Infected (Book 2): The Flight

by Cleek, Caleb

  When Zeke’s door opened and he stepped out of the Hummer, Katie left her post on the porch and ran down to meet him. With tears in her eyes, she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered, “We didn’t think we’d see you again.”

  As Katie loosened her embrace, her eye caught Meagan who was now hesitantly standing at Zeke’s side. Katie released Zeke and took a step to the side, bringing her in front of Meagan. Looking Meagan over, Katie turned back to Zeke and said, “She looks like a keeper,” and then she gave Meagan a welcoming hug. “We’re glad to have you with us, Meagan. Come on inside. Eve and I and will get you fed and set up with a place to sleep.”

  After dinner that evening, the group sat around the dining room table, swapping stories about how they had managed to stay alive. The conversation slowly ebbed away into a tranquil silence. After thirty seconds had passed with nobody speaking, Connor finally broke the stillness. “I know I’ve hinted at this all day and you are all probably expecting it by now, but Katie and I made up our minds. We’re leaving Lost Hills and moving to my parents’ farm.

  Frank nodded his head knowingly. He had been expecting the announcement, as had everybody else.

  Merv was the first to speak. “We’re going to miss you and your family. You’ve been good to the community. What’s left of it will be worse off for your absence, but I understand why you’re leaving.”

  Connor nodded in appreciation at the compliment and slowly looked around the table at everybody present. “The offer I made to each of you still stands. You’re welcome to come with us.”

  Introspective silence returned. Matt and Eve looked at each other knowingly before Eve nodded her head slightly to Matt. “We’ll come with you,” Matt said softly, breaking through the silence that hovered over the room like a heavy fog. He looked over at Luke, who was soundly sleeping at his side. “It’s the best thing for our family,” he added as he ran his fingers through his boy’s dirty hair.

  “Anybody else?” Connor asked as he again passed his gaze around the table, seeing if anybody else would accept his offer. Nobody met his gaze, each staring at his empty plate on the table.

  Frank was the first to speak. “My family has lived on this ranch for four generations now. I don’t know how we’ll defend it, but this is my home and I couldn’t leave it.”

  Merv reached up and patted Frank on the shoulder with a smile. “We’ll give ‘em a fight to remember,” he said with a grin as he visualized making a desperate stand by his son’s side against overwhelming odds.

  Martinez spoke next, “I don’t have any family left to return to. I haven’t been here long, but I really like the area. If I can find a place to call home, I’m going to stay.”

  Merv quickly spoke again. “I think you’ve found that place right here. Welcome home.”

  “Well,” Connor said, standing up, “I guess that leaves everybody settled. I’m going to bed because tomorrow’s going to be a busy day, and I still feel like somebody beat me half to death.”

  -The End of Infected: The Flight

  Email the author at theinfectedbookseries@gmail.com.

  Look for the Infected Series on Facebook to Like it and see the latest info on progress for the third book.

  A Note From the Author

  I have always enjoyed End of the World movies. When I decided to write a book, I didn’t have to think about the topic; it was definitely going be End of The World genre. Like everybody else in the country, I was hooked on the Walking Dead around the time I started Infected: The Fall. My enjoyment of the Walking Dead inspired me to center my book in the world of zombies.

  One of the things that I particularly enjoy about the Walking Dead is the suspense of not knowing who is going to live and who is going to die. Nobody is safe.

  Death is a situation with which everyone can relate; none of us are immune to it. Sooner or later we will all die. The fact that death is largely an unknown lends to the fear it engenders.

  My question is this: Is death really an unknown and if not, what happens when it occurs? It is a question that every religion attempts to answer. Whether it is Animism of tribal cultures, Hinduism, Islam or Christianity, each teaches of an afterlife. What does the afterlife entail and how do we get to it?

  If there is more to come after death, these are important questions to answer correctly. Contrary to dogma that is incessantly spouted today, there is only one truth. Two contradictory ideas cannot both be correct. They may both be wrong, but they cannot both be true.

  Over the next pages, I would like to share what I have found in regards to death and the afterlife. If you are interested, I would encourage you to bear with me and read further as I think you will find it interesting, even if you disagree. If not, thank you for reading my books, and I wish you the best.

  I have spent significant time investigating the religions of the world. As you have more than likely deduced, I have reached a conclusion as to which is correct. I am not going to spend time laying out the problems I found with the beliefs I have discarded. I am simply going to present a brief case for what I believe to be the truth and why I have come to this conclusion.

