The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

by Tony Battista

  It had snowed off and on for more than a week and it was nearly three inches deep now. No infected had been spotted in all that time and no tracks other than the local fauna despoiled the smooth white blanket. The mood of the whole group was one of hope and expectation of better times ahead.

  “I'm feeling pretty good today,” Jake announced after lunch. I believe I'll take a walk, check out the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, I don't think so,” Carolyn said firmly. “I’d like you to give it another week or so.”

  “I feel fine! I’ve been stuck in here for how many weeks already and I want to get a feel for the lay of the land.”

  “Jake,” Vickie said softly, laying her hand atop his on the table. “There are six other people beside you here and you still aren’t back to your old self yet. You don't have to do everything personally. Let the rest of us take some responsibility.”

  “She's right, you know,” Pete added. “The rest of us are capable of handling things without you holding our hands. I don't think we'll need worry about the infected after the weather we've had lately, but I'll take a walk around, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “And I'll go along with him as back-up,” Carolyn added before Jake could say anything more.

  “Okay,” Jake sighed. “Just go up the road until you can see over the rise, give a look around and come on back. You can see for miles down the road the other direction, but maybe take the binoculars and scan the field across the road. Make sure you keep the house in sight, someone will be watching from the upper porch in case you get into any trouble.”

  “I swear, you're like an old mother hen,” Carolyn laughed. “We've got this, okay? Really!”

  “Okay, okay, just come back safe.”

  Wearing boots and light-colored coats, each carrying a Glock and a long gun, Carolyn an AR and Pete a twelve gauge, the two started up the road toward a stone cairn at the top of a small rise not quite a quarter mile away.

  “So, what do you think?” Pete asked. “I think he's looking a lot better.”

  “Oh, he's recovering nicely, but he’ll never be the way he was before all this happened. There’s been too much damage done that will never completely heal. Even so, I'd actually have been comfortable with him doing this right now, but I wanted to keep him reined in a little. He still seems to think he has to do everything himself, be personally responsible for everyone. I'm hoping that Vickie can talk some sense into him when they finally get together.”

  “What do you men, 'when they finally get together'? Aren’t they already an item?”

  “I shouldn't say any more. So, when are we 'getting together' again?”

  “Well, certainly not while Eve's up there on the balcony watching us through binoculars.”

  “She isn't as innocent as you might think...”

  “Oh, hell, I don't need to know any particulars. She already said more than I wanted to hear about with that Listerine conversation!”

  “She's almost seventeen, for crying out loud! Were you an innocent virgin at that age? I certainly wasn't.”

  “Oh, I don't need to know that either, Carolyn,” he answered, hurrying a few paces away, mockingly covering his ears with his hands. Carolyn laughed and quickened her pace, getting a few yards ahead of him and he had to scramble to keep up.

  They approached the cairn at the top of the rise and Carolyn stopped to let him catch up. He took her into his arms and kissed her passionately, pulling her tight up against him.

  “What about Eve?” Carolyn purred.

  “Ah, let the kid have a little thrill,” he smiled, kissing her again.

  She pressed and molded her body to his, grinding suggestively against him and could feel his arousal until he suddenly pushed her away and stared over her shoulder.

  “What's the matter?”

  “I see a car!” he answered, dropping into a crouch and pulling her down with him.

  A dark blue sedan was just coming into view over the horizon, moving fast along the road in their direction, too fast for the road conditions, skidding and sliding on the snowy highway. It skidded onto the shoulder several times and nearly ended up in a ditch but after a few minutes of erratic driving, it finally approached to within half a mile and slewed sideways to a halt. The front passenger door opened and a man got out and opened the rear door, reaching in and roughly pulling a naked figure out and tossing it onto the road. He kicked the indistinct form once, savagely, in the side, and then got back into the car, which spun around and headed back the way it had come.

