The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy

by Tony Battista

  “Melissa's gone.”

  . . .

  They left the vehicle as twilight began to fall, working their way up the road toward the truck stop. It was still just light enough that they could see the same vehicles in the lot and no sign of any new tracks on the road. A different man was walking guard duty, a good deal heavier and a good deal drunker than the one from earlier.

  “We'll wait a while longer until it gets a little darker. Vickie, you make your way to the edge of the tree line. Pete, you work your way over to the right, across from the back door, and I'll slip across the road into the park behind the dumpster. Once I get into position I'll be able to see if there's more than one guard, but it looks like they're pretty sloppy so I don't think there will be. On my signal, you put an arrow into that bastard and the three of us will close in on the building. Make it count, Vickie. I don't want any gunfire if possible before we get through the doors. Pete, you take one of the grenades and set it against the back door, pull the pin and get behind cover. When it blows, I'm going through the front door and you go in the back as soon as you can. Go in hot and noisy. Kill everyone with a swinging dick, no hesitation, no mercy. You got it?”

  Pete swallowed and nodded his head. Jake looked Vickie in the eyes and in the softest, tenderest voice he'd used all day, told her he loved her, then retreated into the wood. Pete took only a minute to get into position and turned to look back at Vickie, who gave him a quick wave. It took Jake two minutes to get a little ways down the road, then, watching as the drunken, careless guard paced back and forth keeping a sloppy watch, waited until he was walking away from him and slipped across to the other side. Another minute of moving when the guard's back was turned brought him behind the dumpster, almost directly across the street from the front door. There was no other guard in sight.

  There was enough moonlight for him to catch Vickie's eye and he nodded to her as she readied her bow. Incredibly, the guard picked that moment to face the side of the building at the corner nearest her, opened his pants and began to relieve himself against the wall. Vickie moved into the open, silently advanced across the blanket of soft snow to within forty feet of him, drew the bow full back and released the arrow. The slender missile flew straight and true and took the man between the shoulder blades, the razor tip piercing his heart and jutting out front through his ribcage. He staggered, looking down at his bloody chest in disbelief for a moment and a second arrowhead appeared a few inches to the side of the first, having punctured his right lung. The man collapsed heavily into a twitching heap on the frozen ground and the three intruders quickly moved on the building.

  Jake shrugged off his heavy coat, stuffing two spare magazines behind his belt. With pistols drawn, he waved to Pete, who pulled the pin on his grenade and set it right up against the back door, then quickly retreated around the side of the building just before the explosion blew the door inward off its hinges. Jake opened the front door as quickly and quietly as he could and, seeing everyone looking toward the rear of the restaurant in shock, calmly and methodically began firing both Glocks.

  Pete went through the shattered doorway into a dark hallway to the sounds of gunfire. There were rest rooms to his right and a small storeroom and the kitchen to his left. After making sure the other rooms were empty, he entered the main room, lit with a pair of Coleman lanterns, just as the last of the renegades were turning toward Jake in confusion and terror and he added his rifle to the carnage. Vickie was only two seconds behind Jake, but he was standing, feet wide apart, right in the doorway and she couldn't get past him or shoot around him. Only three of the renegades managed to fire their weapons and one of them, instead of firing at Jake or Pete, shot at the screaming, terrified women, killing two and wounding two others before being cut down by Pete's AR. One man threw his arms high into the air and pleaded for them not to kill him, but Jake took deliberate aim and a bullet tore through his groin, castrating him. Two more bullets put an end to his screaming as he writhed on the floor.

  The room was suddenly quiet but for the frightened sobs of the women cowering in terror and the groans of the wounded. Jake walked calmly through the room and put a bullet in the head of every one of the men regardless of whether or not they were still alive, then looked at Pete who froze in his tracks and felt a terrified shiver crawl up his spine at Jake’s expression. After what seemed a very long few seconds, Jake nodded and gave him a quick smile.

