The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

by Tony Battista

  Lethal Infection Book I: The Dying world

  Foreword

  There were many differing opinions as to how the world nearly ended, how civilization died. Some thought it a mutation of a common disease, a sort of super measles. Others were convinced it was a biological terror weapon. Many religious leaders decided it was divine punishment for humankind’s accumulated transgressions. Ultimately, it was a moot point as no group was spared. The young and the old, the wealthy and the impoverished, the wicked and the righteous, the oppressors and the oppressed, all segments of all societies, regardless of sex, race, color, creed, nationality or wealth were stricken by the Great Infection.

  This is the story of a small group of survivors, ordinary men and women coping with a world overrun not with zombies but with hordes of otherwise ordinary men and women whose minds were warped by infection, turning them into fiercely aggressive creatures with a nearly insatiable hunger for flesh and blood. The hope of establishing a new civilization could only be met if the surviving members of the human race could overcome the infected, the elements, the bandit gangs and their own intolerant nature.

  Chapter 1: Jake

  He paused under a large oak tree, appreciating the momentary respite it brought him from the relentless heat of the mid-day early summer sun. The water in his canteen was quite warm but quenched the thirst brought on by hours of trudging along with a heavy load, ever on the watch for danger from all quarters. Twelve days had passed since he’d last seen a normal human being, one whose mind hadn’t been destroyed by the infection.

  So far, at least, it had been a good day: he'd found canned goods still on the shelf at the local IGA and an abandoned police car from which he'd taken a 12 gauge and thirty-one shells. Best of all, though he’d seen scores of them, he'd managed to avoid being spotted by any of the infected.

  The load he was carrying was really too large and awkward, but he couldn’t pass on the shotgun nor count on the stores remaining unlooted forever. In all, he was carrying an AR-15 slung on his shoulder, two 9mm Glocks and a large hunting knife on his hips, the shotgun cradled in his left arm, a machete in his right hand and nearly fifty pounds of food, mostly canned, in a backpack along with a large canteen.

  He also wore heavy leather gloves with the trigger finger cut down and leather armlets on his forearms and leggings on his shins. With steel-toed work shoes added, he was in no shape to run fast or for any distance, but the infected were mostly un-coordinated and not particularly quick or clever. The leather would help protect him from bites and he’d more than once snapped a shinbone with a swift kick with the heavy boots. In the five weeks since the infection overwhelmed the city, Jake proved to be a fast learner.

  It was not that he was in any way prepared for a disaster of these proportions; he was far from a survivalist. At thirty-four years old, he'd worked at the steel mill outside town for a dozen years after a hitch in the Army. At first, he'd been caught off-guard like everyone else, given the nature of the catastrophe. The only weapons he'd owned were an old Smith and Wesson .38 Special passed down from his late father and a semi-auto .22 scoped rifle. He'd had 115 rounds for the .38 and nearly 300 for the .22, that amount only due to the fact that he'd recently bought ammunition to go target shooting with his buddies, something he managed to do three or four times every summer. Now his arsenal consisted of the AR-15, the newly acquired shotgun and three 9mm Glock pistols. He’d run across a number of other guns over the last weeks, but he’d already had to abandon hastily two other supposed safe havens and saw no point in having more weapons than he could reasonably carry with him.

  Up ahead he spotted movement and stood still against the tree trunk watching quietly, eyes scanning the area around him, ears perked for the slightest sound. A loner appeared from behind an abandoned minivan. No, it wasn’t a loner, as a second one followed a few steps behind, then a third. In all, six of them staggered along, roughly in single file, four males, a female and a boy of about twelve, swarms of flies attending all. The first male was the most dangerous, an alpha as he called them, one who, for some reason, retained more co-ordination and intelligence than the others. If they spotted him, he’d try to kill that one first.

