The Infected (Book 3): Nightfall (11 page)

Frank found his way
through their kitchen and got the glass of water first. Sara and Cliff had
their hands clean, gloves on and ready for instructions.

Frank stepped from the
kitchen with the water and handed it to Jim, “Any requests?”

“Simple and fast would be
best.” Jim took a sip of water.

“Got it,” Frank had
spotted a box of healthy cereal in the cupboard and milk in the fridge. There’s
not much out there food wise that was faster than a bowl of cereal.

“Alright, Sara You’re going
to be my second set of hands and get me the tools and bandages as I call them
out. Cliff you’re in charge of helping me keep the blood clear so I can see
what I’m doing.” Tina said it and it was so.

Jim heard the familiar
sounds of breakfast being made and a short while later Frank appeared with a
bowl and spoon in his hands.

“Here you go.”

Jim exchanged his empty
glass for the full bowl and spoon, “Thank you.” He dug in right away. The sweet
taste of the milk and the crunch of the flakes were as close to heaven.

Devon drifted in and out
of consciousness. The blood loss had taken its toll and he was as white as a
racist’s sheet. Tina unwound the bandage from his leg until it was all clear.

“Cliff, take the two pads
and press them to the wound. Sara get me the scissors.”

Cliff held one against the
back of Devon’s leg and the other on the top of the thigh. Sara handed over the
scissors and Tina began to cut the pant leg off.  

Tina removed the fabric
from Devon’s leg, “I need to clean this out and make sure there are no foreign
objects in the wound before we stich it up.” She held a bottle of hydrogen
peroxide and surgical tweezers. Tina poured out a small amount of peroxide onto
the open wound. It fizzed up and bubbled for a while. Once it cleared she gently
looked into the bullet hole with the flashlight. She couldn’t see any fabric
from the pants or shards of the bullet. Blood raised up out of the hole.

“Give it a gentle wipe
please,” she asked Cliff.

He grazed the top of
Devon’s leg and wiped away the extra blood. Once she was sure that it was clear
she dropped a little more peroxide onto it and let it bubble up again. Tina
readied a sterile needle and thread. She had never stitched anyone before but
she did make Alex’s Halloween costume last year and she hoped it would be close
to the same principle. She made her first incision and started to stitch the
wound closed. It didn’t take her very long to close up the little hole. Sara
already had a bandage and tape ready to go and placed it on Devon’s thigh
shortly after Tina cut the string of the thread.

“Okay, let’s roll him over
onto his side so I can get at the back of his leg.” Tina said as she lifted
Devon’s leg. Frank helped and grabbed Devon’s shoulders and rolled the young
man to his side. She poured a helping of peroxide down the back of his thigh and
it bubbled up again. Cliff wiped away a layer of excess blood and Tina held up
the light to take a look. This time she did see something. It looked like a
little hunk of his pants had passed through to the back of his leg.

“Shit!” Tina cursed as she
picked up her tweezers.

“What?” Sara’s voice
raised with concern.

“There’s something in
there. I think I can get it.” Tina dug into Devon’s leg. That woke him up and
he pulled his leg away from Tina.

“AAAHHH!! WHAT THE FUCK
ARE YOU DOING?!!!” Devon fought against Frank’s grip.

“Get his leg!” Tina
commanded Sara and Cliff.

“Hold on kid! There’s
something in there and she’s got to get it out,” Frank said as he tightened his
grip on Devon’s shoulders to keep him in one place.

They held him down as she
poked around in the back of his thigh. He cried out. Begged them to please
stop, but she couldn’t. Tina had to make sure the wound was clean.

Finally she got it. She
poured more peroxide onto it to make sure it was fully cleaned. Tina prepared
another needle and string. Devon’s screams ramped back up when she started in
on fixing the bullet hole. Everyone felt horrible for the guy. Jim especially.
He just had two stitch jobs done a few hours ago. He knew exactly how bad it
hurt to have a needle threaded through your skin.

