Infection Z

by Ryan Casey

  He didn’t have to say any more words. He could tell from the looks on the three faces that they understood what he was getting at.

  Clarice shook her head. “No. You can’t. You can’t.”

  “I have to, sis. It’s … it’s my duty. My responsibility. I came back here to help you all. I have to finish what I started.”

  Clarice started to protest again, but her words were incomprehensible.

  Hayden held himself tall. He tried not to let any emotion slip in. Tried to stay as detached from the situation as he could. “Newbie, pass me your bat, please.”

  Newbie ducked his head. He opened his mouth as if he was going to protest, then sighed and walked to Hayden. Sarah comforted Clarice while she sobbed some more.

  “You don’t have to be the one to do this,” Newbie whispered, looking Hayden in the eyes. “It shouldn’t be you who does this. I can … I can do it. If you want me to, I can do it.”

  Hayden took the baseball bat from Newbie. He forced a smile back at him. “I appreciate that. I really do. But you’re wrong. I do have to do this. It’s my responsibility.”

  Newbie nodded. He stepped away and walked back to Sarah and Clarice.

  Hayden gripped the heavy baseball bat in one hand and the sharp steel pipe in the other.

  He turned around. Faced the blood-specked door. Held his breath.

  You can do this. You have to do this. You have to be strong. Be strong for your sister, just like you were strong for her when you were kids.

  He listened to the crying whimpers of his sister, to Sarah’s words of reassurance, to Newbie’s sighs, to the gasps and moans of the zombies on the street outside.

  You can do this.

  He put the baseball bat to one side.

  Opened the door.

  Picked it up again and stepped inside the bedroom…

  Forty

  Hayden closed the door of the front bedroom and turned around to face his undead dad and his dying mum.

  His dad lunged at the rope wrapped around him the moment Hayden stepped inside. It pained Hayden to see him in this condition. He smelled of urine and feces. Dad was always so keen on looking “half decent” when he was in the company of others. But there was no dignity to his current state. None whatsoever.

  Hayden tightened his grip around the baseball bat and tried not to look directly at his dad as he walked across the carpet, which was squelchy with blood. He tried to breathe deeply, tried to handle what was in front of him with the same detachment doctors showed when they were diagnosing patients with cancer.

  Because this creature wasn’t his dad. It was just a shadow of Dad. An avatar. For although it looked like Dad and had his features, there was nothing inside the zombie that resembled Dad at all.

  He stopped right opposite his dad. He listened to him lurch as he pushed as hard as he could against the rope around him. He was pushing so hard that the rope was digging into his bitten skin, making more blood spurt out of his punctured intestines.

  Hayden shook his head. He couldn’t watch this invader of his dad’s body abuse him much longer.

  So he pulled back the baseball bat.

  Steadied his grip.

  His hands sweated. His shaking wouldn’t stop. His heart pounded in his head and wouldn’t let him think clearly.

  Just get it over with. Get it done with. It’s almost over. All of it, it’s nearly finished.

  He closed his eyes. Listened to his sister’s cries from the landing area. Listened to the pained gasps of his father’s zombie, only one thing in mind: biting his son.

  But Hayden wasn’t his son.

  He wasn’t this monster’s son.

  His dad was a good man. A brilliant, gentle man. Not this violent, bloodthirsty beast.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. Felt tears drip from his chin, his hands still shaking. “Sorry Dad. So sorry.”

  He swung the baseball bat hard across the side of his dad’s neck.

  He didn’t open his eyes to check he’d made a clean hit. Instead, he swung again, felt the bone of the top of his spine crack back against the force of the heavy metal baseball bat.

  He listened to his dad gargle blood and he swung the bat at him again, tears streaming down his cheeks, unable to open his eyes and look but unable to get the image of what he was doing out of his mind.

  “Sorry Dad. Sorry. Sorry.”

  He swung at the neck of his dad’s zombie until the gargling stopped.

  And then he swung twice more.

