Infected (Book 1): The Fall

by Caleb Cleek

  I knelt down yet again to tend to another fallen woman.

  “Connor. CONNOR!” I turned to Mary and saw her index finger pointing at the first woman who had succumbed to the illness. Mary’s face showed a mixture of bewilderment and joy at the same time. “She’s moving!”

  Chapter 3

  She was moving. She was trying to sit up. Yuto dropped the ice bucket, which landed perfectly on its bottom. Several pieces of ice flew from the bucket and pirouetted as they descended and finally shattered on the tile floor. By the time the remnants of the ice cubes had come to a rest, Yuto was already by his wife’s side. He began speaking rapidly in Japanese as he knelt beside her. He put his right arm around her back and gingerly placed his left hand behind her head and helped her sit upright, He pulled her in for a tender embrace. She moved her head slightly and nuzzled her head toward his neck.

  I began to cross the twenty-some feet separating myself from Yuto and his wife. As I stepped across the bodies and toppled chairs blocking my path, I wondered what this meant. Obviously it was an improvement over the downward spiral of the past twenty-five minutes. But it didn’t necessarily mean we were out of the woods yet.

  As I approached, I could see Yuto’s face. In an instant, it changed from bliss to horror. His eyes opened wide, his cheeks and mouth contorted in agony, his lips parted, and a shriek poured forth. His wife suddenly bolted forward, pushing him onto his back while bringing herself onto her hands and knees. Her head was still at his neck. She pulled her head up and twisted it back to look at me. Her lips pulled back over her upper teeth like a rabid baboon. Her eyes were hollows of madness, looking in my direction but not really seeing me. They seemed to be looking right through me like a junkie high on PCP with a thousand yard stare.

  Blood and flesh were dripping from the corners of her mouth, down her chin and onto her shirt. The blood dripping from her mouth and chin completely eclipsed the blood that had previously flowed from her own body. Yuto was laying on his back with a gaping wound on the left side of his neck where his wife’s head had appeared to be nuzzling him five seconds earlier. Bright red fluid gushed forth rhythmically from the wound, spraying an area four feet in diameter with each beat of his heart. Mary and Bertha screamed in unison. No words were uttered; it was a purely uncontrolled exercise of their vocal cords.

  A snarl proceeded from the curled lips of Yuto’s wife, reminding me of my dog warning a neighbor dog away from his freshly filled food bowl. Like my dog, she returned her attention to Yuto. She dipped her head back down and closed her teeth on muscle and skin. She twisted her head, jerking it back, tearing another large piece of flesh from the side of his neck.

  The jets of blood had diminished. The scarlet pool was turning into a lake as the last of the life sustaining fluid slowly oozed from Yuto’s massive wound. It now covered the floor in a six foot diameter, gushing along grout lines until the flow hit a perpendicular line, at which point it spread out at right angles and continued its forward effusion.

  I was raised to never hit a lady and I never have. I have hit plenty of women, though. Let me fight a two hundred pound man rather than a hundred and twenty pound woman any day. My dad used to tell me women were hard headed. He made that claim without ever having tried to take one to jail. Deep inside, I honestly believe women have a reservoir of strength that is normally reserved for bringing children into the world. From time to time, I have seen a women tap into that fountain and turn into raging wildcats with unexplainable strength. You try to grab onto an arm and it flows through your hands like water. She is nearly impossible to keep within your grasp. When you manage to grab on, it is like a cowboy trying to maintain his hold of the strap attaching him to a crazed bull. Whatever happens, you better not let go.

  When faced with one of these situations, no holds are barred. I use whatever force I deem appropriate to take the crazed woman into custody and if that means bludgeoning her in the face with my fist, then that is what I do because she is doing the same to me.

  The beast on top of Yuto was no lady and would be treated accordingly. I leaned forward and caught a handful of her hair and lifted her to her feet and flung her against the counter. The violent collision with the counter should have taken all the fight out of her. If it took away even an ounce of fight, she didn’t show it.