  At the risk of ruining the suspense, I have come to believe that the Bible (Don’t give up on me yet.) is the word of God and holds the answers to the mysteries of life. In fact, it makes that claim for itself:

  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (I Timothy 3:16, 17)

  There are many factors that have led me to place my faith in the authenticity of the Bible. I will briefly present a few.

  In my mind, the most significant proof of the Bible is the prophesies it made that have been fulfilled, and there are hundreds of them. For the sake of brevity, I am only going to present one:

  For dogs have surrounded Me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet… They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots. (Psalm 22:16,18)

  This prediction of the Messiah’s death was written around 1000 BC. It was recorded some 500 years before the first known practice of crucifixion and was fulfilled by Jesus’ death, which was recorded in the New Testament in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All four report Jesus’ death by crucifixion, the barbaric punishment in which nails were hammered through an individual’s hands and feet, affixing him to a wooden cross.

  The Gospel of Mark records the soldiers casting lots for Jesus’ clothing at his death as predicted over 1000 years before:

  And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take. (Mark 15:24)

  Another evidence that the Bible is more than a mere collection of moral teachings is its historical accuracy. Archeology is constantly confirming the Bible. An example is the discovery of the Hittite empire. The Hittites are mentioned many times in the Bible. Until the 19th century, outside of the Bible, there was no evidence that such an empire had existed and many used this lack of evidence as proof the Bible was wrong. In the early 1900’s the Hittite capital, Hattusa, was discovered in northern Turkey. Further evidence of the Hittite Empire was discovered in Egypt in the form of a treaty between Egypt and the Hittite empire.

  The Bible provides many scientific insights beyond what was known at the time. This one, speaking of God, is from the book of Job:

  He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing... He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness. (Job 26:7, 10)

  Even relatively modern cultures have had many beliefs regarding the nature of the earth. The book of Job was the first book of the Bible to be written. Even thousands of years ago, through God’s revelation, it was understood that the earth is round and is suspended in space from nothing.

  Over a period of more than 1500 years, some 40 people
penned the words of God. If the Bible were a book written by men from such varying stations in life and different cultures, it would be full of contradictions. The fact that it does not contain contradictions gives credence to its claim that it is indeed penned by men who were writing under the direct inspiration of God Himself. There is no other explanation for its consistency.

  While these brief evidences are far from exhaustive, I trust they are enough to make you at least consider the Bible’s claims.

  With that said, what does the Bible claim? The Bible deals with a broad range of topics, but the overarching theme of the Bible is the restoration of mankind’s broken relationship with God.

  The Bible enumerates God’s many attributes, the most familiar of which is love. God is also described as holy, meaning He is devoid of sin. He is also just and therefore cannot allow evil to go unpunished. To some, God’s justice may seem hard to reconcile in light of the evil in the world; however, the Apostle Peter describes God in the following way:

  “… is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

  Rather than administering immediate punishment for wrongdoing, God is patient, giving people time to turn from their evil and embrace him.

  God created mankind to have a relationship with Him. The requirement for that relationship to continue, however, is that mankind must be holy and sinless as God is. It is obvious that humans are not holy or sinless. And it is our sin that has separated us from God.

  But your iniquities have separated you from your God;

  And your sins have hidden His face from you,

  So that He will not hear. (Isaiah 59:2)

  The Bible is the story of what God has done to redeem that relationship.

  In American culture, sin is a loaded word that raises people’s hackles. We don’t want our actions to be criticized or have limits set on what we can do. In the ancient Greek language, the word in the Bible that is translated as sin is a term used in archery and has the connotation of “missing the mark.” In archery, the mark is obviously the bull’s eye. Hitting anywhere other than the bull’s eye is falling short of the goal.

  Regarding sin, “missing the mark” means not obeying God’s rules. Throughout the Bible, God has laid out how we are to live. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us that God has written His law on our hearts.

  …who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel. (Romans 2:15,16)

  This doesn’t mean that we intuitively know every aspect of how God wants us to live, but we have been given a basic knowledge of right and wrong. Our conscience directs us and accuses us when we violate that knowledge.

  The Apostle Paul also writes in Romans:

  “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

  Everybody is afflicted with the disease of sin and everybody and has fallen short of the standard that God has set and demands.

