Infected (Book 1): The Fall

by Caleb Cleek

  “Katie, we’re back,” I called out.

  Katie stuck her head around the corner of the kitchen and smiled as she walked toward me. “I’m glad to see you,” she said as she reached for me. I caught a slight wince in her face as she stretched upward to kiss me.

  She ran her hand through my hair and it was my turn to wince when her hand brushed against the top of my ear. The injury was small and the blood had clotted. She didn’t notice it. She did notice my response to her touch, though. Before she could question me, I went on the offensive, attempting to keep her from finding out I had been shot.

  “You’re supposed to be in bed,” I chided in genuine frustration. I had never met anyone as hard headed and stubborn as her and I told her that.

  “Don’t be mad,” she said as she angled away slightly, lowered her head, raised her blue eyes upward until no white was visible at the top and then stuck out her pouty lips. It was a pathetically sad look and it had its desired effect.

  “What I am I supposed to do with you?” I asked, trying to convince her I was still upset.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her visage returning to normal and cheery. “I wasn’t doing any work. I was just sitting at the table watching Eve work. I got lonely laying in bed with no one to talk to. Besides, I’m feeling a lot better. My rib still hurts, but overall, I feel great.”

  “The only reason she wasn’t doing any work was because I forbid her. She tried and tried to clean the living room,” Eve said, walking out of the kitchen and drying her hands on a towel.

  “Shhh,” Katie whispered to Eve. “I just got out of the doghouse. You’re going to put me right back in.”

  Katie suddenly noticed Cindy and Kimiko who were standing behind Matt. “Cindy, we are glad to have you with us. And you must be Kimiko,” she said, reaching out to shake hands. “I’m Katie. Welcome to our home. We’re still trying to put it back in order after last night. They really messed it up.”

  The truth was, it wasn’t that bad compared to what it had been earlier. Matt and I had buried the bodies with the back hoe. All the furniture had been righted and the broken sheet rock had been cleaned up. There were still blood stains on the carpet and there were still holes in the walls, but overall, the house once again appeared neat and organized. Eve had obviously been working hard all morning.

  “Is there anything to eat?” I asked hopefully. My stomach had been gurgling for an hour and I was starting to feel the beginnings of hunger pains.

  “It’s cooking,” Eve said, turning back to the kitchen. “If you would have given us more than five minutes notice, we would have had it ready when you got here. Now you’re going to have to wait,” she added over her shoulder, having returned her attention to the food.

  “Matt, it’s bad enough when I have to take that sass from own my wife, but now I’m taking it from yours too? A man can’t even get respect in his own home these days.”

  “Tell me about it. You keep that complaining up and you probably won’t even get your lunch. Trust me. She’s vindictive.”

  “Your house?” Katie interrupted in mock anger. “If you keep picking on Eve, you’re going to find yourself sleeping on the porch in front of my house.”

  “Matt, I can tell when we’re not wanted,” I said in mock annoyance. “Let’s go see Toby and Luke. At least we’ll get some respect from them.” As if to accentuate my statement, the report of a .22 rifle cracked through the open front door. The crack was immediately followed by the dull thwack a bullet creates when it strikes flesh. An instant later, another crack penetrated the room, followed by another thwack.

  Before I could ask Matt what he thought they were shooting at, a terrified “Help!” turned the room into panic.

  I was two steps behind Matt when he exploded through the front door. We rounded the corner of the house and saw Luke and Toby tearing down the hill behind the house. Two infected were in pursuit and closing the distance. Their path was going to take them past Matt’s truck, which was parked by the shed sixty yards from the house.

  “Get in the truck!” Matt screamed as we ran toward them. Both boys were emitting panicked screams as they ran.

  The face of the closest infected was covered in gore. Chunks of bloody meat clung to his neatly trimmed brown beard. Moving aimlessly through the brush had shredded his white button up shirt to the point it hung in tatters from his torso. His lilted gait was further hampered by the fact that he was missing the shoe and sock from his left foot. Walking through the countryside had shredded the skin on his tender, bare sole, leaving the foot a deep crimson.

