The Infected (Book 1): Jim's First Day

by Joseph Zuko

  “Sweet idea,” Devon holds out his fist for me to bump it. I shake my head and I raise my hand in the air for him to high five it.

  “Old school,” he raises his hand to match mine. I give his palm a solid smack. The power comes from the elbow. I really got him. His hand stings, I can tell, but he acts tough in front of me. When he turns away to secretly rub the soreness from his palm. I take the opportunity to do it too.

  I feel good. I am scared as hell to open that door and step out into the city. I realize I have one last thing to do before I go.

  “Bathroom break,” I tell Devon.

  “Yeah, I gotta take a whiz,” he puts down his spear. I lean my spear up against the counter next to his.

  “Dibs on the guys bathroom,” I move quickly to get there first.

  “You can’t call dibs,” he tries to catch up but it is too late. I jog to the restroom and catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I look like a weekend warrior or a silly yuppie with a new hobby. I get to the door first.

  “Use the little girls room,” I tease him. The kid rolls his eyes and enters the ladies bathroom. I can feel the Five Hour Energy start to course through my veins. It makes me want to run and I get very talkative. I had become addicted to these over the years and would take one before every class to get pumped so I would push myself harder and get a better workout. I finish first and head back into the showroom floor. I grab my spear and stand by the window and wait for Devon. I don’t see any cars traveling down the street. Maybe the police have things under control. Devon has finished and exits the bathroom. He picks up his spear and meets me by the front door.

  “Are you coming with me? Or taking off on your own? I’ll support whatever you choose,” I hope he comes with me. I can’t imagine fighting these things all by myself. He needs to choose. I can’t be the one that forced him to come and then have him hate me for it. He thinks for a minute or two. I don’t want to rush him.

  “I’ll miss my Mom,” a tear forms in his eye and he swallows hard. “but, I won’t miss my Dad,” he brushes away the tear. I slide on a pair of wide receiver football gloves and my new safety sunglasses. I hand him the matching pair of gloves. Why not keep this thing going and look like total twins. He slides them onto his hands. I hold my hand out at chest level. He grabs it and we bro hug. We slap at each other’s backs. His hand shakes with fear. I am scared too. I do not want to step out this front door. I stop hitting his back and pat him on the shoulder before I let go of his hand.

  “We’ll be okay. I promise,” I don’t know why I said that. I can’t promise shit. I have no idea what is out there, “you ready?”

  “Nope,” he slides on his matching set of sunglasses. I unlock the gate and slide it back. I push the door open, pop out my head to look around. That is when the smell hits me. The absolutely disgusting smell of the dead.

  “Goddamn it,” I curse.

  Chapter 6

  There is a horde of infected outside and they have seen me pop my head out of the door. We can’t hang out at this sporting good store all day. We have to make a run for it. Across the street is a German themed restaurant. It takes up a full city block and the outside is designed to look like an old Bavarian building. Between the restaurant and us it is clear. We have to move fast before the horde of fifty is on us. I take off running. Devon is right behind me. I hope I can keep up with him. I can see us getting caught in a pinch, if he has the chance to run, he might leave me behind. I am halfway across the street heading for the front door. One of the infected is on a collision course with me. He looks like he was one of those crossfit guys, always working out, always at the gym, probably a great looking guy before his nose was torn off. I hold out my spear and tighten my grip. I feel like a Spartan. I aim right for its ugly face. The blade hits it and is so sharp that it slides into its skull like scissors through paper. The body goes limp. This time I am ready for it and I pull the spear up into the air. The blade takes its jaw and most of its face off. I don’t slow down. I hurdle its body and sprint past the other infected. We run past my smashed up Mitsubishi and I take one last look at my friend Sam. His body sits like he is sleeping in the passengers seat. I wonder what will happen to his corpse? Will I ever have a moment to come back and bury his body properly? Or will he and Tracy sit there and rot for years before someone can clean up this mess.

  I get to the restaurant’s red double doors and pull them open. Devon skates in behind me and I slam the door shut. The doors are glass from about the waist up.

