The Infected Dead (Book 1): Alive for Now

by Bob Howard

  Kathy called back to us in a voice just loud enough for us to hear, “We go around them on the way back.”

  Jean and I gave the infected dead a wide berth as we went by. They were all reaching for us and snapping their jaws.

  Mark pulled up even with Kathy and the Chief and led them to a single door. The larger barn doors were on the other side of the barn and would draw much more attention if they were opened.

  Chief Barnes asked, “Are there any in the barn?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” answered Mark, “but the barn is wide open, so there’s no place to hide. If anything is in there, at least we’ll know as soon as we get in there with it.”

  Kathy stepped up and moved Mark to the side. Now that they were at the barn, he didn’t need to be in the lead. She pushed the door wide open but held back without going in. All she could see going from a bright sunny day into the barn was total darkness.

  Kathy said back over her shoulder, “We could have used a flashlight.”

  “I have one,” said Jean. Everyone looked at her with the same look.

  “What?” She said. It seemed our group had a knack for looking innocent.

  Despite the fact we were barely concealed along the side of a barn in the middle of nowhere, facing the prospect of a terrible death at any moment, we all smiled and shared one of those rare moments that can only come from the bond that forms between people who have their backs against the wall. All except Mark who was looking at us as if we were nuts.

  Jean passed the flashlight to Kathy. She clicked it on, and it put out a surprising amount of light for its size. Kathy traded her machete in for her gun and pointed the flashlight along barrel of the gun. She eased into the darkness listening for movement.

  There was a tense moment when Mark fell over a body on the floor. He landed awkwardly on top of the body and tried to scramble away. As he did, he was making a crying, panicked sound. We all rushed in with our machetes poised to strike at whatever was attacking him, and in the dim glow of the flashlight it really looked like the body on the floor was trying to bite him. We probably each hit it twice before we realized it was dead. Kathy kept circling trying to get off a clean shot.

  When the noise all died down, the Chief pulled Mark free from the body. He picked him up and got his hand over Marks mouth trying to get him to be quiet.

  The Chief said to him in serious voice. “If you bite me, I’ll snap your neck. Now, shut up.”

  There was a big John Deere mower in the garage. There was also something that looked like a gas powered garden tiller, and off to one side was a row of twenty-five gallon gas cans. I grabbed one and the Chief let go of Mark to scoop up another. Everyone else did the same, so we had five cans total. That would be a lot more than we needed, but we were already learning that more was better than less. There wasn’t any reason to hang around, so we made it back out the door without a word.

  Nothing got in our way as we ran back, and we gave a wide berth to the group of disabled infected that had been dropped by Kathy and the Chief on the way to the barn. They had managed to crawl a short distance toward the barn, but we had no problem getting around them.

  Becky was watching as we approached and timed her opening of the door perfectly. Kathy didn’t look like she even had to break stride. I was the last one through this time, and Becky closed and locked the door just as fast.

  The next step in our plan was to cut through the sheetrock to get to the wiring that controlled the garage door. The missing ingredient was how to draw the infected out of the garage.

  Mark suggested that the infected would wander out on their own. Without telling Mark and Becky about how we had watched the infected stand stock still for hours on our closed circuit TV system, we just told them we knew for fact that an open door wasn’t necessarily enough incentive to get them to move.

  Becky followed Mark’s suggestion by saying a boat horn would be loud enough to draw them outside. The four of us stared at her as if she was an alien.

  “How have you two survived since this all started,” asked Kathy? “Do you think we want to make enough noise to draw every infected dead within miles to the driveway?”

  “There’s really only one way,” I said. “I’ll go out the front door, run past the open garage doors, and circle the house. I’ll come in through the back door. As soon as the last one clears the garage into the driveway, you guys can drop the doors and load the car. I’ll go right through the house to the car.”

  Jean got around in front of me and asked, “Are you crazy. What makes you think we’re going to let you commit suicide for the rest of us?” I thought she looked adorable in her coveralls with a rifle on her back and a pistol on her hip.

  “No, he’s right,” said Kathy. “When I was on the dock in Charleston trying to think of a way to get everyone onto the ship before the mobs of infected broke though, I knew it had to be something crazy. We don’t want to draw them out with noise, so it has to be a warm body.”

  Jean grimaced, “God, do you have to say it like that?”

  Kathy looked at each of us one at a time. “Ed looks like the only one of us who could run fast enough if he has to, but I have a suggestion, Ed.”

  She had that look on her face that we had come to expect. She was a natural at tactics and had proven it repeatedly since the first day of the infection.

  “Ed, instead of running around to the back of the house, do you think you could run straight down Wando Farms Road? We don’t know if they will keep following you once you go around the corner of the house. They might follow you to the corner and then turn around and come back.”

  I may have spent too much time playing video games, but I wasn’t in terrible shape, so I said, “I think I can manage that. You said it’s only a mile or two?”

  “Yes,” said the Chief. “The road is straight, so they would be able to see you for a long time. We can load the car and catch up with you long before you reach Highway 17.”

