Rage (Book 2): The Infected

by Murray, Richard

  They swarmed over him, seemingly excited by the scent of his blood as it began to flow from the hundreds of tiny bites on his flesh. His scream became a whimper as he staggered back, then fell, crashing through the glass countertop.

  His despairing scream echoed through the shopping centre and was answered by the cries of the infected as Kyra and the rest of the small group ran for their lives.

  Chapter 14

  Peter gawped at the white, armoured, prisoner transport van for a full minute before turning to look at Bradley.

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah, man. We drive this bad boy and just go straight through those freaky fucks out there.”

  The two inmates both turned towards the gate. The infected had stopped flinging themselves against it sometime after dawn and as the day had worn on, they had moved away. To where, Peter couldn’t say, but they were no longer right outside the prison gates, though there were plenty of bodies still.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Look. You can come with, or you can stay here with the rest of these sad fucks. Either way, me and the boys are going.”

  Peter glanced back to where Trevor sat slumped, head down, against the wall. His cellmate wasn’t doing too well at all and while there might not be any help out beyond the walls, there definitely wasn’t inside.

  “Yeah, fine. When do you want to do this?”

  “Now.” Bradley flashed a repulsive grin before waving towards the small group of dark-skinned prison inmates lounging near Trevor. “We’re ready to go.”

  Each of those prisoners had a box or bag stuffed with food taken from the kitchen, along with an assortment of weapons. Several batons taken from the guard's storeroom, a few knives from the kitchen and a hammer taken from a toolbox they had found under one of the desks in the admin building.

  The two prison transfer vans were located in their own separate courtyard with a gate that opened up into the same courtyard that the prisoners had fled just a few hours earlier. Getting out of the prison wouldn’t be the problem but where they went after, was.

  Peter had studied the maps of the area that had, eventually, loaded on the horrendously slow internet. He could guide the way out of the city, but to where? Bradley wanted to go to a place in the north of Leeds, which was doable, but the easiest way to go would be through the city centre.

  Which, he reasoned, would be the best way to go because it would allow him to guide the way to where his wife lived. She was near enough to the city centre that he could find her and finally see her again, which was something he’d been dreaming about from the very first day he’d entered the prison.

  “Yeah, who’s driving?” Peter asked.

  “I will. You tell your mate to get in the back with the others.” Bradley flashed another grin. “You can sit up front with me and direct us.”

  “Sound.”

  Without wasting any more time, Bradley turned and barked a command at his little gang of wannabe gangsters. They eagerly leapt to obey, climbing into the back of the van while Peter walked across to where his cellmate sat.

  “Trevor, mate?” he said, crouching down beside the sick man. “You good?”

  “M’good.”

  His voice was weak, but clear and Peter nodded as he grabbed the other man’s arm.

  “Here, mate. Let’s get up. We’re gonna go, yeah?”

  “Yeah, man, yeah.”

  Stumbling as though he were drunk, the wiry prisoner allowed Peter to pull him to his feet and guide him to the van. His skin was hot to the touch and sweat beaded it. Peter could only shake his head as he made a mental note to make sure his route would take them past a hospital or pharmacy.

  He settled Trevor on the bench inside the van and closed the door. It shut with a finality that sent a shiver down his spine as he turned to watch Bradley pull open the gate. Nothing leapt out at the gang leader and Peter turned his face up to squint at the sky.

  It would be dark in just a few hours. Plenty of time to get through the city and hopefully to somewhere safe. If not, it would be an unpleasant drive with the infected coming for them.

  Peter climbed into the passenger seat of the van and made sure to lock the door. He glanced at Bradley nervously as the other man started the engine, and then they were off. Driving slowly through the gates, the van rising and falling as the wheels went over the bodies of the dead.

  They left the prison behind as they turned onto the road where the infected had first attacked them. Once again, Bradley kept the van moving slowly over the bodies. Once past them, he continued to the end of the street before glancing at Peter.

  “Turn right, then left over the train tracks.”

  “You better know where you’re going.”

  “I do.”

  Bradley nodded and started the van moving. They drove in silence for several minutes, both sitting with bodies tense as they waited for the attack that never came.

  It soon became clear that others had had the same idea as the roads were full of cars and vans. With a fair amount of swearing, Bradley drove onto the pavement, scraping past the empty cars loaded with belongings.

  “Where do you think they all went?” Peter asked, a little nervously, as he nodded at those cars.

  “Nowhere good,” Bradley grunted in reply.

  They drove slowly, watching the road and the abandoned buildings alongside it. Shops were shut up, many of them with windows and doors shuttered, while bodies lay everywhere. Old, young, male and female, they lay where they had fallen.

  It soon became clear to the two men that something immense had happened. Despite what he’d seen on the internet, Peter hadn’t truly believed how bad it had been. The evidence as they drove further into the city was undeniable.

  Abandoned cars, bodies on the ground and empty shops. If that wasn’t bad enough, the houses they found sent a chill down the spine. Windows shattered, doors hanging open as the wind blew the rain inside.

