They sat up and talked until nearly eleven, Santino, as always, extolling the virtues of his nephew; he was a practical man with a good job and a bright future, certainly a catch for any woman looking for a serious minded partner. Karen finally made it to bed but the sound of breaking glass woke her a few hours later and she cautiously left her room, gun in hand. Santino met her in the hallway and she told him to call the police.
“I call the nine one one. There’s a no answer. I wait and I wait and nobody answer. I try to turn on the lamp, but there’s a no power.”
“Keep trying! I’m just going to the top of the stairs and make sure no one comes up here.”
“You be careful, Karen! My nephew, Gino, he’s wanna meet you! I tell him you a nice girl!”
“I won’t go any farther than the top of the stairs. Keep trying to call.”
Karen flipped off the safety and chambered a round, crouching against the wall and peering down the dimly lit staircase. Crashing and banging noises came from below for most of a minute until a figure crept into view at the bottom of the stairs. He turned and said something and a second person joined him and they both began to climb the steps.
“Stop!” Karen said in a low but clear voice. “I’m armed and I won’t-“
The first man fired blindly, the bullet smacking into the wall three steps below Karen. His partner fired a split-second later and she heard the round whizz over her head. Karen pulled the trigger and sent four shots down the stairs, hearing one of the men cry out in pain and the other curse at her before the sound of running footsteps faded into the street. Santino was suddenly at her side, a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. Together they eased down the steps and found the first intruder lying on his back, glazed, sightless eyes open and bullet wounds in his chest and neck. A trail of blood led out through the front door and a second body lay in the middle of the street, still twitching but bleeding out the last of his life’s blood onto the pavement.
Karen took a few staggering steps and fell to her hands and knees on the sidewalk, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the concrete. Once the heaving passed, Santino helped her to her feet and led her back into the building. He tried the rest of the night to get through to the police, the phone line going dead just after sunrise and he finally gave up and dragged the other body to the curb. Sirens sounded in the distance and the sounds of gunfire echoed through the streets, but there didn’t seem to be a living soul in sight.
“Maybe you stay here a while,” he told Karen. “I think it not safe for you out there right now. The police, they come and take care of things soon, and then maybe you go home.”
Karen smiled at him and let him give her another fatherly hug, then found the presence of mind to reload the magazine for her Beretta.
“Who’s that?” Santino called. Karen looked up to see a man staggering drunkenly along in the middle of the street. Santino called out a challenge and the man looked at him and began to approach. Santino went out to the curb and began to berate the man for being drunk at this early hour, telling him to leave this respectable neighborhood and get himself home or he’d call the police. The man stumbled, fell and slowly got to his feet again. It was then that they both noticed the blood. The front of his shirt and both arms were soaked and his face was wet with it.
“Hey! You inna some kinda accident?” Santino yelled. The man stumbled again and Santino rushed out to help him even as Karen’s panicked voice warned him to keep away. At the last moment, Santino realized it wasn’t the man’s own blood and he was suddenly gripped and drawn in, teeth tearing into his cheek. In the time it took Karen to reach them, Santino’s throat was ripped open and the man was dragging him to the ground, chewing on a chunk of the old man’s flesh.
Karen stood to the side and put two bullets into the man’s head at close range. He collapsed on top of Santino and Karen pulled him aside and knelt by the old man.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod! Santino!”
The old man tried to speak, then just took her hand and smiled at her as his life ebbed away, leaving her alone, sobbing uncontrollably.
. . .
She heard the shuffling of feet and the low moaning noises for several moments before they registered and she looked up to see eight figures advancing on her at a fast walking pace. The five men and three women staggered and stumbled like the one who’d killed Santino and blood and gore smeared their clothes and faces. Karen stared at them, not understanding what was happening. She stood up, lifted her pistol and pointed it at the nearest man.
“Stop! Stay back!” but he only stretched his arms out toward her, baring his teeth and emitting a low growl. She backed up until she came up against the storefront, then fired one shot, hitting the man in his left shoulder. He flinched and his arm went limp but he kept advancing. A second shot took him squarely in the chest and he staggered and fell to his knees, glaring at her, still reaching for her with his one good arm. Several more infected appeared from side streets and alleys and moved in her direction and Karen realized she was in danger of being cut off. There was a back door to Santino’s leading to a small parking area by an alley and she ran through the restaurant, unlocked the door and slammed it behind her.
At the noise of the door slamming, two infected looked up from the eviscerated remains of their victim. One gave her barely a glance and continued feeding while the other turned away from the gruesome meal and started toward her. Karen spun around to run away and saw a small crowd of infected blocking the other end of the alley. One of them spotted her and let out a loud moan and they all started toward her. She looked back to find the other infected was only fifteen feet away and she fired three times, missing him with the first shot but putting the other two into his upper torso. He went down and Karen trotted down the alley, giving the second one a wide berth, but he only gave her a warning growl and continued feeding.