  Jean wasn’t happy about the plan, but no one could come up with anything better. The only thing left to do was cut the hole in the sheetrock and find the wiring for the garage doors.

  Mark carefully located the right spot and slowly pushed the sharpest kitchen knife into the sheetrock, being careful not to make any noise or to cut the wires.

  Jean asked, “How are we going to know if all of the infected actually leave the garage? I mean, some of them may not be interested.”

  I tried to joke about it and commented that any infected dead in it’s right mind would want to eat me.

  “Not funny,” said Jean.

  Mark said, “I thought of that already. I can put a small hole into the sheetrock on the garage wall that should give us enough of a view to see them leave.”

  “But not the entire view of the garage, right?” Jean obviously didn’t want me to be the bait for this part.

  Kathy put her foot down and said, “Jean, we don’t have much choice. Anything else would be too noisy. We’re going to have all of our gear and the gas cans ready to go. Once they go out the door after Ed, we aren’t even going to waste time shutting the doors. If any are still in the garage when we go out through that door, we’ll put them down. Now, let’s do this.”

  Now that the decision was final, everyone got into position ready to do their jobs. Once Mark got the doors going up, he would quietly make the hole for them to see through. The noise from the doors would probably start drawing them away from the door to the house.

  From my vantage point at the front door, I could see the garage doors. The infected didn’t have a lot of mobility, so they would probably wait until the doors were high enough before they would walk out. If any crawled out before the doors were higher, I figured I could avoid them long enough to draw the attention of the others.

  Kathy stuck her head around the corner and said, “We’re ready in here. You okay?”

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  She gave me her most reassuring smile. I tried to
give her one back, but both of us knew it was weak looking. She disappeared again, and I got ready to open the front door.

  It seemed like an eternity, but the garage doors started going up with a rattle. I could see the feet of the infected as the doors rose higher, then the knees. They began gathering at the opening as both doors went up at the same time. I didn’t see any trying to crawl under the doors, which was a relief.

  Inside the house, Kathy was at the door with her gun in her left hand and the machete in her right. She would quietly disable if she could, and she would shoot to kill if she had to.

  Behind Kathy was the Chief. He had both of the big gasoline cans in his hands. The plan was that he would open the rear door of the big Suburban, load the cans, and then move to the driver side, open the passenger door as he went by it, and then get in the driver seat.

  Jean and Becky were both loaded down with gear and fuel and would follow on the heels of the Chief. Jean would drop her gear if Kathy needed help with stragglers, and Becky was told not to stop for anything. Follow the Chief, load the gear and go around to the passenger door on the driver side.

  Mark’s part of the plan was to grab the last of the gear and follow Jean and Becky through the door. Plan B was for Mark to start lowering the doors if anything went wrong, and they couldn’t contain the infected.

  When the doors were high enough, the first of the infected began to wander outside into the sunlight. It was now or never, so I yanked open the door and ran straight past the garage. Almost as one, the infected flowed out after me.

  I almost ran straight into one that was coming around the far side of the house. If I had been looking back at the infected to see if they were still following, I would have.

  Frankly, I was too afraid to look back, and unless these infected could sprint, I was going to outrun them. My heart was pounding so hard, and I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body that I felt like I could run all the way back to Mud Island. It crossed my mind that I was going to have a heart attack and drop over. My friends would drive up in the Suburban and find me on the pavement being chewed on by a bunch of slow infected dead.

  Back in the garage, Kathy had heard Mark saying it was all clear, but she expected to find at least one or two of the infected hanging around inside the doors. She dove into the garage with her machete raised, but she could see the last of the infected disappearing down the driveway following Ed. For a moment she didn’t know what to do, then something clicked and she went into motion.

  The Chief was already in the driver seat. Becky was in her seat behind him, and Mark was just finishing putting the last of the gear into the back of the Suburban and closing the door. By some miracle, they were actually making it look easy.

  Everyone’s heart stopped, and Kathy felt her mouth go dry when the Chief turned the ignition key. The engine turned over, but it didn’t start. That was the one thing they had all taken for granted.

  I was still running fast but starting to slow down. There was a stitch in my side that I knew would only get worse as I ran, so I slowed my pace just a bit. I looked back and saw a small army of the infected dead following me.

  I had a pretty good buffer between myself and them, so I stopped to watch and catch my breath. I was pretty sure I should be seeing the Suburban come out of the garage by now, but there was nothing happening back there. From my angle, I couldn’t see inside the garage doors, so I had no idea if they were having to go to plan B, or if they would be appearing at any moment.

  I turned around to see if I could tell how far I was from Highway 17. My heart almost went ahead with the heart attack when I saw that the infected were on the road ahead of me, too.

  Back in the garage, the Chief looked at the ignition like he could will the engine to start, and maybe he could, because the engine jumped to life when he turned it again. As soon as it started, the Chief threw it into drive and shot out of the garage.

  I was only vaguely aware of the sound of the engine. I was busy trying to gauge the speed of the groups of infected to see which would reach me first. When the Suburban reached the first group of infected dead, the Chief just drove around them and pulled right up next to me. I looked at the big vehicle as if I wasn’t sure what to do.