  Waited for his dad to go completely still.

  He opened his eyes, but that was no use. Tears filled them. The room smelled of blood. No, worse—it tasted of blood.

  Hayden lowered the bloody baseball bat to his side. The frame of it was covered with pieces of flesh. He tried not to picture what part of his dad’s neck it was from. He took in some deep breaths. Calmed himself. Steadied himself. Distanced himself.

  Stay calm. Stay focused. Nearly there. Nearly there.

  And then he turned to his mum.

  Just seeing her lying so peacefully in the bed made Hayden’s grip on the baseball bat loosen and his knees almost gave way completely. If not for the bites on her neck, the slight paling of her skin, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was just sleeping.

  She was still breathing. Throaty, chesty, shallow breaths, but breaths nonetheless.

  Hayden crouched down beside her. He wrapped his fingers around her hands, which were always so soft, so smooth. He pressed his head up against them and he cried. “I’m sorry, Mum. I … I got your call. I got your call and I tried. I tried so hard but … I’m so sorry.”

  His mum just kept on breathing those shallow breaths. Her hand remained completely still, completely cold, and yet so comforting.

  Hayden wiped his tears away and looked up at his mum. He’d never imagined this happening all his life. He wasn’t naive—he knew his parents weren’t invincible—but he always pictured himself someplace else when the time for them to pass finally did come. He imagined himself with a life of his own, with other things to care about. A life where he’d finally got his shit together and started thinking and acting for himself.

  He never pictured himself having to step up to the plate and put them to rest. Not like this.

  He stood up, but his head was spinning and he kept seeing the bloody remains of his dad’s body to his right. “Gonna … gonna make you comfortable now,” he said, as he reached for the pillow under his mum’s head and gently shifted it from under her gorgeous, shiny brown hair. “Gonna make you comfortable so you can sleep. So you … so you don’t have to feel any pain.”

  He lifted the plump, feathered pillow and hovered it over his mum’s face. He wanted to close his eyes and look away, but he couldn’t. He saw himself from outside his body. Saw himself holding a pillow above his own mum’s face. His mum, who had been through so much in her life. His mum, who had put everything aside to make Hayden and Clarice’s upbringing as easy as it could be.

  His beautiful, supportive, loving and caring mum.

  He lowered the pillow towards her face and he heard a voice.

  “Hay … Hayden …”

  He froze. Froze completely. No. The voice wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be real. He was imagining things. He was—

  “Hayden … My … my boy. You came. You came.”

  Hayden moved the pillow away. His heart raced.

  His mum’s eyelids were open, just a sliver. Her smile was twitching at the corners. There were no lines on her forehead, nothing like that. She looked happy.

  Alive.

  Hayden lowered himself beside her again. He didn’t know what to do, what to say. “Mum, I … I …”

  “You … good boy. You came. Good … good boy. Strong boy.”

  Tears filled Hayden’s eyes. He sniffed back the snot that dripped from his nostrils, bit his tongue to stop the sobbing. “I’m so sorry. So sorry I couldn’t come sooner. So sorry I wasn’t there for the anniversary trip. I�
��m … I’m so sorry for everything. For—for leeching off you. For making things hard for you. I’m so sorry.”

  Hayden felt his mum’s hand touch the back of his. She twisted her eyes underneath her barely open eyelids and directed them at Hayden. “You … you never have … have to say sorry to me. You’re my … my boy. My special little soldier.”

  Hayden remembered the times his mum would sit him on her knee as a little kid and stroke his curly dark locks. She’d always tell him what a special little soldier he was.

  “Clar … Clarice … Is she—”

  “She’s—she’s okay,” Hayden said. “She’s outside. Do you want me to—”

  “Don’t let her … her see me this way. Just … just my little soldier. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Me and … me and Dad are so proud.”

  Hayden squeezed his mum’s hand, tried to get some warmth back into it. There had to be a way to reverse the bite. There had to be a way he could get out of doing what he had to do.

