The Infected

by Gregg Cocking

  Sam

  11:22am, May 18

  Feeling quite a bit better now after vomiting for a day and a half (for a second I did start to wonder if I had become infected). I also now know what it must be like to be bulimic – trying to vomit without emitting a noise is quite tricky.

  No news from Melanie yet although Owen and Johan have had an interesting day or two. A couple of the infected had managed to breach their defences at Eastgate, and after talking to Owen, who saw two of them being killed with his own eyes, I reckon that brain thing must work. He said that a skinny woman, who probably managed to force her way through the barricades because of her size, ambushed another woman who was on her way to the bathroom. The ‘colony’ as they are calling themselves heard screams coming from the bathrooms and sent a rescue team – Owen included – to go and investigate. By the time they got there it was too late, and as Owen says, Skinny had eaten so much of the other woman’s face that they struggled to identify her. Skinny had dragged the woman into one of the stalls of the men’s bathroom and was… feeding… Armed with a few cricket bats, a butcher’s knife and one or two skewers sourced from one of the many restaurants, the five men attacked. Owen says that the cricket bats just made her more aggro, the butcher’s knife made some deep cuts but didn’t stop her trying to defend herself (and her kill), but a skewer through the skull stopped her immediately.

  They had to dispose of her body over the roof, and Owen says that as soon as she smashed onto the ground, all the infected in the vicinity were upon her (in their slow, laboured manner). The next time one of the infected that made it inside, this time because “some fucking idiot” (Owen’s words) got tired of being cooped up and tried to do a runner and accidentally, or who knows, maybe on purpose, left the door open. This time they went straight for the skewer method and it worked again – the teenage boy who made it into the mall was dead within seconds. Owen told me how they had fastened skewers to broom and mop sticks to use as weapons, and then went straight for the head. I won’t go into all the graphic details, but they skewered him through the eye. It apparently made things a lot easier.

  Happily, for Owen and Johan and the people at Eastgate – and for me, and I suppose, ultimately, for the rest of the world, they don’t come back to life. They don’t reanimate. They don’t die over and over again. Once you ‘kill’ them, that’s that. I am seriously relieved to know that.

  Otherwise the Eastgate refugees are doing alright. Johan has already hooked up with a girl there and they are sneaking off into the disabled toilets every day (according to Owen). Since the infected managed to get in, Owen told me that they have stepped up their security and now have three people on guard at every entrance/exit point at a time, all linked with walkie-talkies (the beauty of being stranded in a shopping centre!) to a central “control point”. Seems like their little community is starting to take shape.

  I tell you, without my daily cell phone chats (still in the cupboard), I would be going mad! I wish I had more human contact… If there is anyone in the vicinity who would like to try and get to my place, you are more than welcome. I can offer shelter, safety, food. Shit, I’m starting to sound like Will Smith from I Am Legend. In fact, I think I am starting to feel like him too. But seriously, and I think that was the title of a Phil Collins album (another random musical fact, and don’t even ask why I know the titles to Phil Collins’ albums), if there is anyone out there who feels a bit like I do and needs company, get in touch. And if you are female, blonde, between 18 and 30 and have the body of a swimwear model, I will personally come and escort you back to my place. (Lily will know that I am just joking)

  Take care

  Sam W

  8:40pm, May 18

  Just popped in to check if that 18-30 year old blonde has responded. And you’ll never guess… nothing.

  Good night all. While you are saying your prayers tonight, please include one for my Lil.

  Sam

  1:58pm, May 20

  I grossly miscalculated my need for food... I have a packet of Mini Cheddars, one Coke Zero, two viennas, some mayonnaise, a breakfast bar, a tin of sweetcorn, half a bottle vinegar, three ice cream cones and some olive oil which I am definitely not going to eat. Shit, shit, shit… I guess I’ve been bored, and when you are bored, eating gives you something to do. I’ve also been so focussed on Lily the last few days that I haven’t even noticed my dwindling food supplies. What an idiot! You know what this means, don’t you? I’m going to have to go out. Out there. With them.