  Jake held as still as possible and watched them make their way down the street and disappear around the corner. The wind shifted and he could smell them. They reeked of spoiled meat, body odor most foul and especially of urine and fecal matter. Their brains no longer made a connection with the need to clean themselves or even to take down their pants when they evacuated. When they were out of sight, he let his breath out and relaxed just a little. It was always better to avoid them than fight them, as he'd learned; if you had to shoot one of them, others anywhere nearby were certain to be drawn to the sound. Noise and movement attracted them; and smell if they came close enough and the wind was right, though he couldn't, for the life of him, figure out how they detected any odors beyond their own stench.

  When the infection originally broke out in Africa, medical teams were dispatched from Europe and the US and details were at first spotty, at best. Then India and eastern Asia were hit and the infection quickly spread. Planes were grounded, ships ordered back to their ports of origin or to remain at sea, borders were closed, but it was already too late. The infection at first exhibited no symptoms but was contagious in the extreme for a period of weeks, and then manifested itself with sudden, mindlessly violent rage, mutating quickly to shorten the dormant period to days, then to hours or minutes. The infected hungered for flesh, human or animal, and attacked without fear and without mercy. Those bitten who survived the bite sickened to a comatose state in less than a day and awoke within twenty minutes or so, to become flesh-eating monsters themselves. With air travel and the incubation period, during which the disease remained asymptomatic, nearly every area of the earth was affected before any preventative measures could be taken, indeed, before anyone even realized the scope of the problem. More than eighty percent of the world population was dead or infected in a month. Civilization collapsed, society devolved, gangs were formed and warlords arose. Just as quickly, the larger gangs broke up as people realized there was no safety in numbers anymore, only greater danger of infection.

  . . .

  Jake made it home without incident, home at the moment being a cinderblock former car-repair shop in a rundown neighborhood at the edge of town. After checking the perimeter, he unlocked the steel door and bolted it securely behind him. Sighing, he stripped off the backpack, gloves, armlets and leggings and changed into a pair of sneakers. The long guns he placed on the bed and he began stacking the food on the shelves. Then he went into what used to be the supply room and lit a cigarette and grabbed a warm beer.

  Taking a long swallow, he began to go over his plan for a run to the sporting-goods store the next day. It was nineteen miles; farther than he'd traveled for supplies in any one day since the outbreak. He'd have to take a vehicle, even though they seemed to draw the infected like flies. There was a fairly new Hummer in the parking lot across the street that had nearly half a tank of gas and he had a set of keys he'd fished out of the pocket of what remained of the owner who'd almost made it to the door. With luck, if the store hadn't already been looted, he'd bring back at least several hundred rounds of ammunition and a few more guns. So far, that hadn't been much of a problem. The virus had hit his area particularly hard and fast and few people survived long enough to loot.

  That last part troubled him endlessly. The area was teeming with infected, thousands of them in the city and still hundreds in the outlying areas, but he hadn’t seen any sign of even a single, healthy human being in nearly two weeks. Was he the only one left in the entire
vicinity, the state, the country? How many people around the world still lived? He’d survived this long, but was it enough simply to survive, was it worth it to remain alone, moving only in the shadows for the rest of his life?

  Finishing the beer and the cigarette, he took the newly acquired shotgun apart, gave it a thorough cleaning and oiling, then checked to make sure the doors and windows were securely barred before settling down with a book. There was still an hour of good daylight left and he read several chapters of a second rate mystery and promised himself he'd make finding some new reading material a priority.

  Chapter 2: Vickie

  Vickie lay flat on her belly on top of the semi-trailer. A small herd of twenty or so was slowly making its way down the road, followed by a few stragglers. She held tightly to the .38, wishing she had more than four bullets, one of which she vowed to save for herself.

  Up until a few weeks ago, her life had been so promising. Not quite a year and a half out of college, she’d landed an internship with a prestigious law firm, was quickly hired on and had already made an impression on the partners. At barely twenty-four, she saw herself moving up rapidly in the company in the very near future. Then her world had gone to hell; everyone’s world had gone to hell.