  “That’s not gonna hold.” I bark.

  The horde hits the door. It is a loud impact and we can hear the creak of the wood flexing under the pressure. The windows must be safety glass because they do not break. The infected claw and punch at the windows. These dead people look like starving orphans, pressing their faces up to the bakers display window, wanting nothing more than to eat everything that is on the other side of the windowpane.

  “What should we do?” Devon’s voice is strained. I look for something to block up the windows. There is nothing. All of the benches are built into the walls.

  “Run,” I turn and enter the dining area. Tables and chairs are turned over. People’s lunches sit half eaten. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the restaurant. We sprint by a table and there is a beautiful untouched sausage on a plate. I grab it, take a bite, and drop the rest on the ground. Damn these guys know how to cook a pig. We hit the bar when we hear the glass break on the front door. There is a large pitcher of beer on the bar. It is still cold, condensation drips down its plastic sides. I need something to wash down that bite of sausage. Plus I might die any second and that beer is going to waste. I pick up the pitcher and take a big drag off of it.

  “What are you doing?” Devon races into the kitchen. I slurp down two more gulps and then toss the pitcher over my shoulder. The beer splashes on the ground behind me.

  “Oh, that’s good.” I follow Devon. In the back there is a big door that reads “EXIT.” I stop when I see the gas range. “Hold on!”

  “What?”

  The monsters crash and fall through the front door. They will keep coming after us. No matter how sharp my spear is I can’t kill them all. I move to the gas range and turn the knobs on to high. There is no power to the building but the gas still flows. The gas hisses and the rotten egg smell fills my nose. I turn on each of the six big commercial gas burners. I prop the back door open with a garbage can. I pull the Zippo from my pocket and grab a cardboard box from the recycling. I light a corner of the box on fire. The horde stumbles through the restaurant. I stand back from the door.

  “Pull that dumpster over here,” Devon grabs the big dumpster and pulls with all his might to get it to move. The first of the infected have entered the kitchen. Their bodies mangled, torn and wrecked from whatever horrible death took their first lives. My cardboard box is halfway burned. The kitchen is full of the infected now. Devon has only moved the dumpster a few feet. One of the monsters stands in the doorway. I toss the box over its head and into the restaurant. I dive behind the metal box.

  Boom! The back of the restaurant explodes in a fireball. The heat on my body, even being on the other side of the dumpster, feels like I stuck my face in an oven. I peek over the edge of the dumpster. It worked. There is nothing but fire in that kitchen. I breathe a little easier. Maybe we can get ahead of this and the trip home will not be so bad. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and stare into the fire.

  “Shit!” I can’t believe it.

  “What?”

  “They’re still coming,” they look like the Devil’s minions with their black skin pulled tight over their mangled bodies. Six of them move in the kitchen. Why am I surprised, it didn’t kill the Jiffy Lube guys. They look lost, bumping into each other and into the kitchen counters. At least it will slow them down.

  I help Devon up from the ground and we run north from the restaurant. We cross the parking lot. There are a few cars parked back here. I wish I knew how to hotwire one. Another h
orde has gathered at the intersection. I step out onto the street and pass a sign that reads “DEAD END”. Shit, I hope not. The horde has spotted us. I really feel the Five Hour Energy in my body now. I sprint hard away from the horde. An older hippie couple has stepped out of their house and walks out onto their front yard. They look confused when they see Devon and I sprinting towards them dressed like hunters with homemade spears. Their look of confusion changes to horror when they see what is behind us.

  “RUN!” The man pushes his wife back towards their front door. Devon and I sprint past their house. I didn’t mean for them to go back inside. Their house has a front porch and low hanging windows. It is an old house from the fifties. Those windows will not keep anything out. I look back over my shoulder and some of the infected have split off from our horde and chase after them. The windows shatter and the man and woman call out for help.

  The sound makes me run faster. I am not used to running on anything other than a treadmill. This thirty-pound pack only adds to the pain. We get to the end of the block and find ourselves facing a steep hill. The ground is covered in sticker brush and weeds. We will never make it up that hill and through the overgrown brush.

