“Amen, brother!”
Liz, Susan and Hannah had pretty much taken over the cooking and most of the household washing and cleaning chores and they’d prepared a meal of venison stew for supper that night and apple pie for dessert. Afterward, Pete carried in enough hot water to fill the tub and relaxed in it, letting the heat soak away the aches and pains of the long working day. Carolyn came into the bathroom to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. She peeled off her clothes and stood in front of the mirror wearing only a pair of panties and began to tie her hair back. Pete watched her for a while, enjoying the view then suddenly, sat upright in the tub wide-eyed, his jaw dropping.
“What’s wrong with you?” Carolyn asked, seeing his reflection in the mirror and turning around to face him.
“Nothing’s wrong with me! Not anymore!” he answered with a huge grin plastered all over his face.
“What are you talking about?”
Pete didn’t answer. He simply stood up in the tub and looked down. Carolyn followed his look and her eyes grew wide, too. She hurried over to him as he got out of the tub and threw her arms around him, kissing him and pressing against him.
. . .
Jake and Tom each took quick showers and met on the front porch, Jake lighting a cigarette and Tom opening two cans of beer, handing one to Jake. Vickie and Susan joined them a minute later, Susan reaching into the washtub of cold well water and helping herself to one of the beers while Vickie sat on the swing beside Jake. They could see the Kays walking up the long drive, returning from patrolling the area, both slinging M-4s and wearing a brace of pistols in twin holsters. Kim also carried the ubiquitous, razor edged Bowie knife strapped to her leg.
“Well, don’t you look like a couple of desperadoes,” Susan chuckled.
“You better believe it, sister,” Kim shot back. “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
Everyone broke out laughing at her Clint Eastwood with a Vietnamese accent voice and she smiled and propped her rifle against the porch railing.
“All quiet out there?” Jake asked.
“Didn’t see a thing,” Kate answered. “We did come across some raspberry bushes, I think. We’ll keep an eye on them and maybe we can have some fresh berries when they ripen.”
“I love raspberries,” Tom smiled. “You’ll have to show me where you found them.”
“Let me have one of those smokes, Jake,” Kate said as Kim frowned.
Jake tossed her the pack and his lighter and she lit one up and passed them back. Vickie plucked the cigarette from Jake’s lips and took a shallow puff before handing it back to him.
“That really is a bad habit,” Susan said, disapprovingly.
“Filthy habit,” Jake corrected, causing Vickie to snicker and Tom to smile.
Just then, Pete and Carolyn came out the front door, big smiles on their faces, Carolyn clinging to his arm.
“Can you spare another one?” Pete asked.
“Yep,” Jake tossed him the pack. “Are you sure your better half isn’t going to get pissed?”
“Sometimes, a man just needs to light one up,” Pete answered, looking at Carolyn who began to giggle.
“Alright you two, what’s going on?” Vickie piped up. You’re acting like… Oh, my God! Did you?”
Carolyn hugged Pete’s arm even tighter and her smile grew even wider.
“We did!” Carolyn beamed.
Vickie jumped up from her seat and hugged them both.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Tom shouted. You mean, you’re back to normal?”
“Well, I don’t want to brag, but…yeah, definitely” Pete answered.
“This is so wonderful!” Vickie enthused.
Tom put his beer down and started for the door, calling for Liz.
“I’m so happy for you!” Kate beamed.
“Are you sure it’s us you want to be hugging now, Vickie?” Carolyn asked.
Vickie gave both of them a quick kiss and turned back to Jake, taking him by the hand.
“Let’s go,” she told him and he followed her into the house.
Pete and Carolyn spent a very happy night together, as did Tom and Liz three nights later. Jake and Vickie spent most of another two weeks trying, but, at long last, they finally made it there themselves.
Chapter 37: Epilog
The mood at the farm in the days and weeks following was cheerful and happy, as much as it could possibly be, given the circumstances. The crops were finally planted and the worst of the hard work was over. Another trip to Hollington found that things there had gotten back to normal also. Dr. Vargas informed them that the authorities in Cincinnati had been thrilled by the blood samples and confirmed that now both the infectious and impotent stages were, indeed, over. Susan immediately hit it off with Ted and elected to remain there when the others returned home. Best of all, neither they, nor the people at the base in Cincinnati had seen any sign yet of the infected returning and all were hopeful of better days ahead.
. . .
Jake and Vickie lay next to each other on the hood of the Hummer, holding hands, relaxed and content just to be together.
“Is it really over, Jake?” Vickie asked.
“Who can say?” Jake replied. “Let’s just enjoy the here and now for a while.”
Smiling, she kissed him and rested her head comfortably on his shoulder and they watched the sun set together.
Author’s Notes
This concludes the first book of the Lethal Infection trilogy. I made a conscious decision to limit the series to three books, having read a number of other series, some by quite well known authors, and finding that after the third book, the story line often just seems to drone on. There are usually retellings of what went on in previous books, ventures into side stories that really don’t add to the main theme and a lot of filler material that simply artificially expands the length. Of course, this is not true in all cases, but it seems to happen more often than not.
