The Infected (Book 2): Karen's First Day

by Zuko, Joseph

  The infected encircled them. Troy’s shotgun had slid ten-feet from where he landed on his belly. Two infected old folks crossed over the steel barrel and wood stock of Troy’s gun. The monsters looked like an old couple visiting Hawaii. Flower shirts and shorts. The only thing missing was a set of colorful leis around their necks.

  “What are we going to do?!” Karen panicked. They were completely cut off from Troy’s weapon. The thirteen-ish rounds in Karen’s gun were no match for the twenty plus ghouls that surrounded them. Karen wished she were back in the closet.

  Chapter 14

  Robin tried to crawl farther up onto Karen’s shoulder. As if being on top of her Mama would save her. Karen fought to keep the girl on her hip and her gun aimed at the closest infected man. Troy pulled at Valerie’s arm to get her to stop choking him.

  “Troy?” The dire situation has crippled her ability to string a sentence together.

  “I…don’t…” Troy got to one knee. There was no clear path to make their escape and without his shotgun they were all dead. The grandma with the missing hands had regrouped with her gang of creeps and had closed off the way they had come. There was no retreat and they couldn’t move forward. Maybe if Karen had a lucky clover shoved deep up her ass she might hit a bullseye with every shot and clear a path to the truck, but she forgot to shove it up there this morning.

  The closest infected was now only five feet away, close enough for Karen to smell the man’s coffee breath. She was about to pop off a round and take stinky breath down when a scream screeched out above them.

  The high-pitched yell blasted across the parking lot. Karen and Troy turned quickly to see from where it was originating. It came from Cliff and Tina’s second floor window; Eve was carrying on like a banshee. Once her voice gave out she punched a hole in the screen and tossed down a toy. It was a plush mechanical teddy bear that sung and danced to the song “Wild Thing”. It kept dancing and singing when it hit the flowerbed at the front of the apartment. Over the singing bear Eve kept screaming and slapping her hand at the siding outside the window.

  Karen and Troy looked back over the approaching infected. The monsters were easily distracted and the nine-year-old now had a captive audience. The dead shuffled past Karen and Troy and they made for the noise.

  The brother and sister stood still and kept their mouths shut. It did not take long for some space to clear up around them. A few more voices joined Eve’s.

  Tina and Cliff yelled out and loudly clapped their hands, “HEY! ASSHOLES! UP HERE!”

  “Bad word.” Robin shook her head against Karen’s neck. A gap was made for Troy’s shotgun. They sprinted for it. The gun had a few new scratches down its side, crisscrossing the dark blue metal finish of the barrel. Troy swallowed a grunt as he squatted to pick up the Remington.

  The infected clustered under the second floor window, their torn blood covered wrinkled arms reached up and futilely clawed at the building’s siding. One of them had stepped on the teddy bear and the digital sounding old rock song started over again. It made the whole scene look like a pathetic rock concert with the worst audience ever.

  Troy retrieved his weapon and they bolted for the open truck door. One of the infected, suffering from a busted up leg, was limping behind and staggered by the front of Troy’s ride. It was late for the concert. Even with one of its eyes dangling by a thread of tissue it spotted the fast moving Karen and charged at her. It was on a collision course with the fleeing humans. Karen didn’t break her stride as she aimed her pistol at the infected.

  BOOM!

  She nailed a direct hit at fifteen paces. Maybe she did put that lucky clover up her ass this morning. The gunshot pulled the attention of the infected back onto them. No matter how loud Tina and Cliff shouted down at the monsters, the moving target was much more appealing.

  Karen’s body slammed into the truck door and she pushed Robin up onto the bench seat.

  Troy stood guard by the open door. He pumped a few rounds into the closest infected. Once Karen was fully into the truck cab Troy took a step back and Karen pulled Valerie off of him.

  The infected were so close together Troy was able to take down a group with each of his shots. Karen got the girls set up next to her and clicked both girls into the center seatbelt.

