Infected- The Beginning

by Perry Stevenson

  “Watch out, Dad!” shouted John.

  A tall man had appeared in front of us, his eyes glowing red in the dim light of the passageway. I backed away from the open door as I lifted the shotgun to my shoulder.

  Another, smaller, infected had joined the first man. I fired, removing the top of the tall man’s skull. Then the door to the room we were just about to enter flew wide open. A heavily built man of medium height stood in front of me and, pointing the shotgun at his chest, I pulled the trigger. There was a resounding click! but no bang. Looking at the gun, I saw an empty cartridge hanging from the ejection port. I started to step backwards as I attempted to free the offending shell case. John opened fire on the shorter fellow, but he could not shoot the one in front of me because I was in his line of fire. I managed to remove the empty case and, re-cocking the shotgun, I sent a fresh 3.5-inch magnum shell into the chamber. The infected was now on top of me, and I fired from the hip. He was so close that the muzzle blast blew his jacket open as the 2¼ ounces of BB shot removed his private parts. He staggered backwards under the impact and doubled up, but to my amazement he stood upright again almost instantly and kept coming at me. This time I planted the shotgun in my shoulder and fired, and a large hole appeared in the middle of his chest, as a red mist covered the left wall of the passageway behind him with the occasional lumpy bit that completely ruined the paintwork. This had the desired effect, knocking him violently backwards and, as he bounced off the side wall, smudging the fine spray of blood, he collapsed to the floor causing a pool of blood to spread across the passageway from beneath his body. By now John had dropped the other infected by planting two .22LR rounds in his forehead.

  “That wasn’t very nice of you, James! You do like removing their goolies first,” said Miles, standing directly behind me and grinning.

  “Thank for your kind words, Miles,” I replied. “That was a bit too close! Does anybody else want to go first?”

  We proceeded along the corridor into the next building, checking the adjoining rooms as we went. There was now no need to be quiet or so cautious, as after the booming sound of the shotgun any remaining infected would have known we were there. On entering the next building, we waited in silence for any infected to respond to the shotgun blasts. I started to move forward when Miles tapped me on the shoulder.

  “James, wait – I hear something.”

  I froze in my tracks and listened intently. A shuffling sound was coming from behind us, then a scraping noise came from an open door leading to another room, three yards ahead on our left. Then a dull bump, bump – something was moving down the stairs we had passed at the entrance, and there seemed to be more than one set of footsteps. A door swung open at the end of the long corridor leading to the final building, which was joined by a passageway full of sunlight due to the large windows that ran its full length on the right-hand side.

  A small, slim woman entered the passageway, followed by a tall but overweight man. Their eyes glowed an artificial scarlet red as they came into the brightness of the corridor. Their faces were contorted in a mask of pain, made worse by the shadows of the window frames as they moved towards us. A tall, thin man seemed to fall out of the room on the left just in front of us and crashed into the opposite side of the corridor, as another, of average height but a stockier build, had pushed him out of the way in his eagerness to get at us first.

  “Miles, we have incoming from the front,” I warned.

  “And at least three behind us,” noted Miles.

  I turned round to see two infected approaching us shoulder-to-shoulder, with another following close behind. The front door to the house swung open to reveal Mary and Josephine.

  “James, are you ready for us yet?” Mary called.

  I was just about to shout a warning when another infected appeared from the stairwell and headed directly for Mary. The rearmost also turned and headed in her direction.

  “Argh!” Mary uttered while turning. Josephine let out a high-pitched scream. Both started to run for the truck, with two infected in close pursuit. I had automatically shouldered the shotgun but could not shoot until Mary and Josephine had moved from my field of fire.

  “I’ll get the ones in front, James – you’d better sort your wife out,” said Miles.

  John had automatically turned once he heard his mother’s voice. We opened fire together, but unfortunately we shot the same infected and two small holes appeared in his forehead just before the rest of his face turned completely red from the blast. We turned our attention to the other one, who took no notice of his comrade’s demise. This time I fired first, causing him to spin round and crash into the opposite wall, which he slid down before ending up in a heap on the floor.

  The two that were following Mary and Josephine had disappeared through the front door.

  “Dad, check the stairs – I’ll go after the other two,” said John.

  Being younger and much fitter than me, he reached the front door before I had covered even half the length of the corridor. He had disappeared from view as I reached the staircase. I turned to look up the stairs, and saw an obese infected standing on a small landing where the staircase turned to the right. He was looking at me with his bright red eyes and an evil smile, making my blood run cold. I lifted the shotgun to my shoulder and fired. His face instantly turned to red, the impact making him bounce off the wall behind. He then did a number of somersaults as he tumbled down the flight of stairs, landing at my feet, seeming larger than ever as his bloated stomach spread horizontally across the floor.

