Infected (Book 1): The First Ten Days (19 page)

How he managed to stay alive with possibly no agility and the funny slow movements his body made while he walked was a mystery to everyone. You know what they say; mind over matter. Maybe this old guy lived by that belief and managed to stay alive simply through the use of his mind to control all the situations he came across, while we on the other hand, with a whole group of young, agile, physically fit people would still manage to see ourselves in constant peril. How pathetic.

Just an apartment… That’s where he took us. I’m sure you are just as disappointed as I was when I found out he wasn’t some sort of zombie apocalypse super hero that lived in his bat cave. He was apparently just a lucky old man. The apartment he walked us into was the least protected thing we came across in days and it was virtually untouched. There was no way to know how many other survivors were still in the city alive, the same way this man was, but it was entirely possible there were more. The infected we came across in the city were no more than strays gathered in the city from other areas, presumably. It was possible that some survivors decided to stick it out and were still in the city like the old timer.

Old Timer’s Apartment

T
o our luck, the apartment the man walked us into had a window that faced the building Marcus was on. Lizbeth and Mara ignored the rest of the apartment and went straight for the window. They spotted Marcus on the roof of the building across the street and waved at him to get him to see which apartment we were in. At first Marcus didn’t notice the girls but Lizbeth lost her patience. “HEY!” she yelled. Marcus locked onto the location of the sound and knew they were safe which for all intents and purposes meant we were too.

“Make yourselves at home. Don’t be shy,” the old man said as he took a seat on one of the couches in his living room. “It’s been a few days since I’ve seen a single person that hasn’t acted so monstrously towards the people around them. It’s a breath of fresh air to know I’m not alone.” The old man rested his back against the couch’s backrest and he took a deep breath before he looked around the room.

Edwin and I sat on the couch across from the old man.

“Thanks for the help, mister. We were pretty jammed up back there. Not sure what we would have done if you didn’t show up to our rescue, the way you did,” Edwin said, his holiday picture perfect smile hung up on his face.

I scanned the room; everything looked age appropriate for the old man. Figurines his wife probably put up, pictures of family such as children and grandchildren. The home also looked spotless clean; four and a half days indoors could drive someone to madness and boredom. He most likely cleaned the place to keep himself busy. At least that is what I would have done.

“How did you know when to go to the roof and save us?” I asked.

The question arose from the old man’s precise timing when he saved us. Did he watched us the whole time before he decided to come to our aid? He did mention other people that behaved monstrously. Maybe he first waited to see if we were hostile too before he decided to help.

“Son, I had no clue I was going to run into so much youth when I went out,” the old man began. “I was going to feed the birds that stop by every day. That’s when I saw you were in trouble and I did what I could.” So our whole survival was due to a mere coincidence, but I won’t argue. I take what I can get.

“I think I left the bread up there too. An hour…” He rambled on. “I have enough time to feed them.” This man managed to keep his cool to the point that he still kept the birds he wanted to feed in mind. “Oh, before I forget, my name is Trevor.”

The condition of things: I believe that things were looking up around this point. Although we were separated, we managed to cover some time and stay alive all the way into another day. To make things brighter, daylight was right around the corner. See what I did there? Make things brighter? Clever me right?

“Is it possible to get inside this building through the front door?” Lizbeth asked Trevor when she walked in the living room.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’ll be impossible. Before the building was abandoned, it was barricaded from the inside, doors and windows, both. It would take us the whole day to take everything from behind that door.”

“Then what can be done?” I asked.

“The tenants left this building through the next building. Not the one you kids came through, but the one on the opposite side.” Trevor took his time off of the couch and walked to the kitchen. “I‘ll be there shortly! Give me one moment.” He was doing something. The sound of running water and pots being put down on counters brought food to mind. Was he going to cook?

None of us moved, we were in awe that this man left mid way through an explanation, to cook it would sound like.

After a few moments, he returned to the couch and took a seat again.

“What if they could make it to the same building we came through? Would it be possible to recreate our way over?” I asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Trevor responded. “I had an idea but I don’t know how it’d turn out.”

Mara’s was taken by the subject; she walked into the living room after Trevor confirmed that he came up with a plan to get Marcus and Strobe inside.

“If we could find something that could support our weight and get us across, like the plank we used it would be a matter of getting Marcus and Strobe to the roof,” I made it up as went. “I could go across and clear the path up to the fire escape on the building Mara came up through, Marcus and Strobe would proceed to sneak by the infected, and they could make their way up and back here to the rest of us.” I moved to the front of the door and finished my explanation. “Either way, Marcus saved us so the least we can do is the same for him.”

“I know what we could use,” Trevor said. “Go to the roof and wait for me. I’m going to the basement for a few things, I’ll catch up.” Trevor finished and went back to the kitchen to mess around with something else.

I did as Trevor asked and went on my way to the roof. Going up the stairs, I could faintly hear Lizbeth tell Edwin and Mara to stay in the apartment.

Are they her children?

The door shut behind her. She wanted to help me.

I made it to the roof first having also been the first to head out, and I searched for anything to get me across to the next building with no luck. 

Lizbeth reached the roof and yelled across at Marcus and Strobe to tell them the plan so far.

I gave up the search when I found nothing and decided to wait for Trevor to join us.

“I think this’ll work,” he said while he dragged a ladder made of some tough aluminum through the door. It was long enough to make it across the buildings, exactly what we needed. I’m sure Marcus and Strobe were balanced enough to walk the ladder without much trouble.