  Got to think. I’ll be back…

  4:11pm, May 20

  Okay, tonight I’ll have the Mini Cheddars, a vienna with mayo and two ice cream cones for supper, then in the morning I’ll have the last ice cream cone, the other vienna with mayo, the breakfast bar, and if I can stomach it, the sweetcorn. I hate sweetcorn.

  Then, I’ll go out in search of food.

  I’ll try my next door neighbour first – that idiot Steve. They’re away on holiday and their balcony connects to mine so I will be able to scope out any activity from my side before I venture over there. I’m not expecting much as the dude was an alcoholic and ate out most nights, but his kid stayed there with him, and although kids just out of school don’t have much of a balanced diet to speak of (three words come to mind coming from me – Pot. Kettle. Black.), I just hope that there is some eatable food.

  After Steve’s place, I’m gonna have to leave the safety that elevation affords me and go downstairs. To their level. The unit below mine is empty, so no use going there, and then below Steve’s place is the Myburg’s unit. And I’m not going in there again. So that means I’ve gotta head to the right (if you are looking out my window onto Erasmus Road). That means going closer to the gate, which means closer to access for the infected. But fine, I can do that. The numbering is funny in this complex. I am 18, next door is 19, below is 20 and their next door is 21. All good there. But then it skips to 26, 27 and 28 on the ground floor of the units to the right and 30, 31, 32 above them. After Steve the arsehole’s place I’ll try 30, 31 and 32. If I don’t get enough there I’ll risk the bottom floors. I say risk, because although I’ll enter their ‘back’ door which I’m sure leads into the kitchen, the lounge and patio of those units face onto the gate and guard unit of the complex. If they are standing by the gate, and if there are no curtains in the rooms, then the infected might be able to see me. So it is a risk.

  But I’ve been going over the figures of when and where the infected are active, and it seems that early morning and mid-afternoon are the best times to go. Maybe it’s too cold in the morning for them now that summer is gone? Or too hot under the midday sun at 12pm? I haven’t done enough surveillance at night so I don’t want to risk that. And also because it will be fucking scary and I’m a big girl. So I think I’ll try midday – they also seem slower at the hottest part of the day, so any head start or slight advantage that I can give myself, I am definitely going to take.

  I just can’t believe that I let it get to this. If… no… when I make it back, I’m going to have to ration myself better, makes meal lists and stick to them.

  Take care

  Sam W

  11:34am, May 21

  For a laugh I dialled the Mr. Delivery number to see if I could get out of venturing past my front door. Like all the other numbers I have tried though, no luck.

  So, I am preparing myself. I have, how’s this, got my nail gun from my long forgotten guitar refinishing project which I am going to take with my as a weapon. I mean, if you need to pierce their skull and screw up their brain, then what better weapon than a nail gun? It is pretty quiet, and set to its quickest, most powerful setting, I am sure that it will be able to do some substantial damage. I’ve also got plenty of ‘ammo’ to take along. But I’m not just relying on the nail gun, I’ve also got like a butcher’s knife thingy… you know those ‘blocks’ of knives that you get? The ones you usually buy moms for Mother’s Day? Well I’m taking the biggest, strongest two knives from
there too.

  Shit. Less than twenty minutes until I leave my townhouse for the first time in two weeks. Wish me luck.

  Sam

  6:09pm, May 21

  Sorry to disappoint you all, but I am still alive. And I have eaten so much that I actually feel sick. So what happened you may not be asking yourself? I’ll tell you anyways.

  So just after 12pm, and after I had surveyed my surroundings very thoroughly, I quietly moved back all the furniture from my front door. I stood there for a while, key in hand, not praying, not rethinking, just... just... I don’t know. I just stood there.

  Eventually I put the key in the key hole, turned it quietly (I had already sprayed it with a ton of my trusty Q20), and opened the door. I slipped out, ducked down and locked the door. I moved the metre or so on all fours to Steve’s front door and removed my backpack. I took out my screwdriver set, checked his door handle quick, and reached for the largest flat screwdriver. I had contemplated going over the balcony and in that way, but two things made me go for the front door. Firstly, I had peeked over the balcony and seen that the two windows were closed – I was secretly hoping that one of them had been left slightly ajar, but I know how much the dickhead hates cats (two have been found dead in the complex in the last eight months, and as his hate of felines is common knowledge, he is (was) the prime suspect), so I wasn’t holding out too much hope that they would be open anyways.

