Chronicles of the Infected (Book 3): Finding Home

by Wood, Rick

  Sadie backed away from the lake, refusing to go in. Gus took her hand and said, “It’s okay, get on my back.”

  He helped her up, but she was still shaking, terrified of the water.

  Desert dove in and Whizzo followed. They swam, though they didn’t swim fast.

  Gus ran into the water, feeling a set of outstretched fingers skim his remaining leg.

  Once the water was up to his shoulders, Sadie clinging so tightly that he struggled to breathe, he turned back and looked at them.

  Paused.

  They had stopped, paces away, refusing to even make contact with the water’s edge.

  Masses of them lined the fluid barrier, reaching their hands out but unable to get him in their grasp.

  Their teeth snapped.

  Eyes opened.

  Saliva drooled out of snarling mouths.

  They were lucky.

  So god damn lucky.

  If this lake hadn’t been so close…

  Sadie whimpered into Gus’s ear and he stroked her arm.

  “It’s okay, I got you,” he said.

  He gave the army one more look, accompanied by his middle finger, then turned.

  He swam away, weighed down by Sadie but just able to remain afloat.

  He saw Whizzo ahead, struggling to keep Desert above water. As he approached, he could see that she’d passed out.

  Gus lifted Desert’s hand and gave it to Sadie.

  “Hold this,” he instructed.

  She took it, Desert’s arm shaking under Sadie’s tremble. Whizzo took the other arm and, in a very slow swim, they carried on. It took a while, but they reached the other side of the lake.

  Once Sadie had released Gus’s throat and Desert had been laid upon the wet grass, Gus felt for her pulse. Her face was mangled, her nose twisted and both eyes blackened – but she was alive.

  “She’s fine,” he reassured Whizzo.

  Whizzo nodded, though he looked a little angry.

  He knew what Whizzo was thinking.

  If Desert had shot that gun before you stopped her, she’d be fine right now.

  There was no way to know that, but he understood.

  If the situation was reversed and the same thing had happened to Sadie, he would not be forgiving.

  “Let’s just get her back.”

  He took Sadie over his shoulder and they carried on walking.

  BEFORE

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  With a hobble and a grimace, Gus stomped down the open street. Dust scattered across his face and the smell of decay hung on the air like a child clinging to its favourite toy.

  There were no infected around. Not as far as Gus could see, anyway – and not that he’d care; he’d happily be killed and eaten and be able to end his misery.

  Yet, despite the lack of undead, their smell still remained. It’s what everything smelt of now. Every street, every looted shop and every burnt-out village. The ashes that floated across the wind no longer smelt like the fire that had created their decay.

  Even he stank of it. His clothes, his hair, his skin. He hadn’t washed in weeks and the repulsive smell had replaced his body odour in becoming his natural scent.

  He kicked open the door to the supermarket. It was somehow jammed, skewwhiff and bent from its hinges. He gave a harder nudge with his shoulder and it opened. The annoying ding of the store bell announced his entry.

  There was little left. The remnants of the store were strewn across empty shelves and stained floors. The occasional spot of blood or wayward limb marked his path, but he ignored it. Blood and limbs were as normal as bread and butter to both him, and the world he now inhabited.

  And it didn’t matter that there was little food left.

  His stomach gurgled and spluttered, but he didn’t care about his hunger. He’d been hungry for a while and he was used to it. His skin clung to his ribs and his beefy arms looked unnatural next to them, but with a bullet lodged in his leg, he’d always he safe in the knowledge that there would never be any other part of his body as fucked up as his calf.

  He limped past the magazines, the empty vegetable crates and the ransacked pharmaceuticals.

  He arrived at an aisle with a large sign above it reading 13 Beer / Wine.

  There was still enough left. It seemed that people had prioritised scavenging food rather than such necessities as booze.

  He grabbed a basket and hobbled over to the wines. He’d never been able to afford the really, really expensive wines, but here they were. Free for the taking.

  He picked a bottle of vintage red and unscrewed the top. He lifted his head back and took more large gulps than his body could handle, and faster than his throat could accommodate.

  Damn, that’s good shit.

  He grabbed the rest of the bottles and shoved them in the basket, holding the open bottle in his other hand, and taking further swigs as he made his way to the spirits.

  A few bottles of whiskey had collapsed over one another. He didn’t even bother looking at the brand. It was whiskey, which meant it would all be good. He shoved them into the basket.

  The basket was growing heavy, but there was still room. He grabbed a few bottles of amber ale and limped away.

  He had what he came for.

  He went back past the pharmaceuticals, past the empty vegetable crates, and past the magazines.

  He paused.

  Even some of the television magazines were missing.

  Who would want an out of date television magazine?

  He dropped the basket and meandered down the aisle. Past the women’s monthlies and men’s health magazines and something about metal music and then the books.

  And there it was.

  In the middle of a shelf, nothing else around it.

  The final copy.

  A new cover, not like the one he used to have.

  The Ever-present.

  He didn’t know whether to cry or snap fuck you at the book.

  He did neither.

