Infected (Book 2): The Flight (4 page)

Connor must have passed out because he had no recollection of anything until he heard voices and felt hands shaking him. He opened his eyes to see Matt hovering over him.  From the looks he was getting from Matt, Frank and Zack, Connor realized the beating he received must have left him looking pretty pathetic.

Zack, pushing Matt aside, began examining Connor.  “What hurts?” he asked as he unbuttoned Connor’s blood-soaked shirt.

“Mmm,” Connor moaned.  The brain fog had returned with a vengeance.  “A better question is what doesn’t hurt,” he muttered past his split and swollen lips, trying without success to focus on the individual aches and pains.   All he was getting from his brain was pain, pain everywhere.  He couldn’t isolate any individual sensations.

Zack poked and prodded without speaking.  He started with Connor’s head, shining a light in his eyes after prying open the swollen upper and lower eyelids on his left eye. He felt Connor’s neck and then felt his way down his torso, feeling from side to side across his ribs.  “Nice cut you got there.” Zack said, as he ran a finger along its length.  “I assume you’re not going to want any anesthetic before I sew it up?”

“I’m not falling for that one again,” Connor stammered nearly incoherently. 

“I hope you got those magazines all loaded up before you got beat to a pulp,” Zack said, pushing on Connor’s stomach with both hands.  “We passed a whole passel of infected on the way over here,” he continued.

“We don’t have time for this,” Connor said, trying to push Zack away.  “Curtis’s guys have Katie, Eve, and the boys.  Even Curtis was worried about what was going to happen before he caught up with them.”  As Connor paused to cough, pain shot through his chest.  His head felt like it would burst.  “We have to go. Now!” he said, trying to impress the urgency he felt on the others. 

“We’re secure here,” Zack said, turning to Frank.  “Go out to the truck and bring the package inside.”

Frank, who had been kneeling beside Connor, stood up and walked nonchalantly down the hall. 

Anger welled up within Connor.  Nobody had the sense of urgency the situation demanded.  Everybody was calm and relaxed.  Zack had an infuriating smirk on his face when he turned back to Connor and continued his examination.  He worked his way down Connor’s legs, pushing and pulling as he went. 

“Matt, tell him we don’t have time for this!” Connor asserted as he pushed himself upright, growing more agitated at the lack of urgency everybody was exhibiting.

Zack put his hand on Connor’s chest, bringing a halt to his rising.  He put his other hand behind Connor’s head and pushed him back to the floor.  “You need to take it easy, Buddy,” he said calmly but insistently.  “You have a nasty concussion, at least one broken rib and your guts are probably beat to a jelly inside of you.  You are in no condition to…” and he was cut short.

“Get out of my way!” Connor heard as Katie came into his field of vision and pushed Zack to the side.  Her mouth opened and her lips quivered as she looked at him.  Her cobalt eyes began to sparkle as the tears built up and overflowed down her cheeks. 

Zack removed his pack and began pulling things out of different pockets as Katie bent down, hugging Connor and kissing his broken and bloody lips.  When she pulled back, her green shirt had dark splotches of blood all over and her lips were smeared with blood, too. 

“Oh, Connor, are you okay?” she sobbed.  

“I don’t understand,” Connor said with confusion, seeing Toby, Eve and Luke behind Katie, all with equally distraught looks on their faces.

“Mom, is he going to die?” Toby asked, nearing the point of tears.

“No sweetie, he’s not going to die,” Katie said, looking to Zack for reassurance.

“Your mom’s right.  He’s not going to die.  He’s going to be pretty sore for a while, but he’s going to be fine.”  Zack affirmed.  After cleaning the wound, Zack interrupted the reunion between the family. “Hang on, Connor.  You’re going to feel some pricks,” he added as he bent over with a syringe in his hand. 

Connor watched as he injected a clear liquid along the length of the gash on his side.  He didn’t feel a thing after the initial pokes.  After recapping the syringe, Zack prepared the curved needle and thread he pulled from a packet in his bag.  He plunged the needle in one side of the cut and out the other, continuing along the whole length with a running stitch.  Blood oozed out as he pulled the stitch tight and brought the two sides of the cut together.  In a well-practiced motion, he knotted the suture, trimmed the ends, and threw both hands above his head, yelling, “Done!”

With everybody staring at him in confusion, Zack explained, “Haven’t you guys ever been to a rodeo?  I used to do high school rodeo calf roping.”

A half smile brightened Katie’s face and Matt shook his head back and forth and whispered, “He’s a strange dude,” to Toby and Luke.  They both nodded in agreement, grins plastered on their faces, as they looked at Zack in awe.

The mood in the hallway was suddenly much lighter.  There was talking and even some laughter.  Connor had a hard time taking it in at first, but as his brain began to clear, his thoughts came easier and more cohesively.  Eventually, he was able to put together the nagging question that had been lurking in the back of his mind.  As soon as he was able to put it into words, Connor asked, “How did you get away from Curtis?”

