on is worn and well kept. I can’t hear anything other than the sound of our feet and heavy breathing. I am glad to see Devon and Sara huff and puff as badly as I am. My sopping wet clothes seem to have added twenty pounds to me and these top of the line boots rub my feet raw. We are close to the north beach now. The last half of the 205 bridge is right ahead of us. It looks so high up in the air from down here. The bridge touches down onto the island for a quarter mile then rises up high above the Columbia River.

  We hit the beach and I have to slow down. I promised myself that I would take up running for exercise, but I never did. Now I am paying for it.

  “Hold up guys,” I slow to a fast walk. “My nose is killing me,” I blame the nose but it is my whole body that’s screaming “NO.” We are close to the bridge. There are screams and commotion up on the bridge. I can’t make it out. I hear the moan of the infected. There is a chain-link fence that separates the freeway from the island and it wraps around all four sides of the bridge. A small horde is smashed up against the fence. We need to keep moving, so I pick up the pace.

  They have spotted us and it gets them all riled up. They shuffle down the fence and climb over the concrete barrier that lines the bridge. Their bodies fall and tumble onto the island. One after another they fall on top of each other. A few of them land on their feet and they move right for us. The fence dips under the bridge. It is designed to keep people off the island. Right now it gives us a few more seconds to get past them. The fence is topped with razor wire but they do not try to climb over. They push and bite at the metal barrier. We run under the bridge and are shaded from the hot sun. More and more infected pour down onto the island. The fence is about to give. I stop and face the monsters. I stab at them. I demolish a dead housewife’s face.

  “What are you doing?!” Sara yells.

  “This fence is gonna give! We need to take down a few of them so it will hold!” Devon follows me and starts stabbing away with his spear. Sara pulls the machete from Devon’s hip. Over and over we stab through the fence. The last time I saw real human brains outside of the skull was in my sophomore biology class. Today I have seen dozens of shattered skulls with brains leaking out of them. I am so ready for this day to be over.

  At the east end of the bridge stands thirty monsters. Pushing against the barrier.

  “Come on!” I sprint for the other end of the fence. A big one, a full on “Walmart Mom” as wide as she is tall falls over the concrete divider and crash-lands into the fence. I quickly take out another five monsters, but her weight was enough to pop the fence off its post. They spill out onto the sand under the bridge. I take out a few more and keep running. I slash and stab at them. Blood, guts and brains drop to the sand. Devon and Sara take down four or five each, but we can’t kill them fast enough. They are about to surround us. We have to go now.

  “RUN!” I scream. We take off down the beach away from the bridge. There are too many. If we stay and fight they will easily overwhelm us.

  We get two hundred feet away from the bridge when I smell it. Cow shit. Why do I smell cow shit out here? We run around the little bit of woods and the island opens up to a pasture. There are a few hundred cows hanging out eating grass. We run into the pasture and it freaks out some of the bovine. They take off and run into each other. Someone yells at us and it is not one of the infected. It is coming from the cows. There is a man out in the middle of the herd. He is tending to one of the animals. As we get closer, the sea of cows parts and we see the man in his late fifties next to a four-wheeler. It is the kind of knobby-wheeled thing you would use on a ranch.

  “What the hell are you people doing?” he readjusts his baseball cap.

  “Start the four-wheeler,” I shriek at him.

  “You people shouldn’t be here!” he catches a full view of the disgusting army of the dead that are on our heels. The horde splits up and chase after the cows. Devon, Sara and I reach the four-wheeler.

  “Come on man!” Devon says to the farmer. He climbs onto his ride and the three of us jump up onto the racks. The guy turns a key and hits the ignition. He punches the gas and the tires spin out as we take off. The infected chow down on a few of the cows. They swarm them, tearing at their flesh. One cow trips on a dead person, falls to its side and they tear into it. Some of the other livestock get away but suffer a few bites from the infected. The farmer heads for a small house and barn that sits at the end of the pasture. The horde has forgotten about us and is focused on this easy prey.

  The farmer pulls into the barn and kills the vehicle’s engine. He hops off and runs for one of the barn doors. Devon and I run over to the other door and pull it closed.

