The Infected, a PODs Novel

by Michelle K. Pickett

  David helped me up. I leaned on him, soaking up the comfort he offered. We circled around the hole in the ice, and came ashore a few yards from the rest of the group. Judy and Rebecca were silently wiping tears from their eyes. Roy and Juan both looked at the ground, while Devlin gazed over the frozen lake, a frown pulling at his lips.

  “There’s a town just up the road. Why don’t we find a house and stop for the day?” Devlin suggested.

  “It’s only two o’clock,” I said.

  “I thought you might like to—”

  “If it’s all the same to everyone else, I’d rather keep going.” I walked by the group. I needed to do something. Stopping for the night would only give me time to think. I didn’t want to think.

  I wanted to forget. I wanted to go home and forget.

  We made it to the highway by late evening. We were all tired and sore from walking through the dense trees and brush and mentally exhausted from losing Seth.

  Juan looked around and cursed, throwing his pack on the ground. He was normally a quiet, easy-going guy. Not much flustered or irritated him. So when I saw his reaction, my heart rate kicked up a notch.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered to Devlin.

  Devlin pushed off his hood. “The subdivision is damaged.”

  “Oh.” I dropped my pack and stepped around David and Devlin so I could see the neighborhood. “Welcome to Hell,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, the highway must’ve been enough of a barrier to keep the fire from this side. But it destroyed everything in that town.” David blew out a breath and shook his head.

  “Guess it’s another night of tents.” Devlin dropped his pack and started looking for a place to set-up camp.

  I followed him. “What do you think caused the fire?”

  “Lightning storm. Probably struck a tree or something, who knows.”

  We pitched our tents in the middle of a small clearing next to the highway. We wanted to get as far away from the trees lining the highway as possible. If anyone, or anything, tried to approach our camp, we’d see them.

  We arranged our tents in a circle, the fire pit in the middle. I crawled in my tent and spread out my bedding, throwing my pack in the corner. That’s when I saw it and tears filled my eyes. The pillow Seth gave me. I grabbed it and held it close to my heart.

  Oh, Seth. I’m so, so sorry. I’m gonna miss you.

  I shimmied into my sleeping bag, curled around the pillow, and cried for the friend I lost, tears soaking the soft fabric of the pillow. I don’t remember drifting to sleep, but I woke to the low timbre of David’s voice.

  “I’ll go get Eva,” he said.

  “Nah, you let her alone. We’re just having canned stew for dinner. I think Rebecca and I can handle that ourselves,” Judy said.

  I pulled myself up and blew a lock of hair out of my face. Plastering on a smile I didn’t feel, I crawled out of the tent. “What can I do to help?” I asked Judy.

  “Go lay down like you were.” She threw a log on the fire, and sparks danced in the air.

  “I need to help.”

  “Nah, we got it. Go back to bed and I’ll call ya when dinner is ready,” Judy said.

  “You’re sure?”

  Judy looked at me, a rare smile touched her lips. “Yup. You need yer rest. I don’t wantcha gettin’ sick again. Now get.”

  “Okay,” I said, slowly turning back to my tent. I crawled under the sleeping bag, pulling it up to my nose to keep warm. My eyes grew heavy and I drifted off to sleep.

  The gunshot woke me.

  “Eva, move!” David shouted.

  I tried to scramble out of the sleeping bag. It twisted around my feet, and I kicked to free them. My breath came in loud gasps.

  More gunshots.

  My stomach twisted and I could feel the adrenaline filling my blood with each heartbeat. I flipped to my hands and knees and started crawling out of the tent, the sleeping bag wrapped around my legs holding me in place. I clawed at the nylon, the slippery surface not giving me anything to hold on to.

  Something hard and heavy fell across my back, pinning me to the ground with a grunt. I hit my chin, my teeth clamping down on my lip. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

  At first, I didn’t process what was happening. Then I heard the grunting and felt the thing on top of me move.