  The infected, in their rage and hunger, had smashed through wood and glass alike to get to the people inside. Most had died, but many more had become infected and joined the growing ranks of those crazed people as they rampaged through the city.

  They turned off of the main road and onto the less crowded side streets. There were fewer bodies on the pavement and road as most of those who were killed were left inside the houses or if caught outside, dragged away to provide food for the infected as they hid away from the light of day.

  “I didn’t believe it, man, but…”

  “Yeah,” Peter said, voice low as he stared out through the window in horror. “Yeah.”

  Peter couldn’t find the energy to make small talk with the other man. Everything seemed almost surreal as though he were travelling through some huge and elaborate joke that was being played on him.

  He watched house after house as they passed, hoping to see some sign of life but finding nothing. They were all quiet and empty, devoid of anything resembling memories he had of the city. Where the streets should have been full of children at play, people going about their business, there was nothing.

  “The fuck is that…” Bradley said, slowing the van.

  Peter turned to follow the other man’s gaze and let out a gasp. A naked man and woman were chasing a kid, barely out of his teens, along a side street. The boy was fast but the infected were tireless.

  They hooted and yelled at the boy, faces twisted with hatred and rage as they ran. The boy leapt a low fence into a garden, rushing for the door. The two infected followed, the female leaping the fence and landing on all fours as the heavier male, clambered over.

  “Oh fuck!” Peter said, eyes wide as he watched the boy struggle to open the door but knowing there was no way to get to him in time. “What are…”

  He cut off as the boy, unable to open the door, was grabbed from behind by the infected woman. She hooked one arm around his neck, dragging him to the ground before she was on top of him. He struggled and fought, arms swinging at her, but she ignored
the blows from his fists.

  “What the hell!” Bradley said, his own eyes widening in horror as the woman tore at the boy’s clothing. “Is she…”

  Peter could only shake his head numbly as the infected man reached the struggling pair. He grabbed at the boy’s ankles, pulling at his jeans.

  “Drive!” Peter snapped, turning his head, unwilling to watch what was about to happen. “Just fucking get us out of here!”

  Even the hardened criminal and gang leader looked shaken as he set the van in motion once more, turning away from the screams of the teenager that mixed with the demented howls of the infected.

  They both sat in silence, unable to put into words how they felt about what they had just witnessed. It was only to give directions that Peter spoke as they drove slowly along the abandoned streets as the rain began to fall in earnest.

  “Turn left,” Peter said after a short while.

  “Shit, I know this area,” Bradley said, forcing a lightness to his tone that he didn’t feel. “I brought a girl here one time for a concert.”

  “Anyone good?”

  “Can’t remember.” He shook his head, a grin forming. “Man, I do remember I had some fucking great weed and the girl, Lisa was her name. She gave me a blowjob before we went in.”

  The gang leader let out a bark of laughter as he shook his head again, smile becoming genuine as he remembered the night.

  “Hey, hold up,” Peter said, breaking into the other man’s thoughts. “Look at that.”

  There, on the top of a parking garage, were three people, all waving their arms and jumping up and down as they tried to get the attention of the people in the van. Bradley and Peter shared a quick look, a silent question passing between them.

  “Might be able to tell us more about what’s happening,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, but could be fucking trouble too.”

  “They look like women.”

  “Well, shit. That’s all you had to say,” Bradley laughed, leering at the other man. “Let’s go rescue them ladies and see what reward they’re willing to give us.”

  Peter just shook his head as the gang leader laughed.

  ****

  Standing on the open concrete, Sarah shivered as she wiped the rain from her face. Anna beside her glanced at her with a wide smile forming on hers.

  “See! I told you we’d find a way out of this.”

  “Yeah,” Kyra said from the other side of her smaller woman. “I’ll believe that when we’re off this bloody carpark.”

  The three women all turned to look back the way they had come. The rats had scared them, badly and with the alarm filling their ears and the way ahead blocked by a metal cage that had been padlocked shut, the only way for them to go had been into the parking structure.

  Sarah couldn’t shake that feeling of terror as she had followed the others into the darkness, hoping that there wouldn’t be death waiting for them. It had been all she could manage to hold onto Jason as he struggled to keep up with the others, the sound of Dec’s screams ringing in her ears.

  “You think they’ll be able to help us?” she asked softly, before looking back at the ramp they had run up to reach the roof.

  The infected were down there, she knew. Whether it was the rain of the last of the daylight; or even just some old memory that told them the women would have nowhere to go. The infected hadn’t followed them onto the top floor and she knew, that in only a short time it would start to get dark and then they would come for them.

  She looked down over the side of the parking structure. Six floors up. High enough for her to die or at least shatter her skull enough she wouldn’t know what happened to her body when the infected found it.

  Another shiver ran through her and she touched the knife in her pocket. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t become one of the infected.

  Chapter 15

  A crack of thunder overhead had both Jack and Dobbs looking up at the windows set high into the garage wall. The water ran down the glass, a thick stream of water that was evidence of the heavy rain outside.