Eve started for the group, “It was really Luke and Toby who did it.”

“Yeah,” Luke said.  “They caught us at your house and tied us up and put us in the back of the Army truck.  That guy right there,” he pointed at Curtis’s body, “told them to take us to the ranch.  He and the guys in his Army truck and the other one went somewhere together and two guys in our truck went the other way.  When we passed the grocery store, one of the guys said they should stop and get some booze.  When they stopped, they left us in the truck.  I got my hand untied and then I untied Toby.  They had put handcuffs on Mom and Katie and we couldn’t get them off.”

“One of the guys left his rifle in the truck,” Toby added.  “I got it out of the front seat.  It was just like yours, Dad,” he added, the excitement building in his voice.  “At first I couldn’t turn the safety off, but then I remembered it was on the side of the gun and not by the trigger.  I pushed the switch down like you taught me. Mom told me to rest it on the hood of the truck and wait for the guys to come out.  When they walked out of the store, I shot them both.  When I shot the first guy, he fell into the grocery cart the other one was pushing.  It was just like when I shot that fat infected lady that was trying to eat me yesterday.”

Connor cringed as Toby paused for a breath.  This was exactly what Connor had been trying to protect him from.  Nobody should have to take another person’s life, especially a boy Toby’s age.  At the same time, he felt pride that his son was able to do what needed to be done to protect himself and the others from what would have occurred had he not taken the two lives.  He would much prefer Toby to live with the guilt rather than have him and Luke brutally murdered and Katie and Eve endure the horrors awaiting them at the hands of Curtis and his crew.

Matt jumped in to finish the story.  “Frank was driving us toward the station when we heard a gun popping away further up the road.  Instead of turning toward the station, Frank kept going to check out what was happening and see if somebody needed help.  We couldn’t have been more surprised when we saw Eve and Katie running up the road toward us.  Toby was blasting away at infected with the rifle he picked up, while Luke was lighting them up with a flashlight he took from the truck.  They made a pretty good team.  We uncuffed the girls and came to meet you.  When we got here, we saw the Hummer in front and left the girls and kids in the car, fearing the worst.  I’ve got to tell you, it looked pretty bad when we walked into the hall.  I thought they got you.”

“You know me better than that,” Connor said, trying to put up a nonchalant edifice as he thought back to how close he came to losing his fight with Curtis.

Toby was hovering over Connor, still not convinced he wasn’t going to die.  “I’m going to be okay, Buddy.  I’m a little banged up, but I’m going to make it,” Connor said, trying to give a reassuring grin.  His lips were still oozing blood, which coated his teeth.  His attempt at a reassuring grin unsettled Toby even further. Connor pulled Toby to himself, hugging him.  Even though it sent a searing pain through his broken rib, Connor squeezed him tighter. “I’m really going to be okay, Son.  How are you doing?”

“I want it to go back to how it used to be,” Toby said.  “I want those things to go away.  I want people to stop trying to hurt us.”  He squeezed Connor’s neck tighter as his soft voice grew more and more emotional.  His words turned to sobs as his defenses collapsed, leaving the raw emotions of a vulnerable eight year old boy exposed for all to see.  His short life had not equipped him with the tools needed to process and cope with the multitude of hopes, fears and pains that had threatened to overwhelm him throughout the last day and a half.  No amount of experience could prepare a person for what Toby had gone through.

“Son, I don’t know if things will ever go back to the way they used to be.  I don’t know if the infected will ever go away, either.  Whatever happens, our family is going to take care of each other.  As long as we have each other, we’re going to be okay.”

“Toby,” Matt said, kneeling down beside him and Connor. “We are going to make it even if life is different than it used to be.”  Matt stood up and reached down to Connor.  As Connor took his hand, Matt pulled him to his feet.  “We need to get out of here and get you cleaned up.”

“Mom and Dad have an extra room at their place and somebody can use Jeb’s room,” Frank said.  “We have the bunk house, too.  There’s room for everybody out there.”

An hour later, Connor was toweling water off his battered body after a hot shower.  He cautiously lowered himself into bed beside Katie and, without saying a word, instantly drifted off to freedom from lawless, marauding criminals and the infected.

Part 2

Atlanta, Georgia

Thursday Morning

Zeke immediately noticed two things when he opened his eyes. First, he was lying on his left side, his right thigh pulled up perpendicular to his body with his knee bent at ninety degrees.  It was the same position he had assumed just prior to falling asleep. He hadn’t moved all night.  Second, and more important, he realized the ache that had racked his body for the last two days was completely gone.  There was no uncomfortable bloating in his abdomen, no pressure building within his bowels.  There was no excessive saliva accumulating in his mouth, signaling the onslaught of another round of vomiting.