  Secondly, because the front doors of the upper level (well the bottom half of them anyway) are blocked from view from the street by the corridor wall, and because I would have needed to go through the front doors of the other units – now and probably in the future – the practice of opening the door by removing the handle, while not taking a chance of being seen and being so close to the relative safety of my front door, could prove to be great practice.

  So I got to it, unscrewed the door handle, removed the locking mechanism, and the door swung open. Luckily, like me, the false sense of security of living in a complex often meant that people didn’t worry with security gates, double locks, chains, lock bolts and the rest. I grabbed my nail gun from the backpack and crawled inside. It fucking stank. The cause of the stench? Bloody students... A half-eaten Debonairs pizza on the kitchen counter, luckily not a dead body.

  I shut the door, stood up and had a look around. The townhouse, a mirror image of mine, was your typical dwelling of two guys – one couch, no frames or paintings in the lounge, but a huge flat screen TV. (I know it’s wrong, but it’s in my house now. If they come back, I’ll give it back to them, honest). It smelt funny though, and that was apart from the maggot and fly infested pizza – I am sure that that was the way it smelt before anyways. Both of them were smokers, and you could see it by the yellowed walls (the overflowing ashtrays, I suppose, were a dead giveaway too). But I didn’t care about any of that. Apart from the flies there was no movement in the flat. I quickly checked both rooms and bathrooms, nail gun in hand, but apart from one sparse room and adjoining bathroom (porn magazines visible under the bed) – Steve’s – and another strewn with dirty clothes – his son, Jared’s room – I was quite certain that I was alone in there.

  So to business. I got some cloth bags out (plastic would have been too noisy), and headed for the kitchen. The fridge was, as I had predicted, a waste of time. There was no fresh food – and it probably wouldn’t have been too good anyways – but I did get another half a bottle of tomato sauce, some Italian salad dressing and two bottles of wine. Next I moved on to the pantry cupboard – almost a waste of time if I was only after food. But I wasn’t. It was filled with beer. YAY! I haven’t had a beer for ages! So earlier when I went back to ‘borrow’ the TV, I helped myself to two cases of Windhoek Draught, one case of Millers and a case of Heineken. There’s plenty left there but I didn’t want to be greedy. I guess having an alcoholic arsehole next door neighbour does have its advantages.

  After discovering this goldmine I turned my attention to what I had actually come there for – food. I rifled through the rest of the kitchen cupboards and managed to find one small area dedicated to food. I filled my bags with all the tinned and packet food that I could find – I got some rice, pasta, tinned fruit (I left the three tins of frikking sweetcorn), sugar, assorted sweets, and for some reason I also took the carton of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes that was there, just in case. It seems like the end of the world, so maybe starting smoking would not be the worst thing I could do. Sorry Mom.

  That was about it from the kitchen, although I did find some AA and AAA batteries which I slipped into the bag just in case. I had a quick look in Steve and Jared’s cupboards for anything which may come in handy, and added a couple of bottles of headache tablets from Steve’s bathroom, a few Steven King books (I’ve read all the books in my house that I had been meaning to read for years) and the Police Greatest Hits CD which I found in the lounge – always liked their music but never owned any of their stuff.

  But there was something else… I have left it there for now, but at least I know that it’s there. Underneath a pile of, let’s say, adult orientated DVD’s at the bottom of Steve’s cupboard, was another pile of adult orientated DVD’s. But under that pile was a gun. A glistening black pistol and a box of bullets. I had thought before that a gun would be a great idea, but that was until I saw one. It’s pretty frightening. I toyed with the idea of taking it, but in the end thought I would rather leave it there – it’s close enough if I need it, but not too close.

