The Infected (13 page)

He lost Owen in the chaos, but headed back to the Pick n’ Pay alone. But, unfortunately, he came across two people from another racial group – he didn’t say which – on his way away from the pandemonium. They challenged him, and before he could say anything they dropped their bag of food which they had stolen and ran straight for him. Johan grabbed the nearest object at hand, a fire extinguisher, and swung it as the first of the two assailants reached him. Johan said that it connected with a sickening sound and sent the man – Johan reckons he was not even twenty yet – sprawling across the floor, leaving a thick trail of blood on the grey ceramic tiles. He said he felt sick. He was sure that the guy was dead, but what could he have done, “It was either me or them,” he said before launching into a sorrowful weep. What could I say? Luckily the other guy, maybe frightened, maybe sickened, deviated his path around Johan and carried on running. “I don’t think I would have been able to have swung at him too if he had come for me,” said Johan when he regained some of his composure.

He got back to where his group had set up ‘camp’ and crawled up into his makeshift bed – two wooden pallets modified and filled with toilet paper and plastic packets as a less than comfortable mattress. That’s when he phoned me and that’s the last time I spoke to him.

My thoughts are with both Owen and Johan’s families. I will let you know if I hear from them, but, and I hope that this doesn’t sound too pessimistic, given the way that things have tended to go of late, I’m going to light a candle each for the both of them tonight. I’ll miss you guys. We had some good times.

Sam

8:43am, June 17

Hi. Didn’t sleep too well last night, unsurprisingly I suppose. I spent most of the night tossing and turning thinking about the people that I had lost. I got thinking about my school days with Owen and Johan, and I was in fits of laughter at 2am remembering some of the things we got up to (even though it was the early hours of the morning I had to stifle my laughs – I didn’t want to alert the infected to my whereabouts in that way. It is really quiet at night). I only realised that last night. Since this whole infection thing happened, the white noise which usually characterised the night has gone – no distant rumbling of long distance trucks on their nightly journeys from the relatively nearby NI highway, no cacophony of dogs communicating from garden to garden, suburb to suburb, no Boeing 747’s flying across the dark night sky, transporting hundreds of people from one continent to another, no distant bass riff from a crappy song played too loud on a dodgy hi-fi at an underage party. No nothing.

It’s eerie. Just your thoughts for company, and occasionally, just occasionally, the thick, dark quiet is pierced by the monotonous groan of one of the infected. Or the distinctive slow shuffling sound of one of them walking, stumbling in the street a mere seventy or eighty metres away.

Okay, well. It’s almost 9am and I have to get ready for a busy, busy day. Yes, that’s sarcasm dripping from my keyboard. I am slowly getting into a new book, Cujo by Steven King – it’s supposed be about a dog that turns into a monster, but one hundred and thirty odd pages in, there’s not been anything really scary or distinctively Steven King about it. But I’m getting there and I am enjoying it, even without the usual horror storyline. Maybe in these t
imes the less horror in my life, the better.

And, feel free to come over and help me, I’m actually going to do a bit of a clean today. I can’t tell you when last I did any major cleaning. Maybe weeks. Maybe a month or two. But, and I must be getting sick because I actually want to do this, I need to give the bathrooms, the kitchen counter and the fridge a really good scrub. Spring is still pretty far away – and the frost outside on the grass is testament to that – but today is the day that my small bit of the world gets a spring clean.

See ya,

Sam W

Okay, here’s what’s been going on:

From:
Sam Ward [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent:
19 June 2009 19:34 PM
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Dude, I’m fucked

Shit Chris, you okay man? I would ask if there was something I could do to help, but we both know that there is nothing that I can do…

Have they managed to gain access into the complex yet? And when did they start coming. Do they know that you are in there?

Thinking about you dude. You can get through this.

Take care,

Sam

From:
Chris
Sent:
19 June 2009 19:44 PM
To:
Sam Ward
Subject:
Re: Re: Dude, I’m fucked

Dude, don’t worry – my aim is getting better, so worst case scenario I’ll at least be able to take a few of the fuckers out with me! And hey, if you want to do that Bloem trip, then hey, get the fuck over here ASAP!

But seriously, and I don’t know if it was stupid of me to do it… Okay, well I do know – I was fucking stupid. I disconnected the electric fence as I figured that it was chewing too much of my precious power. So to answer your question, yes. They are in. They are tenacious fuckers when they want to be. I watched them trying to climb the fence for ages – there’s a palisade fence between the complex and the golf course, the area where they all seem to be coming from – and I kinda helped them get over…

Let me tell you how. When the first one started trying to climb the fence, first I laughed as I watched the fucker – a guy in a blue overall and big, chunky work boots – struggle to get a grip and make any headway. But after about twenty minutes of struggling, the stupid fuck was getting somewhere. As he stretched his right arm out to pull himself up, and possibly over the now useless electric fence at the top of the palisade, I put a bullet through his right ear. He dropped like a dead zombie to the ground at the bottom of the fence. But then, before I knew what was happening, another one of them, a guy in a smart, checkered work shirt, no pants, was standing on top of the dead guy in the overalls, and reaching for the top of the fence. I panicked and shot wildly, missing him by at least a metre. The dickhead looked up at me, or at least in the direction where the noise had come from, and I froze. Shit. Then I tried again and blew his fucking brains out. Then there were two of them there, a man and a woman who actually looked pretty similar with shoulder length dark brown hair. Before they could climb on to the two bodies, I stopped them. But then more came and I just couldn’t stop them all. While I was aiming at others, more of the fuckers started climbing. I’d then try shoot those ones, missing sometimes, while others would then start climbing over. And each time a shot went off, they looked up at my flat.