He had felt “off” when he left work Monday afternoon.  He wasn’t really sick; he just didn’t feel right.  It was a slow day and he had put in six or seven hours at the office over the weekend, so he decided to leave early. 

The moment he opened the door to his apartment, he was overcome by the aroma of simmering beans wafting out the door.  The smell normally had an effect similar to what Pavlov’s bell had on his dogs: instant salivation from the anticipation of food.

But on Monday afternoon, the smell brought on a wave of nausea that he was barely able to suppress.  All he could do was unplug his Crock Pot, hurriedly move the beans onto the balcony, and turn on the vent fan above the stove to pull the offending odor out of the apartment before the nausea drove him to his knees in front of the toilet.

The fan didn’t have the power to draw the smell out of the apartment in a timely manner.  Although he didn’t want to, Zeke finally resorted to opening a window and turning on the whole house fan in the hallway.  In a matter of minutes, the smell was gone and along with it, the crippling nausea. 

The monstrous fan blades created another dilemma, however.  Although the fan had effectively removed every vestige of the provoking scent, it could not work in a vacuum.   Every liter of air the fan drew from the house had to be replaced with another liter of air from outside.  The house was now full of ninety degree air saturated with moisture from the brewing Georgia thunderstorm. The humidity was nearly one hundred percent.  Within twenty minutes at most, the charcoal clouds would be thoroughly impregnated with moisture and would begin to vent excess liquid in the form of rain.

The hot, humid air filling his house was almost as bad as the smell of food had been.  He quickly closed the window and turned the fan off.  

In a continuous motion, he moved his hand to the thermostat and dropped the temperature to fifty-eight degrees.  It was as low as it could be set.  He intellectually knew setting it at fifty-eight wouldn’t cool the house any faster than leaving it at seventy-two where it had been.  He also knew fifty-eight would be too cold. 

That knowledge didn’t matter.  All that mattered was sweat was beading on his forehead. It had already soaked through his t-shirt, and was beginning to saturate his dress shirt around the armpits.  The muggy air felt like it was suffocating him.  Dropping the thermostat to fifty-eight had psychological implications: somehow, it made him feel cooler.

His body suddenly began to ache, as if the hot, damp air had catalyzed some sort of reaction that had been slowly steeping away within his joints.  His gut was roiling in discomfort.  It felt like part of the storm developing outside had moved inside his belly and was about to reach a crescendo. 

In an instant, he knew he only had moments to get his besieged body to the bathroom.  Upon his arrival, he couldn’t decide whether to raise the seat and kneel before the toilet or leave it in the down position and sit on it instead.  In the end, he sat on the seat and picked up the wastebasket resting beside the porcelain throne.  Whether the vomiting came first or it was preceded by the diarrhea didn’t matter.  Either way, one preceded and precipitated the explosive arrival of the other.

After several minutes the attack subsided.  Zeke felt like every drop of energy had been wrung from his body. He stepped out of his clothes and left them to lie on the floor while he cleansed his defiled body in a cold shower.  By the time he was done, the combination of cold water and the rapid onset of a fever left him chilled to the core and shivering.

His trembling hand reached around the shower door for the towel hanging limply from the wall.  Feebly, he struggled to sop the dripping water from his body.  He didn’t feel like making the effort; however, he knew the remaining water wouldn’t evaporate on its own in the high humidity.  Once he was dry, he staggered to bed, nestled his naked body between the sheets, and went to sleep. 

He was roused from his sleep by a flash and explosion that rattled the windows as the thunder rumbled away into the distance.  Awakened, the turmoil within his bowls intensified and he rushed to the bathroom again.  The thunder awakened him several more times, providing just enough warning for him to make it to the safety of the bathroom.  Finally, the storm faded away in the cooling night and his innards, in response, seemed to relax for several hours.

Tuesday was a sleep-induced blur punctuated with moments of wakeful terror as he raced for the toilet.  Fortunately, each time his body woke him in time to reach the safety of the bathroom.  After each desperate race against his body’s turmoil, he forced himself to drink as much Gatorade as his body would tolerate and then returned to bed. 

Wednesday was more of the same, but by evening he felt he was beginning to recuperate. The vomiting and diarrhea had subsided.  His body was slowly winning the battle against the invading virus.  His appetite had returned and he considered eating something light. His body had expended a tremendous amount of energy by metabolically raising his temperature in an attempt to cook the besieging virus to death, and it was begging to have its stores replenished.   In the end, he decided against it.  As famished as he was, he sensed his body would revolt against anything solid he introduced to his digestive tract.  Better to wait another day. 

He didn’t have the energy to do anything other than roll onto his left side and raise his right thigh perpendicular to his body in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort in his stomach.  With that laborious task completed, he closed his eyes.

That was how he found himself when he awoke Thursday morning.  The difference was that, in spite of his fast-induced weakened state, he felt great.