  I turned and ran through the front door as a fusillade of shots echoed along the corridor – Miles, Brian and Jeffrey had engaged the infected. Now outside, I could take in the scene, and to my horror Mary and Josephine were being chased around John’s truck by two infected people. John was trying to take aim but could not shoot for fear of hitting either of our ladies. The infected eventually came up with a better plan and split up, each going to one side of the truck and forcing Mary and Josephine to run from the vehicle along the dirt track from where we had entered. The infected followed them in hot pursuit. John still could not fire from his position as the infected and Mary and Josephine were in line with each other. They were rapidly reaching the maximum effective range of the Ruger as they moved further away.

  “John – after them! We’ll get our chance to shoot when Mary and Josephine turn by those barns, but we need to get closer!” I shouted.

  John started to pull away from me in pursuit of the infected, as I fumbled in my pockets for the SG-loaded cartridges. Finally, I found two and fed them into the shotgun’s magazine, and then ejected the 3.5-inch magnum, which loaded the SG rounds into the chamber.

  John had gained ten yards on me as the ladies turned left towards the main track. He stopped and opened fire on the infected, now 60 yards from us. As I drew level with John, I fired my two SG rounds in the general direction of the infected in the hope of hitting them. Two of the SG balls hit the infected on the right in the back, causing him to stagger forward and fall to the ground. No longer a moving target, John fired three shots in quick succession as he started to rise, the last of which hit him in the back of the head, and he dropped to the ground and lay still. The other infected kept going, even though one of the .332-calibre balls had hit him in the shoulder. In desperation, John fired as least ten rounds in rapid succession as the infected approached the bend, hitting him in the upper back and taking lumps of flesh out of his neck before a bullet hit his spine at the base of his neck. He lost all coordination, eventually falling to the ground, twitching violently. John ran up to him and finished him off with two shots to the head.

  “You can stop running now!” I shouted to Mary and Josephine, as they had almost reached the main track.

  Mary stopped and called out to Josephine, who was 15 yards ahead.

  “Josephine, it’s over!”

  Josephine stopped abru
ptly and looked behind her.

  “Get back in the truck, Dad. I need to help the others,” said John as we heard more shots from the direction of the farmhouse.

  Mary started to jog towards us, with Josephine rapidly catching her up. When Josephine drew level with her mother, they both started to walk. John and I scanned the area as we walked quickly back to the house. Just before we went inside, we turned to see the ladies approaching the truck and safety.

  We both replenished our magazines before entering the farmhouse. Looking along the passageway, we could see Brian standing in the doorway at the far end. Between us lay a number of dead bodies.

  “Brian, how’re you doing down there?” I called.

  “I think we’ve got them all. We’re going to go up the stairs at this end of the building next,” he replied.

  “OK – we’ll go up the stairs by the front door, and hopefully we can meet in the middle,” I replied.

  John and I stepped over the large body as we started to climb the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible, but unfortunately, halfway up, one of the treads emitted a very loud creak, and we both froze in our tracks and listened intently. A scampering sound seemed to move across the landing above and go left into an adjoining room. Then the house fell completely silent apart from the occasional creak of a door and the warming of century-old timbers as the temperature of the day increased.

  Making slow progress, we finally reached the top and found ourselves in a small open area with doors off to the left and right and a walkway that led to the front of the house, a small window at the end providing some welcome daylight in the dimness. Another staircase led to the attic rooms above. A door that probably led into the front bedroom was partially open, and this is where the scampering sound must have gone. John and I took up position on either side of the door, and slowly I pushed it fully open with the barrel of the shotgun, revealing a large room. There were wardrobes on the left and right, accompanied by a chest of drawers on one side and a dressing table with a very large mirror on the other. Against the far wall facing us was a four-poster bed that had not been slept in, a quilt hanging down to the floor on both sides. Suddenly the quilt appeared to ripple near the far wall, the movement very slowly coming along the bottom of the bed towards us. Both of us lifted our guns, aiming at the moving shape as it approached. In unison, we flicked off the safety catches, which sounded unusually loud in the silent room. I was slowly squeezing the trigger as the ripples reached the end of the bed, and then a black-and-white head popped out from beneath the quilt. John and I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of a cat. It stood up and looked at us for few seconds and then bolted for the door. John immediately went over to the bed and lifted the quilt with his gun barrel to check underneath.

  “I just don’t need any more surprises! There’s nothing else under here,” he said.

  We decided to climb the stairs and check out the attic rooms before we moved further into the house. A small window illuminated the landing and gave an unrestricted view across the fenced-off fields and the other house some 250 yards away. The door on the left led to a games room equipped with a pool table and a dartboard, and to the right was a gym, including a treadmill and weightlifting apparatus. We returned to the first floor and systematically checked each room as we proceeded along the corridor towards the back of the house.

  Finally, we came across Brian standing guard by a door while Miles and Jeffrey checked it out.

  “Come across anything interesting?” asked John.

  “Not really,” Brian replied. “Most of what we’ve seen up here has been bedrooms, apart from the attic rooms – one used for storage and the other a study. There’s been no sign of life. And you?”

  John told him about our cat encounter, and then Miles and Jeffrey appeared in the doorway.

  “James, that’s it – the rest of the house appears to be empty,” stated Miles.

