Rage (Book 2): The Infected

by Murray, Richard

  For a moment, Jack just lay there sucking in large gulps of air as he waited for the ringing in his ears to stop. Peter reached out a hand and Jack took it gratefully.

  “Big fella,” Peter said, with a nod towards Chester.

  “Yeah, too big,” Jack agreed. “Nearly had me there. Thanks.”

  “No worries. Rest of this floor’s clear.”

  “On to the next then,” Jack said, hoping that they would soon be done.

  Claire and the others were waiting for them at the door to the twelfth floor. As soon as they saw Jack leading the others up the stairs, they went through the door and set to work clearing it.

  They continued on to the thirteenth floor and stopped. There was a banging on wood coming from the hallway beyond. Heavy thuds of something soft, hitting the wood with the occasional burst of mad, high-pitched laughter in between thumps.

  “What the hell?” Kyra said, as she looked at the others.

  “You can go ahead if you want,” Peter said. “We’ll take a turn on guard.”

  “Hell no.” She shook her head, face pale. “Go deal with it.”

  Peter shook his head but stepped up to the doorway. He hefted the knife in his hand and sucked in a breath of the foul air before walking through. Peter followed, glancing to the left to see that the doors were shut and way clear.

  To the right, was a different story.

  “Fuck,” was all Jack could say, so softly that only Peter heard.

  “You know her?” He asked, not looking back.

  “Emmie,” Jack said as he watched the young woman, he had spoken to only a few times.

  She stood with one hand pressed against the door frame, bloody all the way to the elbow. Her clothing was stained almost crimson with the stuff and a lot of it had come from the dead man lying at her feet. His eye sockets were empty and with a shudder, Jack noticed she was chewing.

  Another burst of mad laughter escaped her as she lifted the bloody lump of flesh in her left hand and beat it against the door. Blood and shit were smeared across the door already and every thump sent more of it to splatter the walls and ceiling.

  “What is that?” Jack said before realisation came. His eyes widened and he turned, bending at the waist to throw up.

  “Christ!” Peter said as Emmie finally noticed their presence.

  She raised a howl that set the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end before springing into action. She ran straight at him and he leapt to the side as she almost flew past. She spun on her heel, lashing out with the battered lump of flesh.

  He ducked and felt something foul and wet spatter against his neck as the flesh hit the wall, before he leapt aside, hitting the ground with his shoulder and rolling to his feet a few yards away.

  “Help for fuck's sake!” he snapped as he raised his knife.

  Jack didn’t have the chance to so much as wipe his mouth as Emmie swung the mass of flesh at him. It hit the ground before him as he scrambled back, and he almost lost control of his stomach again as he raised a knife in a hand that trembled.

  Behind her, Sarah and Kyra came into view, both looking as surprised as he was when they caught sight of the young mother and realised what it was that she held.

  Peter rushed in, ducking another swing and lashing out with his knife. Blood flowed but she didn’t even slow as she swung at him again, laughing wildly. Kyra slipped past the backhand Emmie threw her way, striking at the back of the young mother's knee.

  Emmie dropped, her left leg giving way beneath her and Jack took his chance, running in and stabbing his blade deep into her breast. She looked up at him, mad rage in her eyes and hawked, pulling her head back to spit at him.

  Sarah plunged her knife down into the infected woman’s eye with all of her strength and like a puppet with its strings cut, she collapsed to the floor. The four of them shared a look, each silently checking the others for signs they might have been infected.

  “What is that?” Peter asked, nudging the fleshy mass with his foot.

  “Don’t!” Kyra said, reaching out to warn him away, he glanced at her curiously. “It’s her baby.”

  His face went pale and no one commented as he turned away, walking a few steps before bending over to spew his stomach contents against the floor.

  “She was the first,” Jack said, feeling his own stomach churn once again. “Hopefully she was the last too.”

  “Two more floors to go,” Sarah said. She too looked a little green around the gills but managed to hold it together. “You and Peter go check them over and I’ll clean this up before we check on the people in the flats.”

  “Yeah,” Kyra nodded. “Just go. No one else needs to see this. Christ, I wish I hadn’t seen it.”

  Jack gave a sharp nod of gratitude before heading for the door to the stairwell. Behind him, Peter gathered what little dignity he had left and followed. They all seemed to feel that the battle was done but the war to survive was far from over.

  Chapter 23

  The clean-up took the night and a good portion of the next morning, but no one complained for the rumour had spread throughout the tower block about how it must have started. Everyone was too scared to be alone or even in their flats until they were sure there were no rats there.

  Slowly, one by one, the bodies were gathered up and taken to the sixth floor before being lowered down the elevator shaft to the ground floor. They stayed there until the morning when it was light enough to take them outside and pile them up on the open grass between the tower blocks.

