The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

by Tony Battista

  “I miss watching sports,” Garth added. “The Reds were going to go all the way last year!”

  “Damn, Garth, just how many beers have you had?” Pete kidded.

  “I miss just having a daily routine,” Liz said as she and Tom joined the group. “Just knowing that each day was going to go pretty much the same as the last; that no one was going to try to kill you or rob you or eat you every single day. And compared to what Hannah and the Kays and some others went through, we’ve all had it pretty easy.”

  Everyone nodded and an uncomfortable quiet settled over the group.

  “I never imagined I’d ever say this,” Jake broke the silence, “but I miss going to work every day. That was part of a comfortable routine, too. And I was finally going to get off midnight shift and get that day job! I would have been able to spend a lot more time with…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head and took another drink.

  “What’s the use of all this?” Ethan interjected. “Our old lives and all our old routines are gone and they’ll never be back during our lifetimes. The best we can hope is that we make a better world for our grandchildren. Maybe their grandchildren will be able to have nice, normal, routine lives. It’s up to us to lay the groundwork for that.”

  “Amen to that,” Karen raised her glass. “To better days ahead!”

  All raised their glasses and repeated the toast.

  “My head is starting to spin,” Jessie laughed. “Too much wine and too late an hour are beginning to take their toll. I’m ready to head in.”

  “Good idea,” Jerry yawned as he stood up. Chloe was sound asleep and he gently picked her up and carried her back to her bed while Tom and Jake shoveled dirt over the still glowing coals.

  Tad sat in the dark only a few hundred yards away. When the wind turned in his direction, he could smell the roasting meat and it made his mouth water. The sound of laughter and small snatches of conversation carried over to him and vague recollections of better times rose in his damaged mind, coming tantalizingly close to the surface but never breaking through and solidifying. He felt a pain that was not physical, yet tortured him just the same; the pain of memories that seemed forever lost, never to be recovered.

  Sarge was aware of the goings on at the farmhouse too, but his emotions were of anger and envy. Anger that these people who’d caused him so much trouble were happy enough to celebrate their lives and good fortune; envy because it was something he’d never have himself.

  Mac just wanted to move on. He didn’t care about getting revenge, he didn’t care about the men who’d been killed and he didn’t care at all about the people at the farmhouse. All he wanted was to get away, to look for an easier target and to get away from Sarge. The only thing holding him here was the certain knowledge that Sarge would hunt him down if he tried to slip away.

  Miles away to the north, Sergeant First Class Michael Blaine was making final preparations for a company sized sweep of the area now known as the Southern Ohio Valley Military District. His assignment was to gather intelligence on any communities that still survived and to inform them that a provisional government had been set up and the military was finally in a position where it could start to root out the bandit gangs and deal with the remaining infected. Hollington was to figure prominently in the new organization.

  Chapter 26: Deadly Encounter

  Phil and Joaquin visited the farmhouse the next morning to discuss the plans they’d all been working on for tying all the separate buildings together with Hollington. Jake’s group had already agreed that a centralized authority was a prerequisite to reestablishing any sort of civilized society and would recognize the primacy of an elected committee. In all, there were few details left to be ironed out and, after informing Jake that the election was to be held in two weeks, they shook hands all around and returned to Hollington.

  Kim was still less than thrilled about the whole arrangement, but she kept her peace and agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. Tom, Liz, Eric and Lauren drove to their future home to work on some minor repairs and to start preparing it for occupancy. Pete and Carolyn went with Ethan and Karen to the second site to work on some plumbing issues while Bernie drove Hannah to Hollington to formally announce her candidacy for a position on the committee. For the rest, it was something of a lazy day spent partly on recovering from the previous night’s revelry and partly on adjusting the living arrangements according to their reduced population.

  Tad was puzzled that so many of the residents departed. He worried that the community was breaking up and, since he had no vehicle or any idea about how to drive one even if he had, that he’d never be able to follow them.

  Sarge was pleased to see half the adult population leave, figuring it would only improve his chances of bloodying the rest of them and making a successful getaway. Mac was annoyed that he had to lug the heavy .50 caliber sniper rifle to the oak grove himself, although Sarge did help him get it into position. Lying in the grass, hidden among fallen limbs and overgrowth, he had a clear view of most of the front porch, the tower and part of the front yard. With the lowering sun behind him just above the treetops, there was no way they’d be able to spot him before he opened fire.

  “Give me ten minutes to make it to the old stone fence, then hit the guy in the tower first and anyone else you can line up on,” Sarge instructed.

  Mac nodded, still not liking the whole setup, but not seeing that he had any other choice.

  . . .

  It was a hot afternoon and Alan had been in the tower for nearly two hours, the roof offering little shade from the sun’s low angle. He was happy to see Chloe climb the ladder with a thermos of cool iced tea and thanked her sincerely when she handed it to him.

  “Oh, that’s good,” he smiled after downing a cup. “It would have been tough to face another hour up here without it.”

  “I’ve never been up here,” Chloe said. “It’s a pretty view. Looking at how beautiful everything is, it’s hard to imagine what an ugly world it really is.”