Her apartment was nine blocks away and her car was parked across the street from Santino’s, only yards away from his dead body. A scream turned her to the left and she saw a middle-aged woman dragged to the ground by three infected. It was already too late to save her and more infected were closing in on the commotion. An older Buick was angled across the sidewalk a hundred feet away. It was empty and its right fender smashed against a building but the engine was still running. She made it to the car without trouble, then hesitated when she saw the blood spattered seat and dashboard, but jumped in, closed the door and shifted to reverse, backing into the street before driving away. She made it most of three blocks, weaving her way through the many abandoned vehicles until she came to a massive jam at an intersection.
Putting it into reverse again, she backed to the previous intersection and turned right, toward her apartment, but only made another block before she had to abandon the car and set out again on foot. Screams, curses and gunshots seemed to be coming from all directions and, tears pouring down her cheeks, Karen stood frozen in the road, unable to move, unable to think.
A teenaged boy ran out from another side street, spotted her and yelled at her to run. Instinctively, she followed him until he rounded a corner and ran headlong into a clutch of infected who immediately took him down. She angled away and ran toward the city park, hoping the open area would be safer to navigate. A bicycle lay on its side next to a bloody smear and Karen righted it and began pedaling, steering it easily through the halted traffic, heading out of town. The suburb was no better than the city, more screaming people and lurching infected. Several homes were burning and many of the adjoining houses were close enough to them to help the fires spread. Pedaling furiously, she raced away from the area as the infected watched her zip by, their reactions too slow to impede her progress. She turned off the main road a few miles later onto a township road into a sparsely populated area. Hours later, when she reached a stretch with open fields and good visibility all around she finally stopped, exhausted, legs aching, body soaked in sweat, and lay in the grass by the side of the road.
When she
arose, ten minutes later, she was aware of how thirsty she was in the hot sun and knew she had to find both provisions and safe shelter before dark. She tried to remember how many rounds were left in her magazine, something like ten or eleven. In her handbag sat a spare magazine, fully loaded, and a box containing a dozen or so loose rounds. When she’d left her apartment yesterday, she thought she was being paranoid taking that much ammo with her. Now she wished she’d brought every bullet she owned and that she’d had the presence of mind to grab Santino’s shotgun.
Another half hour of riding at an easier pace brought her within sight of a house set well back from the road at the end of a limestone driveway. She stopped a hundred yards away and just watched for a while, looking for any sign of movement, any indication of life. At length, pistol in her right hand and walking the bike along by the handlebars with her left, she went up to the mailbox by the road and leaned the bike against the post. Head moving left and right and eyes constantly searching, she headed toward the front door, ready to throw herself to the ground or to turn and run as the situation demanded. Standing off to the side of the door, she rapped three times and waited. There was no answer. After knocking again and waiting what she considered a reasonable amount of time, she tried the doorknob, found the door to be unlocked and pushed it quickly open.
The front room was empty, but showed signs of a struggle with furniture out of place and a broken lamp on the floor. She peered into the dining room and found an elderly man’s body on the floor, a butcher’s knife buried deeply in his neck and a trail of blood leading from the kitchen. In that room, a woman about the same age as the dead man was sprawled against the counter by the sink sitting in a pool of drying blood, a chunk of flesh torn from her neck. It was obvious she was dead, but Karen checked the body anyway before searching the rest of the house only to find it empty. She dragged the dead woman into the other room to lay her out next to what was presumably her late husband and covered both with a tablecloth. Once that grim task was accomplished, she hurried out the back door and leaned over the porch railing, dry heaving until her stomach muscles ached.
Back in the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and found the inside was still reasonably cold despite the power having been off for some time. She poured a big glass of milk, made a sandwich with some cold cuts and bread cut from a homemade loaf, and sat at the kitchen table to eat. Afterward, she searched the house again, this time looking for weapons, and found a double-barreled twelve gauge and half a box of shells in an upstairs closet. Back in the kitchen, she picked out the sturdiest knife she could find and went through the cupboards and pantry, gathering all the boxed and canned food she could find. She went back outside, brought the bike into the house, and bolted the door. By each window were hung long, heavy drapes and she closed all of them.
The refrigerator had a built-in icemaker and the bin was full so she filled a large bowl with ice cubes and left them on the counter to melt. The last thing she did was check the closets for a change of clothing, finding a few ill-fitting items she could use before settling down in a big easy chair in the front room facing the door. With the shotgun in her lap and the Beretta on an end table near at hand, she gradually drifted off into a restless, fitful sleep.
. . .
