The heavy-rooted feet of the massive creature stumbled around, and its foul, infected face parted like the red sea as a cord of vines danced back and forth. The powerful new sound stole Hunter’s breath. He was sure the monster could smell him. I’m fucked.
Trapped between the hay and an infected freak towering over twelve feet, Hunter had no hope. He wedged his frame between rolls of hay and the back wall, hoping to remain undiscovered. Hunter imagined the monster’s hot breath as its slow, approaching steps shook the ground. The thing reeked of decomposing excrement. Hunter squeezed his rifle and prayed. It was all he could do.
***
The abysmal creature’s feeler arms stretched against the front of the pyramid of hay, searching for the boy. The terrible odor resonating from the foul thing worked to disorient the boy.
Eyes fixed in horror, Abraham had the fright of a father watching his child get run over in the street. As he sucked in a quick breath, ready to burst, he touched Sam’s shoulder and covered her mouth. He didn’t want her to scream. He knew she would react poorly, and worked hard to twist her back, so she could see his face.
The fright in her eyes caused his hand to slip off her quivering mouth.
“Get to the third level,” Abraham whispered, his dry lips pulling back from her ear. She squirmed back and darted for the ladder to the third level. A nauseating stab churned his stomach as he was forced to imagine the terrible things Rictor must have done to her. Hunter, he reminded himself turning back toward the broken rail overlooking the first floor.
For Abraham, it was far worse knowing he would have to do something stupid to save his grandson. He could only hope and pray he was faster than the monster and its lesser brethren. At his age, the odds weren’t in his favor. He leveled his pistol at the rotten head of the thing; it was the size of a large truck. It’s not enough, he thought, spotting a half empty whiskey bottle near the second-level ledge. He crossed the grate, and suppressed his fears. His hand turned counterclockwise and the liquor splashed down upon the head of the anomaly. He longed for the harsh drink to be pouring down his throat.
The giant freak screamed, causing a momentary brain mismatch: anger, terror, and everything in an eternal nightmare too loud, too piercing. Abraham jolted back like a frightened child, dropping the bottle. Yet, he wasn’t a child; he was an old man. The buzzing continued it was the sound of demonic steel knifing into every frequency ever known. He reached into his survival pack and produced a homemade Molotov cocktail. He readied the weapon quick as he could. The flint of his lighter exploded in color, giving away his position. The rag lit and the glass left his hand in the blink of an eye. It exploded when it shattered upon the bloated frame of the immense infected freak. The flames spread out, shocking the rest of the infected scurrying about in a dark rage.
Fighting the sudden light, Abraham hurried toward an old pulley tangled with a hook. He twisted its crane-like frame, and prayed the twine wasn’t frayed. The hook swung down low, smashing the infected giant across its boiled face, and continued toward the stack of hay.
“Hunter, get your ass up here,” he snapped. The blister of flames devouring the lower levels spread about quick and wild. The thick smoke made it hard to breathe. “Hunter, move! Now!”
A second later, the teenage boy climbed to the top of the pyramid of hay and jumped into the hook. Abraham heaved with all his might, and thanks to the boy running up the backside of the wall, he managed to heave him over the balcony rail.
Below, the flames stunned the infected. Abraham yanked Hunter to his feet and moved through the darkness. The boy was dumbfounded. Abraham found himself dragging Hunter back to the ladder leading up to the third level. Hunter stared at him as if he could not comprehend what had happened. Abraham reached out and slapped his grandson. He was out of options. It worked as Hunter erupted in a rapid cough caused by the building smoke. Abraham knew it was the boy’s asthma.
“Only a little farther,” Abraham grunted, trying to settle down.
A band of sweltering infected scrambled up to the second floor, zoning in on the boy’s uncontrollable cough. Some of them were human torches. In a matter of seconds, they were nearly on him. Hunter tried to level his rifle, but the monsters came too fast.