  Her supervisor, Allan Peterson, had taken her and nine co-workers to his home just outside of town. Peterson was an avid paintball player and fancied this hobby made him a survivor who would weather the storm until everything got back to normal. He had a respectable collection of firearms but his collecting didn’t extend to keeping an ample supply of ammunition. There were more than enough guns to go around that everyone had at least one, but few had more than a meager handful of bullets.

  The atmosphere there had been tense, especially since the food had run out, but everyone mostly accepted Peterson as the leader except Jeff Bonner, a junior partner in the firm, who saw himself as more qualified for that position. It had all come to a head earlier that day when Jeff decided to have his way with Jenny, the office receptionist. They were all going to die anyway, he said, so he was going to enjoy his last days. He and Peterson had it out and Jeff clubbed him to the floor with his pistol and declared that he was now the man in charge. Scotty McDonald objected and Bonner simply shot him in the face, then looked around the room and dared anyone else to object. When no one spoke up, he dragged Jenny into one of the bedrooms. Vickie could still hear her screams.

  When George and Dan approached her and made it clear they intended on having her, Vickie took her chance and bolted out the front door. They started after her and she turned long enough to fire two shots. The first hit the doorframe, which caused George to have second thoughts about pursuit, but the second, by sheer chance, broke Dan’s left shin.

  Vickie didn't look back again so she didn't see the throng of infected attracted by the noise closing in on him. George bolted the door and left Dan to his fate, but they’d already spotted him and several of them turned toward the house. She ran until her legs ached and her heart pounded as if to burst through her chest and hid behind a low brick wall until she caught her breath, the sound of gunfire echoing behind her. From there, she worked her way from cover to cover, trying to keep out of sight, desperately hoping to find some kind of help, some kind of authority until the infected grew thick enough to force her to stop and cower in a roadside ditch.

  She knew what kind of a fix she was in now, alone and virtually defenseless; four bullets were not enough to put up any real fight. If she was going to survive, she had to have something else, another gun, a large knife, a heavy club, anything. Maybe she could get into one of the other houses and find another weapon, maybe the police or the military were still in control somewhere and she could make her way to them, but in which direction? She'd never had to make it on her own; her parents took care of her before she went off to college and she'd lived with two roommates in the dormitory and took a room with another friend when she started working. Virtually every waking moment she'd had someone else with her, someone to talk to, someone with whom to go out dining and dancing, someone to go with her to the movies or to parties. That life was all over now, never to return. She didn't believe for a minute what Peterson had said about this all blowing over and everything getting back to normal again.

  After a long, tense wait, Vickie realized she hadn’t heard any noises from the road for a while and she rose up and looked out from the ditch to make sure no unwelcome company was in sight. Reassured, she began to make her way along the ditch, scanning left and right, warily checking her surroundings. A few dozen yards along, she heard shuffling noises very near and crouched as low as she could against the side of the ditch. The noises grew louder, closer, and suddenly an infected, a middle-aged man in a dirty and bloody business suit stumbled over the edge of the ditch and fell flat on his face a few feet away from her. Vickie's first thought was to shoot him, but she had just enough presence of mind to know that would only alert the others. Looking quickly around, she found a broken half of a concrete block and, kneeling in the dirt, raised it up over her head. She hesitated for a moment, realizing the enormity of what she was about to do but, as the man turned his head to look up at her and let out a feral growl, she shut her eyes tightly and brought it down with all her strength on the creature's skull. It split oven with a horrible squelching noise and blood and brain splattered out over the ground.

  Vickie turned away and doubled over, vomiting up the canned peaches she'd eaten that morning, the only food she'd had since the morning before. She retched for several minutes, her head swimming, tears streaming down her cheeks. This was the most horrible thing she'd ever seen, so much more horrible because she was the one who'd done it.

