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

by Joseph Zuko

  “Fill it if you can,” Frank grunts as he steps out of the car.

  Sara looks over at the convenience store part of the station. “We should get supplies. Water and some food.”

  “I’ll like go with her,” Devon volunteers. I pop the door open and step out. My neck kills but I keep my head on a swivel. Devon and Sara climb out and head for the front door of the store. Frank stands guard by the passenger door. I slide the card into the machine and grab the nozzle. I watch Sara and Devon fill a basket in the store. The pump fires up and drops gas into the tank.

  A big truck pulls into the station. A rough redneck type is at the wheel. He screeches to a stop and rolls down his window.

  “They still got beer?” he calls down to us.

  “I think so.”

  “Cool. Shit’s gettin’ fucked up man,” he pops his door and steps down.

  “Yeah, shit is gettin’ fucked up.”

  “I’m gonna get me some supplies and head up to the mountains. Let this shit settle for a few days,” he walks by me for the front door. He catches a glance at Frank and puts his hands playfully up in the air.

  “Relax partner. I mean you no harm,” he laughs to himself as he steps into the store. Frank and I look at each other. He is as confused as I am. People handle crisis differently. I remember the famous photo taken during hurricane Katrina of a man toting a bucket full of beer as he struggles through waist high water. Priorities man. The gas pump stops and it is full. I put the nozzle back.

  “COME ON GUYS!” I shout at the kids. I look back into the store and see a man holding a gun on them and the redneck.

  “Damn it!” I take off for the front door. Frank is right behind me.

  “You have to pay for that!” yells the clerk. I step into the store and he points the gun at me. I stop in my tracks and put my hands in the air. The clerk takes a look at Frank.

  “Oh, shit!” the clerk and Frank have each other in their sights. The man’s gun shakes as he whips it from Frank back over to the redneck. The redneck has two cases of beer stacked in his hands.

  “I can pay, man. Calm down,” says the redneck.

  “So can we,” Sara points at me. “He’s got money.”

  “Okay! I don’t give a shit what the news says! I’m not getting looted!” the clerk steps back and gets behind the front desk. Sara walks over with her basket and sets it on the counter. The clerk puts his gun down and begins to ring her up. The second he looks down to scan an item the redneck bolts. The bottles of beer clank around in their boxes as he hits the door.

  “Stop you son of a bitch!” the clerk yells after him. He snatches up his gun and runs around the counter. He kicks the door and it swings out wide.

  BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! He guns the redneck down in the parking lot. He falls to his face and the cases of beer shatters on impact. We flinch and duck down behind the displays of magazines. The clerk leaves the store to check out his handy work and continues to scream at the man for stealing his beer. The redneck’s body bleeds out on the asphalt.

  “What should we do?” Sara and Devon have ducked down behind me.

  “Stay down and be quiet,” I pull out a knife from my belt. “Frank, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. The guy shouldn’t have nicked the beer,” Frank keeps his SKS trained on the clerk.

  The redneck slowly lifts himself off the forty-eight busted beers bottles. Blood pours out from his stomach. His eyes are black. The redneck has turned. The clerk fires off his remaining shots. He hits the infected in the chest. The clerk backs up quickly and trips on the curb. He falls hard to his back. The infected snaps his teeth and is about to pounce when its head explodes. The clerk looks back at the store and there is Frank, gun still smoking in his hand.

  “Shoot’em in the head,” Frank holsters his revolver.

  “Thank you. Take what you have in the basket,” he gets to his feet. “I owe you guys one.”

  Sara grabs up the basket of snacks and water.

  “Lock the door. It’s only gonna get worse,” Frank picks up a couple packs of bubble gum. We race back to our car and pile back into the Toyota.

  I take a long drag of water from my pack as I pull out of the gas station. I crank the wheel to the right and take off.