  Just stared.

  It was like the book was taunting him. Like it had been placed there deliberately, knowingly.

  There were no other books around it. The rest of the shelves had ripped, blood-splattered books strewn haphazardly over one another.

  Not this shelf.

  No, not this shelf.

  This shelf had this one book. There. Ready. Waiting for him.

  Should he take it?

  What then?

  He screamed. Punched his fist into another shelf, the books clattering to the floor, his knuckles flaking dead skin.

  But he didn’t punch the shelf with this book on.

  He crouched. Covered his face. He refused to fall to his knees, but he had to lower himself somehow, had to collapse into his grief.

  He grabbed the book and charged back to his basket, put it between two bottles of wine, and left.

  AFTER

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Gus awoke with his arm around Sadie. He hadn’t fallen asleep that way, nor had Sadie been anywhere near him when his eyes had closed – but there she was. Beneath his arm, asleep, and soundly so.

  It was strange how much she desired not just attention, but affection. Like a pet, like something that…

  Gus’s eyes opened.

  Alert.

  That’s it…

  A sudden realisation sparked something in his mind, a realisation that was so obvious he couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him yet. In fact, he couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to Whizzo yet.

  But no, it couldn’t be that simple.

  Could it?

  He thought back to his confrontation with Donny from a few days ago – a confrontation that had prompted Desert to cease all talking to him whatsoever, going from spiteful glances to no glances at all.

  What had stopped Donny from killing him?

  It was a mention of Doctor Janine Stanton…

  The doctor who did this to him…

  But maybe there was more to
it than that…

  Maybe he and Stanton had become closer. Maybe she’d had been nicer toward him. Maybe she was reluctant to administer the treatment she had been forced into…

  He gently moved Sadie off and placed her down. She groaned gently, but didn’t stir.

  He rushed into the kitchen where Whizzo sat at the table with his research, and Desert sat over a can of something she was scooping out with a rusty spoon.

  She still looked groggy. Beaten. Her eyes were no longer just black, but blacky blue. Her cheek had a scab going all the way up to her eye, and her eyelids still flickered with a distant pain.

  “I have it,” Gus announced.

  Whizzo looked up. Desert didn’t.

  “Have what?” Whizzo asked. He looked tired, and his question seemed impatient.

  “How we can save Donny.”

  Desert scoffed. The closest thing to an interaction they’d had in a while.

  Even Whizzo sighed, rested his head on his hand and closed his eyes for a moment, as if to think, are we really doing this again?

  “Look, I know you’re sceptical, and you have every right to be, but I really think I’m onto something.”

  “Look, Gus…” Whizzo began, then trailed off.

  Gus knew what they were thinking.

  They thought that Gus was so adamant, so stubborn, that he was bordering on delusional.

  He knew, because he’d think the same thing.

  But he honestly thought he had it.

  “Just listen to me,” Gus urged them, and felt a little angry about it. He’d never had to justify himself to anyone before.

  “Fine,” Whizzo said, leaning back and lifting his arms in the air. Desert shook her head. “What is it?”

  “Emotions!” Gus said, then left it hanging there as if it explained something.

  Whizzo returned Gus’s look expectantly, requiring further explanation.

  “Right, look at Sadie,” Gus continued. “She has the infection, we know that. She has it on a different level, but it’s still the same thing they have. Yet, look at her – I wake up most nights with her cuddled up to me. She refused to even fight Donny because she cared too much for him.”

  Whizzo nodded, then waited for Gus to continue.

  “Then take Donny the other day – he almost killed me. Then I mentioned the name Doctor Janine Stanton, the doctor who administered his infection, who Donny would have some kind of, I don’t know, emotional connection to.”

  Gus paused again, prompting Whizzo to say, “And?”

  “Don’t you see? They are displaying human emotions. That is how we get him back!”

  Desert stopped eating and slammed her fists on the table. She tried to remain still but her leg was shaking.

  “I think we’re past the point of getting him back,” Whizzo said. “Don’t you?”

  “Look, I know how this must sound, and I ain’t asking permission, I’m, I don’t know – asking for help. I think we can save him, I honestly do, we–”

  Desert stood, took her can of food, and threw it across the room.

  “Fuck off!” she shouted, her voice straining under the volume. Gus instinctively went to tell her to be quiet as she may attract the infected, then decided not to.

  She stared at Gus, who stared back.

  “Look at me!” she asserted. “Look at me! He did this. Donny did this. He isn’t your mate anymore, he isn’t something we can save.”

  “I understand why you–”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Do not interrupt me!” Gus screamed, slamming his fist so hard into the wall it left a round dent and dust scattered.

  Desert looked horrified.

  “Who are you?” Gus said. “Who the fuck are you? What, just over a year ago you were some secretary and you turned badass and now you think you know all about this?”

  “And you do?”

  “I served! I fought, I killed, I watched friends die and enemies win, and I did it for years! So don’t fuck with me!”

  An uncomfortable silence hung as the eye of the storm passed. Then the storm resumed.