  She started to crawl away, but realized she should really check to see if there was anything on the corpse she could use. Peeking over the lip of the ditch, she could see several infected moving along the road, but none paying any special attention to her direction, so she moved over to the body, trying not to look at what remained of the head. There was nothing of any use to her in any of the pockets, but there was a one inch iron pipe about two feet long shoved behind his belt. She didn't know where he'd gotten it and really didn't care, but she wanted it. It took her a few moments, but she got the pipe and moved as quietly as she could down the ditch.

  Her mouth was dry and nasty after being sick and she desperately wanted a drink of water; that was one of the things she hadn’t time to consider when she ran from the house. The food was already gone, but there had still been some bottled water and she wished she had one of those bottles now. There were homes across the road and Vickie climbed up out of the ditch to cross over to them. An infected appeared from behind a line of hedges. Vickie moved to her right and saw two more on the porch of one of the houses. All three saw her about the same time and all three started toward her, one of them letting out a loud groan.

  Casting her eyes around her she saw more appearing, looking her way, moving toward her. Vickie ran blindly down the road, dodging around abandoned cars, desperately seeking a place to hide when she spotted the semi. A ladder attached to the rear door offered her hope and she quickly scaled it, losing the pipe as she climbed, then threw herself flat on the roof, heart racing, praying that they'd not seen her go up.

  Now, after ninety minutes in the hot sun, peeking carefully over the side, Vickie saw the last of the stragglers far enough away that she felt she could chance climbing down and moving on. She was more frightened than she'd ever been in her life, with no idea what to do next. After travelling, hiding and cowering for nearly two hours before reaching the semi, she was still little more than a mile from Peterson's house. Maybe it would be better to just go back and take her chances. At least she wouldn't be alone and she couldn't imagine being alone outside after dark in this nightmare world.

  After carefully scanning the area, satisfied it was safe to come down, she eased down the ladder, picked up the pipe and started to head back toward the house.

  Chapter 3: Supply
Run

  Jake was up at first light, used the bucket he kept in the back room, washed up, brushed his teeth and heated water for instant coffee over a can of sterno. He picked up a can of corned beef, which he opened and ate cold; the smell of any sort of meat cooking being a magnet to the infected, then put on his protective clothing, strapped on a pair of 9mm pistols and grabbed a shotgun, filling a pocket with shells. He attached the sheathed machete to his belt and loaded a bag with spare magazines and a fifty round box of ammo, a crowbar and a pair of bolt cutters along with a couple bottles of water and a few energy bars. Lighting a cigarette, he peered out through the small slits he'd left in several of the boarded over windows to make sure there was no unwelcome company in the vicinity. Luckily, for him, the infected didn't seem to pay any particular attention to the smell of burning tobacco. Satisfied, he slung the AR over his shoulder, grabbed a pair of binoculars and slipped out the door, locking it behind him before making his way carefully to the Hummer.

  The engine had to be cranked for nearly half a minute before it reluctantly sputtered to life and Jake had to nurse the gas pedal carefully to keep it going. Nervously he scanned the surroundings and saw that a dozen or so infected were already approaching, drawn by the noise. He revved the engine a few more times and when he was satisfied that it was in no danger of stalling, he put it in gear, pulled out of the lot and made his way down the street. He moved quickly enough to keep them from catching up to him but slowly enough to entice them to follow him a goodly distance away from the garage.

  When he was satisfied they were far enough away, he sped up, leaving the small herd behind him. Picking his way through abandoned autos, he barely averaged twenty miles per hour, but that was more than fast enough to evade any of the infected that spotted him. They grew disturbingly more numerous as he left the suburb for the open road, one herd running to more than forty and he began to doubt the wisdom of this foray, but they thinned out again after he put a few miles behind him. If the store was intact and approachable, he'd have no problem fighting his way out if need be. If it had already been looted and all he found were empty shelves, he might be in a tough spot if he ran into any serious opposition.