The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

by Tony Battista

  “Don’t talk like that! I don’t want to hear that!” Vickie’s voice was louder and shriller than she’d intended. “Life is more uncertain than ever now without you taking unnecessary risks!”

  “I don’t take unnecessary risks,” Jake countered gently. “It’s no longer possible to lead a risk-free life, but, I promise you, I’ll do my damnedest to stay alive.”

  Vickie looked up at him, smiling and told him that’s all she could ask of him.

  “You want me to turn my back for a minute?” Eve wondered aloud.

  “No,” Jake chuckled. “I think we can restrain ourselves until we get home.”

  Vickie knelt on top of the Hummer with her bow while Jake siphoned gas from the abandoned vehicles in the parking lot into five-gallon cans, using them in turn to top off the three vehicles they were using. She loosed off three more arrows before Jake finished refilling the cans and he got into the 350, Vickie into the Hummer and Eve bringing up the rear with the van, excited to be driving solo for the first time. They spotted the occasional infected, loners or small groups, reaching toward them, stumbling to try to catch their vehicles, but the few that came very near were bounced off fenders or fell on their faces trying to grab hold. For a while, it seemed it was going to be an uneventful drive home.

  Jake stopped the truck about ten miles down the road and Vickie stepped out of the Hummer to see what the problem was. He waved her back in and came out himself, carrying an AR.

  “Two cars parked across the road up ahead,” he explained. “There’s probably going to be some trouble. You pull up behind and to the left of the truck and I'll have Eve pull up to the right of you. Use the vehicles for cover and be ready for a fight, just in case. I'm going on up to have a look.”

  “Can't we just go around them? Maybe backtrack and find another route?”

  “Take us miles out of our way and they might follow us back to the house. If we're going to have trouble, I'd rather get it over with now. If anything happens to me, you and Eve get into the Hummer and get back to the house any way you can.”

  “Jake! Remember, you and I still have unfinished business.”

  “I haven't been able to get it out of my mind,” he told her, touching her cheek.

  Once the vehicles were parked in a triangle with the two girls in the middle, rifles at the ready, Jake stepped out onto the road and began approaching the blockade. The surrounding area was nearly flat, treeless, with grass, weeds and brush standing knee high. There was a drainage ditch on one side of the road, but no other substantial cover. He felt naked, his skin tingled, beads of sweat formed on his forehead and the icy cold in the pit of his stomach grew deeper with every step.

  “Close enough!” a voice rang out when he was within fifty feet of the blockade.

  Jake stopped and looked around the immediate area. He could see no one near the cars, no sign of anyone trying to hide in the overgrowth. He stood there for the better part of a minute without another sound from the hidden speaker.

  “What do you want with us?” he finally called out.

  “What do you got?” a second voice asked.

  “We're not looking for trouble. Just let us by and we'll be on our way.”

  “Well, you see, it looks like you got guns and cars and supplies and probably food.”

  “And a couple of bitches!” a third voice put in.

  “Shut up, Max!” the first voice called. “We might see fit to let you take that van and leave, but your guns and the other two vehicles and the girls stay with us!”

  Jake spotted the first talker. His voice drew Jake's attention to a dark spot off to the right of the road and he was sure the man was lying in the grass. The other two voices sounded like they came from behind the vehicles.

  “If you're short on supplies, we can let you have some of ours. People need to help each other out these days.”

  “Well, that's real accommodating of you, friend, but we need everything you got. These days, it's every man for himself.”

  “So, that's the deal? You let me go if I give you the girls and the guns?”

  “That's the deal! Ain't like you really-”

  Jake swung the barrel of the AR and fired three rapid shots where he thought the first man was lying. He heard a sharp yelp as he threw himself to the ground and rolled into the ditch, pain exploding in his injured shoulder. One of the men behind the cars stood up and aimed his rifle but Vickie was waiting for that and fired off five rapid shots, one of them tearing into his throat. She and Eve peppered the vehicles with fire while Jake came up out of the ditch and ran forward toward the first man, firing as he moved, and found him with his left ear a bloody mess and a bullet through the bridge of his nose. Moving around the roadblock in a crouch, he saw the second man lying on the ground, throat torn open and lifeless eyes staring straight up at the sky and the third tossed his rifle aside and held his hands high in the air.