  Vancouver is all suburbs. Thousands of homes wrapped around shopping centers. As we speed down the road we see families scramble. Clamber to fill their cars and SUV’s with laptops, iPads and phone chargers. The housing development to our right is so packed on top of each other. The houses sit less than fifteen feet apart with no backyards. There is a five foot stone wall that separates their tiny backyards from the sidewalk. They are squeezed into tight streets and around culs-de-sac and in the center of it all there is a golf course. I hope everyone grabs their golf clubs before they leave. They are going to need more than iPads to fight against the infected. Sara and Devon load the new food and water into his backpack. They hand the over flow up to Frank to put into his bag.

  “We’re getting close,” I tell them.

  “What are we gonna do after we find your family?” Sara chomps down on an energy bar.

  “I hope we can ride out this shit in the apartment, but I don’t know.”

  “We should try and get to a Costco,” Devon digs into a bag of jerky.

  “That’s a good idea,” Frank re-zips his bag. “Tons of supplies and no windows. A big metal door that can be locked.”

  I weave the car past some newly infected humans.

  The road we are zipping down runs parallel with a big highway. It is gridlocked in both directions. In the distance is a swarm of infected people. They are marching down the highway smashing windows and biting the terrified people. A couple of people stuck in this mess try and make an escape. They drive up onto the median and into the emergency lane. Whole families are consumed right in front of us.

  I step on the gas and get the car up to seventy miles an hour. Calvin’s ride has a smoother feel to it than my car. It really hugs the road at this speed. The closer we get to the freeway the more infected there are on the streets. I weave in and out of the traffic. Both my side mirrors are torn off by near misses with small groups of infected. The bloodthirsty monsters race off the highway and are storming towards us. They are a plague of locusts that devour crops of healthy humans.

  “We have to get away from the highway!” Sara pulls herself forward with the back of my seat, her face right next to mine. I don’t have much of a choice. The intersection up ahead has a multiple car crash blocking the road. It looks like some of the cars tried to escape the highway and crossed the little stretch of land that separated the two roads. They lost control and crashed into each other. The street and sidewalk are totally blocked. I am going to have to turn right and head north.

  A car screeches to a stop on the other side of the intersection. He tries to smash his way through, but he only destroys his car. He stumbles out of his car. His shirt is covered in blood. There is a family in the front and back seats. He has a look of devastation on his face. He scans the chaos around him and then looks back at his car. The woman in the passenger’s seat points at him and slams her fist down onto the dash. The children in the back seat slap their little hands at the glass windows. The horde on the highway closes in on him and his family. I make the turn. He pulls a gun from his belt and quickly fires three shots into his car. All four of us flinch with each shot. Little clouds of pink spray up onto the windows. The last thing the man does is put his pistol to his temple and pull the trigger.

  “That motherfucker!” my face goes flush with anger.

  The horrible scene shrinks in my rearview mirror.

  “Would you want your family to turn?” Frank pulls out a stick of gum and pops it into his mouth.

  “No!” I yell at him. With every minute that passes in Vancouver I feel more and more agitated. Seeing how bad it is this close to my home fills me with dread. Even in Calvin’s mansion they were able to get in. Thinking about it makes my eyes water
up. I notice my grip on the steering wheel. My hands are trying to tear the wheel off the column.

  “We should try and find a farm to live on,” Devon says as he pops the last of the jerky in his mouth.

  “A farm?” I say over my shoulder at him. The thought of living on a farm has always been a little fantasy of mine. I know that the reality of owning and operating a farm is ridiculously hard work, but maybe with a group of people all helping out it could be possible.

  “A farm,” I say again to myself. I know outside of Vancouver there are tons of working farms. If we could get there maybe the owner would let us stay if we helped out. The more I think about it the better I feel. “That’s a really good idea.”

  “You know how to farm?” Frank chews his gum loudly.

  “No, but I could learn.”

  “I lived on one as a kid,” says Sara.

  “Really?” asks Devon.

  “For like a year, but I didn’t help or do any of the work. I was only six at the time,” she finishes off the last of her energy bar.

