The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

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The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 5

by Tony Battista


  Across the bridge, she noticed a group of infected, seven men and women and two teenage boys drifting across the field near the Hummer. She watched as they approached and sniffed around the vehicle, a couple of them pressing their faces to the glass to look around inside. One of the boys stumbled against the gate and, to her horror, it swung open. She realized that she'd left it unlatched because it had been such a bother to keep undoing it while bringing the supplies in. Vickie stood up quickly and one of the men noticed her and started across the bridge, the rest eventually drawn to follow him.

  Vickie pulled the 9mm pistol Jake had given her from its belt holster, went to the gate in the perimeter fence, pointed it at the lead infected and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She tried again with still no results before she remembered how Jake showed her how to release the safety. She flipped the lever to the fire position and aimed again. By now, the first two were almost abreast of each other and close to the near shore. Vickie fired and the shot grazed the shoulder of the one on the right. She fired again and hit the same one in the cheek. A third shot took him in the throat and he gurgled and staggered and fell in the water. Two more shots inflicted wounds, causing one more to fall into the water to be carried away by the current, but the first of them had reached shore by then and all were moving steadily toward her. She squeezed the trigger again and again, taking down another of them and scoring a couple more hits before the magazine emptied.

  Jake appeared at her side, nudging her back behind him toward the building and, steadying himself against the gate, fired nine times to bring down the remaining infected. Looking across the bridge, he saw that the noise from all the gunfire had attracted a lot of unwanted attention. More than thirty infected were shambling their way toward the bridge now.

  "Get across the bridge and lock that gate," he told her, faltering, trying to keep his balance.

  "What? But, they're coming! Look at them!"

  "I see them!" he croaked in a strained voice. "And if you don't get that gate locked, they're going to come across that bridge and be here on the island with us! I don't have the strength to go that far that fast! You have to latch that gate and turn the lock! Do it now! There isn't any time to argue!"

  After a few moments hesitation, Jake shoved her toward the bridge, falling to his knees from the effort, and Vickie ran across, dodging the corpses, and pulled the gate shut, latching it and turning the lock only a moment before the first of the group slammed against it snarling, fingers reaching through the chain link for her. Vickie felt a warmth at her crotch that spread down her thighs and realized she'd wet herself in terror. She ran back across the bridge, closed and latched the gate in the chain link fence and helped Jake into the building, slamming and bolting the metal door behind them.

  "Go look through the firing slits and see how many of them there are," Jake told her, his voice weak and breathless.

  She did as he said and saw dozens of infected gathered by the gate, jostling and pushing, one or two falling into the water now and again. Others gathered along the shore further up and down stream, occasionally walking right into the water and being swept away. The bridge was just high enough for the ones upstream to pass beneath but one slammed against a support post and reached up, trying to pull itself out of the water and onto the bridge before the current dragged her away.

  "The gate's holding them right now," she reported. They're clumsy and stupid and some are even falling into the river."

  "Alright. We'll keep the door closed and not make any noise. We’ll close up the shutters and firing slits so no light will show outside tonight. With any luck, they'll get bored and forget about us by tomorrow or the next day, as long as that gate holds."

  "What if they break through the gate?"

  "The gate posts are pretty well set. If they did manage to break through, there's still the chain link fence and this is a solid building," Jake said, shaking his head. "They'll never get past that door. Make sure the back doors, the one in the kitchen and the one in the utility room are locked and barred. We'll be okay here for as long as it takes."

  "I'm so sorry, Jake" she told him after securing the doors.

  "Really? What are you sorry about? About doing nothing while four infected attacked me right after I saved you from another one? About standing there, watching me bleed until I finally coerced you into helping me with my wound? About leaving the gate open and letting the infected stroll right across the bridge onto the island? About the hundred or so that the gunfire attracted and are waiting right across the river for us? About us having to wait inside this building for who knows how long until they finally decide to move along? If they ever do?"

  "I know, I know," she said softly, looking down at the floor, her hands moving uselessly as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  "Go clean yourself up. Put on some clean clothes. I need to lie down for a while," Jake said more gently after a moment, his anger and frustration vented. He watched her as she walked away, shoulders slumped, head hanging, and he regretted being so harsh with her. She was still more a child than a woman, he realized. Nothing in her past could possibly have prepared her for this and he knew that it was his responsibility to teach her to survive.

  Chapter 9: Refugees

  The barricade loomed ahead of them, daunting and formidable. An armored vehicle with a mounted machine gun stared at them along with six, heavily armed, uniformed soldiers, all weapons trained on their car. One of the soldiers stepped forward and held up his hand, signaling them to stop. Tom did so and carefully exited the vehicle at a shouted command. They were all disarmed, frisked and marched along through the barricade to a large medical tent while men thoroughly searched their car before driving it into a parking area inside the camp. Inside the tent, they were made to strip and were subjected to the close scrutiny of a medical team wearing hoods and masks and protective clothing. Every portion of their bodies was checked for bite marks or any other open wounds, blood was drawn and one of the team peered into their eyes with the aid of a bright penlight. Almost an hour later, they were shown to a shower, then given clean clothing and met with an officer with silver bars on his uniform.