“Done!” Tina snipped the
string and Sara placed the bandage on the back of his leg. They rolled Devon on
to his back and Tina began to wrap his leg to secure the bandages and keep them
from bleeding. Devon had passed back out and laid silent on the cheap counter
top. The room was quiet. Except for Morgan. She was giggling at an episode of
Futurama.

“Alright, that was fun.
Now what?” Sara’s voice was exhausted.

Everyone turned to Jim.

The man with a plan.

The guy that always seemed
to know what to do.

Jim’s eyes were shut, his
head had dropped and he let out a soft snore.

Karen clung to the side of
the cabinet of the kitchen island. She was too afraid to look over the counter
because, whoever was wielding the gun would take her head clean off. She was
frozen with fear. It was her first time being shot at.

BOOM! BOOM!

The shots were fired at
the garage door. The shooter must have seen Leon. Karen pulled her gun. Her
trembling hand lost its grip and it crashed to the floor. Her nerves had gone
haywire and were sending her muscles mixed signals on how to move. Footsteps
crept across the hardwood floor. They were heading in her direction. Everything
was happening so fast. Not even ten seconds ago the first round whizzed past
her head.

Leon’s shotgun whipped
around the corner of the garage door and he fired blindly into the kitchen.

A scream bellowed out of
what sounded like a woman. It was followed by the sound of a body falling to
the kitchen floor.

“Karen!” Leon called from
the garage.

“I’m okay!” Karen snuck a
look around the edge of the island. A bullet punched the floor inches from her
face. Karen recoiled back, “FUCK!”  

“Karen?” Leon’s voice
strained and then he pumped a few more rounds around the corner in the
direction the shot came from. The woman yelped and her gun clattered to the
floor. Karen inched her way around the other side of the island until she saw a
woman’s legs splayed out on the floor. She had a pair of brand new Nikes and
yoga pants on. Crimson fluid pooled around her thighs. Karen kept her gun
trained on the legs as she crept closer to the body on the floor.

“Karen?” Leon peeked one
eye around the corner of the doorway and saw that she was fine and moved slowly
towards the body slumped over on the floor.

“I’m fine,” Karen
whispered. She could see more of the woman now. Her lungs were still taking in
air but the shotgun’s pellets had devastated her torso.

Leon moved with haste from
the garage and stared down the barrel of the shotgun, keeping the woman dead in
his sights. Her body laid flat along the floor and a half gallon of blood had
already collected under her. A revolver sat inches from her outstretched hand.
The shotgun blasts had shredded her left arm and carved a hole into her chest.

Karen’s hand moved to
cover her mouth as shock and dismay covered her face. She recognized the woman
from the photos. This was her house.

The woman’s pretty blue
eyes flicked up at the two of them and then she coughed out, “Mike…went to go
get the kids…from school…he…he never came back.” Blood seeped from her mouth.
There was no saving her. Which meant she was about to turn. 

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry.
You were shooting and…oh God,” Leon ran his hand through his hair and his voice
shook like a leaf.

Karen knelt down next to
the woman. Her trembling hand reached out to comfort the woman, but she didn’t
know how.

 “If Mike comes
back…with Tyler and Maegan…tell them I love them…” The woman’s breathing became
erratic. The pool of blood on the floor had doubled in size.

“I will. I promise. We are
so sorry. We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.” Karen’s words felt cheap and
useless. The woman’s breaths came to a stop. It would not be long until she
became infected.

“Is she dead!? I killed
her! I fucking killed her!” Leon was breaking down. This was more than he could
take, but someone had to finish the job. Karen lifted the revolver from the
ground and handed it to Leon. “No! I can’t! I can’t do it!”

“This is the world we live
in! This is how it is now!” Karen was filled with anger, rage and sorrow. Her
words came out like poisonous venom. She felt equally responsible for what
happened. She may not have pulled the trigger but it was her idea to find a car
and break into this house. “Leon, you have to do this!”