Abraham drew his pistol and fired, recounting the people he had killed over his lifetime. “Climb, you stupid boy!” he shouted as he emptied the magazine. The first wave was dead. However, the burning bodies ignited part of the second floor.
Hunter gripped the ladder and scaled it though the harsh coughing continued. Abraham emptied a second magazine, then pushed the boy the rest of the way up using the side of his sweat-filled, flush face. Below, he heard the infected scratching, howling, and struggling to climb at the base of the ladder. The flames were trapping them in the mill.
“At least they can’t climb,” he breathed out.
Sam had already opened the window and slipped out onto the water wheel. The wood was warped, the beams fractured, and when Abraham and Hunter joined her, the weight drove them down in a hurry. Plywood ripped from parts of the great wheel as the frame crumbled. Yet, the soft dirt of the dry riverbed insulated their hard fall. The metal base of the wheel whined as they scrambled forward, the snapping sound of metal echoing in the crimson night.
Abraham ran, afraid to look back. He envisioned one of the infected dragging him into the hard soil to feast upon his flesh. The two teenagers were a good twenty yards ahead of him, sprinting into the void. Terrified beyond belief, he ran, screaming prayers in his dark mind that his heart would not give out. The blistering sound of the fire was nothing compared to the final screech of the giant creature. Was it dead? Could such a thing die? All he knew was a bunch of the creatures were trapped in the flames. He jolted forward past every tangle of shrubbery and every shadowy tree, trying to convince his own running mind that living was worth the challenge of survival.
IV
A few hours’ journey would bring them to the last remaining safe spot on the planet, at least that’s how Abraham felt after everything he experienced. It took a lot of running, but together Abraham, Hunter, and Sam outran the horrors of the mill. His bruised heels begged for rest. The desire of his heart was to see his family with his own eyes. His blue flannel shirt had rubbed him raw under his armpits, and his boots were a filthy muddle from small pools of water that dotted the riverbed. For one length of the run, they were forced to climb out and travel amongst the sharp rocks. Abraham didn’t want to risk losing time stuck in the muddy sand.
The riverbed gave way to a thicket of trees that spotted the final mountain peak. Over the final peak rested Abraham’s humble little farm. The copse of trees on the mountainside was broken into a variety of sections and species. He loved the aspens and the smell of the bristlecone pines, yet it was the implanted cottonwood in the summer he favored the most.
He led them, his pistol never leaving his hand, praying his family at the farm was alive and untouched. It was sad that the dread was normal for him, changing only in degree and circumstance. Part of him, like a frightened child, wondered if it might have been better to have died back at the mill. Stop that weak thinking. As long as his family was alive, death wasn’t an option. He stomped and trampled on fevered memories of agony. Hundreds of infected swarmed the old factory, and the big guy almost devoured his grandson. Was it foolish to set out to the gas station? Did he believe his two missing children were still alive after two years? As a father, he had no choice. It was part of what kept him going. But he had put the rest of his family in danger.
“Can we stop already? I have to use the bathroom,” Sam said. It was the second time she had asked.
Abraham could tell the girl was tough, but then again, he didn’t fully trust her. “Alright, make it quick.” Abraham stopped and scanned the stunted firs and assortment of pines for any sign of danger. Once he was satisfied, he took a seat on a log covered in green lichen and exhaled. Everything happens for a reason, he heard his wife saying in his mind
. Was the girl a reason worth risking his life and the life of his grandson? Each person you meet is a string connecting you to your destiny, his wife again whispered in his stubborn mind.
He watched both Hunter and Sam scurry in opposite directions. It dawned on him that they were still mischievous teenagers. Nonetheless, the fear of survival kept both looking over their shoulders, almost expecting danger. What has this world become?
Abraham held the thought, fingering the white stubble on his weathered face. Falling farther back on the log, he felt the throbbing pain in his ankle for the first time. There were too many sharp spaces and unsettled rocks in the riverbed to escape unscathed. Nevertheless, his grit kept him stumbling forward away from the god-awful sounds of the infected. He told himself it was only a mild sprain.