  I struggled against the weight of the infected person. I bent my arms and tried to push up on my forearms, but the weight was too much, and I started to panic.

  The infected person squirmed against me, grinding me painfully against the hard, frozen ground. Its weight made it hard to take a breath, and my lungs burned. Grunting and groaning it scratched and pulled against the nylon of the tent trying to reach me.

  Think… think dammit!

  I wiggled my arm down beside me, trying to reach my pack and get my gun. I couldn’t reach it. All I could hear was the blood rushing behind my ears, and the horrible grunting above me.

  There was a small opening in the tent’s door that gave me a glimpse outside. The Infected swarmed the camp. Everyone was trying to fight them off. David was aiming at a man running toward him. Another was behind David, its club aimed at his head.

  “David!” I screamed, but he was too far away, and there was too much noise for him to hear me. I watched helplessly as the club descended… and the infected man’s head exploded. Chunks of brain and blood flew out the right side of its head, thanks to Juan’s perfect aim. For a second, it teetered, then fell in a crumpled heap.

  I squirmed under the weight of the Infected still on top of me. Inching my fingers into the pocked of my jeans, I grabbed my knife. I pushed myself up enough to get my arm out from under me. Flipping the knife open, I jammed it upward. I missed. I jammed it again and again, waving it around looking for a spot I could reach that would come in contact with the person—monster—on top of me.

  Finally, the knife push through its skin with a pop. It shrieked, rolling off me, and I didn't waste time. Flipping over, I pushed off with my heels, scooting backward on my butt away from the infected person, which I could see was a very large man. He held his shoulder, blood seeping through his pale fingers. His face distorted in pain and rage. His blue veins bulged.

  He advanced on me. I scooted backward quickly. When I felt the flames of the fire lick the backs of my arms, I reached behind me and grabbed a log that was half in, half out of the fire, and threw it at the man. His clothes ignited. He stumbled, and screamed in pain, falling to the ground a few feet from me, his skin turning red and bubbling.

  A woman’s scream drew my attention. She ran toward me. I hurled my knife at her. It lodged in her throat, blood pouring out the wound. She fell at my feet, gurgling. Frothy blood bubbled from her mouth.

  I jumped to my feet, ran around the woman and dove for my tent, scrambling around inside until I found my pack. I unzipped the side pocket with shaking fingers and withdrew my gun. Flicking the safety off, I rolled and aimed at the first thing I saw.

  “Whoa! Eva, it’s me!” Devlin yelled.

  I launched myself into his arms.

  Devlin held me against him, murmuring, “It’s okay. It’s over.”

  I surveyed our campsite. The snow had been stained red from blood. Dead lay around the camp, arms and legs bent in awkward, unnatural angles. Supplies were strewn across the ground, tents leaned to the side where their support poles were bent and broken, blood dripped from the vinyl, the cold temperature already causing it to freeze and create a slick surface on which to walk.

  “Are you okay?” Devlin looked over me, his hands running up and down my back.

  “Yes. You?”

  “Okay. Everything’s okay.”

  “Do. Not. Say. It’s. Okay. There’s nothing okay about this, Devlin. Nothing.”

  I walked to my tent and kicked it open and out of the way so I could grab my pack without touching the pool of blood on it. I hefted it out of the tent and swirled around to look at Devlin.

  “And now
I need a new flippin’ knife because mine is sticking out of her throat!” I gestured to the woman lying on the ground.

  Juan walked by and chuckled.

  “I can get your—”

  “I don’t want it. I’ll just get another at the next town.”

  “We need to get out of here,” David said, walking by. “Don’t leave your knife. We don’t know when we’ll find another.”

  “What? Wait, it’s dark and…”

  David stopped and turned around. “And what?”

  “We haven’t had dinner yet!”

  He stared at me a beat, then starting laughing. “I think you’re crazy, Eva.”

  “Who said I wasn’t?” I muttered, reaching down and yanking my knife from the dead woman’s throat.