  “Actually, guys, I think we missed a couple of rooms downstairs, along that well-lit passageway, where the second and third building were connected,” said Brian.

  “You mean where we encountered the infected?” asked John. “By the way, how many did you shoot? We managed five or six.”

  “I’m not sure, but at least eight,” replied Miles. “The end house seemed to be full of them.”

  “We’d better check them out, then,” said Jeffrey.

  Miles led the way to the rear of the farmhouse, where we descended a flight of stairs bringing us out at the ground floor of the third house. One infected body was sprawled out on a dining table, his lifeless legs dangling over the end with one side of his head missing and a three-inch diameter hole in his chest. Another was slumped over the back of one of the eight dining chairs, his wounds fortunately not visible. There were a further four bodies in various positions lying on the floor between the blood-spattered walls. We stepped over the corpse of a woman before entering the long corridor. There were indeed two doors on our right and one on the left just before the corridor entered the second building. This led to a conservatory. Miles reached the closest door and tried in vain to open it.

  “It’s locked,” he said.

  “I’ll try the other door, Dad,” said Jeffrey, passing Miles. “Oh, it’s locked too.”

  Brian, John and I looked at each other.

  “That’s strange,” said Miles as he peered through the keyhole. “There’s a key in the lock on the other side.”

  “Hello?” John called out. “Is anybody there? We have cleared the infected from the house, and it’s safe to come out.”

  We waited in silence for a reply. Finally, a man’s voice came from within the room.

  “Yes, there are two of us.”

  “You can come out now,” said Miles.

  The key turned in the lock and the door opened to reveal a fit, tall, middle-aged man with black curly hair dressed in blue overalls, and behind him a stockily-built man of medium height, scruffily dressed and wearing wellington boots.

  “Hello, I’m Ken and this is Scott,” the tall man said.

  Miles introduced our team, and we shook the newcomers’ hands.

  Miles and I edged our way into the room, which had a long banqueting-style dining table that ran almost the full length of the room, surrounded by wood-backed green leather dining chairs. The table was completely clear apart from a double-barrelled shotgun. In the centre of the left wall was another door and by the opposite wall lay two corpses with four empty 12-bore cartridge cases next to them.

  “What’s in the other room?” Miles asked.

  “That’s the kitchen,” said Ken.

  “Yeah, how do you think we’ve survived for the last … err … it must be nearly two weeks?” added Scott.

  “So, what happened here?” I asked.

  “It all started when the gamekeeper came back from town, and said he had been bitten,” said Ken. “I don’t know the full story as I was trying to repair a tractor at the time, and Scott was helping me to find the fault. I do the maintenance and repairs on the farm machinery, and Scott operates it.”

  “That might come in useful,” Miles interrupted.

  “Anyway, Scott and I solved the problem with the tractor and went back to the house to inform his lordship of our success,” Ken continued. “When we approached the front door, we could hear all these screams and shouts coming from inside, and we rushed in to see if we could help. The noises were coming from the back of the building, and we got as far as the conservatory entrance along the main corridor when the door at the end opened, and the gamekeeper came at us like a madman, brandishing his shotgun, followed by another man. When he finally lifted his head to look at us, we saw his eyes had turned a bright red with black holes in the middle. His face was a mask of pain. Scott and I dived through the kitchen door and locked it behind us.

  “Everything seemed to go quiet for a while. I was
standing at the door to the corridor, trying to listen for any sign of sane people, while Scott was at the other end of the kitchen looking for a weapon of any sort. The door to the dining room suddenly flew open and there was the gamekeeper, still brandishing his shotgun. Strange thing was, he didn’t try to shoot at us – in fact he dropped the gun and came at me with arms outstretched and teeth bared as if he wanted grab and bite me. Fortunately, being tallish and having long arms, I managed to hold him off. Then there was a bang and one of his arms went limp – that gave me the chance to spin him round and push him towards the corridor door.

  “The next thing I remember was Scott saying ‘stand back!’. I did, and to my amazement the gamekeeper started to get up, even though his right arm was hanging on by a thread and blood was squirting everywhere. Scott fired again, which caved his face in, and he slowly slid back to the ground, never to move again. Scott then said to me that we needed more ammo, so I searched the gamekeeper’s pockets and found another six shells. Scott reloaded while I barricaded the kitchen door. We entered the dining area, where we encountered the second man, again with red eyes. Scott fired, caving in the right side of his chest, and he staggered backwards and seemed to bounce off the wall, but then he continued to advance towards us. Scott let him have the second barrel, this time hitting him in the centre of the chest. That seemed to do the trick, and he fell backwards and collapsed on the floor.

  “Two other farm employees, now infected, came into the room and again it took two shots each before they finally expired. We had no more ammo left, but luckily the key was in the dining room door so I locked it. We moved all four bodies to the far wall. Blood-curdling screams and shouts of pain filled the air for at least half an hour before things went quiet, and the only sounds after that were the shuffling of feet and strange noises made by the mad people. The well-stocked kitchen has supplied us with food and water for the last two weeks.

  “So, could someone tell us what the fuck is going on?” Ken concluded.