“The fuck’re you doing?” she hissed, anger filling her face. “I told you to stay back.”
“Can’t let you go alone!”
She gave him an incredulous look and shook her head. He flashed a grin and raised his gloved hands before him, an eagerness in his eyes that she had seen many times before on new recruits heading out on their first patrol.
Like them, he didn’t know what he was dealing with and while she didn’t care whether he got himself killed, she had no intention of letting him be the cause of her own death. But, at the same time, she realised that she had no way to keep him from doing anything truly stupid anyway.
“Stay close and stay fucking quiet,” she said, before turning away from him and peering into the warehouse once again.
Still no movement or sound and she dared to hope that whatever had killed the truck driver had long since departed. She had to know for sure though. So, moving slowly, she entered the warehouse.
Chapter 8
Grace Barnes, wife of Seth, was a woman in her seventies who had, in her own words, lived a life worth living and enjoyed every damn second of it. Which likely explained why it was she who held her husband’s hand and comforted him as they sat in their small living room, talking with Sarah.
The older man was close to tears, his wrinkled face pale with his lower lip trembling as Sarah checked Grace’s insulin levels one more time. With a sombre expression, Sarah shook her head and looked the old woman in the eye as she spoke.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Grace said, reaching out with her free hand and patting Sarah’s knee. “I’ve lived a good long life.”
Sarah could see how much effort it took for the other woman to do even that much. The abdominal pain she was feeling along with the nausea were taking their toll on her and there was an odour of acetone, like a bottle of nail varnish remover had been opened nearby.
That wasn’t the case though as the smell was coming from the old lady as the symptoms of her diabetes worsened. Sarah dropped the testing kit into the small bag she carried with her and held back a sigh.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked, looking from first Grace to her husband and back again. “I mean, really sure. You understand what’s going to happen?”
“Yes,” Grace said, voice firm and unyielding. “I do.”
“Seth?”
“It’s what she wants.”
Seth’s eyes glittered with tears and his voice trembled, but he didn’t try to argue with his wife, though he’d done plenty of that in the past few days. He’d finally come to see her point of view and while he hated that he had agreed, he’d done as she’d asked and sought out the young nurse.
“How long, do you think?” Grace asked, eyes full of pain and sorrow.
“Days, at best.” It was all Sarah could do to not break down herself as she looked at the brave woman before her. “I wish I could do something to make it easier for you.”
“We’ll be fine,” Grace said, and even managed a smile, though it couldn’t hide her fear. “You go now and help those you can.”
There was little else that Sarah could say, and it was with a lump in her throat that she gathered up the small vials of insulin and put them in her bag. It wasn’t much, a couple of weeks’ worth of the precious substance if she rationed it out as best she could for the other person in the block of flats, but it was something.
“Thank you,” she said as she rose to her feet.
“Just make sure that she gets it.”
“I will.”
That one other person with diabetes was a young girl, a bright and curious child with a family that loved her and worried greatly about her. The girl’s father had helped fight the infected in the other block of flats just so that he could look for any insulin that would keep his daughter alive that bit longer.
He hadn’t found much but that, along with the vials that Grace had volunteered to give her, might just be enough to see her through the winter. By then, some form of order might have returned to the world and she could have a chance of living.
It was a huge sacrifice for Grace to make, but it was one she insisted upon and while it might break Sarah’s heart, she knew that she would follow her wishes. She stopped as she placed one hand on the door handle and reached into her bag.
In the past few days of being in the block of flats, she had gathered all medical supplies together and taken control of them. She had taken it upon herself to see to the welfare of the residents and it was something she would do to the best of her ability. Which meant helping them with their pain.
She pulled a small container of pills from her bag and put it on the sideboard beside the door. She glanced back once and caught Seth’s eye.
“For her pain,” was all she said, and he understood immediately.
Sarah left the flat to the sounds of sorrow and closed the door behind her. She leant against the cool wood and lay her head back, reaching up one hand to wipe at her own eyes before blinking, she set off towards her next appointment.
****
The sound of the argument could be heard across the hall as Kyra and Denis went at it. With a snarl of anger, Kyra threw her hands up and stormed out of the old fools flat, slamming the door behind her.
She waited for a moment to regain her composure, body tense, before striding towards the door that led to the stairwell. She ignored the curious faces that peered at her from their doorways and headed upwards.
It had only been three days and she was already on edge from being trapped inside. Much longer and she knew she would really lose it. She needed fresh air and sunlight, away from all the people, especially the stupidly obstinate ones like Denis.
The argument wasn’t even about anything major, just a minor matter about what should be given priority on the list of supplies that were needed. While the guys had gone out to gather a load of food, there would still be other things that were needed, and she wanted to make sure that the right things were on the list.