  “It’s not going to be ugly forever. We’ve had a pretty rough time of it, I know, but we’re going to straighten it all out again.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do! Maybe it won’t happen in my lifetime, but I think your children someday will grow up in a better world. My generation will get things started, your generation will build on our foundation and the next generation will start to reap the benefits. There won’t be nearly as many people around for a long time, but maybe they’ll all finally realize that this world is big enough to share without-“

  The heavy .50 caliber slug hit him squarely in the shoulder, separating his arm from his body and clipping the top of Chloe’s head. Kim was in the living room when she heard the loud report and looked out the window just in time to see Alan’s arm fall past. She raced out the front door without thinking and stared up at the tower, blood now running down its side. Her life was spared when she suddenly turned to go back after her own rifle and a second slug splintered one of the tower support posts at head level.

  The entire house sprang to life as everyone manned their posts and took weapons to hand. Kate was at a second story window scanning with her scope in the direction from which the shots came. She caught a glimpse of movement and fired five shots at and around it. One of the shots hit the limb behind which Mac was concealed, three inches to his left. A second tore away most of his left ear and the other three, though clean misses, he could hear buzzing through the air around him. That was enough for him and he abandoned the rifle, rolling and crawling away, putting distance between himself and the farmhouse. He no longer cared about the consequences of running out on Sarge; he just wanted to get as far away as he could.

  Karen fired three more rounds, chasing the fleeing sniper though doing no more damage than causing him to soil his pants.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Jake asked when he came into the living room to check.

  “Alan’s dead,”
Kim replied.

  “He’s dead? Are you sure?”

  “His whole arm is lying on the ground at the bottom of the tower! Yes, I’m sure!”

  “Oh, my God!” Larissa shouted. “Chloe was taking him some iced tea! Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know!” Kim responded. “I just don’t know!”

  Jerry was out the front door before anyone could make a move to stop him and he quickly scaled the ladder to the tower platform. One look and he could see that Alan was, in fact, dead. Chloe’s head was covered in blood, some her own but most of it from Alan. She was unconscious but still breathing and her pulse was strong.

  “She’s still alive!” Jerry called down. “Alan’s gone, but she’s still alive! We have to get her down from here!”

  “Okay, I’ll get up onto the roof and Jerry and I can get her over there and then in through one of the windows,” Jake said. “Garth, I need you and Kate for cover fire. Jessie, you get the med kit up there; Kim, I’ll need you… Where the hell is Kim?”

  “She took off,” said Larissa. “I think she went out the back.”

  “Damn! Okay, let’s get Chloe.”

  “Shouldn’t we send someone after Kim?” Jessie asked.

  “Kim can take care of herself,” Jake told her. “I almost pity that sniper though.”

  Mac continued crawling until he thought it was safe to stand up again and began running headlong in flight. He had his two pistols, a canteen and a small amount of food on him and he didn’t care about going back to their camp for his rifle or anything else; he just wanted to get away. Sarge was somewhere in front and to the left of him and he dearly hoped he could get by him without being spotted. Mac felt the tug as his foot caught the low wire and the last thing he ever saw was the bent branch festooned with sharpened stakes springing toward him.

  Sarge began to curse when several minutes had passed without another shot from Mac’s position.

  “The son-of-a-bitch is either dead or he ran out on me. If that trap didn’t get him, he’s gonna wish it had when I catch up to him!”

  From his vantage point, he had a fair view of the farmhouse and a good view of all the approaches to his position. Someone was on the roof and he could see another man in the guard tower. They were moving a body from the tower to the roof and carrying it to an upper floor window. He might have been able to pick off one or more of them with a lucky shot, but didn’t want to give away his position so he watched and waited. Sooner or later, someone would come up to investigate and he’d have his blood.

  Kim slipped through the overgrowth swiftly and quietly, her small frame and lithe movements a definite asset in this type of work. She knew she was getting close to the sniper’s hideout and paused, crouching and scanning. She set an arrow to her bowstring and moved cautiously forward. As soon as her foot touched the ground, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She tried to leap aside but the loop caught her ankle and lifted her off her feet and suddenly she was hanging by one foot, swaying and bobbing several feet off the ground. Immediately she tried for her knife but a heavy fist connected with the side of her head and darkness overwhelmed her.

  Tad found Mac’s body, still impaled on the sharp stakes. One had slid between two ribs to puncture his lung and break out through his back, another went into his stomach and a third glanced off his ribcage. He had nearly half an hour to enjoy this unexpected surprise when he heard the sound of someone plodding through the forest off to one side. Leaving the rest of his meal for later, he moved toward the noise.

  Kim felt her body rocking back and forth and tried to move her arms to steady herself only to find her hands tied securely behind her back. Despite the pain in her skull, she opened her eyes to see a man tugging off her jeans, an all too familiar leer on his face. She kicked at him but he deftly turned aside and her foot landed against his hip rather than in his groin where she intended. Laughing, he slapped her hard across her left cheek, then backhanded across her right. Dazed almost to the point of passing out again, she watched helplessly as he tore her pants apart with his bare hands and ripped her panties off. Still leering, he stripped off his own pants and pried her knees apart, kneeling between her thighs.