The woman convulsed on the
floor. They only had seconds.

“I can’t do it! Please!”
He begged. She didn’t want to be the one to do it either.

The woman’s lips drew tight.
Her eyes opened and they were black. She began to push herself up off of the
floor.

“Leon, do it! You have
to!” she scolded him like a child.

“No!” he sounded like a
toddler.

The infected woman’s arm
reached out for Karen’s leg. There was no more time to argue. She had to make a
difficult choice and it looked like Leon was not up to the task.

She grabbed the gun,
aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

The infected woman’s
brains splattered all over the perfectly clean hardwood floor. The revolver
smoked in Karen’s hand. Her arm dropped to her side and she turned away from
Leon.

A few minutes passed and
not a word was spoken.

“Thank you.” Leon spoke so
quietly Karen could barely hear him. Robin pulled the same act every time she
got in trouble and had to apologize to her sister for hitting or pulling her hair.

“Yeah.” Karen stepped out
of the kitchen and headed for the steps that lead to the second floor. “Get the
booze and meet me in the car.” She said it with no emotion. No inflection. Like
a robot rattling off commands.

“Where are you going?”

“Her bedroom.”

“Why?”

“There is probably a box
of ammo on the nightstand or in the closet.”

“How do you know that?”

She stomped up the steps,
“That’s where I would keep it.”

Leon lifted the bag and
the bottles clanked together. He moped out of the kitchen and back to the car.

Karen pushed open the door
to what she guessed was the bedroom and there on the nightstand was a box of
shells. The woman’s walk-in closet door was open and the light was on. Much
like the kitchen, it was spotless and everything was color coded. Karen took a
few steps closer to the closet to investigate more. It was beautiful. Exactly
the closet Karen had dreamed of her whole adult life. All of the articles of
clothing were from Nordstrom or some even nicer store that Karen had never
heard of. She took another step into the small room and a full length mirror
revealed the nasty pile of a mess that was Karen. Her outfit had been doused
with so much blood and gore today that it could never be clean enough to wear
again. The dead woman downstairs was about the same size as Karen.

Nothing at Mama’s is
going to fit me.
She thought.

I need the clothes and
that poor lady is never going to wear them again.

A backpack sat in the far
corner of the closet. Karen moved to it and unzipped the zipper. She scanned
the room and found jeans, tank tops, another sports bra, socks and a light
weight black leather jacket. To save space she wore the jacket. The backpack
was only half full.

What about the girls
and Leon?

Leon’s clothes were
pretty gnarly after what he did to that infected kid.

Karen left the lady’s
closet and stepped into the husband’s. She flipped on the light and found it as
well organized as the wife’s. She took a pair of jeans and a long sleeved
flannel shirt from
American Eagle
.

Before leaving the master
bedroom she made sure to pick up the box of ammo. It was a case of fifty rounds
minus the six that had been taken to fill the gun. An expensive looking frame
held a photo taken by a professional photographer. It was the family sitting on
a massive boulder on the Oregon coast. The vast Pacific Ocean stretched out
behind them on a perfect summer’s day. The family wore matching tan pants,
white t-shirts and had their bare feet dug into the sand. Karen stared at the
photo and before she left the room she took the picture with her.

Karen stepped across the
hall to a bedroom. Its door was painted bright pink. Inside was a pink bunk bed
set, pink dressers and pink walls. It reminded her of a book she would read to
Valerie at bedtime. It was about a young girl named
Pinkalicious
who had
to have everything pink. One of the stories was about her eating so many pink
cupcakes that she turned bright pink herself. Valerie loved that book and
requested it two or three times a week. The book drove Karen nuts and one day
when Valerie wasn’t looking Karen donated it to a children’s shelter. The owner
of this room was very Pinkalicious. Karen tried her best not to think about the
fact that she was about to take clothing from a child that was most likely
dead, but again her girls needed them more than a dead girl. She filled the
rest of the backpack with hyper colored pants, shirts and underwear. They would
be too big for Robin, but it was better than nothing.

