Infected

by Justin Clay

  Our parents died in an onslaught of Infected some months before that. They died so we could escape. I don’t like thinking about that, either. It sends waves of crippling pain through me where I lose a sense of where I am, who I am and where I am going. I feel too weak to do anything but collapse or throw up. Maybe, even give up.

  But I can’t. I cannot afford to be weak. Not for June’s sake. She needs my strength to survive. I can’t think of any other alternative. There is no other alternative. Not in my book.

  And that book is very short. With mostly pictures. And very few words. Mostly, because I don’t like to talk. I think a lot. That can be good. But maybe it isn’t either.

  So, it’s becoming exhausting keeping up this ruse. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand it, to be honest.

  I like remembering the faces of our parents. Their warm images keeps me going too. I keep the only picture I have left of them in my backpack. June had nabbed it before we ran the hell out of the apartment complex we had been residing within prior, through a hidden underground tunnel with a few other folks, who are all dead now. Dale. Gabby. Jim. Peter. Sarah. Marty.

  All of them gone.

  They had been friends with my parents for quite some time, and so they had been my friends — well, most of them. Didn’t know Peter or Jim that well. Marty was Sarah’s son and my friend. I had known him for at least four years.

  I look at the picture of our parents every morning after I wake, with the one thought on my mind: “This is it. This is for you, mom, dad.” This being the new day we are given. One more day to survive. One more day on this forsaken planet. One more day given to us so we can get to where we are going. One more chance at this deadly game.

  And this is it. June and I would keep going for them. There was and still is no turning back. We will find this wonderful place my father had told me about only seconds before our departure, where we will be safe, and well-fed. We have to. Because time is running out. I can just feel it. And our luck, if you can even call it that, won’t be so favorable forever. It will run out at some point or another.

  They say the Carriers’ main base of operations is somewhere in Washington state. Or what’s left of it, I suppose. That’s where our dad…Jim…Gabby…told us to go. We would find friends there. We would find Gabby’s twin sister there, she told me once, believing her to have made it from a letter she received through the Underground Market…or more commonly known as the Black. I thought we would get there under a year, tops. I was wrong.

  I was so wrong. We ran into too much trouble along the way. Enough trouble to delay us two years. But we’re getting closer. I can feel it. We are in Boulder, Colorado now, and a long, equally perilous journey still lies before us.

  “Earth to Rian,” June chides, snapping me back into reality.

  I shake my head, realizing how much I had drifted off into Rianland. Rian is the name my parents unfortunately settled upon; thinking that, for whatever reason unknown to me, it would fit. What were my parents thinking? I’ve yet to figure it out, and I never asked them, so I will most likely never find out. Suits me fine.

  I blink. “Oh, sorry…Was just thinking.”

  June gives me a suspicious look with narrowed eyes. “About mom and dad?” She has an uncanny sense of what is going on in my mind. Don’t know if it is from merely her absurdly accurate intuition or just being around me for so long, but she knows regardless. She always would know. Unfortunately.

  “Something like that,” I mutter, and turn to open the door carefully. “Let’s go.”

  “Lead the way.”

  ...

  Outside the Hotel Boulderado, the late August sky is a bright blue, filled with white fluttering clouds and brilliant sunlight. The air is dry and parches my lips almost immediately. Birds sing to each other in the few living trees planted along the roadway, and for once the air doesn’t smell like rotting flesh. I am willing to take this as a sign that today might actually be a good day.

  I look up to the multi-storied rectangular building made of red-orange sandstone and think about the first time June and I saw it. Nearly a week ago. And in all that time there hadn’t been an Infected incidence, which was in its own right astonishing, considering our tumultuous past. In fact I hadn’t seen any Frothers since we got to this city, which, instead of being a relief, is a bit disconcerting.

  Maybe they’re all hiding.

  Maybe there haven’t been any here to begin with, but we couldn’t be that lucky. No one could be that lucky. It seems like every city, town in this country is afflicted, populated by at least two hundred Infected. There aren’t many unaffected humans left — well, on the surface anyway. Word from battery operated underground radios is a lot of people have taken beneath the ground for safe hiding. Maybe they are the smart ones after all.

  But I still think getting to the West Coast and manning a ship out into open water is our safest bet. So far I have found no Infected can swim; they don’t even have the brain capacity left for such complex movement. If it’s not running, shrieking, or devouring anything in their path, it’s too much for them.

  It’s sad seeing people turn like that — it makes your insides shrivel up like raisins and your blood run cold. Inhibits you from fleeing, because you can’t even get your damn legs to budge. What’s worse is watching the Frothers consume people who you love more than anything…Just tons of them all crowding around, obsessed with their new meal like it’s a some sort of sick, twisted free buffet. I could throw up just thinking about it.

  What surprised me most about the four-cornered towered building with its tall narrow windows and iron railed large porches is the inside stained glass canopy ceiling. It is spectacular to behold, especially when the sunlight shimmers through the dusty glass. Of course the hotel’s interior suffered greatly from its abandonment like everything else man-made here, but a certain rustic charm still persists.