  “Let’s move,” Karen pulled the belt tight across their laps. Troy backed up into his vehicle and slid his shotgun across the floorboard. He slammed the door shut and cranked up the window. A sloppy set of fingers crashed into the glass. Black sludge squeezed out of the bite marks on its hands. They lay down a thick coat of gunk on the window making it look tinted. Troy breathed out a rough lung full of air. He wasted no time getting out his keys and jammed them into the ignition. Troy cranked over the engine and they took off.

  “Uncle Troy’s truck?” Robin looked up at her Mama and pointed at the dash. Her little brown eyes red with tears, but she still had to tell her Mama the newest update.

  “Yeah baby, it’s Uncle Troy’s truck,” Karen said as she dropped a kiss down on to both kids’ heads. She did an internal prayer and was thankful for the extra couple of minutes she now had on this Earth with her children.

  Blessings and curses. Peaks and Valleys. Each move they made felt like both. They were still alive, but she was leaving her home. The place Jim was fighting to get back to. She squashed the thought that Jim could be here any second. It was a waste of a thought. It didn’t help her to dwell on possibilities. She could only focus on what was happening right now. No matter how much she hated the reality, there was no way they could have stayed in the apartment and kept the girls safe. Jim would have told her she needed to go. Her mother’s house was the right move. As he got the truck turned around in the lot he knocked over half a dozen infected, but never got one of them under the wheel to squash them dead. Karen waved up at the Morgan family. She gave them a nod of gratitude for the help.

  The Morgan’s waved back at her.

  “Where the hell are they going?” Tina asked her husband.

  Cliff shook his head and gave his daughter a loving pat on her back. It was his way of telling her how proud he was of her quick thinking to help save the neighbors.

  Troy left a set of rubber stripes on the asphalt as he peeled out of the parking lot. A white cloud of smoke followed the speeding truck. Maybe it was all of the adrenaline spikes Karen had been receiving for the last few hours, but the ride with her brother felt surreal. It felt more like a snippet from a bad dream. The one detail of the nightmare you can remember when you wake up in the morning. Seeing her brother behind the wheel reminded her of something from her childhood.

  As the sister and brother grew up in their home, the battle lines were clearly drawn. It was always them versus the parents. Team kid versus team adult. The family had to move every couple of years for their father’s work. A large chunk of their early teens was spent in a big house outside of Spokane, Washington. They had a lot of firsts in that house. Troy lost his virginity in the decked out party basement the Halloween after he turned sixteen. Karen kissed her first boyfriend at the age of twelve in her bedroom. It was also the house they lived in when they learned that their parents were going to get a divorce. When Karen was eighteen she got an email from an old neighbor friend from Spokane that told her the house was about to be demolished.

  She and the then twenty-one-year old Troy packed up some camping gear and a twelve pack of beer and took a road trip from Vancouver to Spokane to see the old house one last time. They got there about eleven o’clock at night, broke in, and drank themselves to sleep in the living room. That morning they woke to the sounds of bulldozers. They had just enough time to grab the car keys and escape out the window they busted open to get inside. The construction crew chased them a hundred yards before the workers gave up and went back to bulldozing.

  The siblings watched from a small hill on the property as the house was knocked over with their camping gear still inside. They held hands and cried openly as they watched a
part of their childhood get crushed and sorted into different piles.

  Lumber, metal pipes, carpet and roofing all piled up on the dirt that was once their home. They waited until the work team called it a day before they could get back to their car. They were certain they would get arrested for breaking and entering if they came back to get their ride too soon.

  It was a long, quiet trip back to Vancouver. They both suffered from hangovers, but even with a splitting headache it was the best, and last trip, they ever took together. The memory splashed across Karen’s mind as she watched her brother hammer through the gears. It seemed impossible to her that it had been over a decade since the last time she went anywhere with Troy.

  There wasn’t time to daydream, she had to focus and think about her next move. Karen pulled out her box of ammo and the spent magazine. Her fingers were already sore from the last time she loaded the damn thing. She worked through the pain and refilled both of her magazines.