  Pete's eyes searched the room until he spotted Hannah on the floor clinging to a wounded fellow prisoner.

  “Hannah? It's me, Pete. Pete Wilcox. Do you remember me?”

  Hannah stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, then suddenly seemed to recognize him and ran to him, collapsing, sobbing into his arms.

  “It's alright, you're safe now,” Vickie said, moving in amongst the anxious former captives. “They can't hurt you anymore. No one is going to hurt you anymore.”

  Terror softened to fright, then confusion, then uncertainty and finally relief and joy. One of the dead women had been shot through the forehead and the other took two bullets in the chest. Of the two wounded, one had taken a bullet through her upper arm and the other had a deep gouge plowed along her side. Jake had taken a grazing wound on his right cheek that was bleeding freely and had a few wood splinters in his left arm from a bullet hitting the doorframe. Neither Vickie nor Pete had been hurt.

  “Let's get them back to the house,” Jake said, looking over the carnage. While Vickie and Pete guided the women to the cargo van in the parking lot, Jake checked the bodies and the building for any weapons or ammunition they could use. The men had mostly hunting rifles and .22s, but he found one AR and one Smith and Wesson .38 with eighty rounds for the former and twenty-six for the latter. He left all but one of the hunting rifles and packed all the ammunition into a gray canvas bag. There was surprisingly little food in the building, a few cans of pork and beans and stew and two packages of beef jerky along with a dozen candy bars and a family sized bag of chips. He put them all in a black garbage bag along with a dozen loose packs of cigarettes and an unopened bottle of rum and headed out of the building, grabbing his coat on the run.

  “I wish we could bury those girls,” Jake said once outside.

  “I do too,” Vickie answered him, “but we need to get the others back to the house.”

  “Ground’s frozen,” Pete put in. “Still, we could take them back with us.”

  “Vickie, see if there are any keys in that van. Pete, help me drag those dirt bags out of the building. If there are any infected left around, they’re welcome to them.”

  Once they dragged all the captors out into the snow, Jake and Pete laid out the bodies of the two dead women on cots in the dining room and covered them with blankets. They siphoned a few quarts of gasoline from the cars in the lot and splashed it around inside the building and the outside walls. Jake lit a cigarette with a match and tossed the match at the building, igniting the gasoline and he stood and watched until it was plainly apparent the whole structure would be consumed.

  “I almost wish Art was still with us,” he said. “At least he’d know the words to say.”

  Vickie found the keys to the van in the pocket of one of the dead men and Pete drove them all back to where they’d left the Hummer, the only words spoken being Vickie trying to comfort and reassure the refugees. Jake hopped out and started the other vehicle and they headed back to the house.

  Vickie waved Tom away as she, with Liz, Eve and Carolyn, helped the women into the house; Carolyn and Liz tending to the wounded first, cleaning and bandaging, while Vickie and Eve helped the rest to settle in, reassuring them that they were safe now, showing them where they could wash up and find fresh clothing.

  “What the hell do we do with them now?” Pete asked.

  “I don't know,” Jake answered. “I don't know how any of them kept their sanity with all they've been through. Some of them will never be able to get past it. We'll make room for them, give them as much space as we can he
re, and hope they can make the adjustment.”

  That said, the adrenaline rush now dissipated, he collapsed into a big easy chair.

  Vickie was immediately at his side to clean the cut on his cheek and pick the splinters from his arm and Tom and Pete walked off to talk. Pete recapped the events leading up to the freeing of the captives and Tom listened intently.

  “You should have seen the way he was in that restaurant,” Pete shook his head while he told Tom. “He didn't show any anger, any expression on his face, anything at all! Nothing! His face was as calm as if he was tossing pebbles into a stream, just standing there, plain as day, not even trying to get behind any kind of cover. When they were all finally down, he shot each one once more, through the head. He was like a machine, deliberate and methodical, no emotion, no hesitation, just... I don't know. He looked at me and the way he looked, for just a moment, I almost thought I would be next. Then he just sort of half smiled and winked and it was as if it meant nothing to him, killing those men. Don't get me wrong, I know it had to be done, but he went at it like it was just another chore that had to be finished before dinnertime. I managed to shoot two of them, but he massacred the rest before I even had a chance to swing my rifle around.”

