The Infected (Book 2): Karen's First Day (7 page)

The heavy metal rock blasted from the cab and muffled the
woman’s cries for help. Cliff put one foot on the asphalt. The young woman was
ten feet from the front of his truck. Cliff had the cleaver up, ready to fight
when one of the infected reached out and clutched a fistful of her long blonde
hair. Her head snapped back. She came to an abrupt stop and her feet flew out
from under her. The woman fell brutally to the rough street surface. The
infected were upon her. There was nothing he could do but watch them tear her
apart. Their mouths ripped into her soft tanned skin. Her eyes turned white as
they rolled back into her skull.

Cliff hesitated for a moment. He was driven to save her
but knew she was lost. He climbed back into the cab, yanked the door shut, dropped
the emergency brake and stepped on the gas. As he pulled away, Cliff spun the
dial to max on the sound system so he did not have to hear the screams of her
death.

Cliff made a few turns and fished his cell phone from his
pocket. He kept one eye on the road as he speed dialed the retirement community
where his mother lived. It rang and rang. No answer.

“Fuck,” he hung up and put the phone back in his pocket.
He weaved past a couple of cars that were parked in the center of the street.
Their windows were busted out and blood coated the seats. The tires screeched
under the Dodge as he course corrected after the last car. Cliff checked the
speedometer. He was doing sixty on a street zoned for thirty-five.

A car crash blocked the intersection ahead. The vehicles
were burnt out shells. Black smoke filled the sky. A group of infected roamed
the accident, looking for a snack. Their bodies were charred and smoldering.
When they moved, flakes of ashed skin floated to the asphalt. A few of the
monsters had spotted the approaching truck. The horde took off and raced toward
him. They moved as fast as their barbequed bodies could carry them.

He mashed the brakes with both feet. The meat cleaver
slid off the seat and fell to the floorboard. The palms of his hands worked
quickly to turn the wheel. At this speed the truck’s tail end spun around and
Cliff’s rear quarter panel made contact with the leaders of the group.

The metal around the rear tire folded easily under the
weight of their scorched bodies. The fire had weakened their joints and their limbs
crumbled on impact. He took out four of them, but a large group still gave
chase.

He was headed in the wrong direction and did not have
time for this bullshit. On his right was a parking lot to a strip mall. Cliff
cranked the wheel and pulled into the lot. He got the truck heading back in the
right direction. The crispy bodies followed him into the parking lot. They
reached out and grabbed for the side of the truck. They hit the front quarter
panel of the Dodge. Cliff’s passenger side mirror knocked the block off one of
the infected. Their blistered arms folded backwards and the bodies were knocked
to the ground as he zipped by. Cliff pulled out of the parking lot and was able
to bypass the whole horde without any head on collisions.

He maneuvered past the accident and kept rolling down the
street. At the next intersection two police cruisers had formed a V shape in
the center of the road. Four officers stood in the center of the V. They emptied
their pistols at the oncoming pack of infected.

The nine-millimeter bullets ripped in and out of the
diseased torsos, having no effect. Cliff downshifted and turned south at the
intersection. Two of the shots missed the infected and hit the passenger side
door of the Dodge. Foam stuffing exploded out of the passenger’s seat.

“Fuck me!”

The gunfire faded in the distance. Then there were no
more shots. Cliff checked his mirrors. From this distance he could tell they
were overrun.

Goddamn!

Four officers with proper training and equipment didn’t
stand a chance against them.

What kind of chance did he have with a meat cleaver?
 

Leaving the apartment was a bad idea.

He was only a minute away from his mother’s. Cliff
stepped on it to get the truck back up to sixty.

Cliff pulled his truck into a parking lot and turned down
the heavy metal music. A crashed sedan rested on top of a sparking transformer
at the edge of the block. The sedan probably knocked out the electricity to his
mother’s building. Great! The place was called East Vancouver Retirement
Community. It was a bland two-story building with no discernable features.
Cliff hated that his mother lived here, but it was the best they could afford.