  “I know what he did to you,” Gus continued, his voice low but still menacing. “I can see it, and I bet it hurt like hell. He pummelled me too, almost killed me in fact. But you don’t know shit. You’re angry, and you don’t know shit.”

  “So what,” Desert said, “you’re just going to appeal to his better side and he’ll stop? Pull on his heart strings? Make him cry?”

  “Desert–” Whizzo tried, but was ignored.

  “Who else does he need to kill until you get a fucking grip?”

  Gus stepped closer to her. “Everyone,” he answered. He looked to Whizzo. “Surely you think it could work?”

  Whizzo shrugged. “Even if there was some element of human emotion still there, I don’t know how we’d utilise it to stop him.”

  “Then we figure it out,” Gus said. “Right? We figure it out.”

  “Tell you what,” Desert interjected. “If you get one of those zombies wandering around outside, and you find their humanity, I’ll go along with you. You get one of them to sing you a hymn or watch Titanic with you, and tell them not to kill you, and they don’t, then I’ll go with you. Otherwise…”

  Gus knew she was being sarcastic, but he didn’t care.

  “Fine,” Gus said.

  Desert scoffed.

  “Fine,” she said.

  She marched into the other room.

  “Gus–” Whizzo went to say.

  “No,” Gus interrupted. “Don’t say anything. I got to go catch me a zombie.”

  He pushed the rusty fridge away from the wall, grabbed the wire from behind it, and pulled it off. Flexing it and checking its length, he picked up his blade and exited the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Gus muttered to himself in grunts and inaudible sentences as he stumbled down the steep slope from the run-down house and further into the forest. It took minutes until he was surrounded by trees and branches obscured the sun.

  If he really thought about it, he could understand Desert’s point of view – he could understand it all too well. To take a beating like that, watch her friend die and not wish vengeance would be inhuman. If she wasn’t angry and refusing to give in to Gus’s determination to find some of the old Donny still left in him, then one would have to wonder what was wrong with her.

  But Gus didn’t really think about it.

  He refused to acknowledge that she may have a point.

  He knew his perspective was obscured and he was okay with that.

  He would not let Donny down.

  And if that cost them more than just their lives? If that cost them the ability to stop this army achieving whatever it was Eugene planned to achieve with them?

  Then fuck it.

  Donny went back for him. And he didn’t have to, but he did. Gus was taken by a cannibalistic family and Donny took a gun, shaking in his hands, and fired it, overcoming a fear that had impaled his ability to defend himself for so long.

  Most importantly, Donny taught Gus how to care about someone other than himself again.

  He had taught Gus that there was reason to live.

  His muttering ceased as he heard a groan come closer.

  He readied his knife, flexing his fingers over the leather handle.

  He paused.

  Listened.

  The groans grew louder.

  The steps grew quicker.

  It had seen him. Wherever it was coming from, it was running, and it was quickly approaching.

  He’d seen how they could run. How quick they were. He had to be alert.

  But which direction were they coming from?

  He closed his eyes. Listened even more intently.

  He opened his eyes and turned to his right.

  Legs apart. Arms by his side. Eyes wide open, mind alert.

  Ready.

  He saw it. Approaching from behind the trees. Bumping into the odd stump, a twig a
ttached to its foot. By the look of it, it was once a man. Probably had blond hair, though that was a guess as it was now thick with mud. It wore a raggedy t-shirt, red, ripped, a Manchester United emblem still attached.

  Gus had despised Manchester United.

  Strange, how such trivial hatred seemed so important at the time.

  Its eyes opened wider as it saw what it had heard and smelt.

  It had a limp as well. Something Gus could relate to.

  Just as it reached him with outstretched arms, Gus fell to the floor and swiped his blade through the base of its right knee. Its leg detached and the infected collapsed.

  He mounted its back and stretched the cable he’d taken from the back of the fridge around its neck.

  Before it could find its way to its one good foot, Gus began walking, clutching the cable, dragging it behind him. It took all of his strength to take the body up the hill. He’d always imagined one of the infected would be lighter, which was odd, as a corpse was usually quite heavy.

  He reached the door to the house and took the cable in one hand and the infected’s hair in the other. He used his buttocks to push down on the door handle and back his way into the house.

  Whizzo looked up, did a double take, then leapt from his seat and backed up against the wall.

  “Woah!” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Gus dragged the infected through the kitchen.

  Desert appeared at the doorway. She became instantly alert and withdrew her gun.

  “What the fuck!” she said.

  “Don’t shoot it!” Gus urged her.

  “What, we’re saving the regular infected now as well?”

  Gus held its head away from his, and looked down at the snapping jaw doing all it could to get to him.

  Sadie appeared in the doorway and instantly went to attack.

  “No, don’t!” Gus said, putting out a hand to signal halt.

  “Are you completely out of your fucking mind?” Desert demanded.

  “You said it, didn’t you?” Gus said.

  “What?”

  “That if I could find one of the infected and get them not to kill me, that you’d go along with saving Donny.”

  “I didn’t seriously think you’d do that!”