  “I’m Captain Murdock,” The man introduced himself. “You’ve passed all the tests and have been declared infection-free. Welcome to Camp Bravo. We have food, clean water, medical supplies and the firepower to defend this camp. I know the welcoming was short of cordial, but we don’t take any risks here. Your car and your weapons will be returned to you once you’ve been assigned quarters, but all firearms are to remain in your quarters unless authorization is given. If anyone is caught with a gun outside their quarters, they’ll be shot. If anyone steals food, water or anything else, they’ll be shot. Anyone who deliberately causes trouble will be turned out of the camp. I know these rules are harsh, but we have a lot of refugees here in a small space and the last thing we’ll tolerate is a trouble-maker. Other than that, feel free to mingle with the other refugees anywhere inside the perimeter. Follow the rules, and you’ll have no problems.”

  At that, the captain brusquely turned away and a private motioned for them to follow him.

  “The captain ain’t a bad guy,” he told them as he led them from the tent. “He’s had to repeat that speech a hundred times and he’s got a thousand other things to take care of. My name’s Jim Brady.”

  Shaking the proffered hand, Tom introduced himself and his family.

  “Did all of you make it out okay? I mean, is this your entire family?”

  “Yeah, we all made it out, thank God,” Tom answered.

  “That’s good. It’s nice to see a whole family anymore. This isn’t a bad place, really. Like the cap said, we got food and water, we got showers, places to wash clothes and, as long as you’re not a trouble-maker, you’ll get along fine here.”

  Their quarters turned out to be a tent near the end of a long row of similar tents, just large enough to hold three cots and a small folding table. In typical military fashion, a second r
ow of tents was neatly lined up alongside their own, another alongside that and on down the line totaling well over a hundred individual tents. As promised, Pvt. Brady returned their guns and the keys to their car before he left them.

  Over the next several days, they got used to the routine of breakfast shortly after dawn with daily work details assigned to the able-bodied immediately after, lunch right at noon and a light supper near dusk,. The work wasn’t arduous, mostly keeping the camp clean and hauling water from a nearby stream for laundry and washing up, the military having an ample supply for cooking and drinking. Liz helped out the company clerk who was overwhelmed with trying to keep records straight of how many refugees were there and what supplies were being used compared to the stocks on hand. It was nothing like their pre-infection life, but there was order, security and relative comfort, which were all rare commodities now.

  The refugees in the camp swapped stories of where they were when their worlds collapsed, their experiences on the road getting to Camp Bravo. It was much the same with everyone; one minute everything seemed normal and the next there were people screaming and shouting and bleeding all around them as though the asylum doors burst open and hordes of homicidal maniacs were loosed upon society. One man recounted the story of how he met a small group of survivors only a week earlier.

  “They were all armed and they had a dozen trucks and semi-trailers set up on a highway overpass,” he related. “They had both ends blocked with overturned cars and boxes and crates and all sorts of junk. They wouldn’t let me in. I offered to pay them, I had several thousand dollars in cash, but they just laughed and said money didn’t have any value anymore. I showed them I had gold, over two pounds of gold coins and told them I had three times that amount stashed away if they’d only let me stay with them. Know what they said? They said ‘so what? You can’t eat it or wear it. It’s not worth a thing anymore.’ Can you imagine? Gold! I invested for nearly thirty years to accumulate it and they say it’s worthless!”

  The man rambled on for some time about the injustice of it all and Tom soon lost interest and wandered off to talk to another group. He did sympathize with the man to a certain extent, but he seemed more put out that material wealth had lost its meaning than with the fact that the world was coming apart and people were dying. Tom no longer cared about wealth or status; his family was all that mattered anymore.

  Pvt. Brady became a regular visitor to their tent, as often as his duties permitted. He was eighteen years old, having joined the Guard only months earlier, and was plainly attracted to Eve. The young man was always respectful to Tom and Liz and, as far as they could see, never tried to take advantage of their daughter, in fact intervening on more than one occasion when others acted with less restraint. It seemed they’d found an island of safety amidst the chaos.

  It was a week before it all fell apart.

  Tom woke in the middle of the night to the sounds of shouting and arguing. A horrendous scream, choked short, arose from a nearby tent and the sound of gunfire started a camp-wide panic. Tom quickly gathered his family and they headed for the station wagon. Everywhere, people were running, fighting, grappling, being pulled down by infected. The soldiers formed a line near the command tent and began firing into a mixed crowd of infected and non-infected. Fire was returned sporadically from the crowd and it became impossible for them to reach their car so they ran away from the gunfire, trying to get out of the camp and away from danger.