I helped Trevor lay out the ladder from one building to the other and we placed smaller wooden planks across to build a bridge.

I went over. Trevor and Lizbeth exchanged words before she came across and met me at the other side.

Trevor waited until Lizbeth made it across safely and went back into the building.

It was a good thing he did, we didn’t want to risk his life either, and it looked like he knew how to stay alive so maybe him being with Mara and Edwin was a good idea in case something went wrong.

“Let’s get this over with,” Lizbeth said.

“Yes ma’am,” I responded.

Marcus and Strobe kept up with our pace and made their way over to where we were first separated.

Although the walk was short, it gave me enough time to think and retrace the events up to that point. Several days of near death experiences, random encounters with people I didn’t know, which would just end up having to save my life, and those were just some of the terrible things that occurred.

The man who lost his life to save the little girl, just so she could live a few more seconds, that was by far the most horrible thing, ever, at all. Misha’s death was bad, but there was something much darker, more twisted about how this man gave his life for no reason at all. The little girl lost her life the same way and we couldn’t do anything about it. Our choices were to sit back and let it happen or lose our lives for some additional seconds in the delay of the inevitable.

Before I knew it, we were back at the first building where we split up from Mara. I made it to the bottom level of the fire escape and I lowered the ladder ever so gently to avoid any noise being made. It wasn’t soundless but it wasn’t anything loud enough to attract the infected. Lizbeth stood at the top waiting for me to let her know when it was ready so that she could tell Marcus and Strobe they could come through. Once the ladder was as far down as it could get, the moment of truth arrived.

I nodded at Lizbeth. She vanished from my line of sight and went over to the other side to tell Marcus and Strobe.

They made it to the alley like ninjas. At first I wasn’t even aware that they were in the alley but metal rubbed against metal and when I looked it was the ladder jiggling back and forth while Strobe climbed it. Marcus followed up the ladder and made sure none of the infected remained in the area. Everything went pretty smoothly.

Once both Marcus and Strobe were going up the fire escape to the roof, I pulled up the ladder just in case one of the infected was cleverer than the rest and figured out how to use the ladder. I followed Marcus and Strobe to the roof when I finished. We met up with Lizbeth at the top. She’d clearly become close to her group before Marcus and I came along and she shivered with anxiety, worried for Strobe. She gave him a tight gripped hug. No exchange or words, just relief that he was still alive.

Everyone was so exhausted from the last two days, to the point that even after the reunion hugs were handed out, silence took over. We walked over to the ladder that made up the bridge between the two buildings and we made our way across. Marcus whispered, “watch your step” to Lizbeth while he helped her get onto Trevor’s building.

Strobe and I removed the ladder and put it to a side once we were all on the other side.

In Trevor’s apartment the air became easier to breathe. Tension faded and we all relax now that Marcus and Strobe were with us again. Both of them made themselves at home in Trevor’s apartment. I noticed that Trevor wasn’t in the living room with the rest of us but a faint hum came from the kitchen, to the tune of some old country song I heard once a million years prior. He kept cooking; he wanted to finish the breakfast.

Having a chance to sit and rest without having to keep an eye on everyone allowed me to realize two things. One was the fact that I’ve been cold for the last couple of days which was masked by the constant need to run for my life made sure I forgot that it was winter. The second was the fact that I didn’t have a respectable meal in several days. I manage to scavenged random little nothings like candy bars and what not but not a full meal. My stomach realized it was hungry after I did and it screamed at me. It and I had a little back and forth argument for a bit. I’d tell it to shut up, everyone would look at me like I’m crazy and it would yell at me again so loud everyone could hear it, but no one react to it so they either ignored the loud sound or it was loud only to me. Maybe they didn’t even ignore it but rather, it didn’t faze them in the first place. I mean, with zombies roaming the streets outside even in this “abandoned” city, feeling safe came far in between. I considered the possibility that our minds blocked all things that were not related to pure survival. Hunger was just something else in the world, therefore, unimportant.

Marcus, Strobe, Edwin and I all sat on the couches in the living room while Lizbeth paced back and forth. Mara was in the kitchen on a chair at the dinner table. She watched Trevor make breakfast. From my point of view, she was the only person in the kitchen. Trevor was nowhere to be seen, but he soon reminded everyone he was still there. “If you’re hungry…” his voice echoed out, “…come to the kitchen and take what you want!” A smile crawled onto everyone’s face and rested there with their excitement.

Lizbeth, already on her feet, made her way to the kitchen. Marcus, Strobe, Edwin and I stood up and took our time to let the girls get their food first. None of us ever mentioned that we would let them get their food first but I guess our parents taught us well enough for it to be a given between all of us.

I stepped into the kitchen last out of the guys and what I walked into was nothing short of a dream come true, if my dream was for food instead of the end of the apocalypse. It was as good, for the circumstances, as it was going to get. Eggs, bacon, bread with butter, sausages, orange juice and milk. It looked like the food was taken right out of a cereal commercial. You know the commercials that show irrationally large portions of food aside a huge bowl of cereal that was previously drowned in milk. Like people sit around and eat applejacks and bacon.

I stared dead at all this food, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the volume and the scent, that fascinating scent that came with it all. I took one of the plates set on the table and grabbed a little of everything like everyone else. We subconsciously made a line similar to lunch lines in high school. One person would take and move up to the next bit of food and the one behind would move to where the last person was. By the time I gathered the last of my food and sat at the large dinner table for breakfast… the breakfast table… everyone already tore into their food like they had some beef with it.