Infected (Book 1): The First Ten Days

by Thomas, Jack

  Marcus shook me back into consciousness. I must been out for only a couple of seconds. The infected were gathered around us and I blacked out again. When I managed to wake up the second time, Marcus opened fire on all the infected. He dragged me with one arm and shot the infected with the gun in the other. I was terrified of what was going on, although I didn’t understand it since all I remembered were second based increments to assess the situation. I felt like I blinked and when my eyes opened again we made it inside of another building. Marcus shut the door behind him and I was already inside. He managed to save both of us.

  There were no windows on the building we entered; as a result no light could get inside. When the door shut, the darkness returned. Marcus struggled with the door until a faint click ended the struggle. The door was locked. The sounds left were those of the infected that beat the door in their attempt to get inside. Marcus lit the lantern and the little light illuminated much of the things that were still in the dark. The room was filled with random things: shovels, pickaxes, hoses and supplies to clean. It was some sort of general workers building.

  I was still dizzy. Wasn’t sure whether I was completely conscious or not, and by the looks of it, Marcus didn’t know either. I wasn’t going to be able to reach Jason at this pace. Marcus and I were both aware of this.

  “I should have left you with John,” Marcus made a fist and slammed it sideways onto the wall in anger, “This is my fault.” (Sort of)

  “What are we going to do now?” I asked and failed to sit up. My arms gave out in an attempt to support my upper body off of the floor. I fell back down. Something was wrong with me. All I knew is that I was too weak to do anything. The damage I took was more severe than I gave credit for.

  “Stay here. I will go find the others on my own. When I do, I will bring them here, and we will decide what the next plan of action will be.” Marcus grabbed the lock on the door and put the lantern on the ground so that I would have some light with me. I didn’t reply to his plan. There was no other choice.

  Marcus opened the door, moved to the other side and shut it behind him so the infected that didn’t follow him wouldn’t come for me. I was alone in some random building, with no energy to do anything. I laid my head back and took a deep breath. I passed out right there.

  Crashes, scratches and moans were just some of the sounds that lingered in my subconscious mind whilst I slept.

  I dreamt something worth amazement; traveled outside of our galaxy at several times the speed of light. I crossed the Event Horizon and saw time move in reverse, until I jumped out of my spaceship and decelerated to see the past catch up to the present. I’m not sure how I floated in space without a ship or protection, but it was a dream so who cares. What caught my attention was more of the logic behind the occurrences in the dream. If someone watched me accelerate over the speed of light, would they suddenly see me vanish? Or would they see me still there?

  That dream didn’t last long before Marcus showed up again. The door closed behind him and he automatically put the lock on it. I noticed no one was with him, but I wasn’t ready to speak yet. I observed him, he was tired. There was no way for me to know how much time went by, but it must have been a while for him to return so exhausted. The fact that I could see him at all brought up some questions. The lantern Marcus left behind still shined brightly. (Best lantern ever!) Some of my energy came back, enough to sit up without struggle but then I also felt this way when I sat up at the infirmary and the dizziness kicked in a while later.

  “Where is everyone else?” I asked.

  Marcus was fatigued from having to run from the infected, but he composed himself to answer my question. “They were gone. I don’t know since when or where they went, but everyone is gone. No signs of struggle and no signs of death.” With his back against the door, he slid down to the ground and sat down to relax. “We are going to have to leave without them. We are likely the only two people still in the base. The large number of infected in the base have caused enough ruckus to attract more of them. If we waste any more time here, the numbers will get too great for us to avoid them.”

  “How do you suggest we make our great escape?” He must have forgotten that I wasn’t exactly in the best condition to travel through a large group of infected.

  “I will help you move if I must.” He stood up and walked over to me. “But regardless of how we do it, it needs to get done now for us to remain alive.”

  “Let’s get this over with, I guess,” I said. I forced myself to my feet. Marcus came over and attempted support my weight to stand up but I put my hand up so he couldn’t help. I would do it on my own. It was time for me to man up, if I was killed by any infected, it was meant to be.

  Marcus opened the door and shot two of the infected directly on the other side of it. We walked outside, to my surprise there were no infected out there. In fact the number of infected was extremely low. It made sense why Marcus was so exhausted when he returned and why it was so crucial for us to leave that moment. He successfully outran the infected to get to me, so that I could take my time to move without getting overwhelmed and caught by the infected.

  “This way!” Marcus said. He led the way out. It didn’t look like we were too far from the entrance to the base. We didn’t move too fast, but we kept a steady pace. I kept my distance from the infected and leaned against walls for support. Marcus silently killed off the infected around us with a knife, to avoid the risk that a gunshot would attract others. “There, the gate!” He became more aggressive with his kills on the infected that were between us and the gate.

  Marcus made sure he completely protected me on our way out. We made it to the gate and he ran to pull it open. It was difficult to open alone, more of a two man job, but Marcus managed to open it enough so that both he and I could squeeze through and leave the infected inside. “We won’t last too long out here if we don’t cover some ground and find shelter. I remember a subway station on a map. It’s not too far from here, maybe a couple of blocks, the furthest. We should head there,” Marcus said as he slowed his pace and put my arm over his shoulder so I could have support in the middle of the street. My energy was faint but it gradually recovered.