  “You may as well just lay back and enjoy it, honey. I know I will.”

  The memories of her imprisonment and the degradations inflicted upon her in the diner for those many weeks flooded into her head and her mind screamed though her body was too weak to give voice to her anguish. She wanted to die rather than go through that again, prayed for death to take her now, before this man could inflict that misery on her again.

  A deafeningly loud noise assaulted her ears and Sarge stiffened, his back rigidly straight. His grip on her legs relaxed and he teetered for a moment before toppling over like a falling tree. He hit the ground hard and Kim could see another man with a rifle standing a few yards behind him. She let her breath out in a sigh of relief, tears welling up in her eyes. She began to stutter out a thank you to the man when he bent over her assailant and sank his teeth into the man’s neck. Sarge screamed once and his body twisted and shuddered violently for several long moments before all movement ceased as his life ebbed away.

  Kim looked on in horror as she understood her supposed savior was actually one of the infected. He mind was thrown into utter confusion by the realization that he was an infected who knew how to use a rifle. Tad looked down at her curiously, squinting his eyes as he studied her face. His gaze drifted down her body to take in the smooth flesh, the curve of her hips, the shape of her legs and the dark patch between them. Some part of what remained of his mind vaguely remembered a long ago yearning, tenderness, and a person he once loved. He slowly shook his head and turned away.

  Tad picked up Sarge’s rifle and smashed it against a tree trunk after taking out the magazine. He took both of Sarge’s pistols and beat them with rocks until they were rendered useless. Kim’s weapons were in the dirt a few feet away and he drew her big Bowie knife from its sheath. She struggled to push herself away as he approached her, but he took her arm in one hand, rolled her onto her side and cut the ropes that bound her. She didn’t know what to expect, how to react as their eyes met again. His expression seemed almost one of pleading, of begging for understanding and she suddenly wasn’t afraid of him.

  Tad stood up and dropped the knife to the ground beside her. He gathered up Sarge’s body, hoisted it over his shoulder and began to walk away. At last, he turned and looked at her once more, as if saying goodbye, and disappeared into the forest.

  Kim struggled slowly to her feet, head spinning the whole while. She managed to collect her gun belt with her pistols and throw it over her shoulder. Her bow and quiver in one hand and her torn pants in the other, she staggered back in the direction of the farmhouse.

  Kate saw the lone figure emerge from the tree line and lined up her crosshairs on it.

  “It’s Kim!” She shouted, running down the steps and out the door, ignoring the questions and cautions directed toward her. She thought her heart would break at the sight of Kim’s battered face and half-naked body, but she swept her up in her arms and held her tight, crying, stroking her hair and telling her she was safe now.

  Jake caught up to them a moment later, followed by Jessie and Bailey. Together, they got her back to the farmhouse and listened incredulously to her story.

  Kim’s face was badly bruised and both lips were split. Two of her teeth were loose, but she wasn’t seriously injured. Chloe would always have a bare spot on her scalp, but she would also recover. She didn’t remember anything about what happened in the tower and was shocked to find out that Alan was dead. A funeral was held when the rest of the household returned that evening, attended also by several Hollington residents who’d heard the gunshots and come to offer their aid. A search party the next day discovered the partially devoured Mac still hanging on the staked limb. No trace of Sarge or the intelligent infected were ever found.

  Chapter 27: A New Beginning

  “I se
e vehicles on the road,” Jessie called down from the watchtower. “It looks like there’s a lot of them!”

  “They’re military vehicles,” Ethan yelled out from the second floor balcony after studying them through his binoculars. “They have five Humvees mounting MGs, a couple of APCs and at least three trucks. They’re flying an American flag and they all appear to be in uniform.”

  “They’re coming from the northeast,” Jake noted. “They’ll have to pass by Hollington before they reach us. I just hope they really are military and they’re friendly.”

  “They must be from the encampment in Cincinnati,” Pete offered.

  The convoy stopped in front of the Hollington gates, the APCs and all but one of the Humvees moving off road nearby. Dozens of armed soldiers dismounted from the trucks and deployed along the road and around the vehicles. The Hollington gates opened and one of the Humvees with a cut-down back mounting a 20mm gun drove in. All was quiet for nearly twenty minutes, then the Humvee drove out again, stopped in front of the convoy for a moment and moved down the road toward the farmhouse. As they approached, it became clear that Phil was riding in the Humvee, standing up in the back, waving to the house.

  “Everyone stay calm,” Jake said. “If they’re friendly, great! If they aren’t, they have too much firepower for us to start anything.”

  The vehicle stopped at the end of the drive and two riflemen got out immediately and stood at the ready nearby. Phil stepped out next, followed by another uniformed figure and they approached the house.

  “It’s okay, everyone!” Phil announced. “They’re from Cincinnati! I’ve had dealings with them before.”

  As they neared the house, Ethan stepped out on the porch and stared in disbelief.

  “Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch! Mike Blaine!” He shouted.

  “Ethan! You sorry bastard, you’re still alive?” The two men shook hands and slapped each other on the back. “I hadn’t heard a damned thing about you since that bomb went off! We all thought you were killed!”