  “Look!” Devon points. Tucked in a corner near an old garage is a flight of stairs. It is also overgrown with the sticker brush and tree branches. The stairs lead up and onto the next street.

  I duck under the first tree branch and get snagged on a thorny bush. It grabs at my pants and jacket sleeve. I fight through it, but the little needles poke through and get into my skin. Even with my soccer protectors on my arms and legs they still get me. Devon and I slowly get to the top of the stairs. My feet feel heavy, like cinderblocks, and my heart thumps like a heavy metal drummer, fast and relentless. I pause at the top of the stairs and look down at the infected. A thrashed UPS driver leads the pack. His brown shorts have turned black with blood. A waitress follows him. She is from the German restaurant. Her shirt is torn open and one of her breasts is exposed. Bite marks cover most of her bouncing C-cup. It is one messy body after another. They smash through the stickers and tree branches. Their horribly mangled bodies are the only things slowing them down.

  We have entered into a nice little street of pretty houses. I step out onto the asphalt. I am halfway across when I hear tires screeching on the pavement. A sedan skids around the corner and it is doing eighty. I lock eyes with the driver. This is it. I am dead. No way is this guy going to stop. He jams on his brakes. I can’t believe it. He swerves at the last second to miss us. His sedan smashes into a parked Volkswagen Bug. The parked car pops the curb and slides across the front yard, right for the set of stairs we just ran up. The Volkswagen hits the top of the stairs and it tips over. It is small enough to fit down into the stairwell. The car slides down the concrete and slams right into the horde that is halfway up the stairs. It pulverizes them and crushes their infected bodies. The Volkswagen knocks out the whole horde when it comes to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

  The sedan’s front end hits a pile of decorative stones that sit in the corner of the house’s yard. The sedan flies into the air and hops over the stairwell. The car comes to a stop at the top of the stairs. It blocks the stairs so that no one can get up or down them anymore. The driver’s side door pops open and a man in his forties falls out, landing on his back.

  “Damn it!” I can’t leave him out here. He wrecked his car so he would not hit us. “Come on,” I lead Devon back over to the man on the ground. He has a cut above his right eye and blood drips down his face. When I get close enough and see there is a wound on his forearm. “Did you get bit by one of those things?” He nods his head yes.

  “Should we leave him?” Devon pulls at my pack.

  “Do you live around here?” I kneel down beside him.

  “Down the block,” he points in the direction. I reach into his car, pull out the keys from the ignition and put them in my pocket.

  “Lets get him up.”

  “He’s gonna turn, right?”

  “Help me get him up. We owe him that,” I have my arm tucked under his. Devon helps me get the man to his feet. He coughs a fountain of black blood.

  “This is a bad idea.” We drag the guy, his feet only helping every couple of steps.

  “Which house is yours?”

  “5166,” he burps up more blood. We are a few houses away. About ten houses down from us is an intersection. It is a war zone. There are five police cars parked side by side and the officers are making a stand down there. A S.W.A.T. team pulls into the intersection and joins the other officers. They jump from their truck armed with assault rifles and shotguns. They decimate the ranks of the dead. I lose sight of the action, as we get closer to this guy’s house.

  He lives in a nice two story with a garage recessed into the ground. We are at the steps that lead up to his front door and he starts coughing hard. It is a violent, blood-spewing, hacking cough. We drag him up the stairs. He is passed out, might even be dead already. We pull his limp body up the flight of stairs and I bang at the front door.

  “Open up!” I sound like a cop. I dig in my pocket to find his key. The door opens. A beautiful woman in her forties answers.

  “What do you want?” then she sees whom we have in our arms. She cries out in panic. “Brad! What happened?” she opens the front door to let us drag him in.

  “He crashed his car down the street. He was still awake when we found him,” I tell her as we carry him into the living room and lay him down on the floor. She places a pillow under his head. Their place is well furnished. Beautiful leather couches and expensive artwork on every wall. These two definitely had an eye for design.