  “Alright, you’re the boss. Lead the way,” I said with the little energy I gained. I was sure that I was dying. The blow I took to my head was serious enough to put me in this condition. It must have been serious enough to kill me. It would be a matter of time before I found out if I was going to either get better and be able to function on my own again, or if I was simply going to die from it. Maybe neither; maybe I would forever require someone’s help because my nerves didn’t recover and my brain couldn’t send the proper messages to my body (which is what I thought was taking place). I kept thinking of what the cause to my current problem could be. I knew the blow to the head knocked me out, but what did it cause that kept me in such a bad condition after I became conscious again. I saw something on TV a long time ago similar to this. A guy was in a car accident and took a serious blow to the head, like the one I took; his was significantly more serious than mine. And once he regained consciousness he died gradually. His brain gave out from a blood clot that prevented it from properly functioning. Maybe I was going through the same thing. Only time would tell.

  After a short while of traveling, we found some stairs that headed downwards. After closer inspection, we noticed signs that rested over the stairs with transit route names on them. We found the subway.

  Marcus went ahead to make sure the subway station was safe, while I took my time to head down, and hold on to the handrail while doing so. Once I made it to the bottom, Marcus opened a protective gate that led us to the subway staff area. He planned to find a route through the staff tunnels to exit the town, maybe even find another safe location to hold up for a while.

  Subway Tunnels and Railways

  It was difficult to see in such a dark place, but the lantern Marcus kept handy allowed us at least some visibility. Once the gate was o
pen he helped me get to the other side and closed it. There was a door directly behind the gate that wasn’t locked. Marcus went through it and left the door open so I could catch up with him. I followed the little bit of light that came from the room. Inside, the room was filled with buttons, levers and screens which I was sure at some point displayed the subway station tunnels; it was a control terminal. Marcus shined the light on different surfaces and different walls in his search for a map or anything that would show which way we could head. No luck.

  Marcus gave up the search and weighed the options. “We have to use the train tracks to guide us inside of the tunnels. It’s the only way we can head in one steady direction.”

  “Where exactly are we heading?” I asked.

  “We need to catch up with John but we are behind schedule, so we need to cut him off further ahead.” And then we head to the school, my original destination. My family must be waiting there.

  I nodded in approval (not like it mattered) and he helped me move back towards the gate. We walked deeper into the station, but not for long before we found the tracks and the area where passengers would wait for the train. Down the tunnel it looked like the darkness would swallow us whole. But that was the direction we needed to go.

  Marcus jumped on to the track first and helped me get down. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was a little better. We took our time and moved slowly, and his constant help when I felt weak allowed me to recover with more ease.

  The darkness we walked into was endless. The light was swallowed up by it. Our range of sight was no more than a few feet and the tunnels were lifeless. No trains went by and no one else traveled the subway (as far as we could tell). The moans of the infected echoed across all the tracks and tunnels, straight to us. There was no way to know which direction the sound came from. What we did to convince ourselves we were safe was walk at a faster pace to avoid anything that might catch up from behind and we kept the light ahead of us to show us where we were headed.

  After sometime on the tracks, the moans of the infected faded and left nothing but the echo of our footsteps in the subway, until a familiar sound caught my ear, the sound of something that would periodically and sporadically run and then come to a stop. Strange gasps of breath joined in, like someone was asphyxiating, and the sporadic pattern of movement would continue. Marcus and I stopped and tried to tell exactly from how far ahead of us it came from. We couldn’t tell.

  A scream instantly made the air thick and difficult to breathe in. It was a runner. And the scream was bound to call in all of the infected our way. The fact that it started when we were close enough to hear it move meant one of two things, it either heard us as well or it could see us which was particularly bad because we couldn’t see it back. The worst part was what followed. A few seconds after the runner’s strange scream; another yelled further down the tunnel. I thought it was an echo, until it gave its own second scream.

  Marcus yanked me by the arm and we went on the search for a way out. He couldn’t afford to support my weight at that time. He needed as much time to react as possible in the case that we were attacked. I followed close behind and let the lantern be the guide. No doors or side tunnels could be found that we could veer away into. The runner moved again, it ran further away but the immediate worry were the sounds nearest to us.

  I used whatever energy necessary so that I could move at the pace of a fully functional person. Marcus gained some distance on me while he looked for a door or another way out of the tunnels we were trapped in. We passed a subway station a while back. This was a great thing because it meant we were due to pass by another, but it was a double edged sword because it made having to turn back a difficult choice to make after we covered so much ground.

  Marcus ceased movement and held the lantern high up. After I caught up to him I became horrified. A runner stood there; it twitched and inhaled loudly. I didn’t know whether to move or just stand there and wait to be killed. Marcus clearly had no clue what to do either, but both of us stood there like a couple of idiots, nowhere near a solution or plan of action.