Karen woke with a start in the morning, confused at first at her surroundings, then nearly broke down crying again when she realized it had not all been just a bad dream after all. She went upstairs and used the bathroom, checking that there was water in the tank for one last flush, then took whatever soap, toothpaste, toilet paper and medical supplies she could find and went back downstairs. After packing what she could into a small suitcase, she took one of the racks from the oven and set it over several candles she’d lit in the sink and fried a couple of eggs and some bacon in a pan. The last of the milk was only cool to the touch by now and she drank it with her breakfast. An empty plastic jug in the pantry smelled like it might have once held apple juice and she poured the ice melt into it and found room for it in the suitcase.
She was looking for some rope or a piece of string to tie the suitcase to the bike and, not having any luck, she reluctantly decided to take the laces from the old man’s shoes. While doing that, a thought struck her and, with no enthusiasm whatsoever, she searched his pockets until she found a ring of keys. One of them was a car key and she slipped it off the ring and looked out a back window. There was a small garage behind the house, just big enough for one car. Pistol in hand, she opened the door and cautiously surveyed the area before briskly walking to the garage. Inside was a big, freshly waxed Cadillac, probably at least fifteen years old but still looking like it belonged on the showroom floor. The engine started immediately and the needle on the gas gauge pointed at the ¾ mark. She stopped the engine, got out and took in the rest of the garage. She grabbed a crowbar from a hook on one wall, found a gallon gas can that was nearly full next to lawnmower in one corner, poured that into the tank and went back into the house for the shotgun and suitcase. With both safely stored on the passenger’s seat, she went back into the house and gathered up everything she hadn’t room for in the suitcase and stowed it all in the backseat. The bicycle fit easily into the trunk and, after a quick last look around, she restarted the car, opened the garage door and drove away without a backward glance. She had no idea where she should go or how far she could make it on the gas she had, but knew she needed to try to find some semblance of civilization if she were to survive.
. . .
By noon, she’d only made it a few miles, having to weave her way past abandoned and wrecked vehicles, taking detours across fields and twice getting mired in soft ground and she stopped to stretch and relieve herself by the side of the road and to have a quick snack. So far, she’d seen abandoned houses and vehicles and the occasional infected feeding on a mangled body by the side of the road but not another living soul and she wasn’t sure if there was anything left worth finding. The radio picked up only static all up and down both the AM and FM bands and she felt completely, miserably alone. There was supposed to be some sort of Army base or training center a hundred or so miles farther to the east somewhere around Richmond, according to the Kentucky map she found in the glove box, and she hoped there might, at last, be some authority, some semblance of order and civilization there.
Another twenty minutes of driving brought her to a small community that appeared to be completely deserted. The bodies of infected were scattered all over Main Street, almost all of them taken down by gunfire. Their luckless victims were mostly concentrated in small groups, which had been cut off and surrounded before dying in a hopeless struggle. Karen saw gun barrels protruding from several windows, tracking her as she drove slowly by and she decided that outsiders were probably unwelcome at this point and left the town in her rear view mirror.
Next was a larger town but it seemed to have suffered more than its share. In some places, in front of the police station especially, bodies were piled three or more high and small numbers of infected still picked at the dead. The street was barricaded a block on either side of the police station and she made a right turn to bypass it. A left at the next intersection took her to Fourth Street where she had to carefully maneuver around a pickup with an overturned trailer and make her way to Third St. to get back on Main. She idly wondered why the founders of so many small towns had the same lack of imagination that the major thoroughfare was always named “Main Street”. Once there, she looked back toward the police station now more than a block away and weighed her options. There might yet be guns and ammunition there, and there were only six or seven infected visible between her and the building. She decided to chance it. With her pistol holstered and crowbar in hand, she left the car and began to make her way to the station.
Karen dropped the first infected with a skull-crushing blow to the forehead with the crowbar. She was able to take down two more in a similar fashion but attracted the attention of all the others. Looking over her shoulder, she found that two more had
appeared between her and her car and all were getting too close, too fast. Her Beretta barked three times, taking out the two behind her, then twice more to take down another in front and then her plan really fell apart as more and more infected, attracted by the noise, began to converge on her. It took another eight pistol shots to get her safely back to her car and she tromped on the accelerator and left the small town behind her.
“That was stupid! That was so damned stupid!” Karen shouted, trying to calm her jangled nerves. “I should never have stopped! I should never have gotten out of the car!”
Further along, she came to the most serious obstacle she’d encountered so far. Nine cars blocked the road; one had overturned and at least three others appeared to have run into it at high speed, spewing wreckage all over the highway. Other cars had tried to go around; some were stalled in roadside ditches and the rest had simply been abandoned. The remains of many of the occupants lay dead in various stages of evisceration, most very near the autos but a few made it several dozen yards away before being taken down. Seeing no sign of movement, Karen cautiously exited her car and approached the blockage. Far down the road, she could make out a group of perhaps ten or more people walking in that telling gait that identified them as the infected, but there was no other sign of movement.
The Complete Lethal Infection Trilogy Page 46