  She sprang back to her feet as if she had landed on a padded mat and charged with blinding speed. She reached for me with her right hand. I clamped onto her wrist with my left hand and twisted it backwards. With my right hand, I grasped her right hand and pointed her palm straight up, which resulted in her arm being locked out straight at the elbow. Finally I moved my left hand from her wrist to the back of her elbow. Any pressure I applied to the back of her elbow put tremendous strain on the shoulder and elbow joints.

  With the leverage I had from her extended arm, I would be able to control her through pain. I applied pressure on the back of her elbow, pushing the now locked joint toward the ground. Even someone wasted on alcohol and drugs cannot stand up to this pain and will instantly fall away from it and end up on the ground laying on their stomach, which is an ideal position to apply handcuffs.

  As I applied increasing pressure, she refused to go to the ground. She pivoted around me like an ox pulling a grinding wheel in circles around a mill. She fought with the strength of a gorilla. I had never encountered such unnatural brute strength in my life and I have tussled with some beastly men. Because her right arm was on the verge of hyper-extending, she couldn’t reach around and grab me with her other arm. It didn’t stop her from trying. It took every bit of strength I could muster to maintain my tenuous control. I applied more pressure, knowing that she would succumb to the pain.

  She didn’t. There was a loud snap and her elbow joint buckled. I no longer had any means to keep her at bay as every tendon and ligament in her elbow was destroyed. Her arm now flopped back and forth with nearly two hundred seventy degrees of travel, like the pendulum on a clock.

  She howled in anger, seemingly oblivious to the pain she should be experiencing. Having lost all semblance of control, I grabbed her wrist with both of my hands. I took a step back and pivoted at the same time. I continued my spin and centrifugal force straightened her arm out. Her body was pulled to the outside of our circular dance. When my arms were nearly parallel to the brick wall next to the entrance, I let go. Physics did the rest.

  Once I let go, her body was no longer forced to follow the arc of the circle we were spinning around. Like a rollercoaster freed from its tracks, her momentum carried her in a straight path, a path that directed her headfirst toward the brick wall in which the door was set. She struck the wall with her face, but didn’t go down. She didn’t even flinch. She turned around and eyed me cautiously from fifteen feet away. Her nose was smashed flat and her left cheek bone had lost its curvature. Her lips raised in another snarl and I could see empty spaces where teeth should have been. She belted out another growl and charged me again.

  This time I stood my ground. I was standing with my feet shoulder width apart, my left foot forward and my right foot back. When she was almost an arms length away, I began a swing with my right arm. As my fist came forward, the right side of my torso began rotating toward her. My right shoulder went ahead of my left shoulder and the heel of my right foot came off the ground while the toe of my boot stayed in place, allowing further rotation as I pivoted on it. I aimed my fist at her already destroyed nose. It was the location which offered the most padding. This made it the least likely place on her face to break my hand. This was not the punch I would normally lead with in a fight. It left the right side of my head and body completely exposed, but this was not a normal fight. So far, she was impervious to pain. I wasn’t going to waste time with distracting jabs which probably would have no effect on her.

  My right fist landed exactly where I intended it to. With the full weight of my one hundred eighty pounds behind the punch, there was no way anyone could stand up to the kind of abuse I had just u
nleashed and she didn’t. She crumpled backwards, flopped off a table, landed on the floor and didn’t move.

  For about a second.

  Then she leaned forward, put her hands on the ground and pushed herself erect without effort. The best I could dish out hadn’t even fazed her.

  As she was coming back to her feet, my left hand went for my Taser. My thumb was already pushing the power lever up to the “on” position as it cleared the plastic holster. The yellow, plastic body of the Taser came parallel to the ground and the red laser dot came to rest on her belly. I pulled the trigger. There was a loud pop caused by nitrogen cartridges explosively releasing their air charge. The nitrogen propelled two metal cylinders with barbed hooks toward her. The top probe buried itself in her right shoulder. The second impaled her left leg just above the knee. It was a perfect deployment.