Karen stepped down off of
the last stair and headed for the garage where Leon sat, waiting for her. She
joined him in the front seat of the Subaru.

Leon pointed to the
backpack, “What’s all that?” he tried his best to get the conversation rolling
and back on track.

“Clothes for us to change
into.” Karen held the framed photo in her good hand.

“And that?” Leon asked
softly.

“We don’t have time to
bury her body properly. I’m going to bury this instead.” Karen looked forward
out the windshield. She knew it sounded crazy, but she did not care. She was
going to mourn this lady’s death one way or another.

Shit! I forgot to find
out her name.

Karen popped open the
glovebox and leafed through the insurance papers.

Lizzie! Okay, we will
have a drink for Lizzie tonight.

“Let’s get home.” Leon
tapped a garage door clicker that hung from the sun visor and the door shimmied
up the tracks. He put the car into drive and pulled out the moment the door was
all the way open.

The ride back took less
than a minute. The streets of the neighborhood were still clear of the infected.
Karen had the opener ready and Leon squeezed the Subaru into the overstuffed
garage. They waited for the large door to come to a full stop. The lip of the
door banged loudly against the concrete surface behind them. Karen stayed in
the passenger’s seat with her arms wrapped around the backpack and photo. Leon
put the car into park and killed the engine. They sat in silence for a little
while.

“When we do another run
like that-”

Karen’s words were cut off
by Leon’s, “We will do better.”

“We have to. We cannot
afford to have innocent blood on our hands. What happened to Lizzie is all our
fault. We have to live with that for the rest of our lives. Not one more drop.”

“Not another drop of
innocent blood. I promise.” Leon extended his hand for them to shake on it.
Karen released the photo and gripped his palm tightly as they sealed the deal.
“Did I tell you that I was a bartender for five years?”

“No,” she said as she let
go of his hand and pulled at the car doors latch. 

“I make one hell of a
drink.”

“Good.” Karen climbed out
of the car.

Karen headed straight for
the living room and Leon took the bottles into the kitchen. He started mixing
Karen a cocktail right away. The girls noticed that their Mama was back.

“Mama!” Valerie always sounded
so excited.

“Mama!” Robin copied.
Karen had only been gone for fifteen minutes, but for the girls it was long
enough to celebrate. Karen set the backpack in the middle of the room and she
knelt down onto the carpet to give both girls a hug. Troy sat up on the edge of
the couch.

“How are you feeling?” she
asked her brother.

“Hungry, but I don’t want
to eat again.” Troy’s words sounded steadier than before. Karen hoped he would
be back to normal by morning.

“I got you girls
something.”

“What is it?” Valerie
asked.

“A new shirt.” Karen
opened the pack.

“Oooh. Thank you. This
one’s all dirty.” Valerie began to pull off her own shirt and a second later
Robin followed her. Valerie’s shirt had been soaked by Troy’s sweaty back on
the trip to Mama’s today. Karen found a nice pink shirt with a Disney character
on the front at the top of the bag. She took it and pulled it down over
Valerie’s head.

“Where did you get it? The
store?” Valerie asked. There was no way Karen could tell her daughter the
truth.

“Yep, we got it at the
store.” Karen pulled out a purple shirt and squeezed Robin’s head through the
neck hole. It was baggy on her little two-year-old body, but perfect to sleep
in for the night.

“Too big,” Robin tugged at
the end of the shirt to show her silly Mama that she had made a mistake.

“It’s all they had and
it’ll be fine.” Karen finished helping the little one get her arms into their
proper holes.

Karen stood back up and
checked Troy’s ice pack. He needed a fresh one.

“When you were gone I
looked around for Mama, but I couldn’t find her. Did she go with you?” Troy
winced as Karen removed his ice pack. Karen needed to dance around this
question for a little more until the concussion had worn off completely.