  The second infected was an overweight woman in her late forties. She was fifteen or twenty paces behind the first. What remained of her tattered skirt hung just below her knees. She had lost her shirt somewhere along the way. Her disheveled bra barely maintained her modesty. With each step, her plump belly and bosoms rose upward as the effects of gravity were temporarily suspended. When her foot struck the ground, the effects of gravity once again reigned supreme and the belly and bosoms flopped downward. Momentum carried them past their normal resting place and then they recoiled upward, repeating the process again and again with each pounding step. Like the male, her skin was streaked with bloody scratches. She shrieked and howled as she gained on the boys.

  Matt’s gun was out of his holster and in his hand. As he sprinted toward the boys, there was no way he could hold a steady aim. He fired anyway. The hot lead ripped harmlessly passed the grizzled man again and again. Matt lifted the barrel of his gun, dropped the magazine to the ground, and inserted another as he advanced on the infected at full speed.

  The boys were nearly at the truck. The first infected was only steps behind and gaining. It was clear we weren’t going to close the distance in time. Matt suddenly stopped in his tracks to get a steadier aim. I ran wide around him to the left so as not to cross his field of fire. Once I was clear of Matt, I began loosing rounds down range in desperation. Matt’s pistol barked as I passed him. The lead infected stumbled and then regained his footing.

  I could see Toby working to put another round into his rifle as he ran. The effort was slowing him. He wasn’t going to make it to the truck. My bullets were kicking up dust behind and on all sides of the lead infected. None were finding their target. A red spot appeared in the center of the first infected’s chest and a red emulsion spewed from its back as one of Matt’s bullets exited. The force of the bullet rocked the beast back on its heels, momentarily halting its advance. It regained its balance and resumed its charge.

  Luke reached the truck, pulled the passenger door open, tossed his gun inside, and climbed into the seat. “Run, Toby!” he screamed in desperation, urging his friend.

  I was twenty yards away when I shot the last bullet in the gun. I released the magazine as I ran and it fell to the ground. I bobbled the new magazine in my hand as I tried to insert it into the gun and it fell to the ground, too. I reached for the last magazine on my belt. My eyes were still on the advancing beast. As I slammed the magazine home and released the slide, the beast’s head snapped backwards as the back of its skull exploded. Its forward momentum carried the body along its original trajectory even though its legs were no longer moving. The beast sprawled out on its chest and skidded to a halt in the loose gravel. It came to rest just short of the open door, having nearly slid into Toby.

  Toby stopped and turned around as I reached his side. He brought his rifle to bear on the rotund woman. His gun cracked at my side as I brought my pistol up. Before I squeezed the trigger, the female crumpled to the ground less than ten feet away. A well placed bullet from Toby’s rifle struck her in the forehead and proved to be all that was needed to fell her. Random impulses from intact portions of her mostly scrambled brain caused her foot to twitch several times before it came to a final rest.

  Luke’s terror turned to instant elation. “You got her, Toby! You got her!” he whooped.

  I started to scoop Toby up in my arms and he pulled back, digging furiously in h
is pocket. “I haven’t reloaded yet, Dad.” I couldn’t argue. His instinct to reload on the run had brought the infected woman down a fraction of a second before she was on top of us. That survival instinct and refusal to give up could not be trained into a person. At eight years old, Toby had it and I wasn’t going to squelch it.

  I looked the boys over. Neither seemed the worse for the incident. In fact, they were both extremely animated over the shared experience of nearly dying a brutal, gory death together.

  “Did you see how she fell when I shot her?” Toby asked no one in particular. “I dropped her in her tracks. She almost got us. Did you see her, Dad? She almost got you.”

  “She did almost get me,” I said. “That was quite a shot. Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked again. Shooting someone is a major ordeal. I was pretty sure that Toby wasn’t registering her as a person, though. In his mind, she was some sort of beast that merely looked like a person. I didn’t have long to continue my thought.

