Infected- The Beginning

by Perry Stevenson

  “And I’ll help,” said Josephine.

  I left them looking out through the cracks in the curtains at both sides of the window as I went into the kitchen.

  John had already cut the Sellotape that had sealed the Ruger box, and we checked the contents: one .22LR semi-automatic with a 16.5-inch barrel, one ten-shot magazine, an instruction manual, a small yellow flag that fit into the barrel to indicate the gun was not loaded, and a specially designed padlock and tool for locking the action. Also supplied was a scope rail, which could be affixed to the rifle to allow you to fit a telescopic sight or other sighting device. The rifle was fitted with open sights and only weighed about five pounds. I started reading the manual first, which was not too difficult at all, and then continued with cleaning.

  Then Mary’s voice stopped us in our tracks.

  “There are some people wandering about in the close,” she said.

  “Do they look infected?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure – come and look.”

  John and I ran into the living room, John going to the right side of the window and I to the left.

  “I can’t see them,” said John.

  “I can – they’re in the road outside number 33,” I replied.

  Then there was a shout, which seemed to come from the top of the close. It was Andy’s son, Matthew, who was grabbed by someone, but I could not see very well because of the hedge at number 43.

  “Can you see what’s going on, John?” I asked, as he had a much better view from his position.

  “Yes … Matthew is being attacked by one of the infected. Woah! – he just gave the attacker a right hook, and the bloke fell to the ground but has now grabbed Matthew’s leg.”

  At that point Andy from next door came into view holding a baseball bat, having recognised his son’s voice. He could not have seen anything from his position. Matthew had managed to clear the hedge even though an infected person was still holding on to his leg. Now I could see clearly. Oh no! – the other two people we had seen earlier by number 33 were heading straight for Matthew. Andy intercepted the closer one and hit him on the head with the bat. Jesus! – blood went everywhere as the infected fell to the ground. Andy’s other son, Nick, had reached the one attached to Matthew’s leg and started kicking him in the ribs. Andy had also reached him and delivered a hefty blow to the head with the baseball bat. The infected let go of Matthew’s leg, but the other one grabbed him, biting him on the shoulder. His father turned his attention to him, but he could not use the baseball bat as he was much too close to Matthew, so he grabbed him around the neck and started to pull him off.

  What we did not see was the other five infected who appeared from behind number 43’s hedge. Nick cried out as a woman bit into his arm and a man grabbed him from behind and bit him in the neck. Nick fell to the ground with the infected on top of him. Andy had managed to prise the infected from Matthew, and turned him round and threw him to the ground. Picking up the baseball bat, he gave an almighty blow to the infected’s head, crushing his skull completely, causing blood and brains to go in all directions. Unfortunately, this had taken Andy’s attention away from Matthew, who had now been grabbed by two more of the five infected. Matthew was partly in shock as one bit him in the arm and the other grabbed him about the neck while sinking his teeth into Matthew’s other shoulder. Matthew cried out and dropped to the ground. The last of the five infected grabbed Andy from behind. Amazingly, the first infected person that Andy had hit was back on his feet and attacked him from the front.

  Now another ten to twelve infected were entering the close, the majority of them attacking Andy, who fell to the ground with blood oozing from torn flesh on his arms and neck. We lost sight of Andy and his sons, for they had now disappeared into a pile of writhing bodies. Eventually, the infected stopped their attack, got to their feet and started milling around the close. Andy and his sons appeared to be still alive, as we could see some of their limbs moving. The four of us just stared in complete silence from our position of relative safety, totally shocked by what we had witnessed.

  John eventually broke the silence, speaking very quietly.

  “That’s new,” he said in his usual unflappable manner.

  “We should try to help them,” said Mary.

  “There are too many infected,” I replied. “Besides, Andy and his sons are infected now.” After a pause, I continued, “Right, that’s it then. John, let’s finish checking the guns out.”

  “Good idea,” he replied.

  “It’s nearly eight o’clock. Let’s watch the news,” said Josephine.

  “Yes, but keep the volume down low – we don’t want to attract any unwelcome attention,” I said.

  Mary turned the TV on, saying, “I’ll give you a call when the news comes on”.

  John and I started to open the box containing the last of the rifles – the Ruger 10/22 target model. This had a 20-inch stainless-steel heavy barrel, but there were no sights fitted to this model so we would have to fit the telescopic sight using the scope rail provided. This model came with the same accessories as the tactical version, and after checking the box all seemed to be in order.

  We didn’t get any further, as Mary interrupted.

  “The news is coming on now, James.”

  John and I went back into the living room. The emergency notice appeared on the screen and then the broadcaster.

  “Good evening,” he started. “There has been no improvement in the situation – in fact the disease has spread to the more remote parts of the British Isles.” He then read out the government notice as before, but this time it added the fact that the infected were now moving out of the cities in groups of 30 to 50, seemingly trying to infect the surrounding areas. Once this had been achieved, they would move on to more favourable areas.

  “You can find more details and up-to-date information on our website,” said the newsreader, giving out the BBC’s online address. “Our next main news update will be at 10.00 pm. Please be safe, and goodbye for now.”

