The Infected (Book 3): Nightfall (12 page)

Leon scooted around the
corner into the living room with an iced drink in both hands, “She’s still at
the store shopping. We’ll pick her up later.” He handed Karen her drink. It was
not a great lie, but it seemed to work on Troy for now. He leaned back onto the
couch and rested his head on a pillow.

Leon pointed again at the
photo from Lizzie’s, “Let’s do this in the dining room.” He pivoted and headed
back the way he came.

“I’ll be right back
girls,” Karen gave both of them a kiss on the top of their heads and then she
followed Leon with the framed photo. She had no idea what she was going to say
or do with the photo. It had been a long time since Karen had even been to a
funeral.

When she arrived at the
dinner table Leon already had a candle set up. He had just finished lighting it
and stepped away from the table to make room for her to place the photo next to
the flame. Karen carefully set the frame on the table and then took a spot next
to Leon. They stood shoulder to shoulder, heads down and drinks held close to
their chests.

Tears formed at the corner
of his eyes. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat, “I’m sorry.” He
paused for a moment and gathered his thoughts, “We did not enter that house
with violent intent. We merely were searching for a vehicle to aid in our
escape. Unfortunately for you, Lizzie, the worst did happen.” Tears flowed off
of his cheeks and onto his blood stained shirt. “We won’t make excuses. We
cannot rationalize today’s events. We can only offer our deepest apologies, our
most sincere regrets and the promise that we will carry your memory in our
hearts forever.” Leon used the back of his hand to clean off the tear tracks on
his face.

Karen didn’t realize that
she had broken her deal with the tear duct union until a drop rolled off her
chin and landed on her chest.

“To you Lizzie,” Leon said
as he raised his glass into the air.

Karen raised her glass as
well and choked out, “To you.”

They drank. The cool
liquid burned down her throat in the best way possible. Leon had found a lime
in the cupboard and poured them two vodkas on ice. The Absolut was refreshing and
hit the spot. It was a good start for the night.

“Thank you, Leon. How did
you-?”

He cut her off again, “My
father worked at a funeral home when I was a kid. I grew up going to them every
Sunday. I think I’ve been to about five hundred different funerals over the
years.”

Karen sipped at her glass,
“It’s a good drink. I wish I had some cash to tip the bartender.”

“You are welcome.” Leon wiped
his eyes clear one last time. Karen stepped away from the table and over to the
sliding glass door that led to the backyard. She wanted to say something about
her Mama. She peeked through the blinds and the barricade and there was Penny.
Laid out on the ground next to the dead salesman. Just seeing Penny’s body
again was too much for Karen. She wasn’t ready to give any kind of eulogy. She
would probably get out one sentence, fall apart and turn into a heap of tears
on the floor.

Tomorrow. I’ll say
something tomorrow. When Troy’s feeling better and can help me get the words
right to acknowledge this wonderful woman properly.

Karen emptied her glass.
The buzzed feeling she needed to get through tonight was starting to hit her.
Two or three drinks more and she would be right where she needed to be. Leon
was there ready to take her empty glass and get her a fresh pour.

Leon’s fingertips grazed
Karen’s hand as he took the glass. He swore he could feel the charge of energy
zap out of her hand and into his. He turned away from her and headed back to
his home bar.

“Make it a double,” Karen
placed her order.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Jim woke to the sting of a
needle poking into the skin of his forearm. He looked up at the woman with the
needle, Tina smiled as her thumb pushed the plunger and forced the antibiotics
into his body.

“Devon?” Jim’s voice was
rough and he coughed a little at the end of his question.

“He’s stable. Thanks to
you. We don’t have a heart monitor so I check his vitals manually every couple
of minutes.”

Jim could smell real food cooking
in the kitchen. It smelled spicy, mouth-watering, and he couldn’t wait to eat
it. “How long was I out?” He rubbed his face. His fingertips skirted around the
wounds and massaged his temples.

“Thirty minutes. It’s
almost eight o’clock.”

Jim looked outside and
night had fallen. The dark purple sky held only a sliver of light. The sun was
minutes away from setting on this day.

It was almost over, or
was it?

What horrors would
total darkness bring?

Frank and Sara stood on
the back porch smoking cigarettes and drinking Cliff’s beer. They looked
refreshed and cleansed. All of the dirt and blood that had covered their bodies
had been washed away. Sara took a drag from her burning stick and coughed out
the smoke. She was no pro, that was for sure, but she kept at it. 

Cliff entered the living
room with a bath towel in his hands, “Hey, buddy can you do us a favor?”

“What’s that?” Jim
stretched out his sore muscles.

“Go take a shower. The
smell is killing us.” Cliff handed the towel over to Jim.

“What about the
transfusion?” Jim accepted the towel and looked to Tina.