  But there wasn’t. There just wasn’t.

  His mum coughed and spluttered some blood.

  “Here, here,” Hayden said. He wiped it from her chin with the sleeve of his coat.

  “You … always so good. Always so good. I … I love you, Hayden.”

  Hayden could feel his mum’s words falling apart. He stroked her cheek. Gripped her hand. Let his tears fall onto the duvet that held her. “I love you too, Mum. I love you so much. But I …” He didn’t know how to tell her what he had to do. He didn’t know if he wanted to. Whether it was a good idea. “If you want to be at peace …”

  His mum didn’t say anything, but she squeezed Hayden’s hand ever so lightly, and then she closed her eyes completely and nodded. “You … you do it,” she said. “You do it, my soldier.”

  Hayden’s heart raced. He sniffed back more tears. “I … I don’t think I can, Mum. I don’t think I can.”

  “You … you can do anything. You’re … you’re so strong. So strong. Always so strong.”

  Her words descended into gibberish again. Her breathing grew tighter, weaker. Her grip on Hayden’s hand loosened, but he could tell she was fighting to hold on.

  But it didn’t matter how hard she fought. She was going to turn. And he couldn’t let her turn. He couldn’t put her through a millisecond of that.

  Hayden held back more tears. He looked at the pillow beside him. He had to put his mum to rest. Put her to rest, then … then finish the job.

  He tried to tell himself to stay detached, just like he had when he’d swung the baseball bat at Dad’s neck. But this was different to killing Dad’s zombie. Because Dad wasn’t Dad anymore when Hayden killed him. Dad was something else.

  Mum was still Mum.

  And she had to die as Mum.

  “I’ll miss you,” Hayden said.

  His mum spluttered some more blood and made a sound that resembled a chuckle. “Oh, it’s not long. We’ll see each other again on the … on the other side. Not long at all. Life’s … life’s short. It’s …”

  She coughed again.

  Hayden nodded.

  He leant over and kissed his mum on her smooth forehead, unweathered by years of stress and pain.

  And then he moved away and lifted the pillow in his shaking hands.

  He looked down at his mum, blood on her lips, stringy pieces of chewed flesh poking out from the bites on her bruised neck. He looked down at her, eyes closed, and he saw her half-smiling. A better way to go than Dad. A much better way to go than Dad.

  “I love you, Mum,” Hayden said.

  Hayden’s mum didn’t say anything in return. She just tilted her head, ever so slightly.

  Tears rolled from Hayden’s cheeks. He held his breath.

  You can do this. You can put Mum to rest. You can do what you have to do. What’s right. What she wants.

  And then he closed his eyes and he pressed the pillow over his mum’s face.

  He didn’t press too hard at first. But he knew he’d have to if he wanted to help her pass.

  So he pushed as hard as he could. Pressed right on her nostrils and over her mouth. He cried and he sobbed and he kept on telling her how much he loved her, how sorry he was, how he was here for her.

  She didn’t struggle. She lifted her hands a couple of times. Stretched out her fingers. And near the end, Hayden heard her make a coughing noise and felt her head shake either side under the force.

  But he kept on holding.

  Kept on doing what he had to do.

  My little soldier. My brave little soldier.

  He held the pillow over his mum’s face for what felt like forever.

  He waited until she’d gone still. Waited until the throaty breathing stopped.

  He felt her cold chest with his shivering hand. Felt for a pulse.

  He felt a final, solitary thud against her ribcage.

  And then nothing.

  Forty-One

  Hayden held his sister’s hand as they climbed the hill beside Cheshire Lane in the darkness.

  Newbie and Sarah trailed behind them slightly. Clearly, they figured Hayden and Clarice needed some time to recover after what had happened back at Clarice’s house. Figured they needed time to grieve.

  But really, what Hayden wanted more than anything was just to make sure his sister knew he was there for her.