  We walked down the center of the highway. The full moon hanging high in the sky, glinting off the snow, our only light.

  Traveling at night wasn’t ideal. Any number of things could go wrong. We couldn’t see where pitfalls were located. Fallen logs, pot holes that could wrench an ankle, black ice that someone could slip on and break a bone. There were a million things that could go wrong in the dark.

  The Infected were, by far, the worst danger we faced. No one knew for sure, but it was assumed that they had superior night vision. They almost always attacked at night. They didn’t seem to have a problem maneuvering through the dark. And that posed a problem for us. But, while we didn’t know if human infected could see better than uninfected humans at night, we did know that infected animals could.

  “David, get your flashlight.” I touched his arm. “Please.”

  “We need to save the batteries. We don’t know when we’ll get to a town to get more.”

  I rolled my eyes. Like I’m dense. “I know that. But I think I see something over there.”

  “Where?” He tensed next to me.

  “There.” I pointed. “Is that a house?”

  Roy let out a whoop. “That’s a whole butt load of houses. Let’s go get us one. I could use a nice soft bed.”

  The first few houses we came to were two-stories.

  “I don’t want to get stuck upstairs if we need to get out of there in a hurry,” David said.

  We stopped at the first one-story we came to. Roy held out his gun to shoot the door.

  “Roy!” I shouted. “Geez. You like to shoot everything, don’t you?”

  “Well… yeah.”

  Laughing, I ran my hand along the top of the door frame. When I didn’t find a key, I flipped the door mat over—still nothing.

  “Just lemme shoot it, Eva.”

  “No, we’ll break a window,” Devlin said.

  “No, genius, that’ll let cold air in. And since you’ll be the one on the couch in the living room, I’d figure you’d want to keep the windows shut. Just give me a second. People usually leave one around.” I kicked over a few flower pots, beaming when I found it. “See?”

  I handed the key to David. He slid it into the slot, turning it. He jiggled it around a little until we heard the tumblers fall into place, and the door click open.

  “After you, ladies,” David said with a sweep of his hand.

  “It’s beautiful.” Rebecca looked around the foyer. It opened into a living room with soaring ceilings.

  “Yeah. Ain’t nothin’ like my house back home,” Judy said.

  “Mine either.”

  “Oh, thank God. A wood burning fireplace.” I stood by a glorious stone fireplace in the middle of the room, wood stacked neatly in the wood bin.

  The house was cold but warmer than the outdoors. It shielded us from the bitter cold wind whipping around us.

  David moved the beam of his flashlight around the room, the bluish light highlighting floral Victorian furniture in the formal living room.

  “That doesn’t look too comfortable to sleep on,” Devlin muttered. “I hope there’s another living room with a better couch.”

  “There’s four bedrooms,” Roy yelled from somewhere down a hallway.

  “Yay!” Devlin broke into a jog down the hall. “A bed. Dear Lord, I think I’m in Heaven,” he sang.

  Day Forty—Three

  The snow stopped sometime during the night. We bundled up the next morning and continued our journey. The markers we’d left were covered with snow. It took us an hour to get our bearings and find the highway.

  It took until lunch but we found a town. We picked up some new tents, a few supplies and found a SUV. There was too much snow. We needed a rig that could get through it without getting stuck. So we found a new model and hoped it got good gas mileage. As it turned out, luck was on our side. We got one hundred eighty miles out of the tank, and a comfortable ride. When the day was done we figured we’d traveled nearly two hundred miles. We were more than half way home.

  We found a subdivision and staked claim to a house. Building a fire, we made dinner, and ate our canned stew in silence. Afterward, we climbed into our beds to get a good night’s sleep before it all started over the next day.

  Day Forty—Four

  Hoping to make up time with an early start, it was still dark when we woke and got dressed.

  We were already well on our way when the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon. We came to a town by midmorning and our good luck continued. We found another vehicle with gas in its tank, and we drove a little more than two hundred miles before we had to ditch the SUV.