  “What in God’s name is going on? The girls have been going crazy for the last hour. I see smoke in the sky. I heard the God-awful noise. It sounded like a plane crash,” the farmer pulls off his baseball cap and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He stares at us waiting for some kind of rational answer.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. There is a horrible infection spreading quickly,” I tell him. He snaps his cap back on.

  “The noise and the smoke?” he asks.

  “A few planes have crashed. They took out the bridge, Cascade Station and the airport. Is there a way out of here?” I press. I notice Devon is right behind me. He shadows every move I make. I didn’t notice it before now.

  “Yeah. Back door.”

  “Do you have a boat?” asks Sara.

  “You want to go out there?” he drops his hands onto his hips in disbelief.

  “Hey,” I put my hand out and he shakes it on instinct. “My name’s Jim, what’s yours?”

  “Bob,” he says.

  “Bob, we can’t hang around here. Those things will find a way in or they’ll surround us and we’ll never get out,” he does not believe me. “Bob, we gotta move now. If this is happening everywhere, then there’s no rescue. Do you have a boat off this island?” I let go of his hand. He looks the three of us over and makes eye contact with each of us. It sinks in. How could we possibly make this up? He nods his head.

  “I got a boat tied up at the dock. It’s north of here. Keys are in the house.”

  “Okay. Lead the way.”

  Bob heads to the back door of the barn. He slowly pops it open and peeks outside. The coast is clear so we follow him out. He walks quickly.

  “Let’s pick up the pace,” I jog past him. Out in the pasture, four dead cows are on the ground. The infected chase after the rest of the animals. I hope they stay occupied with the herd and give us time to get off this island.

  We get to the front door and Bob unlocks it. We slide through the door and into the small entryway. Bob locks the door behind us. I keep watch at the window as he hunts for his keys.

  “I got a rifle. Should I grab it?”

  “Whatever you want. Just move fast,” says Sara.

  “I recommend a blade,” I tell him. Bob finds the keys to the boat in a drawer.

  “I’m going to grab my rifle. Where are we going?” Bob goes to get his gun.

  “Vancouver,” says Sara. Bob returns from down the hall and loads a handful of rounds into the old Winchester.

  “Why?”

  “My family. Keep it down,” I whisper. The infected are close.

  “I can drop you off on the shore, but I’m heading upriver. I got a cabin in Stevenson.”

  Out in the pasture something horrible has happened. I thought this was a people disease, but I was wrong. One of the cattle has turned and it is pissed off.

  Devon looks over my shoulder outside. “What the hell?” he whispers to me. Bob fills a backpack with canned food. His rifle is slung over his forearm. He turns quickly and the barrel of the gun hits a quart
jar full of coins. The jar slides off the kitchen counter and crashes to the ground. Glass and coins hit the hardwood floor and the jar explodes. It could not have been louder. The infected out in the pasture hear the noise and move for us.

  “Oops,” Bob says as he slings his pack up onto his shoulder.

  The cow charges at the house as Bob opens the front door. Its ribs are exposed and it is missing its jaw. Bob raises his rifle and fires, hitting its chest. The round does nothing but alert all of the infected to our location.

  “Hit them in the head!” Sara roars. He fires another round and hits the neck. The cow moves so fast, faster than the rest of the infected. Two more beasts have turned and head our way. The first one is at the door. Bob slams it shut. The animal blasts the front door off its hinges. Its head and neck stick into the living room, but it is too wide. The doorway stops it. Bob fires another round and misses completely. Its head rears up and down as it fights to get inside. I stab at it and slice off an ear. Devon takes his spear and slices downward into its neck. He cuts the head halfway off. I hit it the same way on my side and the damn thing’s head falls to the floor. Gallon after gallon of cow blood pour out of its neck. The body drops onto the porch. The eyes and tongue move in the severed head. It is still alive. Sara forces her machete down into its brain. That does it.

  Four infected humans climb over the dead cow’s body. Bob shoots one in the head and I slice at another. Another turned cow crashes through the big front window, but it gets high centered on the windowsill. We back into the kitchen. The infected smash through the windows and front door. Their blood soaked mouths snap closed. Bob fires until his rifle clicks empty. If we do not move we will be surrounded. I do not want to face a turned cow in the open.

  We move further into the kitchen. I see a full bottle of whiskey on the counter. I pull open a drawer next to the sink and find a dish rag. I grab the whiskey and jam the rag into the mouth of the bottle.