  “He seems okay now,” Tom said, glancing back toward the living room.

  “You weren't there. He scared the hell out of me. I'll never forget that look on his face.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” Tom let out a deep sigh. “That day they attacked at the other house, he was the same way. Shooting, swinging that machete, cutting them down left and right. He might have killed as many as the rest of us combined and he actually seemed let down when it was all over. I didn't say anything to you then because, after he was bitten and went off on his own, I didn't think it mattered anymore.”

  “Is that what we’ll all turn into eventually?” Pete wondered.

  . . .

  Hannah, upon discovering that Melissa had died, wept bitterly, but seemed to force herself to recover and helped attend to the other wounded captives. Janet Carter, one of the other women who'd lived at the train yard with the Carlton family, was the one wounded in the arm. Helen Carlton was one of the slain. Denise Mayle had the crease in her side which, though painful, was not serious. The other surviving women were Kate Rogers, Maria Garofalo, Susan Auden and Kim Nguyen. All their stories were similar in that their supposed safe houses had been invaded by the renegades, their husbands, fathers, brothers, children had been murdered and they had been forced into sexual slavery by these lowest dregs of humanity. Kate, Susan and Hannah had, more or less, resigned themselves to their fates and accordingly had suffered less abuse than the others had. They felt that they had simply been pragmatic about the hopelessness of their situation and no one could find it in themselves to blame them; the brutish gang would have beaten them into submission or murdered them at any rate and they would only have fought a hopeless battle.

  The days passed and they seemed gradually to come to realize their ordeal was truly over and life began to take on a routine that was approaching a new, post-infection normal. Wounds were healing, confidence and a sense of security appeared to be returning and, even if there were still uncomfortable moments when some of them interacted with the men, it seemed they were just starting to come to grips with their experience, but it turned out to be a false impression.

  Early in the morning four days after the rescue, Janet hanged herself in the big shed. That night, when everyone was asleep, Denise and Maria slipped out the back door and walked off together into the night. Pete found their frozen bodies, clad only in nightgowns, the following morning less than a mile from the farm. They were still holding each other’s hands. He and Tom laboriously dug three graves in the frozen ground alongside Melissa’s and the previous owners of the farm.

  Chapter 33: Camp Bravo

  With the filling of no less than a dozen metal drums with gasoline siphoned from abandoned vehicles and gas stations, there was, cautiously rationed, a dependable supply of generated electricity; enough to run the pump, water heater and a few lights at any rate on an as-needed basis.

  The days grew still shorter and colder, but there was plenty of fuel for the wood burners and plenty of food in the larder and a limitless supply of fresh water from the well. Though somewhat crowded, the home was comfortable and comforting. In due course, mealtimes became occasions for relaxed conversation and evenings were times for reminiscences, storytelling and music. The crowded, extended family was as content and happy as they could possibly be under the extraordinary circumstances, though there did seem to be some unexplained stress between Tom and Liz.

  The survivors from the diner were integrating fairly well into the group, though Hannah and Susan were the only ones who seemed comfortable around men again. Kate was still edgy, particularly when by herself around any of the men and Kim left no doubt that she’d do something truly unspeakable to the next man who tried to touch her. The two of them had become an item, like Vickie and Carolyn had been earlier, and were inseparable for all practical purposes. Kate had shown remarkable proficiency with a rifle and Kim was frighteningly adept with any form of bladed weapon. Hannah and Susan had proven themselves at least adequate with pistols and rifles and were determined they would never have advantage taken of them again.

  December passed into January and the group had no contact with anyone else, infected or not. One or the other of them would listen to the radio every day whenever the generator happened to be in use, hoping to hear news from the outside world, but static or dead silence reigned all the way up and down the dial on both the AM and FM bands. For all they could tell, they might have been the only people left in the world. No new tracks appeared on the road to disturb the evenness of the snow, no lights shone in the distance, no smoke rose on the horizon.