  Pete and Carolyn looked at each other, then back at the still form on the road and the blue car, again fishtailing and sliding as it sped away. When it was out of sight, they rose up and hurried down the slope, quickly but warily, until they came up to a badly abused woman lying inertly in the snow. She had been brutally beaten; lips split, nose crushed, cheeks battered and bruised, a gash on one side exposing her teeth, one eye swollen shut. Her back and sides and buttocks had been viciously lashed with a belt and there were burns all over her arms and breasts and stomach, as of cigarettes being pressed into her flesh. Pete pulled off his coat and wrapped her in it, lifting her in his arms and carrying her back toward the house, Carolyn following behind, rifle at the ready and Pete's shotgun slung over her shoulder.

  Tom and Eve were already coming over the crest, both carrying rifles, both obviously relieved at the sight of their returning.

  “What happened?” Tom panted. “Who's this?”

  “I don't know,” Carolyn answered, “but she's badly hurt and we need to get her to the house right now!”

  Jake was on the upper balcony with a rifle, waiting for them. Vickie and Liz were at the windows similarly armed, and all hurried to the front porch when they arrived. Pete carried the limp woman into the house and placed her gently on the sofa. Eve covered her mouth and ran outside when Carolyn pulled the coat open, exposing the tortured form and Tom and Liz and Vickie all made sounds of disgust and revulsion when they saw the cruel wounds. Only Jake stood quietly still, staring at the sad spectacle, expression unreadable.

  Carolyn tended to the wounds, giving the woman a morphine shot and making her as comfortable as possible before carefully washing away the blood from her battered face and doing her best to suture the open wounds. Pete, meanwhile, told the rest as much as he knew.

  “What kind of animal does something like this?” Tom wondered. “They're worse than the infected ever were! The infected aren't capable of reason, of recognizing right and wrong, but this... I never knew such evil could exist.”

  “It does,” Carolyn said. “I've run into it before. The men who killed poor dear Benny bragged about doing things that would make your skin crawl. Believe me, evil does exist.”

  “How is she?” Pete asked.

  “Not good. Those animals must have tortured her for hours before tossing her out onto the road. I'd like to get her upstairs into a bed to make her more comfortable. Pete, would you and Tom carry her up for me?”

  “Sure thing.”

  They set a cot next to the sofa and were preparing to transfer the injured woman to it when Pete suddenly stopped cold, his eyes widening and jaw dropping.

  “Oh, my God! I didn't recognize her at first with all bruising and swelling and blood all over her face! That's Melissa! Melissa Carlton, Fred's wife!”

  “What's that?” Jake asked, pushing forward.

  “Melissa Carlton! She and Fred had the two little girls you saw at the TSC the day I met you! Oh, God, the little girls, Hannah and the rest of the family!”

  “Where was their place, Pete?”

  “They-they'd set up at the rail yard near Mannerton, had a brick maintenance building surrounded by railroad ties piled up about five feet high against the outer walls. There were two other families with us there, two married couples and five more kids and a grandmother.”

  “That's what, ten, twelve miles from here?”

  “Closer to fifteen,” Pete corrected. “They had guns,
food, water... It wouldn't have been easy to get to them if they put up a fight.”

  Melissa opened one swollen eye and sucked in a harsh gasp as she stared at the group hovering near her sofa.

  “Easy, sweetie, no one here is going to hurt you,” Carolyn soothed, kneeling by her side.

  She stared at the men and became more agitated and Carolyn waved them away. All four women stayed with her as the men retreated into the kitchen.

  “She was such a sweet, mild mannered girl,” Pete lamented. “She would never hurt a soul. I don't understand how this could happen!”

  “Needless to say, we'll all have to be on our guards from here on in, even more so than before,” Jake told the other men. He went out onto the back porch and lit a cigarette. Pete followed him a moment later.

  “Can you spare me one?” he asked.

  “Sure Carolyn won't mind?” Jake asked handing him the pack.

  “After seeing Melissa, I need one. I need a stiff drink, too!”

  “Look behind the bench there. That's where Carolyn hid it.”