  Once again, Pvt. Brady came to their aid, ushering them to the far side of the camp, away from the battle, using his rifle to clear a path to a now-deserted guard post. There he pointed them down the road, telling them to keep going as long as they could while he guarded the road behind them. Eve frantically urged him to come with them, tried to throw her arms around him, but Brady held her at arm’s length, shaking his head. In the fight to reach her family he’d been clawed and bitten. None of them could help him now and there was nothing more he could do for them. Tom reached out to shake his hand, but Brady backed away, saying that it was better they didn’t tempt fate, and so the Carrolls made their way down the road in the darkness, the sounds of gunfire echoing behind them.

  By dawn, they were several miles from Camp Bravo and had no intention of trying to return. Hours later, they came across a campground containing the remains of a few tents and some campers and RVs, ravaged by infected and now deserted, which provided them with a small amount of food and most of two cases of bottled water. The keys were lying on the console of an older SUV that had definitely seen better days and they loaded what they could find in that, continuing their quest to find another place of refuge and normalcy. They spent weeks travelling back and forth on side roads and dirt and gravel lanes, siphoning gas where they could, slipping into homes and stores to search for food and spending uneasy nights sleeping in the SUV, searching for a place where they could stop and rest safely, even if only for a little while.

  Chapter 10: They Can’t Swim

  Jake slept for nearly four hours and, when he woke up, Vickie opened a can of chicken stew and warmed it up on the stove. He accepted a bowl gratefully and finished it off, asking for a second. He watched her while she dished up another serving. She was wearing a clean set of fatigues that hung loosely on her, legs and sleeves rolled up on the oversized garment. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying and she looked to him like a child who'd been punished for some transgression that she'd committed not quite understanding how things had gone so wrong.

  Once he'd eaten, she cleaned and rebandaged his wound. He would have limited use of his left arm for a while, but thought it would eventually heal. The fingers of his right hand ached from the bruising on his forearm by the infected male's jaws at the mall, but he could still use the hand, if a bit clumsily.

  "Have you had to deal with wounds like this before?" she hesitantly asked him. "I mean, you seemed to know what to do, where I would have just put a bandage on it and hoped for the best."

  "Guesswork," he shrugged, wincing at the motion. "I mean, I know it's gotta be clean and I know you have to use antiseptic, but I'm just using common sense, I hope."

  He looked at her again and said “After all the trouble you took picking out clothes, you're still wearing fatigues?"

  She looked down at the floor instead of at him and said, "They’re still in the car."

  Jake nodded and let it go. He stood and walked a little unsteadily to a front window, looking out the firing slit. Dozens of infected still roamed around the field across the river, but they were beginning to drift southward in ones and twos. While Vickie washed the bowl and saucepan, he cleaned both their pistols and reloaded them. He was still weak from shock and loss of blood, but felt better than he had before eating and he was too restless just to sit around all day. Instead, he checked the loading on all the spare magazines and set a rifle and pistol by each door, by which time he was ready to sit down for a while. His eyes drifted closed and he dozed restlessly.

  Vickie had a plate of fried spam and canned vegetables prepared when he woke again and, after finishing it, he opened the front door and stood there, beneath the overhang, smoking a cigarette and watching. The sun was sinking below the horizon and there was just enough light to give a dim view of the field across the river.

  "They’re still there, forty or more. Most are just kind of standing around now, some of them sitting on the ground, like they don't know what to do next."

  "They can't see very well in low light," Vickie said.

  "They what?"

  "They don't see too well in dim light. That's probably why they're not moving around much."

  "What are you talking about? How do you know this?"

  "That first night, after I left Peterson's house, I came across some of them in a clearing and they didn't seem to see me if I was more than twenty or thirty feet away. You've never noticed that?"

  "I've always holed up before dark, kept quiet, never lit a lamp or candle unless I had to. Huh. I never knew they had
a problem with the dark. No more than a regular person does, anyway."

  "I avoided several groups that night by moving slowly and carefully, just out of their range of vision. If I moved too abruptly, they'd catch the motion and head my way, but I was able to distance myself from them pretty easily until I was out of range again."

  "How about that. I might just have an idea here."

  Jake grabbed a big five cell flashlight and quietly moved across the grass a dozen yards or so and none of the infected seemed to pay any notice.

  "You stay here, by the gate," he whispered to Vickie, who had followed him reluctantly.

  While she remained back behind the chain-link fence, Jake went out the compound gate and moved closer to the river, about thirty feet downstream from the bridge. Checking all around him to make sure he was alone, he switched on the flashlight, aiming it toward the group across the river and let out a sharp whistle. Several heads popped up and turned in his direction.

  "Hey, you ugly mothers," Jake yelled, wincing at the stab of pain caused by the effort.

  They all turned his way, those who were sitting or lying down getting to their feet, and all began moving in his direction. They began to crowd the opposite bank, some of them stepping off into the water as they moved toward the light and noise. He kept moving slowly downstream from them, taunting them, daring them to come and get him. A few walked into the water and the press of the crowd pushed a few more into it, then whole groups began to wade into the stream, only to be swept away. The river was only about six feet deep in the center of the channel, but it was swift and none of the infected had any clue how to tread water, much less swim. Soon, dozens of helplessly flaying bodies were drifting downstream.

 

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