  The screen then went blank.

  John broke the silence.

  “Well, not much different from what we know already.”

  “Let’s finish off the last Ruger, John,” I said. “A cup of tea and something to eat would be good.”

  “I’ll make the tea,” Josephine volunteered.

  “I’ll make some sandwiches,” said Mary.

  “I will help you, Mum, when I’ve made the tea,” added Josephine.

  John continued the maintenance on the Ruger target rifle, while I unpacked the scope and the additional magazines we had purchased. By the time I had finished, John was ready to fit the telescopic sight, which was done in less than five minutes. The problem was that it needed to be zeroed, and the tactical Ruger’s sights also needed to be checked. You cannot just fit a scope to a rifle and expect it to be pointing in the same direction as the barrel. That is why scopes have vertical and horizontal adjusting turrets.

  “John and I will take the SAK silencer off the air rifle and fit it to the Ruger,” I said. “If we use the subsonic ammo we have, it should be quiet enough to try out in the garden, and a twenty-yard zero should be OK out to about fifty yards, plus we will find out if the gun is functioning correctly.”

  “We would need the infected to leave the close first,” commented John.

  “I’ll keep watch through the curtains while you two have your tea and eat some sandwiches,” Mary interrupted.

  That cup of tea must have been the best I had tasted in a long time and the ham-and-cheese sandwiches were excellent. Josephine was also peeking through the curtains.

  “I can hear screams, and they seem to be coming from the village hall,” she said.

  The village hall was on the other side of the main road from us, about 300 yards away.

  “The infected are leaving,” announced Ma
ry.

  I quickly got out of the armchair where I had been eating and peeked through the curtains. Yes, they were indeed going.

  “Ooh, look – Andy and his two sons are going with them,” said Josephine.

  Soon they had all gone, leaving one body lying in the middle of the road. It was the one infected Andy had hit so hard that he had crushed its skull.

  “Right, John, let’s sight the Rugers in,” I said.

  John picked up a 50-round box of the subsonic .22s and the ten-shot magazine and we both went into the kitchen, where we had left the rifle on the table. We fitted a target to a phone book and then embedded it into the three-foot-high bank at the bottom the garden, so if we missed the bullets would disappear into the dirt. After mastering the technique of how to load the magazine, we managed to zero the scope without too much difficulty. More importantly, the rifle functioned flawlessly. We then put a few shots through the tactical Ruger; the open sights were near enough spot on and again it functioned correctly. We could not try out the shotguns, as an almighty “boom” would have attracted too much attention.

  It was now starting to get dark. We could still hear screams and shouting in the distance, and occasionally a much louder scream would pierce the otherwise tranquil late-spring evening. We were all beginning to get a little scared as night began to fall over our small village.

  “John, have a look on the Internet and see if you can get any further information,” I said, breaking the silence that had fallen across the room.

  “I’ll have a look on YouTube and see if anybody has posted any videos,” he replied. “We could at least see how other countries are coping.”

  John sat in the armchair and fired up his laptop, and within a short time he was on YouTube searching for videos linked to the disease.

  “There are loads on here, going back about three days,” he said.

  “Mary, perhaps you can contact your sisters on Skype,” I suggested.

  “OK, I’ll try.”

  I sat with John as he started to view some of the videos. The most interesting one was from America, showing a police officer being attacked by five infected people. He started firing his pistol at them but, although he was obviously hitting them in the chest area, only one of them went down. He eventually ran out of bullets, and while trying to load another magazine the other four infected were about to get hold of him – they were only 10 to 15 feet away – when a man came out of a house brandishing a pump-action shotgun. He must have been only 20 feet away, and waved at whoever was filming to indicate he should move to his left as the infected were approaching from the right. He then pointed the shotgun and fired. He was at a 90-degree angle to the infected, so it must have appeared to him that they were in a ragged line. The head of the infected nearest to him nigh-on exploded and the one next to him was also hit; both fell to the ground. Another two shots rang out in quick succession, which took care of the remaining two, both hit in the head.

  “Wow, so shooting them in the head seems to be more of a sure thing,” John remarked.

  “Does look that way,” I replied. “But when push comes to shove, so to speak, could you kill another person? These infected are still alive, after all – they’re not zombies.”

  “I have Cher on Skype,” Mary called out. This was not a famous singer, as in Cher or Cher Lloyd – Mary’s sister just had the same name. She lived in a small town in Arizona. John and I went into the kitchen, where Cher’s worried face dominated the screen on Mary’s Notebook. We joined the conversion after they had finished the customary greetings.

  “How you doing out there, Cher – have you seen any sign of this disease yet?” Mary asked.

  “No, not in our town, but it’s all over Fox News. It appears to have taken hold in the big cities but it’s being slowed down in the more rural communities, mainly due to the fact that the gun laws over here are not so strict. Once you get into the countryside most people seem to have some sort of weapon – in fact my next-door neighbour has given me a nine-millimetre Glock pistol and ammunition so I can protect myself. What is it like in the UK?”