  It must have been quite something back in its heyday, when the windows weren’t shattered, no gory blood splattered its walls, and there were concierges and bellhops all dressed up in formal attire to wait on you hand and foot. My decision to stay up there on the fourth floor had been one of my better ideas, I consider, but now supplies are running dangerously low, and as always food is practically nonexistent. And of course water…We will need to find that soon as well. I’m already getting thirsty, and those bottles we lucked up on a few days prior did not last as long as we hoped.

  We had looted as much as we could find from the hotel’s kitchen and there was barely anything to begin with. A jarring flashback of the couple of bodies we found against a stove rips through me. I try to forget that, too.

  June and I haven’t explored much of the massive city at the foothill of Flagstaff Mountain, where the Rockies meet the Great Plains in a sweeping undulation. But there were leftover city brochures with all sort of touristy things to do and see while in the city — albeit yellowed with time, and crinkled at the edges back in the hotel. But they were still readable all the same, so I had grabbed a few and stuffed them in my backpack. Supposedly, somewhere down 13th Street where the hotel resides, a pedestrian market of sorts exists, called Pearl Street Mall. I’m hoping we’ll find what we need there.

  ...

  “We’re almost there, I think,” I tell June as we’re walking quietly along the sidewalk lined with ransacked, fallen-in buildings both domestic and official.

  The dead litter the streets, some mutilated by Infected and passing wild dogs, others ravaged by time and decay, creating quite an aroma. My stomach churns nauseously as my eyes glaze over them and I tell June not to look, but she does anyway. She is used to not be able to. She would become frigid with fear. She even got sick once — but now, she’s becoming numb to it. Just like crushed leaves on pavement, the deathly sights are becoming too common. And that scares me.

  Some of the bodies — already Infected, torn apart by fellow Infected, assumedly — actually appear freshly fallen, the blood still wet. I don’t
tell June, yet. Instead, I reach for my pistol and pull it out of its holding, warming my forefinger on its trigger. It’s nice, both an elegant silver and possessing a well-crafted wood-embossed handle. Our father, Liam Prime, had been a collector, one could say, of arms. Which we lucked out on, since the world went to shit.

  “Keep your dagger out and ready.”

  “Gotcha,” she responds, revealing the sharp little thing I gave her some months ago. She needed some sort of protection for herself. She is actually getting good at using it, too. Some while back we had got into a bit of trouble with some manic Ravagers — cruel people who kill off the living to hoard their belongings — and pretended to be helpless, which made one of them drop his guard. June had stabbed the guy who aimed to kill me in the neck repeatedly before we had run for it, but not before taking off of him what we could use. Keeping karma in check, I think of it as.

  The tactic was fearless of her, and effective. I told her not to do it again, but I figure she would if the time should come. I swear sometimes she’s just as stubborn as I am.

  Well, hey, at least I own up to it.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” I warn as we enter into the once quaint shopping district. Old-fashioned buildings with wooden facades line the street that we pass cautiously. There are, I’d say, about fifteen or so shops before us, and most of them I can tell have their front windows blasted out. Whether it’s from the raiding bombs to wipe out Infected or from remaining pillaging civilians, I do not know. Whatever the reason, it’s not a good sign.

  June keeps her hand clutched steadily around her sharp weapon, but her eyes travel to me, uncertain. “Rian…I — I don’t have a good feeling about this place.”

  “Me neither,” I whisper dourly, frowning. “But we have little choice…We have to see if there’s anything we can find here to either arm us or feed us. We’re starting to run out.”

  June doesn’t say anything and looks forward again, a bit crestfallen. She understands, I can tell from her body language. Her vigilant, ghost of a gait. She moves so soundlessly sometimes, I barely recognize she’s there with me. She’s quick too. Some days she can outrun even me, and I’m pretty fast. I’m confident for the sole reason that I am. It’s saved my life and my sister’s on numerous occasions. But there’s just something about absolute adrenaline pumping through veins with your life hanging in the balance that kicks every ounce of your survival instincts into gear. That’s when I can really run. Because I have to.

  When I notice a small forest green café with an iron-wrought sign labeled Rocky Road Café, I motion to her with a cock of my head to head toward it. We move as silently as we can across the road beneath flickering traffic lights and approach its front door. The dark green paint has chipped off from the wooden surface in places, and its oval window structure is too mired with dusty grime to see through properly. I take a deep breath in, holding the brass knob, before I turn it.

  I brace myself as the door squeaks and creaks loudly while opening it. The damn thing swings open fully and I release my held breath when the dark, shadowy inside remains free of any erratic movement or strange sounds.

  “I think we’re clear,” I say more loudly. “Let’s check it out…But stay close.”

  “Hey, Rian!” I hear June call to me from a feet away. “Look what I found.”