In the darkness he heard Samantha call out. “I’ve never seen a big guy like that.”
“Hope we never see one like that again,” Abraham answered.
“It looked like its moldy insides were on its outside,” said Hunter, somewhere in the red night. “Does that make sense?”
Abraham didn’t know how to explain the abomination. “It reeked worse than a highland skunk.”
“Funny, I almost shit my pants,” said Hunter. Then, he must have remembered he was with an attractive female. “I mean, not literally.” He laughed, lowering his eyes.
“Let’s call it a septic,” Sam said, emerging from the dense tree line. “It smelled like an old septic tank back in a trailer park I used to live in.”
“A septic—I like it,” grunted Abraham. He remembered the swollen frame of the septic blistering when the fire swam across its dead flesh. “I wonder if the fire was enough to kill the foul thing.”
“It’s dead,” said Hunter. “Do you think it’s a hiccup or are their more weird hybrids out there?” Hunter stopped in front of Abraham and saw his grandfather pointing to his fly. “Oh snap,” the boy slurred, making uneasy eye contact with Sam.
She laughed and lowered her tense shoulders. She appeared somewhat comfortable for the first time.
“I don’t know.” Abraham was finding it hard to imagine, at least on the surface.
“It’s not an anomaly,” Sam blurted. “The man I was traveling with, Rictor, he had heard of some different versions of the cordyceps fungus infection. I never saw any of them. But Rictor always talked about them when we were walking. I overheard about the zombie infection from hundreds of different sources, but I didn’t understand it, at least not at that point in my life. To tell you the truth, I still don’t understand. But I think it started overseas.” Sam pulled at her pig tails.
“What the hell is a cordyceps fungus?” Abraham hated fancy words.
“Rictor told me it was some sort of parasitic fungus that transformed insects into puppets. It attacks its host and takes total control. I don’t know really.”
“I heard of that on one of the nature shows. I remember them talking about how the fungus was able to take over the insects mind. But they said it would never work on a human.”
“That’s what Rictor told me, sugar,” she replied. “I don’t know if it’s real. But I must admit it makes sense.”
Abraham saw the devil in her eyes. As if she was daring him to call her a liar. “How did you and Rictor meet?” Abraham couldn’t deny the girl had a certain allure for trouble. Was it the tiny shorts, the southern tongue, or sassy attitude? Probably a little of everything, he considered.
“He wasn’t always a bad man. I mean, when I met him, he talked a good game. He gave me protection, food, shelter, and saved my brother more than a few times. We met when I was still wandering the south with my brother.”
“What was your brother’s name?” Hunter asked.
“Hunter,” she answered, blinking her eyes. “Kidding, it was Tyrell. It was me and him for the longest time. We were trying to escape the super famine in Texas. Denver was the city of dreams, or so we heard from others heading north. Making a new life there was all my brother would talk about—clean air, plenty of food, and no bullets flying through the thin walls.”
“Why don’t we walk and talk?” Abraham suggested. He averted his strong gaze from the girl and stared up at the stars. He would listen to her story and decide if she was worthy to stay at the farm. Sam and Hunter led the way as he struggled to walk on his swollen ankle.
Sam swatted a bug threatening her neck and then continued her story. “We hitched a ride with a nice couple to a town called Durango. At least that’s what the locals called it. The strip town was crammed with refugees talking about the super infection killing everything overseas. Rumors suggested that the infection had reached America. Tyrell told me it wasn’t true. Now I know he lied to keep me from being scared.”
Abraham noticed how tight his shoulders had become and rolled them back to ease the tension. He couldn’t stop looking back. His mind kept replaying imagines of the infected.
“We met Rictor in Durango early on. He was the only other black man in the city. He told Tyrell that brothers needed to stick together. I thought it sounded stupid.”
