Infected (Book 1): The First Ten Days (28 page)

There were limited options from then on. Every other side of the building crawled with infected, so my only escape plan was to try to follow the infected that chased the hunters, but needed to be done without being seen or heard by any of the runners in the area. On the bright side, the runners which gathered back there already vanished after the hunters. I bobbed and weaved through the walkers and succeeded to not attract anything else into the mix. Now, this plan would have otherwise been incredibly easy, except… BANG, BANG, BANG! The idiots shot their guns again, only this time I was between them and the infected gathered around the building. Screams became louder so I ran right passed the walkers ahead of me to avoid all the runners that now came from behind.

This was incredibly stupid. I couldn’t figure out what the damage was with these guys. They couldn’t put two and two together? Why would they want more infected behind them? If I was them I would have avoided the use of my guns as much as I could while I ran for my life. Either way, I was on the run in their direction since they didn’t give me much of a choice.

I ran onto a street parallel to the highway and in the same direction. The infected behind me already spotted me and joined the chase under the impression I was the one who shot the gun. There were too many to try to run into another building, I‘d likely get trapped in front of a locked door and killed. My only chance to survive was to hope the hunters made their way somewhere safe enough for me to also hideout undetected.

I was either never hypothermic which was a miracle on its own, or the heat built up from having to run and the adrenaline that coursed through my body made me warm enough to fight off the hypothermia. My body was nice and warm and I ran full speed with no restrictions, even the snow was little. Who knew being near death would save my life?

The further down the street I went, the lower the ruffle and mess of shoeprints in the snow became. From every direction except the front infected spilled out and focused on the only person they could see: me. By then I involuntarily ran a straight line down the street.

The street came to an end and at its end rested a warehouse, a large one at that. It was safe to assume the hunters ran in there, it was also safe to assume there was no option but to do the same. Too many infected came out of every dark corner outside and prevented me from heading anywhere else. They even came from the sides of the warehouse so I couldn’t go around. At least one of the gun shots must have come from the warehouse for all the infected to know exactly where to go before even I knew.

A huge sliding steel door was the entrance to the warehouse from the side I was on, and it was already open enough to fit one person at a time. The narrow entrance was definitely going to thin out the number of infected by forcing them to squeeze in one at a time. The steel the warehouse was made of was going to assure the infected would not break their way into the place.

I ran in.

The Warehouse

I
nside the warehouse there was a familiar darkness. The outline of large shipping containers and wooden crates lit up by the moonlight that seeped in through windows at the top of the warehouse. I went deeper inside to get away from the entrance. Some of the infected already roamed inside, the deeper I went the more I could hear. They gathered somewhere but I couldn’t turn on the lantern to see where and become an immediate target. Quite the predicament I was in.

Some parts of the warehouse were lit enough to see the floor and the things on them. I took my time through these spots, but I didn’t step in the light rather I would walk in the shadows which surrounded the light. Using the moonlight, I could better identify my surroundings and spot any of the infected if they moved around, which there happened to be many of.

I searched for a safe location where I could halt movement but it all looked the same. The warehouse was last used as a storage unit for whatever was inside of the containers and crates. There wasn’t any other purpose for it.

Several minutes after slow movements around the warehouse, I was ready to give up.

Something moved. I caught it from the corner of my eye. A flicker of orange somewhere high on the walls of the warehouse crossed my peripherals. I turned my attention to it and there they were, hidden inside of an office that overlooked the inside of the warehouse, the hostile survivors, the hunters. There was a flame active inside of the office for light while they waited for the infected to thin out. The flicker of orange was their flame dancing around while it peeked out through the crack in the door the way one of the hunters did. Luckily, I was still hidden in the shadows not to be seen by the infected and it served me as cover from the hunters too.

My new goal was to reach the second floor and take cover up there the same way the hunters were doing, except I had to hide from both the infected and those hunters for however long it would take to be safe again. The door on the second floor shut and I took it as my cue to look for a way up there. The darkness didn’t help and there wasn’t any moonlight shined in that direction, this led me to believe they camped out in the warehouse long before this moment ever arrived. How else would they have so easily located an office in the dark? They possessed prior knowledge of it.

I moved under the office to find a way up but there wasn’t, at least not one I could see. Like the use of fire escapes, repetition worked well during the apocalypse, if it isn’t broken it doesn’t need to be fixed, so I went back to a trick which worked before, I slid my fingertips along the wall in the dark. Cold metal grazed my fingertips some twenty feet or so away from the door to the office. The chances were there was in fact a staircase somewhere, but it was safer to go up a ladder since the infected could not follow me up.

Quietly, I climbed the ladder to the top, stood on the catwalk, and went over to the door where the office was.

“How much longer do we have to wait here before we can go?” a voice from inside of the office said. I listened in on the conversation through the door.

“However long it takes for the infected outside to forget what they’re looking for.” There was something about their voices I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“This whole town is infected. With the exception for the guy you let get away back there. This place has been looted dry.” They confirmed my suspicions. They hunted anybody they could find to take their supplies.

“Richard’s going to be pissed if we don’t find something before we catch up with him.” A chill ran down my spine and my heart sped up. These guys were Richard’s men? The reason their voices bugged me so much was because I remembered them from the larger group back when Jason and I first met Marcus. They told me all I wanted to hear. They would lead me straight to Richard and by default, straight to Jason. All I had to do was follow them to wherever they headed.