  Electricity traveled from the top probe, through her torso and down her leg, to the lower probe. Every muscle between the probes was confused into a full contraction. The massive contraction locked each muscle between the probes into a rigid state, leaving her completely immobilized. Her attention was diverted away from me toward the agony of fifty thousand volts coursing between the two probes.

  At least that is what was supposed to happen.

  She was able to reach her right hand to her shoulder. She clawed at the shoulder and somehow ripped the probe out, which broke the flow of electricity, allowing her to regain control of her muscles. She charged again.

  I attempted to take the spent cartridge out of the Taser and replace it with the spare, but there wasn’t time. She was going to close the ten feet between us before I could remove the spent cartridge, much less load a new one. I dropped the Taser onto the ground and brought my right thigh parallel to the ground as my lower leg raised up and straightened out. The bottom of my boot connected with her chest and sent her reeling backwards. Other than knocking her down, it didn’t have any effect. Whatever was spurring her on was too strong for me. I was no match for her strength and her inability to feel pain.

  I unsnapped my holster and grasped the plastic handle of my Glock 22. It was loaded with fifteen, one hundred-eighty grain forty caliber Speer Gold Dot hollow points, packing four hundred-twenty foot pounds of knock-you-on-your-butt-fight-stopping-power. As the pistol came up, I was already aligning the front and rear sights. When the sights were centered on the middle of her chest, I squeezed the trigger two times in rapid succession. She slowed briefly, nearly stumbled, and then regained her balance. She resumed her charge at full speed. I raised the sights thirteen inches and squeezed the trigger again. A small red crater appeared in the center of her forehead. The floor, tables and wall behind her were spattered with mushy pink matter as she fell to the ground with finality.

  Chapter 4

  I reached for the radio microphone. “Shots fired, repeat shots fired. The suspect is down and medical personnel are on scene.” I was feeling the effects of the stress. I could feel my heart beating away inside my chest, like a little man with a big sledge hammer was trying to bash his way out through my ribs. My hands were shaking and I could feel them beginning to moisten. My peripheral vision was gone. At least I hadn’t wet myself. A lot of people do. In the fight or flight response, the body dumps adrenaline into the system. The immediate result is pinpoint tunnel vision. The heart begins beating like drums at a rock concert in an effort to get lots of blood where it is needed. Fine motor skills vanish as blood is shunted from the small muscles to the core muscles. The brain shuts down except for the portions controlling instinctual responses. The body perceives that death is imminent and in a matter of seconds, it moves all available resources to where they can most effectively be used in the fight to stay alive. Anything not vital to that fight is turned off. The sphincter muscles on the urethra fall into the category of wasted energy and the brain tells them to relax and the urine begins to flow. There is nothing you can do about it.

  My training took over. I looked over my left shoulder and then my right, visually clearing the room. There were no other threats. My brain was definitely not working at its full potential. It was time to be methodical. My magazine was now short three rounds. I needed to replace it with a fresh one. My left hand reached for the bottom pouch on my magazine carrier. I unsnapped it with the blade of my hand and drew the fresh magazine out of the pouch. I instinctively moved my index finger in search of the nose of the bullet protruding from the top of the magazine to assure the magazine was oriented properly. It wouldn’t do to place it in the gun backwards.

  Once I felt the bullet, I pressed the magazine release button and the magazine in the gun dropped out. Rather than let it drop on the ground, I caught it in the palm of my waiting hand. I now had two magazines in my hand. I pushed the full magazine into the magazine well and slapped it to make sure it was locked into place. The partial magazine was slipped into the empty pouch in the carrier and I refastened the snap. In the unlikely event I shot the two full magazines, I still had one more minus three bullets. With a full load of bullets in the gun, I was ready to get back into the fight.