  They worked their way up the side of the slippery hill. When they reached the top, Hayden looked back at the city of Preston, and at the town of Smileston in the distance. Usually, it was always so lit up. So illuminated. The sound of traffic zooming down the many roads, of the honking of horns and the smells of greasy takeaway food, they were usually so prominent.

  “What happened in that bedroom, Hayden?” Clarice asked.

  Hayden didn’t answer. He didn’t want to tell Clarice about how he’d swung the baseball bat at Dad’s neck, breaking it and bringing him peace.

  He didn’t want to tell her about smothering Mum. A conscious Mum. Barely conscious, sure, but conscious nonetheless.

  And he didn’t want to tell her how he’d finished Mum off, just in case she came back. He didn’t know how the infection worked—whether interrupting it with death through other means stopped the turn completely, or whether the infection always took hold after death. He didn’t know, so he had to be sure.

  He swallowed a sickly taste in his throat. He didn’t want to remember that part too much.

  He’d done what he had to do. He’d stepped up. But stepping up wasn’t always pretty.

  He looked at his sister. Looked into her blue eyes. He could still see the redness underneath them from all the crying she’d done about losing their parents, losing her boyfriend. And deep down, Hayden knew that those marks would never pass, not really. Because everyone lived with their own marks now. Reminders of the experiences they’d been through, and the things they’d done to conquer those experiences.

  “They’re at peace now,” Hayden said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “Do …”

  And then she closed her mouth. Shook her head and stopped speaking. Hayden knew she’d wanted to say something else, but decided against it.

  Maybe one day Hayden would tell his sister exactly what happened in that little front bedroom of her house. Maybe he’d tell her that Mum was alive and that he’d had to euthanise her in her dying moments. Maybe he’d tell her about the glimpse he got of Dad’s neck, caved-in, and the way his eyes looked decidedly human again in post-undead death.

  But for now, he alone had to live with those images. He had to accept the weight of those memories and those actions.

  He had to deal with his own problems, just like every other damned functional human was forced to do, but that Hayden had been avoiding for so many years.

  “We can’t walk much further in these conditions,” Sarah said. She leaned against her knees, panting. Her icy cold breaths clouded in front of her. “Darkness. Cold. Zombies. Military blockades. We can’t just walk on as if there�
�s nothing out there.”

  Hayden looked back at Preston and Smileston. He could still smell the fumes from the explosions, the smoke that had nearly suffocated him in his parents’ house. He could see the vague outline of the Smileston church that was just minutes away from his old flat. Wow. His old flat. It was just earlier today that he’d woken up in a hung-over rut—as usual—and braced himself for another day of … well, of nothing.

  But now he was out here, no matter how morbid and how nasty the situation was, a part of him felt different.

  Responsible.

  Free.

  “We’ll push on into the countryside,” Hayden said. “Try to find somewhere warm to rest for the night. Preferably somewhere with food.”

  “Amen to that,” Newbie said.

  “And if we don’t find anywhere?” Sarah asked.

  Hayden looked at her as she stood in the breezy darkness.

  He smiled.

  “We will,” he said.

  Together, they turned their backs on Smileston, on Preston, on old memories and on everything.

  Together, they walked into the darkness, into the unknown.

  Into a new world.

  Together.

  Forty-Two

  Gareth Betchly sat in the cockpit of the Hawker Hunter fighter jet and wondered what the hell he’d just been a part of.

  The plane whizzed back to his Yorkshire base in the darkness. He’d tried to get in touch with base, but he couldn’t get through to them. He knew he wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but he needed answers.

  Answers for the things he’d seen on the ground in Smileston, in that nearby city of Preston.

  Of Manchester. Liverpool. Lancaster.

  All places the jets had fired missiles at.

  All places they’d burned to the ground.

  He tried to connect to a news transmission too, but he wasn’t having any luck. Something was off about all this crap. He’d been sent to the small town of Smileston to stop an infection raging out of control, and before he knew it he was firing missiles all over the north west of England.