  “Oh my goodness! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Eve and Katie yelled as they rounded the corner and saw the four of us standing beside the pickup with two corpses within ten feet of us.

  Eve and Katie were slower getting out of the house than we were. They heard the same screams for help that we heard and they heard a huge salvo of outgoing gunfire without having the benefit of seeing how it played out. By the time they came round the corner of the house, everything was finished, but they were panicked. Seeing everybody intact didn’t help to quell their panic or stop them from fussing over their babies once they reached them.

  Katie slung the rifle she had been carrying and knelt beside Toby, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him toward herself. Toby was put off by her tears and the unwanted hugging, kissing, and fussing over him. He had just killed a man-eater single handedly. Katie’s concern was threatening to squash the attention he had been receiving for the man sized feat he just completed.

  “Katie,” I said in a hushed tone. She looked up at me and I shook my head back and forth. Whether or not she understood my reasons, she submitted to my request.

  Resisting her motherly tendencies, she stood up and took a step back from Toby, looking him up and down. “You are turning into a man,” she said. It wasn’t how she wanted to respond, but it was important for Toby to be able to focus on his accomplishment rather than getting caught up in the terror that had nearly befallen him. Since the time Toby was old enough to understand fear, we had tried to minimize things he was fearful of and not dwell on them. This was a prime time to follow through with that training. As hard as it was for her to do it, Katie pushed it aside and acted like it was not a big deal.

  Eve was not doing as well. She had wrapped herself around Luke like a piece of melted cheese dripping off a hot burger and showed no signs of letting go. She couldn’t control her sobs. Matt finally extricated Luke from her crushing embrace only to become entangled within her death grip himself. He allowed her the time she needed and did not attempt to evade it.

  I caught a glimpse of her face during the exchange. Black streaks traced the path the profusion of tears had followed from her eyes to the bottom of her jaw line. Each sob racked her body with a renewed series of shudders. She was normally a very strong woman, but she had been pushed to her limit over the past night and day. Nobody faulted her. We each knew that we were all hanging on by a tiny margin and it wouldn’t take very much to push any one of us over the edge as well.

  After a couple minutes, Eve was able to regain her composure. The sobs turned to snivels which quickly died away. Wiping the remnants of tears from her eyes further spread the moist mascara. “If we don’t get back to the house, we’ll never get that lunch finished,” she said in an attempt to shift the attention away from her breakdown.

  Luke and Toby explained what had happened while we walked back to the house. They had climbed the hill out back to look for something to shoot. As they neared the crest, they heard a noise on the other side. Thinking it might be something edible, they decided to crawl the last ten feet and try to catch it unawares. When they reached the top, they saw two infected on the other side. The infected were looking in their direction and making noise, but not moving toward them. They quickly agreed that Toby would count to three and they would shoot at the same time. Both infected fell without taking a step.

  As soon as the shots faded, they heard a rustling in the bushes to their right and two more infected charged them. With single shot rifles, neither of them was prepared for a second shot. They turned and fled toward the house. Toby already had a second bullet in his hand prior to his shot. He said he forgot about it at first. Later when he was running toward the house, he remembered it was still in his hand. He opened the bolt to reload, but dropped the bullet before he could insert it into the rifle. He got another one out of his pocket and loaded the gun for the second shot. When the closest one fell behind him, he thought he had enough room to make the shot on the second. Matt and I were witnesses to the result.

  Two things about the account bothered me. The first was that four infected had made their way to our property, nearly fifteen miles out of town. The second, and more problematic, was the account of how two infected had lured the boys close while the other two had lain in wait in the bushes, apparently waiting for the opportune time to attack. They had successfully set up an effective ambush.

  Chapter 32

  After lunch, we all sat around and talked for nearly an hour. Normally, neither Matt nor I would have sat around that long while on duty. Today, it was important to spend time with the family and help take the edge off everyone’s nerves. The afternoon’s events had left everyone shaken.

