by Caleb Cleek
Heat from the fire had burned the bodies beyond recognition. There was no way of telling whether they were male or female. All that remained were charred masses that roughly resembled the forms of human bodies. Three were congregated in what had been one of the bathrooms. The fourth and fifth were laying close to where the back door had been.
When Matt and I had left the house in the afternoon, five adults, including Katie and Eve, had been there. Toby and Luke were there, too. We searched frantically, looking for the boys’ bodies.
Protruding from the edge of a collapsed pile of rock and brick, which formed the last remembrance of the fire place, Matt located what appeared to be the barrel and action of one of the rifles the boys had been carrying when we last saw them. The fire had reduced the stock of the rifle to ashes. I reached down to pull the barrel free and burned my hands on the sweltering metal.
Looking around, I found one of Toby’s shoes at the edge of the mountain of rubble. It was mostly burned. Somehow, enough remained that it was recognizable. Through bleary eyes, I started trying to move the remnants of the collapsed fireplace, searching for Toby and Luke. The intact pieces were too big to move and besides that, they were still too hot. Matt finally pulled me away, trying to console me. He had lost just as much as I had. His voice was too broken to be understood. His unintelligible consolations did little more than stoke the pain of our loss.
I slowly dragged myself from the house and headed back toward the jeep, leaving Matt alone in the grey and black nightmare. Halfway to the Jeep, I turned back and took in the sight of complete destruction.
That was when I fell to my knees and begged God to let me wake. But I didn’t. You don’t wake up from reality. All I could do was kneel in the dry, powdery dirt, and sob uncontrollably.
Chapter 45
I don’t know how long I knelt in front of my house. My thoughts were dominated by a single idea: there was no point in continuing. My family was gone. The world was destroyed. I had done everything in my power to alter the outcome. Nothing I had done in the last day and a half had mattered. There was nothing left to keep me here. The more I dwelt on it, the closer I came to self-destruction.
It was an end that had never seemed possible in the past. Now it was the only end that made sense. My subconscious was fighting against it, trying to convince me it wasn’t the solution. My conscious mind said it was the only solution. I pulled my pistol from the holster. Holding it in my hand, I looked at the contours in the moonlight. My decision was made.
Matt’s voice called in the distance and brought me back from my internal struggle, back to the world of raw and brutal pain. “Connor?” Only one word, nothing else followed. His inflection made it more of a question than a statement.
I didn’t answer. I wanted to be left alone in my pain. I wanted to allow my thoughts to run to completion, to reach the point that led to the action I knew was inevitable, an end to the agony.
“Connor.” This time it wasn’t a question. It was a statement. I ignored him.
“Connor!” This time it was urgent, a demand for a response. “Connor! Come here!”
I forced myself to stand and edged away from the abysmal pit of despair I was wallowing through. “What?” I screamed, bitter at being forced out of my pit of self-destruction. “What is it?” I yelled again, lashing out in fury when he didn’t answer.
“Hurry up. Come here.”
I obeyed his request in that I started walking toward him. However, there was no hurry. Each methodical step sent a puff of dry dust into the air around my feet where it danced in the beam of my flashlight. Matt was standing next to the two bodies at the back door.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing his light toward the corpses on the ground.
“I don’t want to look at them,” I said bitterly. “That’s why I was over there,” I said, pointing back to where I fallen to my knees in desperation.
“No, not the bodies, look at what’s next to the bodies. Look at the guns.” I hadn’t seen them earlier. There were two rifles laying next to the bodies. They would have been obvious in daylight. In the darkness, the flashlights cast too many shadows. The blackened metal had blended into the dark voids when we examined the area earlier. All that was left were the receivers and barrels. Like Toby’s rifle, the stocks and been reduced to ashes from the heat.
“There are two guns. So what?” I asked harshly.
“Katie had an AR-15 and a shotgun. This is some type of AK-47,” Matt explained patiently.
I knelt down to examine the remnants of the rifle more closely and rubbed the distorting tears from my eyes to clear my vision. He was right. The remains of the rifles in front of me were clearly constructed from folded sheet metal. The metal was in the rectangular shape of an AK-47. This wasn’t Katie’s gun. I had never owned an AK-47.