  “I give up! I give up! For God's sake, don't shoot me!”

  “Keep your hands up and step around the front of the cars!” Jake ordered.

  The man obeyed and Jake kept him covered while Vickie came out from behind the 350, rifle aimed at the man's chest.

  Jake stood up and was turning toward Vickie when a shot rang out and he felt a searing pain in his side that spun him and he dropped to the ground. Vickie loosed six rounds off as another hidden ambusher rose up, riddling his face and chest. She started toward Jake, who had a Glock in his right hand pointed at the last living ambusher’s face, heard Eve scream behind her, and whirled around to run to her. Before she could reach the Hummer, she heard eight rapid shots fired and when she found Eve, she was bent over, vomiting, another assailant lying dead in the road, five bullet wounds in his torso and shoulders. Seeing that she was uninjured, Vickie raced back toward Jake to find him sitting on the ground, pistol still leveled at the last of the ambushers.

  “I didn't do nothin'!” the man shrilled.

  He stood there, stock still, eyes darting, waiting for any chance at all while Vickie went to Jake’s side.

  A moment later, Eve walked up, shotgun to her shoulder and pointed at the man's belly.

  “I will kill you if you even look like you're going to move!” she snarled, and the man's bladder failed him and he stood rigidly still. “Get down on your knees and don’t move, don’t talk, don’t do anything or I’ll take your head off!”

  “Of all the damned luck!” Jake muttered.

  Vickie lifted his shirt to look at the wound. The bullet had entered his lower right side from the back and left an ugly exit wound in front. She ran to the Hummer for the first aid kit and pressed a thick pad against it until the worst of the bleeding stopped. Then she placed another pad over the wounds, Jake holding it in place while she wrapped gauze tightly around his waist over top of it.

  “I'll bring the Hummer up and we'll get you inside and get back to the house. Eve can still drive the van.”

  “What about him?” Eve asked, gesturing with the gun barrel toward the still unmoving stranger sweating nervously in the hot sun.

  “We'll take all the guns with us and disable the cars,” Jake answered. “He won't be able to follow us.”

  Max relaxed slightly as he realized he was going to come out of this alive. He started to smile, then saw the way Eve was looking at him and decided it wasn’t over yet.

  Once Vickie brought the Hummer up, she covered the man while Eve put the discarded guns into it and then drove the van up. Jake held his Glock on the man while Eve and Vickie drove the two ambush cars into the ditch and he was satisfied that it would take a tow truck to get them out.

  “All right,” Jake told him. “Start walking down the road. Keep walking and don't turn around!”

  “Yeah, I'll do that.” the man said with a smirk as he got to his feet. “We'll find you, though. Things gonna be different then. I told Al to just shoot you right off, but he wouldn't listen to me. But we'll find you again, and I'll have me some fun with that little girl the
re,” he said, leering at Eve.

  “You've got to be the stupidest man I've ever met,” Jake told him, shaking his head. “You could have walked off, free and clear, but you just had to open your big mouth one last time,” and he shot the man in the head.

  Eve was stunned, having seen Jake kill a man in cold blood, even though she had no doubt she would have killed him herself if he’d tried anything, and stood staring at the dead body.

  Vickie spoke to her twice and finally had to take her by the shoulders and force her to look her in the face.

  “We have to go, Eve.” Keeping her voice low and even, she said, “You know that man was a danger to us if we let him go. We didn't ask for this. Jake even offered to share our supplies. You know what he would have done to you if he had the chance.”

  Eve nodded, and then seemed to come back to her senses. She helped Vickie get Jake into the Hummer and then climbed into the van.

  “The resale value on this car is going to be nil,” Jake laughed weakly, looking at all the bloodstains. “W.C. Fields in The Bank Dick.”