  “We could find a book that would tell us what to do,” says Devon.

  The little street we are on is lined by beautiful homes with big front yards. There are not too many people packing up and leaving these houses.

  We are so close. It is only a mile until my apartment. I can already feel my family’s arms around me. I can’t wait to talk to Karen, and tell her about everything I have been through today. I know that she will love the idea of living on a farm.

  “What’s that?” Frank points out the windshield. I snap out of my daydream. There is a roadblock up ahead. Men and women stand behind barricades armed with assault rifles. There is about twenty of them out there and they are dressed in normal street clothes. On the ground and street outside of the barricades lay piles of dead bodies. I hope they are only gunning down infected.

  “They don’t look like police,” Frank gets his gun ready.

  “Or military,” says Sara. As we approach they aim their guns at us.

  “We should drive through them?” Devon ducks back behind Frank’s seat.

  “They’d cut us down in a heartbeat,” Frank grumbles. All of the intersections we pass are labeled “Dead End.” There is no way around them and I am absolutely not going back to the highway.

  “Who are they?” Devon hands Sara her machete from the floorboard.

  “I don’t think it’s going to help,” she takes it anyway. They are set up outside the parking lot of a church. I stop the car. I stare them down and rev the engine a few times. A woman steps up to the side of the car. I totally didn’t see her. Blindsided like how the raptors take down their prey in Jurassic Park. Clever girl.

  “Don’t try it buddy,” she says to me. She taps the drivers side window with the tip of her gun. “Pull in,” she waves us into the lot. I am out of moves. There is no choice. I pull into the parking lot. There are more people with guns at the front of the church. Another twenty or so with rifles strapped to their backs.

  “Keep moving!” A man yells at us and he points to a driveway beside the church. At the front of the church there is a school bus unloading kids. The adults quickly move them through the double doors and into the building.

  “How did they get so organized, so fast?” I ask. We loop around the back. There is another group of people waiting, also armed with guns. They have ten cars parked back here. The cars are set up so that they form a half circle around the back of the building. They are using the cars as another form of blockade.

  “Get out!” a big man yells at us. He looks super pissed off and spits every time he talks. “I said get out of the fucking car!” he has a toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth.

  “We’re so screwed! The’re gonna kill us!” Devon opens his door. I turn off the engine and slowly climb out. We leave our spears behind. They take Frank’s guns and his bag the second he opens his door. They grab my machete and knives I have strapped to my hip. They do the same to Sara and Devon.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Shut up and get inside,” the big man commands. He wears camo pants and a matching t-shirt. He is over six three and all shoulders and arms.

  “Who are you people?” Frank glares at the big guy. He grabs Frank by the arm and forces him up to the back door of the church.

  “Follow them,” says a smaller guy also dressed in camo. He has Frank’s bag slung over his shoulder. I follow Frank inside. Sara holds onto the back of my jacket as we enter the doorway. It reminds me, I do the same thing to my wife every time we go to a haunted house. I make her lead and I hold onto her clothes. I really hate haunted houses and I do not care if it makes me look unmanly.

  The place is a hive of people working. They carry up boxes from a set of stairs that lead to the basement below. They fill newly constructed metal shelves with canned food and medicine. There are even more guns lining the walls of the room. They have medical cots set up with people that look like doctors and nurses running the show. The man with Frank’s bag walks us down a hallway. Another person follows the four of us and he has our blades. We are led to a door at the end of the hall. He opens it and turns on the light. It is a small room full of cleaning supplies, toilet paper and towels.

  “Give us your drivers license,” the man holds out his hand.

  “What?”

  “License, now,” he snorts.

  “Why are you doing this?” Sara voice cracks. The man reaches for the gun strapped to his leg. I pull out my wallet and he takes it from my hand.

  “I’m trying to get to my family,” I grit my teeth.

  “Okay,” says the man.