  “You knew all along?”

  “That might be the only bottle of Jack Daniels left this side of perdition; I don't lose track of something like that easily.”

  Pete retrieved the bottle, then went back into the house, returning a moment later with Tom and three glasses. Jake poured a stiff shot into each glass and they each downed their drinks.

  Twenty minutes passed before Carolyn and Vickie joined them.

  “How's Melissa?” Pete asked anxiously.

  “Dying,” Carolyn, told him, walking over to him and taking his hand. “Internal injuries from her beating. I'll be surprised if she lasts more than a few hours. She was able to tell me some of what happened. Be a dear and look behind the bench. I need a drink.”

  Pete held the bottle out and Carolyn looked at it, eyes narrowing, noticing the level had gone down noticeably since she'd hidden it there. She sighed and accepted a glass into which Pete had poured some of the deep, caramel colored liquid.

  “I guess everyone needed a drink,” she said after tipping the glass. “About three weeks after meeting them at the TSC, men came into the rail yard at night and slipped into the building after slitting the throat of the man on guard. There were five of them. They killed all the men right away, and the grandmother. The children... they did unspeakable things to them. Melissa's girls died while being... while they were...” Here Carolyn broke off, the words sticking in her throat, and Pete poured a little more into her glass, along with refilling his own glass and those of Tom and Jake. When she'd drunk it, she continued; “The other kids, the older ones... they used them, too, then broke their legs and left them in the road and made enough noise to attract the infected. They drank beer and watched and laughed while they fed on them, turned it into a spectator sport for God’s sake!”

  Vickie's face grew white and she covered it with her hands and, sobbing, went back inside, saying she couldn't listen to the story again.

  “Anyway,” Carolyn continued, her voice at the very edge of breaking, “They took the four women back to a restaurant they'd taken over. There were nine men altogether there and they already had several other women captive. You can imagine what they kept them for. One of the women snapped, her mind just broke, and she became hysterical. They beat her unconscious and took her out and dumped her in sight of a group of infected and just sat and watched. They made Melissa and the other women from the train yard go with them and watch, too, to show them what would happen if they didn't behave themselves. Last night, Melissa couldn't stand it anymore and she... well, she bit one of them. Bit it off, actually. They went mad and beat her and burned her and tortured her in front of the other women, then took her out this morning and dumped her along the road.”

  No one spoke a word. No one moved. Finally, Carolyn said she was going back inside to see if she could do anything else for Melissa.

  None of the men moved or spoke for a long while until Jake went into the house and strapped on his two Glocks, checking to make sure both magazines were full. He laid a shotgun and the two grenades from the police station on the kitchen table and stuffed the pockets of a heavy coat hanging on the wall with shotgun shells and spare magazines.

  “Jake, you can't!” Vickie started to say, but was cut off when he turned and glared coldly at her.

  “We can't have them out there,” he said quietly but resolutely. “We can't leave those women out there with them! This has to end, now, today!”

  “But, we don't even know where to look for them,” Tom protested.

  “We'll follow the tire tracks in the snow,” Jake answered matter-of-factly. “They should be the only tracks out there and will lead us back to them.”

  “Okay, but what do we do then?” asked Pete, though he already knew the answer.

  “We find where they're staying, wait until dark, close in on them and kill them all,” Jake answered, calmly.

  “I'm going,” Vickie put in firmly. “If there's anyone standing guard, I can take him out quietly with my bow. I'm going!”

  “Done,” Jake nodded. “Pete, Hannah, if she’s still alive, will know you. She'll be less likely to panic if she sees a familiar face, so you come with us. Tom, I want you to stay here and help defend the house, if necessary.”

  “Jake,” Carolyn protested as she came back, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to rush out after them blindly like this. We don’t know who they are, how they’re armed, whether they saw Pete and me and are waiting in ambush. It’s too risky to take off just like that.”

