Infected (Book 1): The Fall

by Caleb Cleek

  Tim took the whole thing pretty well, all things considered. He was the sort of guy who never sat still. He was always doing something. Losing the use of his legs was a hard knock, but he didn’t complain. He took up wood working as a form of therapy, but ended up being really good at it and was able to bring in a pretty good income selling the stuff he made on the internet.

  The problem was, he had been left with a weak immune system after the accident. The doctors couldn’t explain it. Before the accident he never got sick. Afterwards, he caught everything he was exposed to.

  Mary sighed in resignation, realizing that Bertha and I were right. It wasn’t worth exposing Tim to whatever was causing the sickness. If she couldn’t run into Tim’s arms, she might as well stay here with us.

  Mary kept the key to the front door on a purple slinky bracelet around her left wrist. I took the bracelet off her wrist and used the key to lock the deadbolt, disregarding the order on the door that stated, “This door to remain unlocked during business hours.”

  The bolt snapped into place. I pulled the key from the lock and placed the purple slinky around my wrist as Doc Baker was reaching for the handle. “What do you think you’re doing? I need to get in there and help these people!” Doc shouted to be heard through the closed door.

  “Doc, look through the window. There is nothing you can do. There are only four who are still conscious. Twelve of the others are already dead,” I yelled back.

  “Make it sixteen dead now,” Lawrence interrupted from across the room, where he was checking on the bodies strewn across the floor.

  “There’s no point in you coming in here. There’s nothing you can do and it’s foolish for you to expose yourself right now.” I briefed him on what had happened, including the woman we thought was dead coming back to life with unnatural strength in an unnatural rage.

  Doc Baker shook his head and asserted, “I’ve never heard of any sickness like this. Go talk to the four who are still conscious and try to find out when the whole group was first assembled. Beginning from that point, find out where they went and what they did. Ask if they came in contact with any animals or insects. They must have all been exposed at the same time for them to all get sick at the same time.”

  “That makes sense. I’ll talk with them and see what I can find out.”

  “Good luck, keep me posted,” Doc shouted and turned back to his car.

  The conscious tourists had all moved to the same table. Three of them looked really bad. The fourth appeared to be fine. Lawrence was halfway to them when he excitedly yelled, “We have another dead one moving!”

  Chapter 5

  I immediately turned my gaze to where Lawrence was standing. The second to die was trying to sit up twenty feet away from him. “Lawrence, get behind me,” I hissed excitedly. “We don’t know if this one is going to be like the last one.”

  Within five seconds, the sixty year old man was sitting up. He had the same lost look in his eyes that the woman had. His gaze seemed to penetrate right through me. His head cocked to the right and then to the left in a jerky, bird-like motion. Then he turned back to me and our eyes locked. Apparently, he could see me after all.

  He leaned forward and pushed himself upright. His feet were solid on the ground and he was sitting on his haunches with his arms hugging his knees like I imagined a Neanderthal would do while looking quizzically at something on the ground. The only difference was there was nothing quizzical in his face. His lips retracted as he barred his teeth at me. He tilted his head slightly to the left, still in jerky fashion, and snapped his teeth together twice. Click click. He looked past me to the left and focused his gaze briefly on the ladies and then jerked his attention back to me and snarled. Other than his appearance, there was nothing human about him. Everything I was seeing and hearing screamed, “Wild animal.”

  The dining room was a disaster. Chairs were knocked over and tables had been flipped by people desperately grabbing them for support as they fell. Silverware and glasses were spread across the floor. Some had broken on the hard tile, others were still intact. All had spilled their contents, leaving puddles of water and soda littered with cubes of glittering ice. Table cloths had been pulled from upright tables, leaving crumbled piles of checkered linen amongst the rest of the disarray.

  Lawrence clambered over a chair while navigating the obstacle course between himself and me. I could tell from his stiff movements he was trying not to make any noise. The beast’s eyes were still locked on me with laser beam intensity. Lawrence had crossed nearly half the distance between us when he kicked a glass. The glass rolled and bounced across the floor. Its octagonal sides made a racket as it thumped across ten feet, coming to rest against a corpse. The noise drew the beast’s attention. He instantly raised himself upright as he turned to face Lawrence and then sprinted toward him, bounding over the tables and chairs in his path.

  I have always heard that a man with a knife could easily cross twenty feet and cut your throat before you could draw your gun and shoot him. I had even seen demonstrations. I had no doubt it was true. Yet, I was still awed by how fast he moved. When he came up on his haunches, I had drawn my gun. When I saw him start toward Lawrence, I realized Lawrence was in trouble. The creature had crossed half the distance before I could get a shot off. By the time he had nearly reached Lawrence, I got three shots off. The first shot tore through his side just below his arm pit. There was no way it could have missed his vitals. The second shot was a complete miss. The third shot hit him in the right arm. He didn’t seem to register either of them. After that, I couldn’t shoot anymore because he was too close to Lawrence. Lawrence was running as fast as his large frame would carry him. It wasn’t nearly fast enough. The beast was approaching from forty-five degrees behind Lawrence’s right side. Lawrence was ten feet from me. A couple steps more and I would have another clear shot. The beast tensed as it prepared to leap at Lawrence’s back.