Since men didn’t use some of those items, they clearly hadn’t assigned much priority to them and Kyra was fairly sure that they would regret it soon enough if they didn’t get the various sanitary products the women needed.
God alone knew what it would be like with the bathroom situation when the water went out, they didn’t need the added issue of half the residents free-bleeding all over the damned place, especially with the whole infection thing that nobody really understood.
She pushed open the rooftop door and stomped out, sucking in a deep breath of cold, clean, air. She wanted to howl, to scream at the sky about the stupidity of men, but to do so would be to invite the attention of the infected so she couldn’t even do that.
With a younger man, or even one she just didn’t despise as much as she did Denis, she would have flirted a little, maybe a casual touch of her hand on his arm, a well-placed smile and lingering glance. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that with him.
Kyra had long known that her beauty allowed her to coast through life with a great deal more privilege than others had. Men would fawn over her and do almost anything she asked just for a moment of her time and attention.
It was something she had used to her advantage many times over the years and while, on occasion, it had resulted in unpleasantness, for the most part, she had gained from it. Which made it all the more frustrating that she found herself in her current situation.
Jack, was an attractive enough man but seemed a little standoffish, somehow not quite falling for her charms. His little friend, the odd-looking Dec was somewhat easier to manipulate but had no real power other than his influence with Jack.
Which had left her spending her time flirting with Deacon for the past couple of days in an attempt to get him on her side. A somewhat frustrating exercise as he was a paranoid nut-job of a prepper who had been looking forward to the end of the world with the same amount of relish as a child waiting for Christmas morning.
All in all, it
had been an intensely irksome few days and had not been helped by it being the time of the month where she very much needed the sanitary towels that Denis deemed so unnecessary.
“You okay?”
Kyra turned her head towards the sound of the voice and forced a smile to her face as the nurse she had rescued nodded a greeting.
A pretty woman with dimples that showed every time she smiled and natural blonde hair that Kyra would have killed for, they were already rivals in Kyra’s mind and it didn’t help that she had seen the way Jack looked at her, even if the nurse hadn’t seemed to notice.
“Dealing with men, you know what it’s like.”
“Some people can be challenging,” Sarah said in a tone the tightened the smile on Kyra’s face.
“Indeed.”
She wasn’t ready to go back inside and she refused to let the disapproval of the nurse force her off the rooftop, so she gave another polite nod of her head and turned her back on the other woman before moving across to the far side of the roof.
From there, she could see over the city and it was an impressive sight. The First Direct Arena was just a little way to the south-west and further on the sprawling buildings that made up the infirmary. Not far from that was the domed roof of the museum and the many university buildings.
It was a city that she loved, and it had never really occurred to her just how much she truly did love it. While not born in the city, she had moved there years before for college and then university. She’d made friends, and fallen in love, though that relationship had ended badly it had been intense and exciting.
There were a lot of memories there and she’d not realised just how much she would miss the city that was. Whatever came next, she was certain that things would never be the same again.
“I wonder if my friends made it home,” Sarah said, coming up behind her.
Kyra glanced back and the nurse gestured towards the infirmary with a jerk of her chin.
“Last time I heard from them, they were headed home, and I went with the soldiers.”
“I can’t imagine anything pleasant happened to them,” Kyra said with a wave towards the luxury apartments that were far too close for comfort. “Most likely ended up like those poor bastards.”
Sarah was silent and Kyra held back a sigh as she looked back at her once again, seeing the shimmer of tears in the blonde woman’s eyes.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a bitch. Just been a really shitty day and all I could hear last night was the screaming.”
“Me too.”
A shudder ran through Sarah as she glanced over at the apartment block. It was unlikely anyone in their block of flats had been able to sleep as they heard the smashing of glass and the screams of the dying.
“You think they’ll come here next?”
“I think Jack expected them,” Kyra said, looking thoughtfully at the apartment block. “That’s why he had us seal off the first half dozen floors.”
“Smart move.”
“He’s a smart guy. For a man, anyway.”
They both shared a smile at that, and Sarah took another step forward to lean her forearms on the parapet beside Kyra.
“You think they’ll make it back okay?”
“The guys?” Kyra cocked an eyebrow at the other woman and shrugged her shoulders. “Probably. They have as much chance as anyone does.”
“But then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve just had a woman give me the last of her insulin so that I can use it to keep a young girl alive for as long as possible. But, why? The woman will die and if we’re really lucky the girl will survive the winter but not much longer after.”
Sarah shivered and not from the cold. While she had always considered herself to be fairly resilient, the enormity of what was happening was beginning to get to her.