“You’ve given him enough.
I already unhooked you. So go please and put your clothes in the washer.” Tina
tended the steaming pan of sizzling food. “When you get done you can have dinner.”
Tina ran a spatula through the shredded seasoned beef.

Jim got to his feet and
pulled off his shirt. His back was covered with cuts and bruises from the fall
out of the bedroom window at Frank’s brother’s house. On his way to the
bathroom he picked up the plush Burt and Ernie dolls on the table. Next to the
table was the other backpack that Jim had loaded with his extra underwear,
socks and the medical kit from his bathroom downstairs. The dolls still had
blood on them and he wanted to get them cleaned up before it was too late.

Jim stepped in front of
the washer and dryer that was tucked in a closet adjacent to the front door. He
dropped his shirt into the empty washer then he stripped down to his underwear.
He was long past the point of caring about being this nude in a stranger’s
house. He tossed all of his nasty clothes into the washer, put in some soap and
kicked on the machine. When he turned back to head for the bathroom he spotted
the new sawblade weapon Cliff had built hanging on the wall behind him. Cliff
passed at that moment to go check on his girls when he noticed Jim checking out
his handy work.

“I just made that,” Cliff
beamed with pride.

Jim pointed to it, “May
I?”

“Sure.”

Jim reached up and grabbed
the sawblade, “Wow, it’s lighter than I thought it would be.”

“It’s made out of aluminum.”

Jim thumbed the nearly
razor sharp tips of the saw, “Damn it’s sharp as hell too and the grip feels
great.”

“I was inspired by your
spear,” Cliff folded his arms across his chest.

“It’s really nice. It will
definitely do the job.” Jim hung the vicious weapon back up on its hooks.

“Yep, you don’t have to
worry about it jamming up or ever having to reload it.”

“That’s why I made the
spear. There was a beauty of a shotgun at the store where I made it, but I
didn’t know how to use it and to carry enough ammo would have weighed a ton. So
I went with a knife on a stick.”

“Well, it got you this
far.” Cliff said as he began to head down the hallway for his kid’s
room.  

“Yes, it did.” 

Tina could hear their
conversation from around the corner in the kitchen. It finally clicked why
Cliff wanted to build it. Not just for protection, but to show it off and get
some accolades from another man and it worked.

Was this the beginning
of a bromance?
Tina thought.

Jim limped into the
bathroom and shut the door behind himself. His reflection was ghastly. His body
was covered in bruises and cuts. He had never seen it so beat up in his life. His
elbows, shoulders, chest, back and knees were all black and blue. The falls and
car crashes were harder on his frame than he could have imagined.

Jim set the backpack,
towel and dolls down on the counter. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a
bottle of peroxide. Jim learned this trick to get blood out when Karen had
given birth at home and some blood got on the bed. The midwives poured some
peroxide on the stain and it came right out. Jim couldn’t believe it. Up until
that moment he thought a blood stain was permanent. He held Ernie over the sink
and poured a little of the old bubble medicine out onto his orange face.

He executed a perfect
Ernie impression, “Gee, Jim how did I get all of this blood on me?”

Back to his normal voice,
“An infected human’s brains were smashed all over the floor and you were too
close to the carnage, Ernie.”

Ernie, “Boy, I haven’t
been this messy since the first night Bert and I hooked up.” Jim did the Ernie
laugh.

Jim, “Ernie, I had no
idea. You and Bert were a couple this whole time?”

Ernie, “Yep, I’ve been
giving it to old Bert for forty years now.”

Jim, “How do you keep your
relationship fresh after all this time?”

Ernie, “We role play
sometimes. You know bad doctor and the dirty nurse or nasty teacher and his
filthy student. In the nineties we discovered ass to mouth and that’s been
fun.” Ernie laughs again. 

Someone knocked at the
bathroom door and it startled Jim. He had gotten lost in a weird world of
puppet perversion for a second.

“Jim, are you okay? I
heard voices.” Sara asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Jim’s
face went flush. “I’m just cleaning my kid’s doll.” 

“Are you decent? Can I come
in?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he looked
himself over in the mirror. His one article of clothing was a pair of skin
tight athletic shorts that still had a protective cup tucked into the front.
They left nothing to the imagination, but he was a married man. What did he
care?

She opened the door
slightly and peeked in, “I saw the cuts on your back and thought you might need
help to clean them?”

Jim rinsed off Ernie in
the sink, swapped him for the towel on the counter and wrapped it around his
waist, “Okay, sure. Thank you.”

Sara opened the door. She
had a stack of clothes in her hands, “Cliff said you could borrow these until
your clothes were done getting cleaned.” She set them down on the counter next
to Jim’s backpack. Sara had a chair from the dining table waiting out in the
hall. She picked it up and set it down in the center of the bathroom. Jim took
a seat with his back to her. She put on a pair of rubber gloves, picked up the
bottle of peroxide and a cotton ball. She soaked the ball of cotton and started
at the top of his neck. Jim shuddered when she pressed it to his skin.