  Just before the beast unleashed its death launch, I caught Steve on an intercept course out of the corner of my eye. He lowered his shoulders and plowed into the raging animal, catching it in the left side. The impact resulted in both of them slamming into the floor. It was a perfect hit, one that Steve had never topped during the four years he started as a college linebacker forty years earlier. It was the kind of hit that left a scrambling quarterback in an unmoving heap on the field. It had the power behind it that could stall a blossoming career at its inception, leaving the quivering offensive player with permanent injuries. If it had happened on the grid iron, it would have been replayed endlessly on the highlights for years.

  But this monstrous hit didn’t happen on the grid iron. It happened in the cramped confines of Mary’s Diner and it was against an unfeeling fiend rather than a vulnerable quarterback. Before they even hit the ground, the monster was already twisting for position. He was reaching for Steve’s head, seemingly oblivious to the pain of two bullets from me, and the broken ribs and whiplash he received at Steve’s hand. It was able to cavort its body out of Steve’s iron grip in mid-air. Steve landed on his stomach and the creature landed beside him with the fingers of its right hand tightly intertwined in Steve’s dark hair.

  Before their bodies had come to rest, the beast was able to maneuver itself onto Steve’s back with its legs straddled on either side of him. Steve attempted to roll off his stomach as the creature used the handful of Steve’s hair to pull his head backwards. As Steve rolled onto his side, the creature’s head went down to his neck. Its head shook violently back and forth and then came back up. Its face was crimson as blood dripped from its mouth. It looked at me and snarled for the second time in five seconds.

  My Glock barked back in response as I squeezed the trigger. The bullet ripped a hole through the forehead and tore an orange sized hole out the back. He crumpled in a heap, partially on Steve and partially on the floor. I reached for my magazine pouch and pulled the full magazine from the top pouch and swapped it with the one in the gun.

 
; Back in the fight.

  Two individual scarlet pools grew together to form a figure eight which then morphed into various nebulous shapes. The pool seemed almost alive as it moved in one direction and then the flow shifted to another direction. As the edge expanded away from the two bodies, the speed of its growth slowed as there was more area to fill with each outward inch.

  I rolled the beast off Steve and gave it a cursory glance. I could see where the first bullet entered the side of its chest and exited the opposite side. The straight line would have obliterated the heart and both lungs. It was a lucky shot, but it wasn’t enough. In what I guessed was an adrenaline fueled rage, it had still been able to exact its fury on Steve, to whom I now turned my attention.

  I rolled Steve onto his back and picked up one of the discarded dishtowels. I placed the towel firmly against his shredded neck, trying to staunch the flow of blood. It was a futile effort. We both knew it was too late.

  In a gurgling, raspy voice, he wheezed, “I didn’t freeze up that time.” And then he was gone. Steve wasn’t a sheep after all. When it counted, he had pulled himself together and acted. His action had more than likely saved Lawrence. The cost of Lawrence’s life was high and Steve had not hesitated to pay the price.

  Chapter 6

  As I looked at Steve’s body, Lawrence spoke. “Connor,” he said hesitantly, “how many bullets do you have left?”

  I knew exactly what he was thinking because I had been pondering the same problem for the past thirty seconds. I started with three magazines holding fifteen bullets each and one more bullet in the chamber. In two attacks I had used seven bullets, bringing the total down to thirty-nine. I didn’t have enough bullets even if I only shot each person one time and so far that hadn’t been anywhere near enough. If I had to deal with more than one at a time, there was virtually no hope of coming out on top.

  The question that was assaulting my mind and conscience was: should I even give them the chance to get back up once they “died”? Just because two had gotten back up didn’t mean the rest would. If they did get back up, it didn’t mean that they would be violent like the first two. I was struggling with the moral dilemma of shooting corpses that weren’t actually dead. Whether I put a bullet in the head of the corpses around me or not, I definitely needed more bullets.

  “I need you to go to my car and get the shotgun.” As I handed Lawrence the keys to the front door and the keys to the patrol car, I explained where to find the button that released the shot gun lock. “I have a green bag in the back seat that has extra ammo. Bring it, too.”

  Lawrence nodded his understanding as I was explaining. Once he had the keys, he started toward the door. With my eyes still on the unconscious and dead bodies on the floor before me, I heard the deadbolt on the door snap unlocked and then heard the bells jingling as the door opened and was then closed by the hydraulic assist.

  As I was surveying the room, my left shirt pocket began ringing. Telephone technology had leaped and bounded forward in the past twenty years. Everything was digital now. Electronic trills, warbles and tweets didn’t work for me; I was born ten years too early to appreciate them. When they came out with a ring tone that sounded like the mechanical phone bell I grew up with, I gladly parted with a dollar ninety-nine and purchased it.

  I pulled the phone from my pocket and looked at the screen. It was a local number, but I didn’t recognize it. I started to decline the call, but for some reason slid my finger across the screen to answer and placed it to my ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Connor.” The familiar voice of Doc Baker greeted me on the other end. “We have a problem. I just got off the phone with my roommate from medical school. He works for the CDC as one of their lead researchers. What he told me is classified, but at this point, I think you need to know.”