  Jean leaned out of the back passenger door and said, “Hey, sexy. Want to go for a ride?”

  I didn’t need to be asked again and gratefully climbed inside with her. The Chief hit the gas, and we were on our way.

  ******

  A quick check of the map confirmed we were only about sixty miles from home, and almost all of it was on the four lane highway. We would be forced to drive slowly in the places where we couldn’t see too far ahead and in the small towns, but it would only be two hours of driving if we averaged thirty miles per hour. After the tension of the last hour, I was glad to melt against Jean in the back seat.

  Everyone was quiet for what seemed like forever. I think everyone went into their own private world for a bit. We all had to digest what had happened.

  Our new members of the group had the sense to keep quiet, too. I think they were trying to figure out where they stood with the rest of us. We gave them jobs to do, but we didn’t give them weapons, and we weren’t exactly sharing information with them.

  I think our group felt like we would know more about them by the time we reached our turn to Mud Island. If the right things weren’t said and done in the next two hours, we could always give them the car and a few supplies when we reached the spot where the road ended. They would never be able to come back and figure out where we went.

  Highway 17 was a mess in some places and clear in others. We came to our first traffic jam only five miles into the trip. About a hundred cars were lined up behind an accident that had probably stopped people from escaping the area.

  Everyone who saw the news and the attacks in the Charleston area had an idea of where they wanted to be. Some were probably just trying to go anywhere but closer to the deaths, and some might have been trying to reach relatives. People like Mark and Becky Harrison.

  The Chief began easing onto the grass median to get past the rows of cars. Most of them were side by side like they were lined up to start the pace lap in a stock car race. As we got closer to the front the cars were pointed toward the sides of the road, and some were already in the grass. Those drivers could see what was ahead, and they had tried to get around it.

  The front pile up was the wreck and all the trimmings, just like what I had seen on the first day in Surfside. Police cars, fire engines, and EMT trucks dominated the scene, but the bodies were what stunned us the most. Despite the level of decay, the causes of death were obvious. There were none still walking around, but the infected that had walked away were still out there somewhere.

  We were all scanning the trees on both sides of the highway as the Chief cautiously passed the last of the accident and pulled back onto the blacktop. The road was clear ahead, and he accelerated again. We passed a few bodies of people who had probably tried to run from the infected. As a matter of fact, there was something odd about how they all seemed to make it only so far.

  “Anyone else seeing something wrong with this picture?” I asked.

  Kathy, Jean, and the Chief all said, “Yes,” at the same time.

  Kathy finished the answer for the group. “They ran but didn’t get away. Why?”

  We wanted to get back to Mud Island, but we also wanted to know what had happened. It could be information useful to our own survival. The Chief stopped just beyond the last of the bodies, and we piled out to get a closer look.

  Some were face down and had bite marks, but none had been eaten. They had bullet entry wounds on their chests and heads, but all of them had been shot as they ran forward. These were not infected dead. They had been shot to keep them from coming forward.

  Kathy said, “I’m going to venture a guess that there was a defensive line across the road to keep these people from coming north. They shot the first vehicles, the rescue vehi
cles joined the party, and the people on the blockade stood their ground.”

  Jean asked, “Do you think we need to worry about running into them?”

  “No,” said Chief Barnes. “This was a long time ago.”

  “What makes you so sure the same people aren’t waiting for someone like us up the road?” I asked.

  “Think about it for a minute, Ed. We’ve seen a military installation armed to the teeth go under to the infected. It gets inside behind your lines no matter how hard you try to keep it out. If the military can’t keep this thing out, some militia isn’t going to.”

  The four of us hadn’t been away from the Suburban for more than three minutes, and we turned as one when we heard the engine start to turn over. Three of us were paralyzed by the sound, but the Chief had moved fast for a big man.

  He reached the driver’s side door and pulled it open. In one smooth move he had Mark by the hair and yanked him out of the car and into the median.

  “I wasn’t doing anything,” yelled Mark. “I was only trying to keep the engine running in case we had to get away from here fast.” Mark knew his life was on the line. His plea was reasonable, but his guilt was obvious. He was trying to leave us behind. “You heard it yourself,” he said. “The car wouldn’t start again. We’re screwed.”

  “No, we’re not screwed, meathead, but you are. I didn’t know if we could trust you, so I pulled an ignition wire off as we got out. I left the keys to see if you would jump on the chance to screw us over, and I got my answer.” The Chief punctuated his revelation with a punch straight to the middle of Mark’s face. It didn’t take a second punch.

  Becky was screaming and trying to jump on the Chief’s back. Kathy’s police training came through for her as she grabbed Becky and immobilized her face first on the ground.

  Becky joined Mark in their collective begging, but Kathy smacked her on the side of the head and told her to shut up. It wasn’t her finest moment given her training, but she was thinking about how they would have just driven away and left them. Becky trailed off into sniffling and sobbing. She was mumbling something about being sorry, but none of us were buying it.