  “Please! Let us go! I have to get to them. I only live a mile away,” he shoves me into the storage room.

  “It is not up to me,” he takes the rest of the wallets.

  “Who’s in charge?” Frank demands.

  “Not you,”

  “How long are you going to keep us?” Devon whimpers.

  “That is up to Brother Paul.”

  “Who?” I stand right in the doorway.

  “He is the man that will decide your fate,” he slams the door shut in my face.

  Chapter 15

  The fluorescent light in the storage room buzzes above us. It casts an eerie glow, making us all look sickly and pale. There is no telling how long we are going to be in here. After a few minutes it hits me. We stink. All the blood, sweat and tears have made us a stinky bunch of people. I sweat a lot. Always have. In the summer, at work, I would have to take paper towels and fold them in half then jam them up into my armpits. I call them my “no-sweats” and they would soak up most of the overflow. They would keep my dress shirts from pitting out. Nobody wants to buy a laundry set from a guy with sweat stains from his ribs to his elbows. It only happens on warm days and under my right arm pit mostly. Days like today would give me the double stains and right now these puppies are working overtime. They are cooking up a super stink and my three partners in crime are suffering the worst of it. I pace back and forth which does not help with the sweat factory I have going inside my shirt.

  Devon is propped up against a wall. He has not moved or looked up at us since we were jammed in here. Sara nervously chomps on her fingernails. Every now and then she will get a chunk torn off and spit it to the floor. From out side we hear shouts and commands. Then someone will run up and down the hall. Frank has found a cozy spot on the floor and he sits with his legs crossed in a meditation pose. Out of the inside pocket of his jacket, he fishes out a pack of smokes and a lighter.

  “There has to be a way out,” Sara spits another chunk to the floor.

  “We’re outmanned and outgunned. They’ve got us for as long as they want us,” Frank slips a cigarette between his lips.

  “Why would they like want our licenses?” Devon keeps his eyes focused on the floor.

  “I don’t know,” I throw a hard kick at the door out of frustration. It is a thick chunk of wood and well locked. It does nothing but mak
e Sara jump.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. Frank fires up his smoke. He blows out an enormous cloud. Normally I would hate someone smoking close to me. Cancer and everything, but what does it matter now. The smoke smells better than we do.

  “You think they’re going to torture us?” Devon whispers.

  “Why would you say that? They’re church people!” Sara spits a bit of nail at him.

  “People in churches do stupid shit all the time,” Devon kicks it right back at her, “I saw this movie once. It was filmed in the seventies in Brazil. This church in a small town would give wine and women to the tourists as they passed through. Once they got them to relax and let down their guard. The church people would cook and eat them. It was so scary.” There is a burst of gunfire. We all shutter.

  “Damn it, that story isn’t helping,” I resume pacing.

  The gunfire came from the front of the church. Maybe it is the infected. Maybe it is a car that would not stop.

  “We should try and escape,” Devon aims it at me.

  “How?!” I stop pacing and face him.

  “I don’t know. You can think of something. You’re always thinking up how to get out of things,” he folds his arms in a pout. They didn’t get Frank’s ankle gun and I have my hammer in my backpack. I think Devon has an extra knife in his. A six shot revolver, a hammer and a knife versus an army of assault rifles. Great. At best we would take down the people that open the door. Then we would be murderers. I am not a murderer. I don’t want to kill anyone. I didn’t want to kill the guy in the Big 5. He pulled the trigger not me. My conscience is clear with that guy. I don’t want an innocent person’s blood on my hands. I have enough infected blood on them. I feel bad every time I kill an infected.

  Here’s my plan. We storm out of here stab, hammer and shoot the first couple of people. Then what? We would not make it fifteen feet from the door. They would slaughter us. We would be cut down in a hail of gunfire. Shot up in the backyard of a church. Why do I have to think of something? It is someone else’s turn to come up with a plan to escape death. My phone vibrates. I pull it out quickly. I am so excited I almost drop it. It is my brother.