  “I’m listening,” I encouraged, my interest piqued.

  “Two weeks ago his Chinese equivalent, Dr Chen, defected to America. Since then, he has been working with my friend at the CDC. Dr. Chen had been in charge of a secret Chinese biological weapons program. He had been told that it would be used as a deterrent to any country that may threaten to attack China. After fifteen years of research, he was brought in on a casualty study to predict the spread of the disease when released in the United States.

  “He found out that, unbeknownst to him, the virus had been purposed for a surprise attack in America since the inception of the program. That didn’t sit well with him. He had no problem with his weapon being used as a deterrent, but he had serious problems with it being used for an unprovoked attack. He was smart enough to keep his thoughts to himself, though.

  “A month prior, he had been invited to the United States Embassy in Beijing to receive an award for his work in combating measles in China. The meeting was scheduled to take place the day after the casualty study ended. He met with the American Ambassador prior to the ceremony and during that time, showed proof of the weapons program and its purpose. Five minutes later he was on a Marine helicopter and shortly thereafter, was leaving the country on a State Department Citation X. The Citation was met over the East China Sea by a flight of F-16’s which were sent to escort the plane to Osan Air Base in South Korea.

  “When the Chinese realized that Dr. Chen had defected and was on the plane, they sent two Chengdu J-10 fighters to intercept it. They launched a PL-12 radar guided missile from about 50 miles away. The electronic countermeasure pod on one of the F-16s interfered with the Chinese missile’s radar and the missile missed. The American F-16’s shot down the Chinese fighters. Both sides kept quiet about the incident.

  “Since they debriefed Dr. Chen two weeks ago, the CDC has been a mad house. The weapons program was extremely successful. They began with the measles virus which is one of the most contagious viruses around. They changed some of the genes in the virus so it would not be recognized by antibodies in people who had been vaccinated for it. They spliced in DNA from a heavily modified strain of the Ebola virus to increase the lethality. From what Dr. Chen said, they reached this point about ten years ago, but the leaders in the government weren’t satisfied. They wanted more. They felt that war with America was unavoidable. The military gap was ominous and they were all too familiar with the outcome of the cold war with Russia. Even with their improved brand of communism, they knew they could not compete with the American economy which would crush them in a war of attrition. They wanted to level the field and this virus was going to be the means by which to accomplish their goal.

  “As their research and experimentation continued, they did what scientists have been unable to do for years. They found the gene responsible for Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease. It attacks neural tissue and is typically fatal in less than a year. The Chinese experimented with the disease and, through genetic engineering, were able speed up the rate that the disease progresses. They were also able to modify how it presented itself. Some of the symptoms were done away with and new symptoms were created. A lot of what they ended up with was accidental, but it suited their purposes perfectly.

  “The disease is caused by a prion, which is an aberrant protein. Unlike viruses and bacteria, there is no way to prevent or treat prion diseases. Once you get a prion disease, there is no hope of curing it. An enzyme was created that catalyzed the creation of the prions in affected brain cells in the host’s body. It increased the rate of prion production exponentially. The gene for this enzyme was spliced into the virus’ genetic code. The effects are now manifested in hours rather than months.

  “Basically, what happens is a person is infected with the virus which enters his body’s cells. It inserts its DNA into the cell’s nucleus. The infected cell is tricked into thinking the virus DNA is its own. The cellular machinery in the infected cells begins cranking out viruses, thinking it is making something the cell needs. Eventually the cell is filled with the viruses that have been produced and it bursts. The viruses are released into the body and spread to
other cells where their cellular machinery is hijacked and produces more viruses. The virus runs its course very rapidly, spreading throughout the body in this manner.

  “Eventually, the virus reaches the brain where it causes neuron cells to begin producing the prions. When prions reach critical mass in the brain, the infected individual goes into a coma. Shortly afterwards, the body’s aerobic metabolism shuts off for about thirty minutes and the heart and lungs go dormant. Unless you run an EEG to detect brain activity, you wouldn’t know that the body is still alive. Somehow, prior to the coma, the virus creates a new, highly efficient pathway for metabolism without oxygen in the infected person’s cells. This results in the infected individual being able to survive indefinitely without oxygen. The body still needs the heart to pump to bring fresh nutrients to the cells and take away the metabolic waste, but as long as the body is not moving, it can go a long time without the heart beating. The new metabolic pathway still isn’t as efficient as aerobic metabolism which resumes once the individual comes out of the coma.

  “The Chinese discovered that even if the heart and lungs are destroyed, an infected body can perform between six or seven minutes of intensive movement before the cells exhaust their fuel stores.

  “The prions wreak havoc in the brain. They kill large clusters of cells, leaving empty pits throughout the brain. It almost looks like a sponge after the prions have done their work. Obviously, brain damage ensues. The damage seems to be consistent from person to person. The capacity for higher thinking is lost as is the ability to speak. An infected person seems to operate on an instinctual level very similar to an animal.