A tall guy with one eye and filthy jeans and a brown T-shirt was the first one to actually get over. I killed him. But then one of his friends jumped over and ran (well as fast as they can run) around a wall while I had my sights on a hot blonde zombie chick with big boobs – didn’t stop me shooting her though. This was at about 5pm. And they’ve been steadily streaming over ever since, using the ones that I killed as a sort of staircase to get over the fence.

I don’t know if they are getting cleverer. I haven’t seen any other signs of it, but fuck, when they looked up in my direction it was like they were marking me.

I’ve now barricaded myself upstairs with all my ammunition and food. If they’re gonna get me, they’re fucking gonna have to work for it.

Chris

From:
Sam Ward [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent:
19 June 2009 19:56 PM
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Re: Re: Dude, I’m fucked

Damn Chris, that sounds a lot worse that I first thought. Don’t talk like that though. I’m sure you’ll be okay. I’ve seen the way they are and doubt they’ll be able to get inside your place – they can hardly pick things up, never mind figure out how to open a door, especially if it is locked. I’m sure climbing over the fence was just lucky. Like you said, you accidentally gave them a helping hand. They’re brainless these things…

And yeah, I told you about my R8 – let me just pack a few things, pick up some hot companions for the trip and I will be there!

Chris, stick in there mate. I’m sure you’ll get through it. Be in touch with any news.

Take care,

Sam

If there are people out there reading these blogs, please keep Chris in your thoughts. If you are religious, please say a prayer. If you are not religious, it won’t hurt, will it?

Sam

11:01am, June 20

Just thought I’d check in and let you know that I have still not heard anything more from Chris. I mailed him first thing this morning on the last juice from my battery, but haven’t got a response yet, not even a Read Receipt.

I also tried calling him on his cell but it was off. I’m not too worried though as I’ve only really chatted to him twice on the phone – he prefers to keep it off because of the noise and some crazy theory of his that the infected can pick up on the cellular waves. But I think he may have been stoned when he mentioned that.

Will let you know as soon as I hear anything. Prayers and thoughts would still be appreciated.

Cheers

Sam W

3:35pm, June 20

Still nothing. I’m starting to get seriously worried.

One bright ray of sunshine amidst the gloom – my herb/veggie garden has sprung its first bud (probably not the right term, but then again I am not a gardener). But I can see some growth coming through in the area where I planted the spring onions – awesome. I’ve been watering every day and making sure that no birds dig in the ‘bed’ so I’m pretty chuffed, and pleasantly surprised, that I might actually have a self sustaining system going on here. I gave it some thought the night after I did all my planting and was wondering whether I would have been better off doing all the planting in a bed downstairs? Now after all of this that has been happening to Chris, I am glad that access to my garden is right here, not out in the open, but in the future I may look into the possibility of adding a supplementary garden downstairs… if my crops are edible.

That’s it for now – checking my mails every hour on the hour to see if I’ve heard from Chris. Will let you know.

Sam

7:43pm, June 21

Bad news this morning. Very bad news…

From:
Chris
Sent:
21 June 2009 05:39 AM
To:
Sam Ward
Subject:
Adios Amigo

Sam. Samuel. Sammy. Brother, my time is coming.

Sorry that I haven’t been in touch since Friday, I just couldn’t fucking bring myself around to it to be honest. The end is near my friend, and I fear that even if you get that hot R8 around to my place in the next few hours, it will be too late.

These fuckers have been slowly but steadily coming round to my place since I last mailed you – my latest estimate? 200. Maybe 225. Eventually the weight of the fucks trying to climb over the fence got too much and it gave way, collapsing and letting them come in quicker than they had been able to before. Like I told you, my place is a double storey, but with no ground access – there is a place below mine, a single storey unit. So from the ground level you have to go up some stairs which I had barricaded, pretty well I thought. But I guess when there’s a couple of hungry zombie fuckers after you, you can’t secure yourself well enough.

So they got through that yesterday morning, from my vantage point at the top level peering out of my bathroom window, my slap dash security gate/dining room table/door thingy, gave way, again because of the sheer weight of them fucks. So then they all crammed up the stairs, probably only about eight or nine of them (the stairs that is, not the zombies – there were about 60 of them then) and only about a metre wide, but they crammed in there. It reminded me of a email I got of some Chinese or Japanese train station where the police literally squeezed people into the trains, pushing them in from behind so that the doors could close. Crazy guys. The Chinese and the zombies.

So more and more of them have been joining the back of the queue since then, trying to push their way to the front, reaching and clawing at my place even though they are still like 30 or 40 metres away. And all this means that they were then now just outside my front door. Well they were for a couple of hours. I’d barricaded myself upstairs with whatever I could – the door is secured by a combination of dining room table chair legs nailed to the door post. Then my computer cabinet. And then the bathroom door which I pulled off and wedged into place. Then a couple of side tables. And two 5kg weights… anything will help.