The second book, Lethal Infection: The Infected Return deals, obviously, with the resurgence of the threat after the infected who managed tenuously to cling to life through the winter once again become active and return to their old hunting grounds. Though their numbers have been depleted severely by continuous exposure to the elements, they are still a deadly threat, especially those led by an exceptionally intelligent alpha-infected. The group of survivors from the first book must confront not only this challenge, but also encounters with an organized gang of bandits even as they face the need to interact with a larger group whose methods and goals are not in exact alignment with their own.
The final book, Lethal Infection: The Resurgence looks at the apocalypse through the eyes of a different set of survivors who face their own challenges leading to an eventual meeting with Jake Harper’s group.
I might also note that upon reflection and reader feedback, all three books have been reworked and expanded from their original versions and combined in a single, boxed set.
Tony Battista
April, 2020
Lethal Infection Book II: The Infected Return
Chapter 1: The Alpha
His name had been Tad Jamison, back when names still held any meaning for him. Before the outbreak, he was an assistant manager at a local bank branch, a generally unremarkable man who’d advanced in business as far as he ever would; a husband and father, regular church-goer, member of half a dozen social organizations. He owned a fishing boat, hunted and camped occasionally and took his family on vacation to the mountains every year. That was all in the past. Now he was an infected, an alpha, smarter, faster, more coordinated than the masses of mindless drones that made up the great majority of his kind.
He’d begun as a drone himself, turning spontaneously soon after the infection erupted into the mid-west, with no conscious desire to lead or plan or to do anything but follow the pack in their never-ending quest for the kill. The first few weeks had been chaotic with people screaming and running and falling under the relentless press of t
he infected but the prey dwindled rapidly as the cities were overrun and plundered of human life and the herds of infected spread out into the countryside. He sometimes went days eating only small animals, insects, grubs and roots, anything to fill the maddening void of his stomach.
Eventually the first alphas began to appear; infected who retained some ability to reason, to plan, to organize. Soon after, drones began to form into groups under the loose leadership of tiny numbers of these alphas. Some were small packs of fewer than a dozen drones and one alpha while others sometimes ran in size up to several hundred with as many as four alphas. He didn’t know why the drones seemed to accept the leadership of alphas; in truth, he gave it no thought at all and no possible explanation would have mattered to him. All he really was aware of was that humans and the larger animals were becoming scarcer and more elusive. The humans that remained were now banding together in defended communities and rarely ventured out alone; the days of independent hunting were fast coming to an end.
Even assaulting these communities in numbers was a very risky business. Only weeks after he attached himself to a large band, as it turned out, too large to be manageable, the alphas who directed them sent them on an ill-fated assault against a refugee camp near Raleigh, North Carolina. All they knew at the time was that there were impressive numbers of potential meals beyond the fences. Unfortunately for them, there was also a sizeable military presence. Nearly three hundred drones charged the compound, across razor wire and pitfalls, through machine gun and mortar fire, into the teeth of automatic rifles and flamethrowers, and they continued to advance until all died in the maelstrom of fire and explosions; he alone had survived.
Somehow, he’d sensed the futility of the attempt and hung back to watch as the troops slaughtered his fellow infected without even the remotest possibility of reaching their objective, most never even reaching the chain link fences that surrounded the camp buildings. Since then he’d wandered aimlessly, searching for food, searching for companionship, be they drones or alphas. If his mind had been capable of recognizing it, what he felt after the massacre of his band was something akin to loneliness. He sought out others of his own kind, searching for another group to join and, eventually, blundered into one consisting of about sixty drones led by three alphas. For the next few weeks, they enjoyed modest success attacking tiny settlements and unfortified camps, even at that losing more than a third of their number. When their alphas led the band to a larger, well-placed compound, he again hung back, trying to steer other drones away from the fight until the alphas set upon him and he barely escaped with his life. The attack was typical; an all-out, full-frontal charge with the predictable result that not a single infected survived.
The alphas he’d encountered so far were capable of organizing and leading drones but their only tactic was the massed attack. There was no reconnaissance, no planning, no concept of searching for weak points and no alternative to charging straight in and either winning or dying. With the first inkling of rational thought since becoming infected, he realized then that he would need to form a band of his own if he expected to continue raiding successfully even the tiny settlements and individual buildings where living people sheltered. Without knowing how, when or even why it had come about, without actually realizing it had happened, he became an alpha.
The first drones he encountered afterward seemed almost awed by him; by the way he confidently approached them with an attitude of presumed authority. Not all were as easily swayed and about one of every six would ignore him and continue on their separate way, still his band continued to increase in number.