As I shone the flashlight around, it picked up a shiny glint a few feet to the right of the bodies. I bent over and picked up a spent shell casing. With the exception of the radius of the case neck, which had reflected my flashlight beam, it was covered with black soot. The case was short and stubby. I turned it over and rubbed my thumb across the end to clean the soot off the marking. The end of the case was stamped 7.62x39, ammo for an AK-47. It was the same caliber and type of weapon Curtis had fired at us earlier in the day. It was the same caliber he had used to kill the baby.
I looked closer at the burned body at my feet. The heat from the fire had shrunk the ligaments in the body, which drew the arms tightly to the chest and curled the fingers toward the palms. The guns beside the bodies didn’t belong in my house. If the guns belonged to the bodies beside them, the bodies didn’t belong in my house, either. There were now four bodies that were unaccounted for: two adults and the two boys. A spark of hope ignited within me.
I shined my light at the head of one body, searching for a clue to its identity. I methodically examined the body as I slowly moved the halo of light from the head until I had illuminated the entire body down to both feet. The fire had consumed the clothes. Small appendages, including the fingers and toes, were missing, presumably devoured by the fire. With no indication of who the corpse had been, I moved to the second body and repeated the process.
Closer investigation of the second body fanned the spark of hope into a small flame. The examination immediately revealed a small hole in the front of the head. Rolling the body over exposed a much larger hole in the back of the head. The body didn’t die in the fire. I wasn’t a forensic pathologist or medical examiner, but whoever this person had been showed every indication of having died from a gunshot wound to the head. Although, I hadn’t located evidence to support it, the first body had probably met the same end, a fatal gunshot wound.
I withdrew my phone from my pocket and dialed Katie’s number again. With the phone to my ear, I heard the electronic ring in the earpiece. It rang again. Just before the third ring, I heard another electronic ring. This one was faint and in the distance.
Matt immediately turned his head toward the sound.
“That’s Katie’s phone,” I whispered. We spread apart and advanced on the sound. After four rings from Katie’s phone, the sound died away. I ended the call and redialed the number. Several seconds later, the ringing started again. It was coming from the base of a tree thirty feet ahead. As soon as I discerned the origin of the sound, I sprinted toward it, across the uneven dirt and weeds.
The ringing quit before I reached the tree. Light from the still illuminated screen affirmed that my ears had been leading me to the correct spot. I bent down and picked up the black, plastic device. It was Katie’s. The ground around the tree was bare. Shading branches above had kept any vegetation from growing in their suffocating shadows. My flashlight beam danced back and forth, searching for a clue to Katie’s whereabouts. There was nothing.
The initial adrenaline rush from hearing Katie’s phone died away. I began my flashlight search anew, this time systematically moving the sphere of light from right to left and then m
oving back to the right again, revealing unsearched areas with each sweep of the beam. Three feet to the right of the trunk, the light was reflected by several shiny objects scattered over a foot or two. They were shell casings. I picked one up. The reflected light was too bright and the glare obscured the details. I held down the power button on the back of my flashlight. A couple seconds later, the beam intensity was cut in half. A second later, the intensity of the already dimmed beam was cut in half again. At a quarter of its original brightness, the light exposed the head stamp. Winchester was emblazed around the top edge of the end of the case. .223 Rem was stamped below it. It was the brand I used for my reloads. It was the brand that was loaded in Katie’s rifle when I left the house.
Returning my flashlight to full intensity, I continued my search beneath the tree. I found a second group containing three shell casings. These casings were much smaller. They were .22 long rifle cases. I picked one up. It had a C stamped where the primer would have been on a center fire case. It was the same mark that was on the CCI Mini Mags Toby shot.
My new found hope was no longer a small flame that needed to be kindled. It suddenly erupted into a blaze that renewed my will to live.
About the Author
Caleb Cleek lives in a small California town with his family. He enjoys hunting, shooting and spending time with his kids. He is currently working on the second installment of the Infected series. Feedback left on Amazon.com, whether good, bad, or indifferent, is greatly appreciated. Caleb can be contacted by email at [email protected]. Look for The Infected Series on Facebook for the latest information.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