  Interested, I turn away from the bare cabinet I had been searching behind a wrap-around counter to where June is crouching, handling something. When she stands up, she opens her hand to reveal a shotgun shell. Weird. Prompted by this find, I look past her and take in the sight of the floor where she found it.

  Then I see it. My eyes widen. My heart begins to beat more quickly, and I swallow.

  June immediately senses my alarm. “Rian…What is it?”

  “We need to get out of here as quickly as possible,” I tell her.

  “Why?”

  “There’s blood behind you, and it looks pretty fresh,” I say, and she looks, seeing the dark, damp splotch as if for the first time.

  “Do you think it’s from the Infected…Or…?”

  “I don’t know…I just know we need to move, now.”

  June nods, and I think about the fastest exit out. Just a stretch beyond us is an open window about ten steps away. It’s our safest bet. When I point to it, June understands, and we make our way there, with my sister walking directly behind me.

  We’re nearly there. As I take another step forward, I hear an unexpected crunch of china, and then feel something oddly slick on the flooring. Right before I’m about to tell June to be careful, I hear her gasp and watch her stumble before colliding against a cupboard of stacked white plates like the one I stepped on. My mouth is held open, and I can only watch for a moment, before a few of dishes slip, rattling as they fall.

  Reacting as swiftly as I can, I hurl myself over June. As I do, I feel the dishes smack into my shoulders, and I grunt, grimacing in pain. There’s an abrasive clattering and shattering of the cutlery onto hard floor, and I suck in air when it’s over.

  Groaning, I upright myself, feeling my back throb from the impact. I try to hide the hurt as much as possible. I don’t want June feeling worse. She asks me if I’m okay, and I say yes, and I ask her, and she’s fine. No cuts or bruises. Which is good. That would only complicate things, since we have next to no medical aid supplies left.

  She thanks me, and I nod, telling her to hurry. As we’re hustling through the half-opened window and into the sunny outside, I’m hoping inwardly that the crash did not warrant any undesired attention. Maybe visiting the café wasn’t such a brilliant idea. We did locate a few packets of nonperishables from the nook of a kitchen, though; June put them in her backpack, since she had the room. Still no water though, or anything else to drink for that matter.

  Outside, I survey the sidewalk and tell June to wait. There are more of those shotgun shells here too. Where are they coming from? And what were they trying to kill?

  “Um, Rian — ”

  “June, I’m thinking.”

  “No, really…You should look behind you.”

  “What is — ” I swallow air, as I cannot finish the sentence. Loitering about in a daze, are a dozen Frothers, which have quite literally sprung up from nowhere. And they’re all there, nearly naked, in their tattered, bloody and soiled clothes. A couple of them notice us, cocking their heads.

  I stand there stunned, unblinking, my heart already beating too fast, until I finally speak.

  “Run.”

  ...

  “Rian…I’m scared,” June whispers to me as we’re pressed up against the windowed wall of a bar near the café we just left. I’ve been holding my breath since we flew into here through a broken window, which earned me a nice cut along my forearm. I ignore the stinging pain and blood dripping for now. We have bigger problems.

  A few of the Infected we had seen before are now crossing just outside the window, moaning mindlessly. The acrid smells of piss and Infected must snake through the window, further announcing their awful presence. Those few hadn’t seen us, I think, but there were some that had. I’d already shot those. They are lying in the street now, one with a blown off head, the other gifted with a nice bullet hole through the brain. That’s where you have to strike. It’s the only way to kill the bastards. They’re like cockroaches…You think they’re dead, but they keep coming back even bodiless, until you smite their brains into oblivion.

  “I know,” I reply quietly. I can’t tell her I am scared too. My heart leaps when we notice the frail door of the bar we had barricaded with a bench already torn from the flooring begin to shake. They are pressing against it, hollering.

  Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

  What to do? What to do? Think Rian…Think. We can’t stay here. It’s a death trap. That’s for sure.

  The door is shaking violently now, and I can see June is utterly terrified. She’s crying, and I feel like a complete failure. Damn it all!

  Suddenly, with no such warning, another clo
sed door across from us rips open, smashing against the wall as a herd of Infected pile through, shrieking and running. My eyes light open and I scream at June to run, to go!

  We dart through the bar’s drab interior, and I’m firing behind me as I sprint wildly. I manage to nail an Infected woman through the chest, causing her to collapse over onto another. Most of them fall over each other, clamoring stupidly about as gunky saliva pools from their agape mouths. This buys us enough time to get out.

  Bursting through the side door, we tumble outside, and pick ourselves up and as soon as we do, more Frothers come out screaming to our left. Where are they all coming from? Tears seep through the corners of my eyes, and for a couple of seconds I cannot breathe.

  I shove June forward, telling her to run again, and she cries out when I see that are more of the Infected headed toward her, crazed for living flesh. We’re surrounded.

  This is it. This is the end. Our end. We’ve come so far…Went through so much shit. Lost so many lives along the way these two years just to end up in a town like this to be overrun by Infected. Sounds about right.