He’d already deduced that even the infected needed to rest though they never actually felt fatigue or drowsiness, and he took pains to convince the growing cluster of followers he was amassing to stop at sundown, since their night vision was so dreadful, and rest until dawn. He also became aware that they needed to seek shelter from rain whenever possible, since that particular phenomenon always seemed to disorient and disperse them and wet clothing contributed to their already disturbingly high die-off rate, especially on chilly nights. Upon discovering the presence of humans, he would keep the main body of his disciples well back, trusting his lieutenants, lesser alphas themselves, to hold them in check. He would then approach the human encampment and calculate the odds of successfully attacking, looking for spots that were inadequately guarded or fortified. All this had to be accomplished quickly, as the band grew anxious and more unmanageable at the scent of prey. Virtually all of the raids he led overwhelmed the human defenses and allowed his ring of drones to feast, albeit always at the cost of a sizeable percentage of casualties. Throughout the rest of the summer, he led a nearly unbroken series of successful raids against small encampments and his band prospered and swelled to nearly a hundred drones and two lieutenants.
Fall later brought new problems with temperatures dropping, especially at night, and he saw his drones becoming weaker and more sluggish as time passed and the days grew shorter and cooler. It began to be worryingly more common to find that one or more drones had died during the night, or became so sickly they couldn’t keep up with the group. Sentimentality not being a trait of the infected, those drones simply served to feed the healthier ones. Tad’s band continued to shrink as winter approached, even as he picked up new followers along the way. Eventually some instinct drove him to lead the band south to what he inexplicably believed would be better weather. After the first frost killed over a quarter of their number, he recognized the need to hurry and pushed them to the limit, traveling continuously during the day in as straight a line as possible along the interstate, hunting only when the need for food became too urgent to ignore, gathering together for warmth at night. At that, he was still the sole survivor after a only few weeks and spent a miserable winter in the Deep South, where the die-off of the infected was due much more to fighting with each other over a desperately depleted food supply than weather or conflict with the few remaining uninfected.
Spring finally arrived and with it a sense that not only the weather but also the hunting would be better if he traveled north once again. He followed the interstate again, this time in the opposite direction, alone now but hoping to rebuild his band for another successful feeding season. The further north he went, the fewer infected he encountered, most of them so weak and emaciated that they were of no use to him except to keep him fed along the way. A few dozen miles out of Georgia, he abandoned the interstate, still generally heading north but keeping to the smaller roads, which kept him out of the mostly dead cities and passed through smaller, more rural communities where it was easier to find prey.
A sound off to his left alerted him; laughter, though he didn’t actually recognize it as anything but a noise made by a potential victim. Carefully, using whatever natural cover was available to him, he made his way toward the sound. There was a young female, alone, in the field near a small stream. As quietly as possible, he worked his way around behind her, crouching just forty feet away, alert eyes scanning the area, searching for others of her kind who might foil his attack. There was no one else in sight, though he could hear voices in the distance. He waited for just the right moment, when she bent to pick something from the grass, and he exploded from cover and rushed her. At the last second, she heard a noise and turned. Seeing him charging at her, she began to scream, a scream cut short suddenly and brutally as he sank his teeth into her throat. He felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage as he crushed her larynx, the delicious flow of warm fresh blood into his mouth and the thrill of her hopeless struggle as life slowly ebbed from her quivering body.
“Amy! Amy! Where are you?”
The voice was not far off and Tad quickly gathered the now lifeless girl in his arms and turned to run. She slowed him only a little, being small for a nine-year-old, and he put a considerable distance behind him before he heard the scream of dread and terror that announced the discovery of the blood-soaked patch of earth. He ran until the sounds of pursuit dissipa
ted, then warily concealed himself and watched for signs of people searching for the little girl. When he was satisfied that there were no followers who dared come this far away from the security of their homes, he carried her off again until he found a hidden spot deep in a wood. Then he began to feed.
Chapter 2: Reappearance
Jake woke when the first rays of dawn streamed through the bedroom window. Quietly, he eased out of bed, careful not to disturb the still sleeping Vickie lying next to him. He stood next to the bed and looked down at her for a long minute, eyes appreciatively taking in the way her silky skin shone in the glow of the early morning light. She lay on her side, turned away from him and he couldn’t see her face, but every detail of it was permanently fixed in his memory. The softness of her flesh, the taste of her lips, the sound of her voice, the very thought of these brought a contented smile to his face. His gaze took in the smooth curve of her hip and the shape of her long, slender legs and, not for the first time, he wondered how such a beautiful creature could have fallen for the likes of him. Sighing, he walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
He reached under the sink and retrieved the bottle of pain pills he’d found in one of the drug stores during a supply run, a task made difficult since he had to keep his left arm tight against his side because of the aching discomfort, and swallowed two. After using the facilities, he yawned and stretched, the motion only aggravating the ever-present ache in his injured shoulder. The pills were working their magic, but he knew they were only masking the symptoms. Flexing the fingers of his left hand was still painful, though manageable but it seemed to be steadily worsening as the weeks passed. He tried using the pills sparingly, usually only after physical activity threatened enough pain to make it impossible to hide it from the others. Lately though, he’d found it necessary to use them in the morning also, not quite on a daily basis yet, but often enough to concern him. One day soon, he knew he’d have to call on Dr. Vargas and see if anything could be done about it, but there was always so much to do he kept putting it off.
The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 30