  Once all the bodies, including those that had lain bloated and rotting outside the tower block, were gathered together, they were burned. Volunteers went into the empty tower block and gathered as much wood as possible before piling it up around the bodies and dousing it all in fuel.

  The pyre burned for quite some time.

  Those not moving the bodies, scrubbed the hallways and stairs with soap, hot water and disinfectant. Once done, they were cleaned again for no one truly felt comfortable with the infected bodily fluids having been there.

  By noon the next day, Jack sat down on his couch. He had showered and changed his clothing, but sleep eluded him. People wanted answers, they wanted to know what would happen next and how they would be kept safe.

  He had no answers for them. His eyes fell on the door to Dec’s room and a heaviness settled around his shoulders. Weariness and sorrow dragging him down, as he began to weep. He cried for his friend, and for all those who had died.

  For a child screaming in fear and pain in his arms as the infection ran through her body, twisting her mind and her heart as her skin burned from the fury of it. He wept for the silence as he ended her suffering and for a young mother who just wanted to watch her baby grow, but never would.

  Sarah found him there, and without a word, she sat down beside him and put her arms around his shoulders. She held him as he wept and there was no shortage of her own tears.

  Soon, the crying stopped and numb, they sat there together both silent and lost in thought. Kyra entered the flat without bothering to knock, Peter behind her. Neither of them commented on the tear-streaked faces or puffy eyes.

  They just sat and waited in a silence that stretched out until Claire and Deacon joined them. The prepper sneered at the weakness he saw, while the soldier had seen harder men break down after battle and knew the pain they felt.

  Claire leant against the wall, while Deacon placed his back against the door and they waited, joining the silence, neither wanting to be the first to break it.

  Jack, with a small smile of thanks for Sarah, gently pulled himself from her embrace and cleared his throat before looking at each of the people there. He had fought beside them and survived, and he knew that while he wasn’t quite sure he could like some of them, he could trust them to have his back.

  “Sixty-two,” he said, just that. Nothing else for a moment, as the others digested it. “Yesterday was a day of devastating loss. There were so many people out in the halls t
hat we just had no defence.”

  He swallowed past the lump in his throat as his gaze drifted once more to his best friend’s bedroom door. A room filled with reminders of the man he had been.

  “It’s been barely three weeks since things went to hell and we have lost over half the people who lived here. There are rats getting into the flats and we have no way of really blocking them.”

  He looked around at the gathered people once more, seeing the weight of his words settle onto them.

  “The infected are out there and the weather is worsening, while the tower block across from us have already been out to demand a share of our supplies. With yesterday’s loss, I don’t think we could do much to stop them if they tried to take it.”

  “What do you want to do?” Sarah asked, softly.

  “How many thousands died in this city?” he asked in reply. “Tens of thousands easily, hundreds of thousands perhaps. The rats will grow in number until they blanket the city, growing fat on the living and dead alike.”

  Deacon grinned, suspecting what Jack was about to say.

  “We have to leave.” He didn’t look at them, didn’t have a plan of where to go or what to do and he didn’t want them to see that. “I need you to help me convince the survivors here that it’s the best thing to do.”

  “Whatever you need,” Sarah said, her hand resting against his back as she watched him. “We’ll support you.”

  “No,” he said. “Not me. I can’t lead anymore. Yesterday proved that. One bad decision after another and we lost so many people.”

  “That happens,” Claire said, crossing her arms as she watched him. “I’d have made those same decisions. We needed food, we needed time to recover from the infected attack and leaving the bodies out there as a distraction for the rats and any curious infected that might wander past, was the right idea.”

  “I’ll still back you,” Kyra said. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t hear anyone blaming you. Well, apart from Denis.”

  “Then we need a plan,” Jack said, hating the relief he felt at their support. “How do we get sixty or so people out of a city full of infected people and rats, and where the hell do, we go?”

  “We have two trucks and an armoured van,” Peter said, speaking for the first time. “That’s a start.”

  “As for where to go,” Deacon added. “I have a few ideas.”

  Jack looked up at them, feeling a kinship that he’d never really felt before. They had fought together, survived together and, he realised with a flash of hope, they would save the rest of the tower residents together.

  “Right,” he said, not quite ready to manage a smile of relief. “Let’s get to work.”

  Note from the Author.

  Book 2 is done, and I hope you enjoyed it. The city is not a safe place to be when the world is collapsing around you, but where is safe? One way to find out is to read book 3. Keep an eye on www.facebook.com/KillingtheDead for information on when the next book in the series is out and while you’re there, why not try some of the other works.

  Thanks for reading and I hope you continue along on this journey with our group of survivors as they head out into the world in hope of finding a home where they can be safe.