  “I’m not going to go charging in without sizing up the place first, but those tracks are fresh right now and the way the sky looks we might be in for another snow tonight,” he told her. “If it does snow again tonight, their tracks will be covered and we might not be able to find them before they find us. No matter what, I want them dead. I want to see them dead. I want to personally kill every last miserable one of them. You have to stay here and take care of Melissa. Tom is a good man to have around in a crisis, but he’s never yet had to kill an uninfected person. I don't know for sure if Pete is up to killing in cold blood, but I think Vickie could after seeing this. I know I won't have any problem. There will be no prisoners, no second chances. All nine of them die tonight.”

  Carolyn involuntarily took a step back at the calm intensity of his voice and the grim determination in his eyes and no one said another word in protest.

  Inside half an hour, the three of them were heading down the road in the Hummer, Pete driving, Jake riding next to him with binoculars and Vickie sitting in back with the bow across her lap. They found the tracks with no trouble after cresting the rise and Pete drove slowly and cautiously while Jake scanned ahead looking for the restaurant or for any sign of an ambush. Conversation was limited during the drive, each one focusing on the task at hand. Pete wondered if he could really pull the trigger on another human being, no matter how much he deserved it. Vickie’s thoughts were about rescuing the captives and she tried to avoid the reality of killing to free them. Jake could think only about those foul dregs of humanity bleeding and dying at his feet.

  Another half hour of driving brought them to a crossroad and Pete turned left, still following the tracks, which swayed drunkenly across the road, frequently running onto the shoulder on either side, leaving deep ruts where the vehicle struggled to get free. A thin column of smoke in the distance alerted Jake and he had Pete pull over when they were about a half mile away from the source; a rural truck stop at the intersection of the main highway and across the side road from a small park with picnic benches, a barbecue pit and a swing set.

  A dozen yards from the road, on the same side as the restaurant, the trees were mostly pine, the thick growth offering excellent concealment, and they were able to approach the building unseen. The trees ended some distance from the building where a parking lot, about eighty feet wide, lay beside the restaurant. In back and on the other side, the lot was considerably wider
to allow trucks to park and turn around, so they couldn't get any nearer without exposing themselves. One man stood guard outside the building, pacing unsteadily and occasionally stomping his feet and clapping his hands together against the cold while puffing on a fat cigar. He had a bottle inside his coat from which he took a swig from time to time. From inside the building they could plainly hear a woman scream and men laughing drunkenly.

  “What's the plan, Jake?” whispered Pete.

  Jake's eyes took in the area surrounding the building and, at length, he shook his head and answered, “I don't really want to wait until dark, not after hearing those screams, but we're not going to be able to get close enough in the daylight to take out that guard without being spotted and him warning the rest of them. We don't even know that he's the only one yet, though with the way he's been hitting that bottle, I don't think they're likely to be all that conscientious about guard duty. Let's head back to the car and get it behind cover, just in case, and wait for sunset. There're four vehicles in the lot there; two cars, a pickup and a cargo van. We'll make sure that hasn't changed and there's no other tracks leading in or out before we hit them.”

  That being said, they went back to the Hummer and pulled it off the side of the road until it was hidden among the pines. From that position, they could still watch the road and be aware of any kind of traffic.

  . . .

  “The waiting is the hardest part,” Liz told Tom, squeezing his hand.

  “It's still a couple of hours until dark,” he answered. “They aren't going to do anything until then, so there's nothing we can do about it.”

  “I know, but it doesn't make it any easier. Nine against three... those aren't very good odds.”

  “They'll manage. Just have faith that they'll pick the right moment, the right approach. Me, I don't have any doubt at all.”

  Tom kissed her and stood up, saying, “It's time I relieved Eve on the porch, she's probably pretty cold by now.”

  As his hand grasped the doorknob he heard Liz softly call his name. Carolyn was making her way down the steps, a gloomy expression on her face and eyes wet with tears. She didn't say anything or look at either of them until sitting heavily into a chair near the fireplace.