He came to a screeching stop in the emergency lane outside
the front doors. He killed the engine and reached over to pick up the cleaver from
the floorboard. The parking lot was full of the staff’s cars. It was black inside
the double doors that led to the main entrance. The eaves above the doors
blocked out the sun.

He saw no movement inside.

Cliff popped the glove compartment and fished out a
flashlight, checked the batteries and luckily they still had juice.

Thank God!

His mother’s room was on the second floor. No power meant
he would have to carry her down the stairs. He moved fast, jogging to the front
door. The sliding doors stayed shut. No power to the sensor. He spotted a big
ceramic flowerpot next to the doors and picked it up. He heaved it into the glass
and the windowpane shattered. The flowerpot exploded on the floor and the
potting soil spread out across the white tile that led into the main lobby.

Cliff paused before entering. He wanted to see if the
sound alerted anyone or anything to his arrival. After a moment he heard feet
shuffling down the main hallway for the lobby and as the figures stepped from
the dark hall into the light of the lobby, Cliff recognized the two women. They
worked the front desk, answering calls and checking people in.

One of the women looked like she’d been scalped. Her
skull, exposed on the right side of her head and the rest of her brown hair was
matted with blood. Two steps behind her was a heavyset woman. Massive chunks of
flesh had been bitten off her thick arms. Excess skin hung down off the back of
her triceps. Their pace quickened as they entered the lobby. The scalped woman
kicked over what was left of the plant as she moved for the busted window.

Cliff couldn’t stop his body from shaking with fear. When
the scalped woman stepped over the threshold he buried the cleaver in her face.
Before it dropped he grabbed the dead body by the throat and forced it back
into the lobby.

He got enough momentum going to knock it into the other
infected woman. The corpse acted as a shield and he pushed both of them
backwards until the heavyset woman tripped on a coffee table in the middle of
the room. Cliff pinned her down with the scalped woman’s limp body and swung
the cleaver at the top of her head. The cracked cranium drained black blood out
onto the white tile. He extracted the blade and tried to hold his breath to
listen for anymore of the infected staff or tenants of the building.

He was met with silence.

Cliff peered down the dark hallway. He couldn’t make out
any movement. He tried to remember how many people worked here. There were at
least ten nursing staff, probably a janitor or two, plus the forty occupants that
were just waiting around to die. Fifty potential infected people could be
waiting in the dark corners of this place.

“Fucking fantastic,” Cliff whispered to himself. He
clicked on the flashlight and shined it down the hall. The light illuminated a
sign that read “STAIRS”.

Cliff snuck down the hall. He paused to listen for any
movement. Still nothing.

Where the hell was everyone?

Cliff moved next to the door that led to the stairwell. He
pointed the flashlight through the small glass window in the door.

A set of bloody dentures crashed into the glass.

Cliff yelped as he jumped back from the door. He covered
his mouth with his forearm to muffle any more noise from escaping. Black eyes cased
in wrinkled skin watched him through the window. The thing’s head bobbed back
and forth as it shuffled behind the door. It did not know how to open the door.

As it swayed, Cliff was able to see a dozen other seniors
behind it. All of them had turned. He took a step closer and tried to look past
the old person’s twisted face. He flashed the light into each of the infected
faces and didn’t recognize a single one.

He took a deep breath and kept moving down the hall. He
flashed the light into each room he passed. There were bodies on some of the
floors and some were resting in wheelchairs. Blood covered the beds and walls
in nearly every room.

An infected old woman lay on the floor at the end of the
hall. It crawled towards him. Its atrophied legs dragged behind it. Cliff hurdled
the old woman, but he came to a stop a few feet from her, realizing he needed
to take her down now. He wouldn’t be able to jump over it while pushing his mother’s
wheelchair. The infected had already started to pivot on its belly and chase
after him.

“I’m sorry ma’am.” He swung the cleaver and put her out
of her misery.

At the end of the hall was the last set of stairs that led
to the second floor. He flashed his light through the window and it was clear.
Just to be sure Cliff knocked at the window. The sound echoed up through the
concrete corridor.

He waited.

