Rage (Book 2): The Infected

by Murray, Richard

  Deacon let out a soft sigh and reached up to run one hand down his face, rubbing at his chin as he passed it. The action seemed to help focus his mind as he shook his head, dismissing the doubts that plagued him. There was a job to do and while he might not like it, he wouldn’t shy away from it.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen them.” He paused. “You trust that, lass? The soldier?”

  “Claire? Yeah, I think she knows what she’s talking about. Besides, she’ll be out there with us. Kind of makes me want to believe she can get us back alive.”

  Both of the men turned their heads then, as though some unspoken agreement passed between them, to look to the east and the place they would be going. It was visible from the roof and using the binoculars that Deacon had provided, they’d been able to watch the place for the past few days.

  As plans went, it wasn’t a great one, but it was better than nothing and if it worked out, they would have all the food and supplies they needed for the winter.

  If it worked out.

  The Harewood Barracks, Army Reserve Centre. It had been the place where the military had set up camp as they directed operations in the city. Through the binoculars, Jack had been able to see the trucks surrounding the building and the pallets full of rations that had been supposed to be passed out to the city residents.

  Claire and Sarah had been there and while there were plenty of bodies, there were few infected. Most of them having chased after the two women as they fled towards the road where Kyra had found them.

  As high as they were, Jack had a good view over the city and had watched for the past few days as the infected rampaged through the streets. Most of the larger groups had moved outwards, away from the city centre and out into the housing estates in search of food.

  People tried to flee but few made it, getting stuck in the seemingly endless traffic-filled streets or trying to escape on foot and being attacked from the dark and shadowed places where the infected liked to lurk.

  At night was when it was most dangerous, when they were the most active. During the day only the larger groups were out, which gave Jack the hope that they might actually be successful.

  “Who’s going?” Deacon asked, breaking into the other man’s thoughts.

  “Claire, Me, You, Dobbs, Adam, Michael and Paul.”

  “Well, I know you and the soldier-lass, but no idea who the others are.”

  “Dobbs is a good man; he fought the infected with me down on the ground floor.”

  “Aye, the others?”

  “I don’t know them that well, but they were willing to come with us, which says something.”

  “That they’re fools.”

  “Probably.”

  “I have guns for me and the soldier. Not sure I trust the rest of you with them.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Jack said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. In truth, he wouldn’t have a clue what to do with one anyway. “Hopefully we won’t need them. We get in, load up a couple of trucks with as many of the supplies as we can, and we come back here.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “Yeah, simple.”

  Jack looked glumly back at the luxury block of flats. In his heart, he knew it would be far from simple, but he hoped. That was all he could do after all. The other choices were to sit in the tower block and hope someone would come to their aid.

  That was impractical and while there were some issues he couldn’t deal with right then; he could try and secure enough food and water to keep everyone alive for as long as possible.

  “Newspapers,” Deacon said, and it was Jack’s turn to look at him in confusion.

  “What?”

  “We need a load of newspapers. Can stick them over the windows. Will help keep the light out.”

  “Maybe. Not like we’ll have power for too long though.”

  “Couple of weeks yet I reckon,” Deacon said, sucking on his teeth as his eyes grew distant. “Some of the power plants are being kept going as long as possible.”

  “More of your friends on the radio?”

  “Aye. Governments had folks going out shutting down the nuclear plants, but the others are still going. Same with the refineries and anything else that could blow up in our faces.”

  “Surprised they’d bother.”

  “When they come out of their bunkers, they want the world to be liveable,” Deacon said. “Word is that they reckon the infected will be dead in a year or so from starvation.”

  “We can hope so.”

  The two men stood in silence for several minutes, both thinking about that. Even if it was two years, that was still two years of trying to survive with whatever they could scavenge, with the infected growing increasingly dangerous as their easy food supply dried up.

  “Edinburgh is officially gone,” Deacon said, voice soft. “Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester… can’t find much signs of life in them. The infected have been seen in the towns and villages now in greater numbers too.”

  “Damn.”

  It seemed like such a pointless thing to say, but Jack could think of no other response. With city after city falling to the infected, their numbers were growing whilst those of the uninfected were dropping rapidly.

  “That young lass, the one whose boyfriend died…”

  “Anna?”

  “Yeah. She was asking me about drugs.”

  Jack’s eyebrows rose at that as he shook his head. He knew the sort of drugs she would be asking for and he didn’t think it would be something that Deacon would have in his surprisingly well-stocked flat.

  “She asked me the same thing,” he said. “But I have no idea where we could get something like that. Not like most pharmacies will stock them is it? Besides, we have other medicines we need before that.”

  “It’s important to her.”

  “Well, if the world is going the way I think it is, then she needs to accept that she might not be getting any more. Not like we could make what she needs.”

  “Aye, that’s what I said. You need to watch her though.”

  “I know,” Jack said, heaving a soft sigh. “Thanks for the warning though.”