  That night, we found a little house to sleep in. “How far is the next town?” I asked Devlin. We’d gone to gather firewood.

  “About thirty miles.”

  “Hmm. Another long day of walking then if we can’t find a car the military hasn’t already drained dry.”

  “Looks like. But if I’m right, we’re only about one hundred to one hundred-twenty miles from Rosewood. If we can pick up a car at the next town, we’ll get home tomorrow.”

  “Home,” I said quietly, “sounds like Heaven.”

  Devlin chuckled. “Doesn’t it though?”

  He turned to me and framed my face with his hands. His green eyes darkened and my stomach dropped to my toes waiting for what was coming.

  He grazed his lips over mine. I placed my hand on the side of his face. Realizing I still had my glove on, I ripped it off and let it fall to the ground. I wrapped my hand around his neck, caressing his cheek with my thumb.

  He took the kiss deeper, his tongue dipping between my lips, dancing with mine. I fisted my hand in his hair and moaned from the taste of him.

  Whoever taught you to kiss deserves a medal.

  Devlin wrapped a finger around the belt loop on my jeans and pulled me closer to him, taking the kiss deeper still. Fisting his hand in my hair, he gently tugged my head back, exposing my throat. He planted kisses up and down my neck, his warm tongue making little circles on my chilled skin. Everywhere he touched burned. Adrenaline soared through my blood stream and something else… lust, want, need? I wasn’t sure, but it felt damn good and I couldn’t get enough. I wanted more… more than I had a right to want.

  “Devlin,” I sighed.

  He pulled back slightly and looked at me. “Eva, what happens when we get home?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to hide in the bushes when I kiss you.”

  “Oh.” I reached behind him and pulled his head to me and kissed him gently. “Neither do I, but I need time to figure things out. I’m sorry, Devlin. I know this isn’t fair to you and the last thing I want to do is hurt you… or him.”

  Please don’t bring that up now. I don’t know what to do. I hate this, too, but I’m so confused. I love David… I love you… wait, what? Yeah. I love you. But who am I in love with?

  He nodded, kissed me one last time, and stepped back. The cold air replaced the heat from his body. “We need to get back.” He turned and started to walk away.

  “Wait…”

  “What?” Devlin asked over his shoulder.

  I looked and him and shrugged a shoulder. “I�
�� well, I—”

  “They’re waiting for us.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded and picked up my glove, following him.

  Day Forty—Five

  We didn’t find a car. The town had already been cleaned out. No supplies and no vehicles. So we hoofed it all day. We walked approximately fifty miles according to David’s calculations. He joked we were like horses. The closer we got to home, the faster we went. I wasn’t sure I liked being compared to a horse, but we did seem to be moving faster, it helped that the closer we got, the less we had to fight the snow and bitter cold, east winds.

  Day Forty—Six

  We made it.

  It was around midnight when we arrived at Rosewood. We watched the fence for an opportunity to slip in, but it was well guarded. So we set-up camp inside the tree line.

  David and Devlin made their way through the trees to the medical district and waited until they saw George arrive for work the next morning. Devlin wanted to know what had been said about his absence, if there was any way he could talk his way out of it. He also wanted to know if there was a way George could somehow give the rest of us medical excuses for missing work for the last forty—seven days. It was a longshot, but we had to try.

  I paced the camp waiting for them to return. My breakfast felt like a ball in my stomach; it rolled around, bouncing off the sides like a pinball machine. My head pounded, and I held it in my hands, my fingers squeezing around my hair.

  George must still be working twelve hour shifts. Or maybe today is his day off. Or he can’t get to the fence because of the guards. Or David and Devlin were caught by the police.

  Just when I’d decided I was going to look for them, they walked through the trees and into camp. I tucked my hair behind my ear and let out a breath. “Thank goodness. I was starting to worry.”

  “You? Worry? Nah,” David said, walking by me.

  “We have a slight problem.” Devlin frowned.

  “What’s that?” Roy asked.