  “Don't you ever get tired of playing the hero? Quit trying to put a brave face on. I just thank God Carolyn has at least some skills at patching people up.”

  “You'd take care of me if she weren't around. You've done a good job, so far.”

  “Well, at least it wasn't my fault this time, anyway!”

  “Yeah, that's a novelty, isn't it?”

  Vickie smiled, but she was worried about the amount of blood he'd already lost and how much more he'd lose on the drive back. She looked in the rear view mirror to see Eve following about a hundred feet behind and realized how much shock she herself would have been in if something like this had happened only a few short weeks ago. Now, she hadn't blinked an eye when Jake shot Max, didn't feel even a pang of remorse for shooting the other one in the throat, was proud of Eve for killing the man who attacked her by the van, and she wondered how much of her former self still survived.

  She wanted to speed up, floor the gas pedal and race back to the house and have Carolyn tend Jake's wound, but Eve was having trouble keeping the van on the winding back road at the speed they were already moving and she didn't want to take a chance on losing her or having her slide off the road. Jake was too quiet and she looked at him to see if he was still conscious. His complexion was pale and waxen, and he sat limply in the seat, but his eyes were still open and he gave her a wink when he saw her watching him. The wound was on his right side, so she couldn't see if the bleeding had worsened, but she knew he was in a bad way.

  “Ten more minutes,” she told him. He didn't respond. “Jake? Talk to me, Jake!” Still nothing.

  They got onto the main road again at last and the next two miles up to the farm were straight and level and she pushed the Hummer as fast as it would go, finally screeching to a halt in front of the house. Carolyn came out on the porch with a rifle in her hands and she could see another rifle at one of the ground floor windows and a third jutting out between the rails on the upper porch. She leapt out of the car to call for help and ran around to open Jake's door. The amount of blood shocked and frightened her and when she and Tom lifted him out, his skin was cool and clammy and his body was limp in their arms.

  They laid him on the table in the dining room and Carolyn cut away his shirt and unwrapped the bandaging. Luckily, they'd had a pot of water on the stove and she bathed the wound with warm water and clean dishtowels, liberally dousing it with antiseptic before stitching together the torn tissue around the exit wound, smearing it with more antiseptic and putting on fresh bandaging. They carefully moved him onto the sofa bed and pulled off his shoes, pants and the remnants of his shirt, covering him with a blanket.

  “How bad is it?” Vickie asked in a tiny, frightened voice.

  “I won't lie to you. It's very bad. The wound itself isn't that terrible; it seems to have missed his kidney, but he's lost so much blood. That on top of the older wounds... I just don't know. We have to keep him warm and hydrated and he's going to need a lot of liquid nourishment for his body to replace the lost blood, but, frankly, it's going to be touch and go at best. I wish I had better news for you, baby. If he makes it through the night, I'd say he at least has a chance.”

  “Isn't there... I mean, if he could use some of my blood,” Tom began, but Carolyn cut him off.

  “Do you even know your blood type?” He said he was A-positive, but Carolyn added, “Even if we were sure you were a match, we don't have the proper equipment and it’s way over my head anyway. I wouldn't know where to start.”

  “He'll make it,” Vickie said softly. “I know Jake. He'll make it.”

  Jake woke a couple of hours later and Vickie was able to spoon a little broth into him. She wanted Carolyn to give him something for pain, but she said it would be best not to drug him at all just yet since she wasn’t sure of what the proper dosage would be in these circumstances and thought it best to let nature take its course. Vickie stayed by his side all night, talking softly to him, dabbing his forehead with a cool cloth, holding his hand. She hadn’t prayed in a long time, really prayed, not the mealtime grace Art had forced on them all. That night she prayed long and fervently that he’d make it through the night and they’d have a chance at a long and happy life together. Worry and sheer exhaustion brought her a few minutes of sleep from time to time during the night but she never left his side. In the morning, his eyes opened and he gave her a little smile and tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Hey, tough guy. You had me worried for a little while.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes while his fingers squeezed her hand weakly and he dozed off again.