  “Anytime, brother. We’re in this together now.”

  “True enough.”

  Both men looked to the north as a car alarm sounded somewhere in the distance. It wasn’t the first they had heard and likely wouldn’t be the last. Somewhere out in the city, someone else was likely dying as that alarm sounded.

  A shiver ran up Jack’s spine and he bowed his head for a moment. While not a particularly religious man, he still offered up a quick prayer for whatever poor soul was out there.

  “Need to decide what to do about them,” Deacon said, with a nod towards the third tower block.

  “I know.”

  “They’ll see us come back with food and supplies.”

  “I know.”

  “A handful of us won’t be able to stop them if they come out in large numbers to loot the trucks.”

  “Jesus, man! I fucking know!” Jack clenched his hands into fists as he set his jaw stubbornly, refusing to be goaded into saying what the other man wanted him to. “I’ll deal with that when the time comes, okay?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “Screw you! I never wanted this.”

  Deacon wisely remained silent, seeing the flushed cheeks of the younger man. The people of the tower block needed a leader and he truly thought Jack was that man, but he had yet to see him make a really hard choice.

  Oh, he’d killed the infected when they attacked but that was a necessary action. He’d done that because it was them or him and most others would do the same. But when it came down to doing the same to people that weren’t infected? Deacon wasn’t sure he would make that same choice.

  It was easier with the infected as they could be seen as subhuman, as monsters. The things they did to those people they caught were horrendous. But frightened people from the other tower block?

  No, while he hoped that Jack would hav
e what it took to give the order that was needed, he suspected he wouldn’t. If that was the case, Deacon decided, then he would do what was necessary himself.

  “Come on,” Jack said, not looking at the other man. “It’s time to go.”

  Deacon nodded and followed Jack to the rooftop door. Yes, he thought, he’d spent a good portion of his life preparing for a shit hit the fan scenario and now that it here, he wasn’t going to die because the people around him weren’t strong enough to do what was needed.

  He’d definitely deal with it himself.

  Chapter 7

  The group left the safety of the tower block with more than a little caution, each of them looking around for any infected that might leap out at them and ready to dash back into the safety of the flats as soon as they did.

  Nothing moved. The car park was silent, the cars sitting empty with dirt and leaves already settling on their roofs and bonnets. The ground around the tower block was stained and the decaying bodies of the dead still remained.

  It had been decided to leave the bodies of the infected where they lay. No one wanted to risk catching anything from them and most were too scared to step outside anyway. Once they had shifted them from inside the entranceway, the residents just wanted to forget about them.

  The stench was horrendous.

  “Fucking rats!” Deacon said, moving up beside Jack and looking over the bodies. “Been chewing on the bodies for days now. I told you they should have been moved.”

  “And you were told you were welcome to do it,” Claire snapped back from the other side of Jack. “Didn’t see you coming out here and doing it.”

  The corporal had washed her uniform fatigues and donned them again with the body armour she had been wearing when she had arrived. With the helmet in place, she looked every part the soldier she was, even if she was carrying a hunting rifle rather than her usual assault rifle.

  Deacon sneered in response and hefted the pump-action shotgun he carried. He licked his lips betraying his nervousness and didn’t bother to reply. Jack ignored them both.

  As long as the bodies were there for the rats to feed on he was pretty sure they wouldn’t go inside the flats and he fully intended to do something about those bodies as soon as they had the supplies they needed to allow them to pull up the drawbridge, so to speak, and hide away for the winter.

  His primary concern was getting those supplies and he had no intention of wasting his time with the bickering of the others. He glanced back over his shoulder to Dobbs, the large bearded man he had fought beside those few days earlier, nodded once.

  Dobbs needed no further urging as he chivvied out the other three men. Each of them a volunteer and all of them looking to be scared shitless. While that was understandable, Jack had no idea how they would react once out in the city and had asked Dobbs to watch over them.

  He took his role seriously as he tightened his grip on the heavy crowbar he carried. It was still stained with the blood of the infected and he grunted at the nearest of the men, a tall, skinny, fellow by the name of Paul.

  The man shuffled forward, almost bumping into the former barman, Michael who moved aside without complaint. While he’d seen a few fights break out in the bars he tended, he was smart enough to know the infected had a ferocity he had never experienced, and the thought terrified him.

  He reached up to sweep his long, brown, hair into a man-bun and smiled mirthlessly at the final member of their group. Adam didn’t respond to the smile as he lifted first one leg and then the other, stretching the muscles that had not been used for much more than pacing in his flat for the past few days.

  A natural athlete, he used his imposing physique along with an impressive speed and agility against others in the ring. Along with the thick coat and tracksuit bottoms, he wore the weighted, leather, gloves that he had used so well against others in his matches.