  So that was it from Steve’s place. I checked the kitchen window – he has pretty much the same view as me of Erasmus Road – and when there was a decent gap (only one of the infected), and he was facing the other way – well he his head was anyways – he must have suffered some sever trauma to his neck. His head faced to the right even when he walked straight, and it looked like a bone or two may have been protruding from around his neck and shoulders – I wasn’t too keen on looking too closely. He wore camo cargo pants, no shirt and only one shoe, and shuffled along as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders (I guess a broken neck would have that effect). He was seriously slow – a lot slower than the others. So when he was the only one I could see, and he was walking to the left so his face was facing the opposite way from me, I took my chance and slid my bags, which were already waiting by the door, out onto the landing, unlocked my door and slid in. After quickly unpacking I was ready to go again. Downstairs.

  After the cursory checking of the street I slipped out again and locked my door. I snaked my way down the stairs and paused when I got to ground level, my car still at the bottom of the stairs where I left it many moons ago. I chuckled to myself (quietly) when I remembered how one of the neighbours had complained and got the security guards to come and tell me to move my car from almost exactly the same spot when I was moving in – even though there was plenty of space to get around it. Now it had been there for weeks and no-one had said a word.

  I listened intently for a while but the only sound I could hear was a hadeda digging for worms in the small patch of grass, now longer than it had been since I moved in, next to the stairs. I peeked around the little wall and checked my surroundings. Nothing. No movement, no sign of life, nothing. The carports were less than half full – the initial main infection had happened mid-day, mid-week, so the majority of people would have been at work. Both bays for number 30 were empty, my first destination, so I breathed a short sigh of relief. 32, however, where I was planning to raid later, did have a car outside – a fucking Audi R8! In white. I almost did a sex-wee in my pants. That is (was) my dream car. I made a promise there and then to check number 32 thoroughly for those keys – it wasn’t the usual car that was there – if memory serves that was a black Renault Megane, but hey, finders keepers.

  So after making sure that it was just me and the hadeda in the vicinity, I made a dash across the complex road in a half crouch, half run. When I got to number 30 I peered through the kitchen window and saw absolutely no sign of life. I got out my
screwdriver, but in the end it turned out that I didn’t need it as the door was unlocked. I grabbed my nail gun and went in.

  Again, I was alone. This unit, which belonged to a Chinese couple and their young daughter, was spotless, as if it had just been used for a photo shoot for a lifestyle magazine. The dark wood dining room table had a runner placed exactly down the middle of it, and exactly in the middle of the runner was a vase of flowers which, I am sure would have perfectly matched the pastel colours of the runner if they were not hanging down from the vase, brown and limp. The beds were all made like hotel beds, and although the world had been stopped for a couple of weeks, I couldn’t see any dust in the kitchen, lounge or bedrooms. But then I checked the bathroom.

  Even just thinking of it now I don’t know how I didn’t throw up. I have never seen that much blood. It was on the floor, on the walls, on the mirror, in the bath, in the basin, and in some places, even on the ceiling. There were no bodies, only dark, thick, crimson blood and body parts. First I saw an ear. Then what looked like half a foot. And an eye. And then I slammed the door. I couldn’t give a fuck (then, but not a few minutes later) about what or who heard me. I was just... well, how would you be if you saw something like that?

  So I sat down on the Chinese family’s perfectly straight couch and let my stomach settle. I listened for any new noises but there was nothing. I was here to do a job, and my survival, not the person who had once been in the bathroom, depended on it. Predictably, the fridge contents were no use except for an unopened two litre Coke, a jar of pickled onions and a huge block of gouda cheese, and maybe predictably, the cupboards consisted of quite a few noodles – not my favourite, but at this juncture I wasn’t being picky (except if it came to sweetcorn). Other useful additions to my cooking arsenal included a bunch of spices which will liven up anything, plenty of biscuits, both sweet and savoury, some tinned mussels (not sure how those will taste, but something different for the palate) some chewy sweets, peanuts and raisins, Marmite, apricot jam, some more coffee and sugar (I seem to be drinking a lot of the stuff) and some frozen bacon, sosaties, chicken goulash and quite a substantial beef roast. All in all, bathroom apart, not a bad house to clean out. And then I saw it…