“Even if she survives the winter, what then? She’ll die without more insulin which is something we can’t make. Add to that the other handful of people who need medicine daily to keep them alive and they won’t get it! In a week, perhaps two, they will start dying.”
“That’s not your problem.”
“What!”
“Hear me out,” Kyra said. “The world is screwed, and you can’t change that, none of us can. The best we can do is ride it out and try to get to a point where it’s not screwed up. Those people are going to die anyway. You aren’t killing them, it’s their illnesses that will do that. It’s not your fault.”
“Feels like it is. I just wish I could help them.”
“Perhaps you can.”
Sarah turned to face Kyra fully, despair giving way to a little glimmer of hope. “How?”
“You need medicine and all of us women need things that the men don’t think are a priority, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go get some.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’re twenty minutes’ walk away from the city centre. There’s a pharmacy two streets away. Let’s stop waiting for Jack and the others to do things for us, and let’s go get what we need ourselves.”
“Are you forgetting the infected?”
“It’s daytime. They’re sleeping, hiding or whatever the fuck it is they do. We stay away from places they might hide, and we can do it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on! Look, we’ll ask a couple of others to come with us, yes? You want to try and keep people alive, then this is the way we do it.”
Sarah chewed on her lower lip as she looked out over the city. The very idea of going out amongst the infected terrified her. She’d seen up close just what they could do and there was no way she wanted to experience that again.
But if she could get the medicines and basic things that would help her keep people alive. Then it was worth the risk.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Chapter 9
Claire breathed out slowly and peered around the corner of the racking. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene and she jerked her head back as she gripped the rifle all the tighter. A part of her was screaming to get out of there while another, wanted her to step out and use the hunting rifle to good effect.
“What is it?” Adam asked, voice barely audible even as he leaned in close to speak directly into her ear.
She just shook her head and swallowed down the urge to vomit.
“Nothing,” she managed to reply but reached out and grabbed his arm as he tried to move past her. “You don’t want to look, trust me.”
The burly fighter tried to push past her, and she merely shook her head as she let go of his arm. With a great deal of caution, he slowly inched his head around the corner of the racking and then jerked it back with a suddenness that she expected.
“Told you.”
“W-what…” Adam paused, face pale as he closed his eyes. “I-I mean…”
“If you throw up, they’ll hear you!” Claire hissed. “Keep it together.”
“But-“
“Quiet!”
He did as she said, though his tongue darted out to lick his lips and there was a discoloured tinge to the skin around them. Claire knew that if he vomited then the noise would draw the small group of infected to them like flies to sugar.
“We should go.”
“But what about… that?” Adam said, nodding towards the corridor between the racks. “We can’t just leave them.”
“They’re already infected!”
She was surprised at how much she hated herself for saying that, even as the words left her mouth. It was true, but at the same time, even one as jaded as she would admit she was, could see that there were some things you shouldn’t let by.
With a silent curse for her own stupidity, she gestured for Adam to move and once more took up a place beside the edge of the racking.
The breathy grunting, the slap of flesh on flesh, was all too audible from where she stood, and she risked another quick look so that she co
uld count. There were four of them, three male and one female. Their victim had stopped trying to wriggle free as the infection took over their small body.
All of them were partially clothed and at least one was fully naked. The stench of unwashed bodies covered in their own waste was almost overwhelming and she lifted the rifle a little higher as she pulled another bullet from her pocket.
One-shot. That was all she had with the rifle, then several seconds to reload. The infected were approx. forty metres away which meant that if she were really lucky, she would kill one, then have a shot at a second before the others were on her.
She wasn’t sure that she should do anything. There were only five of them and if she went back and got the others, they could all fight them together without the need for the guns. But, the woman… she couldn’t get her mewling cry out of her mind. While the infection had clearly taken her, it hadn’t when she’d first come across them.
Her lips tightened and her knuckles whitened on the rifle as she stepped around the side of the racking, raising it to her shoulder. She took a bead on the one assaulting the woman and squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the gun firing filled the warehouse and blood burst from the back of the infected skull as a small, round, hole appeared on his forehead. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, and the others howled.
Claire ignored them, her mind and fingers focused on one thing and one thing only, drawing back the cocking lever and ejecting the spent casing. She fed the fresh bullet into the chamber and without pause, fired again.
Another of the infected fell to the hard, concrete ground, as the remaining two scrambled to reach her. Adam stepped forward as the first approached, right hook to the infected woman’s jaw threw her to the side as he spun, leg rising into a roundhouse kick that caught the other infected in the side of the head.
A third shot rang out as Claire coolly executed the female infected as she tried to rise. With a steady hand, she reloaded once more and took careful aim.
“Move!” she snapped, as Adam stepped in front of her.
Rage (Book 2): The Infected Page 6