  I began to advance toward the insane woman who was now full of bullet holes. I took small steps with my knees bent. The small steps kept me from tripping since the tunnel vision prevented me from seeing what was at my feet. Bent knees acted like shock absorbers and helped keep my gun from bouncing. I wanted my gun steady on target in case she got back up. At this point, nothing would surprise me.

  She was still flat on her back where she should be. I walked to her right side and rolled her onto her stomach with the toe of my boot. I repositioned so that I was standing just above her collarbone. Her head was next to my right foot. I knelt down, placing my right knee in her spine to make sure she couldn’t move and holstered my gun. With both hands free, I grabbed both of her hands simultaneously and pulled them into the small of her back with the backs of her palms touching. My left hand held them in that position while my right hand reached for my handcuffs. Once her hands were secured with the cuffs, I rolled her over onto her back to provide medical care.

  I was pretty sure the medical care was a waste of time, but it is what I was trained to do. I felt for a pulse. There was nothing. I placed my hand in front of her nose and mouth and couldn’t feel any air coming from either. Her eyes were unblinking and her pupils were dilated. She was dead for the second time this afternoon.

  Suddenly, I heard screaming behind me. I looked back and saw Mary with her hands over her mouth. Her hands didn’t seem to be dampening the sound coming out of her in the slightest. I don’t know if she had just started screaming or if my brain had decided that hearing was suddenly important again and had turned my ears back on. Whatever the case, the screaming wasn’t going to help my ears stop ringing.

  Bertha was next to her at the edge of the counter. She was squatted down with her butt nearly touching the floor. She was crying hysterically.

  Steve was the only one at the counter who appeared to be in control of himself. “I thought you were a goner.” He walked away from me toward the corner of the diner as he spoke. “I wanted to help you,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “but I couldn’t move. I was standing there totally paralyzed, watching everything happen.” He interlaced his fingers behind his head and bowed it toward the floor, then pulled his elbows together until they touched in front of his face. Shame for not having tried to help was plastered all over his countenance as he raised his head up and looked back at me from across the room.

  In the face of adversity, some men rise to the top like cream in milk. These are the men who are born for action. They are the ones who win medals in war for acts of valor. When the action gets hot, their own well being is thrust to the side. Their only real concern is for the buddy next to them and the success of the mission.

  Steve wanted to be one of these rugged men and probably thought he was; however, when danger presented itself, he had frozen. It didn’t mean he was a bad person. He had probably envisioned himself as the one
percent of the population who were the shepherds, the ones who kept the wolves at bay. In those short few moments, he realized he wasn’t a shepherd. He realized he was one of the sheep. Seeing himself in a true light had crushed him. It was not how he had pictured himself.

  “Steve, don’t worry about it. It happened too fast for you to respond,” I replied, trying to assuage his guilt.

  “Connor, are you okay?” Lawrence said as he hurried to my side.

  “I’m fine. Half a second slower and I wouldn’t have been, but I’m okay.”

  “What was that?” he yelled. “She was dead! I examined her myself. How did she get up? Then you beat the snot out of her and it didn’t even slow her down!” he exclaimed.

  “I don’t know, Lawrence. She looked dead to me, too. I’ve never heard of anything like it, either. There is no way a woman her size should have the strength she had.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Doc Baker’s here,” Mary blubbered as she stopped screaming and started for the door.

  “Mary, stop,” I said. She continued to the door. “STOP!” I yelled sternly. “We can’t go out there. We have all been exposed to whatever they have.” I rushed to the door and blocked her way because I didn’t trust her to heed my command. She tried to push through me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “He’s right.” Bertha said in a broken voice. “If you run home to Tim, you’ll expose him to whatever they have. His immune system won’t be able to handle it.”

  Tim was Mary’s husband. Fifteen years ago he had worked for the highway department. He was on a crew that was doing shoulder work when he was hit by an intoxicated driver. The car propelled him forward into an excavator that was parked thirty or forty feet down the road. His back hit the excavator and his spine was shattered, leaving him a paraplegic.