The sound of unsteady footsteps echoed through the
stairwell. Cliff couldn’t tell how many infected were in there until he saw the
lone staff member stumble down the last few steps. It was a male nurse. 

It crashed into the door. It was a big fella and his
weight hit the door with a heavy thud. Its powerful arms banged over and over
into the solid oak. If there were any others up in the stairwell they would
have come down by now.

One infected was better than a dozen.

Cliff pushed the handle and put his shoulder into the
door. He hit it fast knocking the door into the big guy. The infected fell back
onto the stairs. Cliff jumped through the doorway and landed on it, cleaver
first. He hacked the steel blade into its big head. Its skull smacked against
the stairs and crunched from the impact.

When Cliff fell forward onto its dead body his flashlight
hand landed on the big man’s chest. He propped himself up and his flashlight
sunk into the gaping wound in the dead man’s ribcage.

The stairwell went black.

Cliff pulled his hand out of the bloody hole and the
flashlight’s glow had become a dim, red color.

“Shit!” Cliff’s stomach wanted to eject the beer he drank
not that long ago. He wiped his hand and bloody flashlight against the small
clean spot on the man’s uniform. He wiped the light a few more times and
extracted the cleaver from the dead man’s skull.

Cliff put his back against the railing and inched up the
stairs. The light now shined with a soft pink glow. No matter how hard he tried
he couldn’t slow his breathing.

He crested the landing and ascended the last flight of
stairs to the second floor. He stepped up to the door and peeked through the
window. The hallway was dark. Only a few bedroom doors were open letting
sunlight into the place. His mother’s room was in the middle of the hall. Room
210. Again he knocked against the door and waited.

He heard no movement.

The door creaked open as he stepped out into the second
floor hallway. He couldn’t move the flashlight fast enough to see everything.
The dim old bulb only shined a two foot wide pink cone of light. Something
scurried along the floor and grabbed at Cliff’s leg.

Without looking he sliced the cleaver an inch from the
back of his calf. He could feel the impact of the blade hit something. On the
follow through he spun away from whatever was on the ground.

The pink light flashed across the face of a young,
attractive woman in a nurse’s uniform. Her eyes were the familiar black of the
infected. From the ground she held up what was left of her forearm. Her wrist
and hand dangled by a tiny stretch of tissue.

She lurched forward on her good arm. Another old body lay
on the floor next to the infected nurse. Its body was riddled with bite marks.
She had been feeding for a while. Bits of human meat hung from her adult
braces.

Cliff leapt back away from her reach. One of the nurse’s
legs had been eaten to the bone. Only a few scraps of muscle left. That was why
she was stuck on her belly. Cliff wasted no time and gave her a taste of his
cleaver. The wrecked body dropped dead.

In the bedroom, behind the dead nurse, sat an old man.
His belly was extended past the realm of normal fat belly. It was so overloaded
from the meat of her leg, it kind of looked like a pregnant old man. The weight
of the ingested flesh kept it floor-bound.

Something moved around in one of the bedrooms down the
hall. Cliff’s heart raced like a jackrabbit in his chest. A woman’s screams
were followed by a gunshot. A muzzle flash came from room 210.

He took the last few steps to her door and pushed it all
the way open. Another gunshot rung out. The round punched through the doorjamb
inches from Cliff’s head. He ducked.

“Stop shooting!” he screamed into the room.

“Clifford? Is that you?” the familiar old voice called to
him from the room.

“Mom?”

“Clifford, did I get you?” she slurred.

“No. Where are you?” he searched the room with the
flashlight. Then he saw a shaky hand sticking out of the closet. A snub-nosed
revolver waved around unsteadily in a wrinkled old fist. Cliff stepped into the
room and locked the door behind him. His feet hit something on the floor. He
aimed his light down.

A nurse’s body lay on the floor. She had an entry and
exit wound through her skull. He stepped over the body and around the end of
the twin sized bed, heading for the closet. He opened the door and flooded the
closet with pink light. Cliff’s mother squinted her eyes when they were hit
with his light.