  “Please call an ambulance!” she begs.

  “It won’t do any good. He’s been bit,” she looks at me like I am the crazy one. She doesn’t know.

  “Lady, there’s some kind of infectious disease out there and if you get bit you die,” Devon says matter-of-factly then turns to me. “Let’s jet.”

  “Ma’am, I know this sounds nuts, but what he’s saying is the truth. It’s chaos outside. The emergency services are all down and people can spread this infection through bites. Look at his arm,” I point at the bite. She lifts his wrist. The clear bite marks from a human mouth have become green and infected. Pus leaks from the wound. It is swollen, red, and his veins are dark black all over his arm. It will not be long. I kneel down beside her.

  “Say your goodbyes, he’s about to change,” she shakes her head in disbelief with tears in her eyes.

  “What do you mean, change?” she asks.

  “This is hard to understand but I’ve seen it happen. He will die. Then he will come back. He won’t be the same. He will try to hurt you and anyone around you. We have to leave right now and I have to put the spear...into his skull.”

  She slaps me hard across the face. Where were my Krav skills there? I let her make full contact with my face. I deserved it. I just told her I want to stab her guy in the skull. My bedside manner is horrible.

  “Get out!” she wails. I stand up and rub my cheek. She really got me on the sweet spot.

  “Okay,” I turn away from her as she sobs over Brad’s body. I have to keep moving but if I go this lady is dead.

  She cries out in pain. I spin around and Brad has her hand in his mouth. Her bones snap and flesh tear as Brad eats off her ring and pinky finger. I lunge toward them and stab into Brad’s head. I get him the first time, but she is missing her two fingers.

  “We’ve got to kill the infection!” I pull her towards the kitchen. I step her up to the sink and kick on the faucet. I hold her hand under the water as she fights against me. Maybe I can keep her from getting infected. The wound on her hand is disgusting. Two white bones twitching in a raw meat sandwich.

  “Find some medical supplies and rubbing alcohol!” I yell over my shoulder at Devon. He tears off into the closest bathroom.

  “I know it hurts! We’ve gotta clean it!” Devon comes back with a cheap medical kit and a b
ottle of alcohol. I turn off the water, reach out for the bottle, snap the lid open and hold it over her hand. “Sorry,” I pour out a little of the rubbing alcohol onto her hand. You would have thought I bit another finger off. I cut my hand on a dirty chicken coop I owned three years ago and I put alcohol on that wound. It hurt more than the actual cut. “Get out a wrap and bandage,” Devon pops open the medical kit and pulls out the roll of gauze and bandages. “Put some Neosporin on it.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. It’s worth a shot,” Devon goes back to her bathroom to rummage through her cabinets.

  “I’m going to put a little more on to make sure it’s clean.”

  “Please don’t,” she can barely talk.

  “I have to,” I pour out a little more. I make sure I cover every part of the wound. “Fight through the pain,” I tell her. Devon comes back into the kitchen with the Neosporin. He squirts a large amount onto the bandage. “I’ve got to put pressure on your wound so we can stop the bleeding.”

  “Do it.” is all she can say. I hold her up by her arm because she wants to fall to the floor. Devon slides a kitchen chair over from the dining table. I get it under her butt. I take the bandage from Devon and I carefully press it over the wound on her hand. She passes out.

  “Hand me the gauze,” he hands me the roll and I carefully wrap it around her hand and wrist. I use the whole roll on her to make sure I have enough pressure on it to stop the bleeding.

  “Tape,” Devon tears off a few bits of tape for me to put on the gauze to hold it into place.

  “I think we need more,” I reach out my hand and take the tape from him. I wrap it around her wrist like a boxer. “Done,” she wakes up. Her face looks like she gave birth to a baby fire truck. “What’s your name?”

  “Colleen.”

  “I’m Jim and this is Devon. It’s not going to be safe here. Do you have any family close?”

  “No. Just Brad,” it takes a lot of effort to talk. I pick up the medical box and dig around in it until I find some Tylenol. I pop out the pills.