  After an hour had passed, I went to the kitchen and retrieved three of the vaccines I had placed in the refrigerator when we got home. I returned to the living room where everyone was congregated, holding the vials, a handful of alcohol wipes and three Band Aids. “Luke, you aren’t going to like this, but it’s time for you to get a shot,” I said as I handed the three doses to Dr. Kemp. “One is for you, Doctor, and the others are for Eve and Luke.”

  “What is it?” he questioned.

  “It’s a vaccination against the infection. The army gave them to me this morning.”

  “How many do you have?” Dr. Kemp asked.

  “After these, we’ll have five more,” I answered.

  “Connor, I need to talk to you for a minute.” Matt interrupted. I followed him into the kitchen. “I appreciate what you’re doing,” he said quietly, “but those were specifically for people who are critical to the survival of the town. Eve and Luke aren’t critical to its survival.”

  “I know what happened to me when my family was exposed and I thought they were going to die. Protecting your family keeps you functioning. I can’t do this without you. That makes them critical to the survival of the town,” I argued.

  He walked to the window and gazed at the hill behind the house before turning back to me. “They have very limited exposure here. Even if something happens to them, I won’t quit. Those doses weren’t meant for them.”

  “You’re wrong, Matt. They weren’t meant for anyone in particular. Those vaccines were given to me to dispense as I saw fit and this is as appropriate a use as I can imagine. They haven’t been exposed. This is a safe use of the vaccines. Anyone else we give them to could have had an exposure and already be infected. There’s no way we can know. Giving them to someone else could be a complete waste. Like it or not, this is my choice and I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Okay,” Matt nodded in agreement. “Thank you.”

  We returned to the living room in time to see Dr. Kemp plunge the needle into Luke’s arm. Luke made a gasping noise as air passed quickly through his pursed lips. He didn’t make another sound. Dr. Kemp pulled the needle out, replaced the cap and handed it to Eve, who was standing beside her seated son.

  “You’re all done,” he said as he covered the red prick on Luke’s arm with one of the Band Aids I had provided.r />
  “You’re next,” he said to Eve as he rolled up her sleeve and wiped her arm with the alcohol wipe. He repeated the process he had performed on Luke.

  When he was done with Eve’s vaccination, he turned to Luke. “I’m going to need your help, Luke. I can’t very well give myself a shot. I need someone to give it to me. Can you help me out?”

  Luke’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “You want me to give you a shot?” he asked incredulously. “I don’t even know how to do it.”

  “It’s easy. You just have to wipe my arm with one of those wipes to kill all the germs. Then you jab the needle in really quick. The faster you do it, the less it will hurt. Once you have the needle in, you push the end of the syringe and the medicine goes in. After that, you put a Band Aid on my arm and you’re all done. Do you think you can do it?”

  After hesitating, Luke slowly said, “I guess.” His intonation and demeanor indicated that he was far from sure of himself.

  Luke picked up the alcohol wipe and meticulously scrubbed Dr. Kemp’s entire biceps and triceps. He then grabbed the syringe and Dr. Kemp walked him through getting the cap off the needle. Once it was removed, he handed it to Eve. Luke held the syringe in his hand, staring at Dr. Kemp’s arm, as he silently worked out what he was going to do next.

  Sensing his apprehension, Dr. Kemp walked him through the process again. “Don’t hesitate once you start. The quicker you stick it in, the better it will go,” Dr. Kemp encouraged, sensing he may have misjudged what originally seemed like a good idea.

  Luke had been holding the syringe like a pencil between his thumb and index finger. Suddenly, he jabbed it into Dr. Kemp’s arm. Without releasing his grip on the bottom of the syringe, he placed his left hand at the top, gripped the flanges with his fingers and slowly but steadily pushed the plunger down with his thumb. When the syringe was empty, he withdrew it from Dr. Kemp’s arm. He took the cap back from Eve, covered the needle, and handed the used syringe to her. Finally, he covered the small prick wound with a Band Aid.