“We’ll leave for the next town as soon as it clears up outside.”

“Yeah, maybe we’ll have more luck over there. This place is a health hazard.”

Tell me about it.

“Tell me about it.”

Jinx, you owe me a coke.

“Check to see if it’s clear yet.” With that, I established the higher ranking one was also the one with the deeper voice. He was the leader of the two, or at least the brain, which isn’t much said based on their trigger happy display.

I leaned against the wall behind the door and it opened a crack again. This time he stood there a while longer and stared out into the warehouse.

“Here, use this.”

A click and footsteps headed over to the door. A bright light shot out from behind it, a lantern. It must have contained mirrors to direct the light, because it was brighter and more direct than mine. Throughout the warehouse the light went, it allowed me to see the large number of infected quietly strolling aimlessly in the warehouse and the stairs to the second level, right next to the entrance on the other side.

“What’s the news?” a third, younger, more intellectual voice followed by footsteps leading out of a separate room located inside of the office.

I assume one of three things was possible. First, three people chased me the whole time. Second, the third voice came from someone who was in this warehouse the entire time. Or third, the office magically generated and materialized henchmen for Richard.

“Too many infected have entered the warehouse.Now we’re stuck here. We need to come up with a different way out. It’s probably packed with infected outside too.” This was entirely their fault. If they would have simply avoided the use of their guns there wouldn’t have been so many infected collected in one area.

“On the other hand, so many infected around us means there are less of them to roam the streets. We can make another sweep through the town if we find a way out,” the third voice was clearly the brains of the trio, unlike what I thought before I heard his voice. The manner in which he suggested the idea rather than giving an order or command told me he was the brains but not the boss, the deep voice was still the big cheese.

To put it simply; the guy with the deep voice was the leader, the guy with the weak voice was the brains and the guy with the neutral average voice was the idiot and probably the one who shot his gun.

“I’m all ears.” the one in command said.

“Yes you are!” the brains of the trio jokingly replied. I already liked him.

Now, at no moment did these three say each other’s names and it wasn’t weird, there wasn’t a reason to say each other’s names since they already knew who they were. But this small detail can create some confusion. So let’s call them Dummy, Bossy and Smarty. Just for giggles, let’s also say they were all a foot tall and blue.

“We can climb down the side of the window if we could find some rope or something as strong to tie on this end,” Smarty said.

Whatever they planned to do I was fully onboard with it. Obviously after they were done doing it, but I was onboard nevertheless.

“And where do you expect us to find a rope?” Bossy said.

“We’re in a warehouse. Go look around. I’m sure you’ll find something useful,” Smarty replied. He was a pretty rational guy. Common sense was his strong suit.

“But the warehouse is crawling with infected!” Dummy redundantly said.

“You don’t say,” Smarty replied.

How I adore the aimless banter of the Smurfs.

“Let’s just get this over with so we can get out of here,” Bossy became aggravated by the stupidity of the overall conversation taking place. That made two of us.

“Just sneak around, if they don’t see you then they won’t know you are there. Be conservative with the light and you should be fine,” Smarty assured them.

Based on the fact that Smarty neither volunteered to go along with them, and neither Dummy nor Bossy expressed a problem with his cowardice, it was a logical assumption he wasn’t fit or armed well enough to go out there and deal with the infected personally. He was only there to assure the other two kept intelligent ideas floating around their stupidity.

My cue to get the hell out of there and go hide somewhere was given, but it was given too late. The door opened and I flattened myself against the wall behind the door again. I waited for Dummy and Bossy to walk out. The door hid me till they were outside of the office. I still couldn’t see their faces to identify either one. I could on the other hand tell which one was Bossy thanks to Smarty’s remark towards his ears. Between a walking tank and an averagely built guy; he was the averagely built guy, maybe a bit more muscular than me. Dummy shut the door behind him and didn’t look back. They continued around the second floor catwalk until eventually they were sucked into the darkness. This combined with their silence made them vanish into the confines of the warehouse entirely.

Now there was an even worse problem to deal with. I was smacked between two guys I couldn’t see and the one in the office.

What do I do?

The more I thought of it, the more sense it made; I held a gun, and based on his reluctance to participate in the more risky ventures along with his epically slow companions, it made sense Smarty didn’t have an entirely solid defense going on. This was no more than a bluffing moment.

This is actually pretty perfect.

I needed to be timed nicely. I had to get in and get an angle on the guy, the gun was the angle.

It’s better than getting shot here without trying anything.

Gun in hand and the door in front of me, it was time to move in and hope for the best. The cold door handle pained my palm. I took a deep breath and went for it. The door came open. On the other side of the room a guy no older than I was, frozen in place with a look of surprise and disbelief. He was definitely too young to be one of Richard’s military buddies. This was some kid he picked up along the way.

“Put your hands up and don’t say a word or you die right here,” I whispered with a stern tone, one which demanded respect and boasted authority. It was bluff.

He nodded back at me and put his hands up.

“Nod yes if you know where Richard is going,” again with the demanding tone in my voice, the plan was to keep the act up long enough for it to be the only thing he knew about me. This was particularly important because according to Marcus, Richard felt intrigue for people who could handle themselves one way or another. He had to believe I was more of a threat than he was.