  Only ten rounds remained in the box when she was done reloading her gun. She popped the magazine back in, racked the slide and put it back in her holster. Since she was in the mood to reload she picked up Troy’s gun from the floorboard, flipped it over and stuck out her hand towards her brother, “Shells.”

  “You know how to reload it?” Troy pulled a shell from his bandolier and handed it to her.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she said as she took the shell and forced it into the bottom of the shotgun. It took her a minute to get the son of a bitch in there. After she worked out the mechanics of it she fought five more shells into the gun and racked it.

  Out of the corner of her eyes she caught glimpses of horrific acts of violence. Troy swerved all over the road to avoid vehicles and humans.

  Living and dead.

  Botchy was scratching at the door of her bag. It had been awhile since she had ridden in it. Karen pulled open the Velcro door and her fuzzy head popped out immediately. The little doggy was all tongue and loving the salty buffet of tears on Karen’s face. Even with the living nightmare going on all around her the wet kisses of her sweet dog gave Karen a smile.

  “Botchy?” Robin put out her hand so she could get some kisses too. Karen moved Botchy from one child to the next letting the dogs little wet tongue bring joy to both children.

  “Where are we going, Mama?” Valerie asked as she rested her head down on her Uncle’s shoulder.

  “Ganny’s.”

  “There aren’t any bad people there?”

  Karen searched for an answer that would not scare the child. “There won’t be as many and Mama and Uncle Troy will protect you okay?”

  “And Robin?” Valerie needed total clarification.

  “And Robin and Ganny and Botchy. You don’t have to worry. You’re safe.” Karen ran her hand down the back of Valerie’s head. Troy raised his eyebrow at his sister and Karen shrugged her shoulders back at him. The statement felt no different than the promise of Santa’s arrival on Christmas. Troy cut across the parking lot of a gas station.

  “Oh, God!” Troy groaned.

  Chapter 15

  A clerk was being mauled next to one of the gas station pumps. Karen covered her children’s eyes to protect them from the gore. Like before, with her deaf neighbor, the group of infected worked at tearing the young man in two.

  “Where are the police? Where is the National Guard?” Karen turned away from the window so she did not have to watch the man suffer anymore.

  “I don’t know. The National Guard station is located in downtown Vancouver. It will take them a long time to get organized enough to make it to this side of town,” Troy said as he cranked the wheel hard to make a fast right.

  “Can you slow down?” Karen steadied the two girls after the turn.

  “I want to get back to Mama’s, fast.”

  They raced through an intersection. Troy did not see the sports car moving quick on his right. The Mustang ran right into the rear quarter panel of his truck. They spun out of control. The truck did a three sixty in the center of the intersection. The Mustang kept moving forward. Its left front tire folded under the wheel well and its hood bent in half. It was heading right for a small store that sold vacuums. Sparks flew as it jumped the curb and smashed into a storefront. Shattered glass sprayed out over the top of the car and down onto the sidewalk. The driver was laid out dead on the horn.

  After Troy’s truck stopped spinning it kept rolling backwards and crashed into a telephone pole. Both girls screamed their lungs out. They reached for comfort from the nearest adult. Pain exploded up Karen’s right arm. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, but before she checked herself she looked down at her girls. They were shaken up but neither of the kids sustained any injuries.

  The growing pain in her wrist had ratcheted past eleven on the “does it hurt” meter. She looked down at her hand. Her wrist looked all kinds of wrong. It was bulged and angled in a bad direction. It had been dislocated or maybe broken. She could not tell. The sight of it made her vomit. All of the pizza in her stomach poured out onto the floorboard between her feet.

  “What’s wrong?” Troy shook off the cobwebs in his brain.

  Karen held up her wrist and showed him what was causing her so much distress.

  “Oh fuck!” he burped out the curse.

  “Bad word.” Robin stopped crying long enough to point out his error.

  “Is it broken?” He reached out for her forearm and took a better look.