  On the morning of what they thought would have been January 18th, Vickie bagged another deer, an eight-pointer, and they had fresh meat for the first time in almost two months, elevating everyone's spirits.

  In time, Jake finally organized his excursion to Camp Bravo, taking Vickie, Pete and Carolyn with him, along with the Kays, as everyone had come to refer to Kate and Kim. He and Vickie rode in the 350 while the rest took the Hummer. They figured on at least three, perhaps four days of travel each way since none of the roads would have been cleared, and took provisions with them accordingly.

  The Hummer led the way, crunching pristine snow under its big wheels as they proceeded on their mission. Crossing the bridge over the ravine where they'd dumped so many corpses was something of an adventure, being slick with ice and having the additional obstacle of eight infected frozen solidly to the roadway, which compelled the grim necessity of chopping them free with axes. Their former farm home was much as they'd left it, with mangled and ravaged corpses still piled near the porch and scattered in a hundred yard arc around it. They'd obviously provided meals for their brethren for quite a while until they, in time, became too rancid for even the infected to stomach.

  They found an abandoned garage just before dark and parked both vehicles in it, sleeping inside them but always having two of their number on watch. A light snow was falling in the morning, tapering off to a stop around noon and they made good time, covering over a hundred twenty miles of unplowed road before stopping again for the night. In the morning, they shoveled a clearing in the road and built a breakfast fire, cooking up powdered eggs and spam as well as putting on a large pot of coffee. Jake climbed on the roof of the 350 and scanned the road ahead with binoculars to discover an undisturbed expanse of snow as far as he could see.

  “Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?” Vickie asked once he’d informed the group.

  “I suppose,” Jake replied. “It means there aren’t any people traveling the same route to the camp, but it also means we’re still alone as far as meeting anyone else who might be interested in rebuilding.”

  “I am happy we’re alone,” Kim spoke up. “No people means no troubl
es.”

  “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Pete admitted, unconsciously taking a half step back as Kim turned to look at him. Both he and Tom had learned to give her a wide berth and took pains never to be alone with her. For her part, Kim seemed only to tolerate the two of them but, ever since seeing him standing in the doorway shooting down her captors and tormenters, regarded Jake with something akin to awe, to hero-worship.

  “If we’re ever going to rebuild on what’s left, we need more people than we have right now,” Jake said. “There have to be good people out there who are interested in forming a new society.”

  “You’re right,” Tom agreed. “We’ll all be better off if we can link up with another group of survivors.”

  Kim was about to interject, but Kate touched her arm and she remained silent.

  They packed up their kit, refueled their vehicles from the large drums in the back of the 350 and headed down the road again, finally arriving at the remains of the fence around Camp Bravo with a good three hours of daylight left.

  They found not a living soul. Most of the remains, both military and civilian, had been broken down by the infected and rotted away in the months since the camp fell. None of the many tents remained, having fallen over and been carried away by wind and weather, and the temporary wooden and canvas hospital had burned at some point. But, most welcome to all, there were absolutely no tracks in the snow anywhere in or around the camp

  Still, they exercised caution approaching the big army trucks lined up near the far fence, one pair advancing to cover while the others kept watch, then another pair moving up to position, never more than two in the open at any one time. Their caution was unneeded this time and they reached the trucks without incident. The first was empty, save for a number of cots and tent canvasses. The second held medical supplies, which Carolyn sorted through and gleefully reported that her wildest expectations had been exceeded. The next three trucks were completely empty, but the one after that contained scores of cases of MREs and hundreds of bottles of water, all now frozen solid with the odd one here and there having burst apart. The last truck, sitting by itself, surrounded by a sand bag barrier, contained cases of automatic rifles, ammunition, hand-grenades and a crated M-2 .50 caliber machine-gun.