  . . .

  For the next two days, Jake was in and out of consciousness and Vickie spoon fed him whenever he woke, cleaned him up when he needed it, and never left his side for more than a few minutes at a time. The others were busy with the fence mostly and on making the house more secure. Tom tried his hand at repairing the engine on the battered SUV he’d driven, but gave it up as a lost cause, finally pushing it out to the middle of the road in a position that any passing cars would have to slow down to maneuver around it.

  Early on the third morning, Carolyn decided that Jake was out of danger and insisted that Vickie take time to bathe and change clothes, hinting that she was beginning to smell a bit ripe, and sleep in a real bed that night, promising that she’d stay by his side until morning. Three days after that and Jake was sitting up in bed, starting to eat solid food and the color had returned to his face. He made Vickie promise to get out of the house, into the sunlight and stop babying him so much. She reluctantly agreed only after Carolyn all but threatened to carry her out bodily. Eve asked Vickie to take a walk with her just to get out of the house and into the fresh air and sunshine for a little while and Vickie agreed that she probably needed to do just that.

  Out in the orchard a little later that morning, they found that a few apples were already beginning to ripen. Vickie picked one, bit into it and smiled. Jake had said his favorite dessert was apple pie and Vickie decided to try her hand at making one for him. At the thought, she turned back to look toward the house, apprehension apparent on her face.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Eve said, taking her hand.

  “I know he is. He is Mr. Macho, after all,” Vickie answered as Eve laughed.

  “He does seem to think he has to take charge of everything on his own.”

  “You have no idea. He won’t admit when he’s hurt or in pain, when he’s exhausted, when he really needs to just sit back and take it easy for even a few minutes. Did I tell you about him putting stitches in his leg himself?”

  “Oh, Jesus! How do you even do something like that?”

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Vickie answered in her best John Wayne impersonation. They both broke into a giggling fit over that and continued along on their walk.

  Vickie saw movement in a small grove a hundred yards away and put her hand on Eve's sho
ulder. Setting an arrow to the bowstring, she kept perfectly still beside a big apple tree while Eve crouched next to her with her pistol drawn and they waited. A few moments later, a doe started out of the grove and looked around cautiously before emerging completely. It walked in the general direction of the orchard and Vickie slowly raised the bow and drew back on the string, following it until it was less than thirty yards away. The doe stopped again, raised its head and turned its face in their direction. Vickie released the bowstring and the arrow buried itself in the doe's chest. It leaped in the air and tried to run, taking half a dozen faltering steps before going to its knees and finally collapsing.

  Elated, Vickie ran to the fallen animal and prodded it with the bow, making sure it was, indeed, dead. Then she told Eve to run back to the house and get Tom to help get it home.

  “Nice heart shot,” Tom told her when he saw the doe. “You got her from back by the orchard?”

  “I got lucky. It stopped and stood still just long enough for me to get a good shot. We should have meat for a long time.”

  “Well, it’s a small doe and there isn't as much meat here as you might think, by the time I gut it and skin it, minus the bones, dividing it up among all of us. We'll have some fresh deer steaks this evening, though. Before they left, the people who lived here emptied out the refrigerator and the door was left wide open so it doesn't have that rancid smell. We could actually use it once we fire up the generator. We'll eat good for a while.”

  “Don't say anything to Jake, okay? I want to surprise him at supper.”

  “Good enough. I'll get a wood fire going behind the barn and the wind will carry the smell away from the house. Haven't been any infected around for most of a week, so it should be okay.”

  Tom laid a tarp on the ground and, with Vickie and Eve helping, rolled the deer onto it. He dragged the load back behind the barn, tied a rope around the doe’s rear legs, tossed the end of the rope over a rafter and suspended it off the ground. Taking a large hunting knife, he began to slit open the carcass. Eve made a gurgling noise and covered her mouth. Vickie was beginning to look a little green and she said she’d better take Eve back to the house. Tom laughed and continued his work while they both beat a hasty retreat.