  More movement, but it didn’t come from the runner that was in front of us, it came from the one behind it. Out of the darkness ran out another runner and it dashed straight for Marcus and me. Marcus turned around and ran back, he pushed me out of the way so the runner wouldn’t catch me. When I slammed into the subway wall the second runner joined the race. It ran at me while Marcus ran from the first one. “Run away, I’ll catch up! I’m going to distract them!” Marcus yelled from inside the darkness he vanished into.

  Out of fear my mind tried to process the information a million miles at a time. I instantly remembered the infected weren’t the smartest of the things left on the planet, and with this in mind I made a run straight for the runner. As it came closer to me I dashed to the side and hoped it wouldn’t automatically turn but rather continue to run or progressively stop. I ran right by it, the opposite direction that Marcus went. The runner stopped short of the wall and made a strange wide turn before it went after me again. Although the darkness persisted, I ran along the wall and stuck my hand out to touch it in hopes that I would come across some entrance I could use to escape and be safe.

  I don’t know what convinced me this would work, but I was sure it would. I ran and the runner ran faster. It was bound to catch up. I was screwed if something didn’t come to the rescue. And just as I hoped, I touched a door. A small ledge, half a foot long, stood in front of the door, I climbed it and felt around for the door handle but couldn’t find one. The runner was almost on me when I found the handle and I pulled the door open. I shut the door as fast as I could and the runner slammed into it behind me.

  The screams of the runner trapped on the other side of the door were persistent and angry. I touched around the door for some sort of lock and found none, but as I felt around I found hooks on the door, hooks that could hold something, and they connected to the wall. There had to be a wooden plank or some sort of piece of metal that could barricade the door when held by the hooks. On the floor in total darkness as expected, there was a steel bar. I picked it up and put it in place to hold the door shut. With my hand against the wall, I took off, further into the darkness.

  The tunnel I took was extremely narrow, large enough for people to move through but no vehicle could fit. The tunnel was only slightly larger than the door I came in through.

  I walked in a straight line for a while before I could find any turns, when I did I no longer needed to feel around the door to be aware of my surroundings. Immediately at the start of that turn there was faint light. Maybe a subway station still with power was up ahead. I headed in that direction with the visibility barely increased as I moved further in. A large room awaited me up ahead. The floor ended in front of me, I fell fifteen feet down a shaft. When I hit the bottom the visibility was significantly better. I stood up and looked around at hundreds of runners all focused on me because of my loud fall into what could only be called their home. Things were bad (Clearly).

  So let me catch you up. At this point in the story, I was involved in zombie festivities. A bunch of brain-dead, once human, nonhumans threw a party for themselves and I crashed that party, or into it. I mean sure, they lacked music, food and dance, but I brought their favorite food, so I did provide for the party. So the crash couldn’t be so bad with food right? WRONG! I was the food I brought. Let’s continue.

  So I’m somewhere underground with no sense of direction and a few hundred runners directly in front of me. My guess is, they took the same fall I did and ended up trapped down there. But within the seconds that I stood there scared out of my mind, I thought rationally enough to assume there wouldn’t logically be a room underground with the only entrance being a drop that can’t be reached from the bottom. By logical obligation there was another way in and out of the room. The question was where?

  It didn’t help that the infected at the back of the group dashed in my direction; they provoked the ones in
the front and a chain reaction stampede of infected began. I ran instinctively, like a coward.

  Being obligated to run so often was a great weight loss technique. Sucks that I was already thin, the only thing left for me was to become so light I wouldn’t be heard and so thin I wouldn’t be seen, a living skeleton of sorts. I made a mental note to become so light and thin the infected would fail to notice me ever again.

  I ran along the wall to have the infected line up behind me and with hopes they would stumble over each other and maybe slow large numbers of them down. As I ran I turned my attention up briefly to where the dim light came from. I couldn’t find the source; it just seemed to be brighter for no given reason (Cliché convenience for the sake of the story perhaps?)

  When my attention came back to the walls an exit presented itself. It was also the entrance for multiple runners. The runners that came in through that hallway added to the collective behind me, rapidly increasing their numbers. I had to take another lap around the room and either reach another exit or hopefully reach that entrance again, once the infected finished spewing out of it. Another lap entailed that I would run straight through the endless stream of infected to get to the other side of the room, and if I turned back, it meant I would slam into an even larger wall of infected.

  The infected that came through the entrance couldn’t tell my location among the rest of the infected until I was close enough for them to see what they chased. This gave me a good chance to run through them without any attempt to grab me until I was clear on the other side. Without further time wasted on the plan I reached the entrance the infected used. With a deep breath I straightened my arms out in front of me to push away the infected the moment I came in contact with them. And then the impact

  The second I felt something touch my arms I spread both of them far apart and pushed three of the infected away, one with my right arm and two with my left. I pushed the two on my left back into the hallway they come from. This went smoother than I expected, they were all behind me and none took hold of me. I looked back and noticed they stopped bleeding out from the hallway that I planned to escape through, so at the end of that lap I could take a hard left and go down the hallway, but I still needed to finish the lap.