  Karen kept her head down. She did not want to look at it.

  She spat the last bit of puke out of her mouth, “I don’t know! Try and fix it!”

  “I don’t know how to fix it! We got to get out of here!” Troy checked three-sixty. Nothing and no one had spotted them yet. He tried the key and the engine revved. He punched the gas and the truck lurched forward. It made a god-awful sound like metal grinding and tearing itself apart.

  The impacted side rear tire sat at a seventy-degree angle and had gone flat. Troy put his truck into four-wheel drive and the front tires activated. He was able to pull back out into the street, but it was like they had the emergency brake on. No matter how much he stepped on the gas he could not get it over forty. The faster they went the louder the noise became.

  Horns blared as cars raced past them.

  “You gotta fix my wrist! I can’t take it!” Karen yelled at her brother.

  “I don’t know how! I might make it worse!” he yelled back. It was the only way to hear each other over the noise.

  “What’s wrong Mama?” Valerie tried to touch the hurt wrist.

  Karen pulled her arm back before the child made contact, “Mama got hurt!”

  “Is it bad? Do you need a Band-Aid?”

  “It’s bad! We need to go see a doctor!” Karen used her other hand to cradle the hurt one so it would not move.

  “We can’t go to the doctor! The hospitals are overrun!”

  The next intersection was blocked by a dozen crashed vehicles and surrounded by the infected. The dead ran as fast as they could toward the truck. He couldn’t maneuver around them. He could only keep the pedal down and hope that the radiator held. Body after body crashed hard into the front end of the truck. Blood cascaded up onto the windshield blinding them until Troy turned on his wipers.

  Karen covered the girl’s eyes with her good arm. Disfigured faces cracked into the glass and torsos were sucked under the front wheels. They mowed down twenty of them before they got to the intersection.

  The pile up at the intersection left only one narrow path for them to escape. It forced Troy to take a turn onto a major street that ran east and west through Vancouver. The section of road ahead had a median covered with beautiful plants and well-trimmed trees. It was one of the busiest stretches in the city of Vancouver.

  Right now it was in absolute chaos.

  Crashed cars, dead bodies, buildings on fire and growing packs of infected swarmed the living. Karen’s eyes fluttered from the constant assault on her senses. She coughed up a
few dry heaves. Her empty stomach begged to wretch up more puke.

  They drove another block when the back wheel started to vibrate and jump up and down. The noise hit a crescendo and the wheel fell off. The wheel was left in the center of the street. The axle grinded along the road and the truck slowed to five miles an hour.

  “We have to get out!” Troy’s voice was filled with dread.

  “What? We can’t!” Karen snapped back. How could he even suggest it? The thought of trying to make it with a child in her arms was unthinkable. Pile on top of that an injured wrist and it made it an impossible journey.

  “We can run faster than this Karen!”

  “Keep going! I can’t carry Robin with my hand like this!”

  A bus straddled the street ahead. Windows were smashed out and the engine block was on fire. It blocked the whole eastbound lane. Troy angled the truck toward the median. He tried to punch it but the truck was dying a quick death. The front tires climbed up onto the ledge and dug into the bark dust, but no matter how hard he pressed down onto the gas the axle could not make the jump. They slowly crawled down the center of the boulevard until they crashed into the back end of a bus. The front tires fought and dug into the dirt, but it could not gain enough traction to pull itself up and around the dead bus.

  “FUCK!” Troy shook the steering wheel.

  “Bad word.” Robin updated.

  “We can’t get out here!” Karen was losing it.

  “We have to!” Troy picked up his shotgun.

  Through the black tinted goo and new blood on the windows Karen surveyed the street. She spotted a beacon of hope. East Vancouver Police Station was written in large black letters across the front of the building. In Karen’s eyes it looked like a beautiful palace of pure white. In reality it looked like every other building in Vancouver. There was nothing really special about it. The main doors were two hundred feet back from the street and tucked around a corner. The whole building sat at a forty-five degree angle in relation to the boulevard.