  “You’re lucky – six of our neighbours have been killed, three of them outside our front door,” said Mary.

  “My God! How did that happen?”

  Mary gave Cher a more detailed description of events near us.

  “It’s nearly ten o’clock,” I said to John. “Let’s see if we can get the latest news.”

  We left Mary and Josephine chatting to Cher on Skype, and went back into the living room. John turned on the TV, just in time to see the newsreader appear.

  “According to the latest from government sources, it appears it has been impossible to stop the disease from spreading. Most main towns have been completely overrun by infected people, but it is expected that there will be pockets of survivors who have managed to lock themselves into their own homes. There is a report that a few London pubs have managed to barricade themselves in with the help of their customers.

  “The only other directive we have received from the government is to warn everybody not to go in to work tomorrow. The armed forces are helping to maintain power supplies. The next broadcast will be at midnight.”

  Mary had finished speaking with Cher and was now trying, unsuccessfully, to contact her second sister, Clare, in Portugal.

  “I’ll try to contact Diane,” said Mary, picking up the phone to speak to her other sister, who lived in Gillingham in Kent.

  I could hear the phone making a connection, then a distant “Hello” – Diane was whispering.

  “Is everything OK?” Mary asked. “Why are you whispering?”

  The rest of us could not hear what Diane was saying, but Mary relayed the gist.

  “One of her neighbours has been attacked in the street and there are about fifty infected people milling around outside. Some of them have gone inside the neighbour’s house.” Mary paused for a few seconds before continuing, “She can hear screams, shouts and banging noises coming from next door. … She said something just hit the party wall very hard. … Her husband is trying to block up the windows and the front and back doors with bits of wood from that old wardrobe, which they’ve broken up, but he has only done the front door and one of the windows so far.”

  “Tell them to keep out of sight and don’t make any noise,” I said. Mary repeated this to Diane. “And tell them to keep some sort of weapon handy, just in case,” I added.

  Then I could hear what sounded like an electric drill coming down the phone line.

  “What part of ‘don’t make any noise’ did they not understand?” I said.

  “Be quiet!” Mary said forcefully into the phone.

  Then I heard glass breaking, and Diane’s scream.

  “They’re in their house!” Mary said in a voice bordering on hysteria. “Diane said they had broken the large front window and climbed in, then I was cut off.”

  Mary stared at me, hoping I would have a solution.

  “There’s nothing we can do, just hope they’re OK – they may be able to retreat upstairs and block themselves in,” I said, trying to give Mary some hope that her sister and brother-in-law might survive. Gillingham was an hour’s drive from us, on a good day. But now I was more worried about our two daughters.

  “John, I just had a thought about the upstairs thing I mentioned. Perhaps tomorrow we can try to make up something so we can block the stairs to form a fallback area upstairs.”

  “Hmm … I think I may have an idea, but we will have to see what types of wood we have left,” replied John.

  “I’m going to try Mick next,” said Mary, referring to her older brother, who lived in Thetford in Norfolk. A few moments later, she continued, “No answer on their home phone. I’ll try his mobile. … It’s ringing! … Hello, Mick. You OK? Where are you? … I might have known it, June is with you.” Mary turned to me as she spoke the
last few words and, while still listening on the phone, continued, “James, you’ll never guess where they are!” I didn’t get a chance to answer. “They’re stranded in their local pub!”

  “Yeah, well, Mick won’t be too disappointed,” I said. He did like a drink.

  “The disease has spread all over Thetford,” Mary continued. “They’re safe for now, locked in the pub, and have plenty to eat and drink.”

  Smiling, I said “I suppose they would have – Mick must be in his element”.

  Mary wished them well and ended the call. We then had a general chat about what had happened during that day. At various points in our discussion, we took turns to peer through the curtain, but none of us saw any movement, although we could still hear shouting and the occasional high-pitched scream in the distance. The people at number 29 had still not arrived home.

  John and I started loading the five .22LR magazines ready for the next day, as well as the semi-auto shotguns just in case something happened during the night. I also brought down from the loft my O/U shotgun, which I had owned for more than 40 years, to use as backup. It had been a long and harrowing day, so we all decided to go to bed at just past midnight.

  Mary and I lay in bed together listening to the screams and shouts in the distance. Occasionally there would be a more ear-piecing scream that seemed closer than the rest. May their God help them, I thought, as I knew they had also become infected. We lay there in silence, listening to the sounds of the night, neither one of us able to sleep. The last time I looked at the clock, it was 2.00 am and the night sounds had turned into an uneasy silence.

  Day Three

  Wednesday 14 May 2014

  “James, are you getting up? It’s nearly eight o’clock and the news will be on shortly,” said Mary.

  I was not fully conscious when I responded, “What? Err, what’s happened? … Yes, the news, yes,” I said finally, recalling the events of the day before.

  I got dressed and went downstairs, where Mary already had the TV on. I tuned into the BBC News channel, went into the kitchen and started making the tea and coffee. No change there, then – Just like a normal day, I thought.