  Also in Romans, the Apostle Paul writes:

  “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable;

  there is none who does good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10-12)

  The prophet Isaiah tells us:

  But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

  While modern philosophy maintains that we are basically good, the Bible tells us that, at our core, we are not. How do we distinguish which of these differing philosophies is correct? The obvious answer would be through honest self-examination; however, it isn’t quite that simple.

  The prophet Jeremiah wrote:

  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

  Because our heart, or our core, is deceitful and wicked, self examination is not necessarily going to be a fruitful endeavor. Our very nature is to not be honest.

  That being said, if I carefully examine myself, I cannot honestly say that I am a good person. I strive to do good, but it is a struggle. There is a constant battle within myself between doing good and evil. If this battle exists, then there must be something other than good within me. If I were truly good, there would be no struggle.

  When I do something that people say is good, it is never for purely altruistic reasons. There is always an underlying motivation that I will benefit from the good deed in one way or another, either in this life, or as a reward from God in heaven. God is all knowing and understands our thoughts and motivations. In the book of Psalms, King David wrote:

  O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. (Psalm 139:1,2)

  In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon wrote:

  For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:14)

  God doesn’t just judge our actions; He judges our thoughts and motivations. Seemingly good works performed with selfish motivations become sinful before God.

  Further evidence that mankind is not good can be seen by turning on the television. The news is full of reports of all kinds of evil taking place in the world. In America, we receive daily reports of murder, rape, robbery, and corruption. Around the world, we hear of terrorism, wars, genocide and the like. These are not the reports one would expect to hear from “good” people. These are the reports of people who are ruled by sinful desires.

  Beginning in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we see the results of sin. When God created Adam and Eve, He set them in the midst of the Garden of Eden. They lived in paradise and had daily fellowship with God. As long as they obeyed the one rule He had given them, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would continue to dwell in this utopia God created for them. However, with the rule, a warning was given: if they disobeyed, death would follow.

  Eventually, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and partook in the forbidden fruit. With this first sin came consequences. They were cast out of the Garden of Eden; their relationship with God was fractured, and the work associated with survival became laborious as a curse was placed on the creation:

  To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”

  Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:“Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:16-19)

  Along with the curse on creation came the real punishment for sin: death.

  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

  This verse has bad news and good news. In order to fully appreciate the good news, we need to first understand the bad news, so we will start there.

  Sinning is like working at a job. A person earns wages for it, and according to the Bible, the wage for sin is death. Unlike the job a person goes to every day to earn a living, with sin he is awarded his full wages upon the completion of his first sinful act.

  We think of death as the end of our life. In the Bible, death is a bit more complex than that and is three faceted. It does include physical death, but it also includes spiritual death, or broken fellowship with God.

  Prior to Adam and E
ve disobeying God, they enjoyed being in the presence of God. He would take on physical form and come into their presence and commune with them.

  And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… (Genesis 3:8)

  After they sinned, this fellowship was broken. God is holy, or sinless, and His nature will not allow sin in His presence.

  The third aspect of the death a person earns as a wage for sin is eternal death, or eternal punishment in hell.

  But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)

  Someone may say God must be unloving to issue such a harsh judgment. When we look at the second half of Romans 6:23 and see the provision God has made we can see that God truly is loving.

  The fact is, we don’t understand how offensive our sin is to God. Nobody criticizes a judge for sending a vile criminal to prison for life, and few would argue with that person being put to death. On the contrary, when a person perceived to be guilty of a crime is allowed to go unpunished, the judge is said to be unjust. We insist that crime be punished in our society and God insists that sin be punished. He is the one who created the universe, He is the one who created mankind, and He is the one who makes the rules.

  The good news is that God has not left us to wallow in the mire of a hopeless situation that ends in eternal damnation. He has provided a means to escape the just judgment we have earned as the wages for our sin.

  In stark contrast to the grim future we face, God offers the gift of forgiveness for our transgressions against Him. This does not mean our sins go unpunished. Leaving sin unpunished would be contrary to God’s justice. His very nature demands that sin must be punished.

  In order to satisfy His nature of justice, and at the same time satisfy His nature of love, God offered the ultimate sacrifice. Leaving His throne in heaven, God took on human form and was born a baby. This baby, Jesus, was different from the rest of humanity in that he led a sinless life.