“It’s cold.” He shook off
the shivers.

“Sorry,” she said as she
attacked another cut.  

 “It’s alright.” Jim
could smell the beer on her breath and the smoke on her clothes. It smelled incredible
in comparison to his B.O. The peroxide bubbled up all over his back as she
spread it from one cut and scratch to the next.

“Do we have a plan?” Sara
asked only to break the silence. In their new world plans were good ideas that
never worked quite as well as they had hoped.

Jim thought it over. All
day long he had been reacting to the situation and not given the luxury of long
term plotting. He breathed in a lungful of air, “We need to rest up. Get some
food. Devon needs a little more time before we move him. What do you think?”

“I don’t know if I will be
able to get any sleep, but we need to try.” Sara got a new cotton ball. The old
one was solid red.

Jim’s head dropped and he
pretended to be back asleep.

“Exactly.” Sara let out a
giggle.

Jim raised his head and
looked into the mirror to see her face, “In the morning, no matter what, I have
to get to my mother-in-law’s. I have to find my family.”

Sara nodded her head, “We
will.” She cleaned out the last of his cuts, set down the bloody cotton ball
and pulled off her rubber gloves. “That’s as good as it’s going to get.”

“Thanks doc.” Jim said as
he got to his feet.

Sara picked up the chair,
“Hit the showers, stinky. Oh and Jim, Bert and Ernie are my favorite Muppets so
let’s keep the ass to mouth comments to a minimum. Okay?” she joked as she closed
the door on him.

Jim was frozen, too
embarrassed to say sorry. He looked down at the two dolls on the counter.

Ernie, “Smooth.”

Classic Bert voice, “Yeah,
real smooth.”

Jim stripped down out of
the rest of his clothes and cranked the water into the red, “I want it just
under blistering.” He talked to himself. “Hot enough to take the first layer of
skin off. That might get me clean.” He stepped up into the tub. The blast of
superhot H2O felt amazing. He wanted to spend an hour under the shower head,
soaking in its glory but he also wanted to get out there and scarf down that food.
He reached for the bottle of Cliff’s shampoo and realized it was the exact same
stuff he used at home.

We have so much in
common.

Why didn’t we ever
hangout with these people that lived just upstairs?
Jim pondered as his hands scrubbed quickly over his
body.

Cliff set up a chair next
to Morgan in front of the TV. He handed her a fresh beer and opened one for
himself, “How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m great.” She sipped at
the cold can. “It feels good to be out of my little old room. It’s exciting
here. All these new people and the kid getting stitched up. I get to see my
grandbabies. It’s fucking fantastic.” Her words slurred into one long one.
Three beers in and now only Cliff’s trained ear could pick up what Morgan was
saying.

“It has been exciting here
today.” Cliff looked over the room. Tina was checking on Devon. Her fingers
were wrapped around his wrist and she counted out the beats of his heart. Frank
sat at the kitchen table, a heap of his guns laid out in front of him. He
loaded and checked each of them. Sara sat next to him at the table. She was
getting a crash course on firearms. Guns and ammo 101. They looked like a team
of mercenaries planning their next raid.

Cliff’s attention was
pulled back to Morgan when she laughed out loud at a joke on the TV and whacked
him on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

Cliff cleared his throat
and started again, “It’s good to spend time with you outside your old place.
I’m sorry I haven’t been by much in the last few weeks.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve got
work, kids and a wife. You are busy. I get it. I was busy once too.” She waved
him off.

“You’re right, but I
should have made more of an effort.” Cliff leaned in closer so she could hear
him without him raising his voice. “I wanted to tell you that I love you Mom.”

She turned away from her
show and squinted her face in confusion, “What the hell are you talking about?
What’s all this mush about? I told you to call me Morgan, damn it.”

The near death experiences
from the day’s earlier events had got Cliff more emotional than normal. Seeing
the family torn apart out in the parking lot had put things into perspective.
Life was short. Now it seemed even shorter. It could have been his family out
there getting ripped to shreds. The two beers helped tip him over his emotional
edge.

“Hey, come on. We don’t
know what’s going on out there. We don’t know how much time we have together and
I wanted it on the record books, Morgan.”

“Well don’t get all sappy
on me boy. You know I hate that.”

“Would it kill you to say
it one time?” Cliff threw his arm around her shoulders and playfully jiggled
her gently back and forth.

“It might. Stop that shit.
You know shaking me makes my stomach feel sick.” She shrugged off his arm.

Cliff sat up straight and
stared down at his beer. He knew Morgan was never one for affection and there
was no changing her now.

She shifted in her seat
and then turned to Cliff. A light had gone off in her brain and she just
remembered something. The look on her face told Cliff she thought it was
hilarious. “What was that silly guy you liked as a kid, Wee Wee Shurman?”

“Pee-wee Herman.”

“That’s right and he had
the crazy show.”