  “Getting late,” Dobbs muttered, hefting the crowbar.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  There was little more for Jack to say and the only reason he answered was to try to drown out the howling of the wind. In truth, he wanted nothing more than to sit and dwell on how badly he had screwed up.

  Sure, they needed the food, but he couldn’t help wonder if there was something he could have done better. Something that would have kept the other two men alive. Adam and Paul had died, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was his fault.

  He was wallowing a bit, he could admit that, but he couldn’t really see any reason not to. Two men were dead, and the rest of the scavenging group were trapped. To make things worse, it was very rapidly becoming dark and that would increase the danger a hundredfold.

  All those infected that had been hiding inside would be out in force, hunting for fresh prey. Not to mention all the vermin that would come out and, if Jack were right, the rats were infected too, then all of the bodies around the base would be the perfect place for them to feed.

  Jack couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of thousands of rats swarming all around with no way to really fight them off.

  “You think we should head out?”

  “No,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Claire seems to know more about this sort of thing. She said wait, so we wait.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Look, I really don’t want to argue. We can’t see outside so we have no idea what’s out there. She might be able to which means we need to wait.”

  Dobb’s grumbled a little beneath his breath but didn’t argue further. He just leant back against the wall beside where Jack sat and stroked his thick beard.

  “At least you didn’t turn into one of them.”

  “Yeah, I was lucky.”

  He couldn’t stop the shudder that came at that thought. You could catch the infection from blood and bodily fluids, and he’d been thoroughly spattered with blood. It was a minor miracle that he hadn’t been infected.

  “You’d think Deacon, at least, would have thought of that,” Jack said. “I mean, he’s supposed to be this prepper who was ready for anything. I didn’t think of wearing a mask and goggles, but you’d have thought he would, right?”

  “I reckon he’s not as smart as he says he is,” Dobbs agreed. “Summat not right about him.”

  “He’s nuts, that’s for sure.”

  The two men shared a brief smile that soon faltered as they remembered where they were. Even so, it was a brief but much needed moment of camaraderie and Jack was happy that the other man had stuck around.

  It would have been easy for him to have gone off with the others and left Jack in the garage all alone and he couldn’t really imagine what he would have done, if he had been there, all alone.

  “Thanks, mate. For being here and watching my back.”

  “No worries.”

  They sat for a little while longer in companionable silence as they listened to the wind howl and the rain hitting the windows. Both of them were lost in thought of better days and it was with those days in mind that Dobbs spoke again.

  “Do you think we’re gonna get through this?”

  “I don’t know, mate.” Jack shook his head slightly, avoiding looking at the other man. “Truth is, we’ve got a lot stacked against us.”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  “You know, Dec was saying the other day, he was trying to think of all the things we’d need to do just to get through the winter and he gave up halfway through. Truth is, we just don’t know what’s gonna happen and all we can do is take it one day at a time. One crisis at a time.”

  Dobb’s nodded sagely, reaching up to stroke his thick beard once more, something he tended to do when thinking. He found it oddly comforting.

  “You been mates for long?”

  “With Dec? Yeah, a fair few years now. He’s been my best mate for
a bit.” Jack thought for a moment, a smile forming. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s been going round the flats just chatting and keeping everyone's morale up. I don’t know how he does it, but people respond well to him.”

  “It’s good that you have him close then. I don’t know how my mates are doing but I don’t reckon they’re doing good.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry, mate. I forget what it’s like for others sometimes.”

  “No worries.”

  It was true and something that Jack wasn’t proud of. He was so intent on trying to get through each day he tended to forget that all one hundred and odd people in the tower block had family and friends elsewhere in the city.

  That they would be as scared for them as for themselves and in many cases, mourning the loss already. It was something he would need to bring up when back at the tower block. A way for people to let out their grief, to share it with their neighbours so that the burden wasn’t too much to bear.

  Another crash of thunder had the two men looking back up at the windows and then at each other.

  “You think they’d be hiding when it’s raining?”

  “I reckon we need to check. I can’t be staying in here much longer.”

  “Right then.” Jack pushed himself up and lifted the knife he carried. “Let’s go see what’s going on out there.”

  The two of them walked across to the door and Jack grabbed the handle as Dobbs took up position beside it, raising his crowbar high. With a quick motion, Jack pulled the door open and stepped out into the rain.

  ****

  Claire bit down on her lip, hard, to keep from crying out as a shudder ran through her. She did let out a soft moan as Deacon slumped down against her.

  “Damn!” he said, leaning in to kiss her neck.

  She pushed him away, jerking her head to the side before pushing him off of her. She didn’t look at him as she pulled up her pants and buckled her belt. Claire could practically feel the self-satisfied smirk that he was wearing as he watched her stand up.

  “Wipe that fucking smile off your face,” she snapped, reaching for her gun. “It doesn’t mean

  anything. I just needed the release and it was you or the prick with the man-bun.”