“Durango, is it still a gambling town?” Abraham looked at her scowling back at him, the moment taking on overtones of familiarity and fear. Abraham heard tales about the casinos early on when people were still heading toward Denver, before the terrible silence. Durango was close enough to the southern border that it attracted a lot of soldiers looking for a good time in a safe environment.
“You better believe it,” she replied. “That’s where all of the riffraff came to play and prey upon the poor and the weak.”
“So you didn’t like the town?” Hunter questioned, ducking down to examine a broken twig.
“I didn’t say that. A town like that has many uses. Tyrell made us a fine living playing cards and tossing dice. We had a small chalet, nothing to brag about, but it was home.”
Here it comes, Abraham told himself, reading the girl’s curious face. She is going to finally give me some answers.
“Unfortunately, many people came through the town. I heard the Northern Republic scum dropped the first nuclear bomb on Jackson, Mississippi. After that, both sides traded everything they had, and the world followed the America way, killing everything. Rictor was the one who told us about the cordyceps fungus infection.”
Abraham took his hand off the grip of his holstered pistol. “I reckon that sounds about right.” He didn’t understand much about the fungal infection. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding a safe place for his family until some scientist put a stop to the monsters.
Abraham moved between the branches, feeling the softness of the aspen’s bark. All around the wind was playing a sad tune of misery. Abraham found himself thinking of the infected freaks again. He didn’t miss the crooked smiles or the troubled sounds.
“A lot of the stuff you said on that radio broadcast, it is true, and it is truer than you know, sugar. Rictor and Tyrell ended up taking their gambling winnings and going into the devils water business, brewing it in an old mine they purchased after riding a three-day win streak. It was a huge success. We moved up into a fancy house with working water and solar power. It was the best living since Red Dead first appeared.”
The breeze brushed against his cheeks bringing a sense of insecurity. Abraham smiled as if the girl had taken the words right out of his mouth. Everything went to hell after Red Dead. He offered her a strip of jerky and the ebony-skinned girl accepted with a half-smile.
The whispering wind had carried its first burning cinders to their location. It reminded Abraham of their daring escape, but only for a moment. He was more interested in hearing the girl’s tale. Abraham’s dad had told him a man could learn a lot more about a person or situation by listening. This was something he had tried to teach Hunter and failed. “Do you know a man named Robb? He was my son and he might have headed that direction right before the first bomb fell.”
Sam nodded. “I remember you saying that on the radio, and sorry, too many fac
es to remember during our stay in Durango. Thinking back on it, I wish we had only traveled through Durango and continued to Denver.” She paused. “I don’t know anything real about Denver. I heard a lot of tales and some of them are bunk, and still others might be true. I know you want answers about the Mile High City, but I don’t know up from down. But I believe my brother is alive, and that means I need to find him.”
Abraham closed his eyes. His brain whirled in mysterious thoughts. “So Rictor told you about other infected breeds—or should we call them types? We have only seen the normal infected corpses in the mountains until to mill.”
Sam whirled. “Yes, he told me about monsters. I always thought he was lying, but after seeing the septic, he had to be telling the truth. Toward the end of our stay in Durango, a group of men dressed in expensive suits came to talk to Tyrell. They gabbed loudly when they chugged whiskey. They told many stories amongst themselves about the different infected species. They told my brother that the longer the fungus thrived, the more severe the effects of the infection grew. Maybe that big guy at the mill had been carrying the infection a little longer than the rest.”
Abraham heard something shuffle in the distance. It sounded like small game, but he wasn’t going to play around. “Stay alert,” he whispered, drawing his gun.
“Should I stop talking?”
“No keep talking and walking.”
Sam nodded. “So, my stupid brother left for Denver without telling me much. I think it must have been a month back. He told me he would be back in a few days. That was bullshit.”
And what did Rictor do to you? Abraham could smell out the plot, but he wasn’t sure how it went down. He saw Hunter creep down and examine a trail of deer scat.
“Weeks ran by, and his mood grew fouler.”
Infected Freaks (Book 1): Family First Page 4