  Unlike the others, he was less nervous and more excited for the potential violence to come. Adrenaline had his limbs feeling weightless as he fought back the urge to run on ahead of the group. He wanted to tangle with the infected, to prove that he was the one the women in the tower block should be looking to for protection. He flashed a quick grin at the others as they set off walking and sucked in a deep breath of frigid air.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Claire snapped, voice low but clearly audible to the group. “We see the infected, you wait for orders before you do anything and if any of you run, you’re on your own. Got it?”

  She didn’t bother to wait for the replies as she lifted the rifle and strode on ahead, quickening her pace a little. Claire was to run point, leading the way and it had been made clear before they even stepped out of the tower block, that they would do exactly what she did.

  Claire led them away from the tower block towards the small housing estate that bordered the road to the east. She kept close to the centre of the street, giving any cars a wide berth as she ducked down to peer beneath them.

  All those in the group watched the windows of the houses they passed. All it would take would be one infected person to see them and raise hell and they would be in trouble.

  They passed through the houses without incident, though none let down their guard. They turned north for a little way, headed towards the place where the wire fence that surrounded the tower blocks had been torn down as the infected came through.

  Claire paused as she passed through the gap in the fence and climbed down the low embankment to the road beyond. She looked both to the north and south but saw little beyond the cars that had been abandoned.

  When she’d fled from the infected with the nurse, she’d followed a road that connected to the one she was on to the south. It was barely half a kilometre from where she stood but it felt like a great deal more.

  With the cars parked along the roadside, and the buildings rising up on the eastern side, there were too many places for the infected to hide. Instead, they had chosen another route and it was that way she led them.

  Across the road and to the low wall on the opposite side, she peered over it, not liking the number of cars in the car park beyond. She glanced back at the men and grimaced before climbing over and dropping down the six feet to the tarmac.

  She dropped into a crouch, rifle rising as she held her breath, listening intently for sounds of movement. When nothing came, she lowered herself further and peered beneath the cars nearest to her.

  Nothing there. Claire, let out her breath and gestured for the others to join her, which they did, one at a time with a great deal more noise than she had made. Jack, knuckles white where he gripped the hilt of the long carving knife he held, crouched beside her.

  “What do you think?” His voice, barely above a whisper, still carried easily to the others. “Is it safe?”

  “Safe’s relative,” she snorted as she replied, eyes never stopping as she tried to look everywhere in order to miss nothing. “If there’s any around, they’re gonna be in the next road.”

  Jack swallowed back his fear as he looked at where she indicated. Beyond the carpark where they crouched, a road ran past. It led roughly north to south and it was southwards they would go for a short distance, past the shops and businesses before turning east towards the reserve centre.

  The infected liked to hide away from the sun. Why? Jack couldn’t say, but he suspected they simply found it easier to attack their prey in the darkness. During the day, they would hide away in any dark space and only come out if opportunity passed them by.

  It would be the safest option, by far, to check each and every building they passed to ensure no surprises came after them. But they simply didn’t have the time to do that and the last thing they wanted was to be stuck outside the flats when the sun went down. Which, in November, was far too early for Jack’s liking.

  Claire, once again, led the way across the carpark with the others following along behind, spread out in a straight light and keeping low. There was an almost palpable sense of fear clinging to them as they moved,
muscles tense with the urge to turn back and run to the safety of their home.

  At the end of the road, Claire paused, taking her time to look along the road. A brewery was immediately to her left, the great shutter doors of the loading bay closed and no movement in the yard. Across the road was an office complex, single storey with empty windows and low hedges surrounding it.

  To her right, the way she intended to go, was an open yard with a large truck parked just before the entrance. Blood covered the white door of the cab and a trail led away into the open warehouse doors.

  There was a prickling on the back of her neck that she was all too familiar with. Her bodies way of telling her that danger was near, and she licked dry lips before raising the rifle in her hands. Single-shot hunting rifle, not ideal in any way shape or form, but it was a great deal better than nothing.

  “Stay here,” she hissed before dashing across to the side of the truck.

  She leant against it; head tilted as she listened intently for sounds coming from within the warehouse. Nothing came to her and she glanced back to where the others waited, considering her next move.

  While she could just move on past the warehouse, when they came back with trucks loaded with food and supplies, the last thing she wanted was a whole nest of the infected rushing out to chase after them. Better to find out how many were in there first and if possible, take them out.

  Claire stepped out from around the truck and dashed across to the warehouse where she pressed her back up against the wall. Still no sound of movement from within so she eased herself over towards the open door and risked looking inside.

  The only light came in through the open doors and the furthest corners were in complete darkness. Tall racking sat in rows along the length of the building, with pallets loaded with what looked to be ovens, fridges and other electronic goods. None of which would be much use when the power went out.

  Her gaze dropped to the ground and she followed the trail of old blood with her eyes, into the warehouse and towards one of the corridors between racks.

  She whirled, gun rising as a body hit the wall beside her and only just managed to avoid hitting Adam in the face with the butt of the rifle as she recognised him.