WorldLost- Week 1: An Infected Novel (10 page)

I told the others that it was time to head back to the
apartment, I’d had enough and I was dead tired, no pun intended.

They both wanted to finish off the last three apartments and
then head back. “If we finish what we started, we can be sure that the whole
floor is safe from the infected and we can rest better.” They argued.

“Don’t forget about the old lady next door. She could turn or
just decide to shoot us.” I argued back.

Of course,
I lost the argument so I gave up and we moved to the next apartment
starting the whole process over again. Luckily this apartment didn’t have any
surprises, but unfortunately, it really didn’t have anything to really use. We
had the same experience until the last apartment.

In the last apartment, we found some camping gear like a tent,
a propane burner, a couple machetes and a small water purifier set. After
packing it all up, we headed back to Amy’s.

We cooked up some of the perishable food we had found in the
apartments and sat around the coffee table to eat. We really talk while we ate.
I’m sure everyone was tired, hungry and didn’t really know what to say to each
other. We just ate in silence, each of us contemplating what had happened to us
individually.

After eating, we spent time organizing our supplies. I spent
time taking the broom sticks and duct taping knives to the ends. The knives
were mostly sharp and would do in a pinch. While we were doing this we talked
about what we thought our next steps should be.

We all agreed that a quick search of the next floor wouldn’t
be a big deal. We hadn’t heard any noise from upstairs so we figured there
wasn’t a lot of people or infected up there. We also felt that it was important
to find Amanda’s parents

If they were alive, they deserved to know what happened so
they could have closure. If they were dead or gone, then at least we had tried.
If nothing else, we could live with ourselves knowing we tried.

Then we could head out and make our way to Butch’s parent's
place up north.

From there, we had some options. We could head to Bull Shores
Lake and find a place around there or we could get a houseboat that we could
take out to the middle of the lake. Although a manmade lake, it was deep in
many areas and was miles long with lots of places to park a houseboat.

At the end of the night, we had some resemblance of a plan.
Something we all felt good about. We found some place to lay our heads and got
some rest.

I woke up the next morning, day two of the apocalypse, to the
bright light of the sun coming in through the balcony window.  My whole body
hurt, just like yesterday, only this time it was from too much activity and not
from the booze. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up to look around the
apartment.

The first thing I noticed was the bodies lying on the
balcony. With it being summer, they didn’t have long before they would really
start to smell.

Amy was at her kitchen counter sitting on a stool reading something
and Butch was on the floor still asleep with the finished bottle of Jack lying next
to him.

“What time is it?” I asked Amy as I yawned and stretched
again.

“Still pretty early, around seven. Get up and get some coffee.”
Amy replied without looking back at me.

I got up and walked into the bathroom to use the facilities
before returning to the living room. I walked up to Amy and gave her a hug.
“How are you today? Doing OK?”

“How am I? Are you serious?” She laughed. “The whole world is
ending, civilization as we know it is dying or being killed off, people are
eating other people and you ask how I am doing?”

“Just trying to have a conversation, some small talk while I
wake up, sorry.” I moved into the kitchen and searched through the refrigerator
for the eggs and bacon we had taken from one of the apartments yesterday.

I pulled them out of the refrigerator and started to make
breakfast. I’ve always like having eggs and bacon in the morning, it always
made me feel like life was good. I really needed something comforting to help
get me going this morning. I turned on the stove top and the burner didn’t
light.

“The electric went out last night sometime. You have to use
the matches.” Amy said pointing to the box of matches sitting by the stove. “We
still have gas and water, but we’d better fill up the tube, sinks and anything
else that will hold water, just in case.”

“We aren’t staying that much longer, maybe just one more night.”
The match lit the burner and I placed a pan for the bacon to get it heated up.
“Scrambled or over easy?”

“Over easy please,” Amy replied as she shut the document she
was reading and set it aside.

“How’d you make coffee if the power was off?” I ask looking
at the Mr. Coffee machine longing for a dark cup of java to help kick start my
brain.

“Went and found a pot that you can heat over the stove.” She
replied pointing at the coffee pot sitting on the hot pad on the counter.

“You went out of the apartment alone?”

“We cleared the floor yesterday. No big deal.”

“Rule number two, watch each other’s back.” I turn the bacon
over and got a plate out to drain the grease on. “Rule number one is to stay
alive. Rule number two is to watch each other’s back. Rule number three is to
be quite. Rule number four is only head shots and last, rule number five is
knocking before entering a room.” I repeated the rules.

I was kind of amazed I remembered them.

“I didn’t want to wake you guys and didn’t we call the all
clear last night.” She smiled at me hoping that the smile would make her
actions OK. “I talked with the older woman down the hall while I was out. She
was in a better mode this morning, so the conversation was pretty good.”

“Yeah, what’d the old thug have to say? I asked with a wink,
but also kind of meaning it. I bet if I thought about it really hard, I would
swear that she was the woman that had kicked me in the balls that one time in
the garage.

“I asked her if she needed anything; like food or water or anything,”
Amy said as she picked up her coffee and took a drink. “She didn't feel
threatened with just me around. She said she could use some bottled water and
that her electricity was out.”

Amy rubbed her eyes and stretched a little. “I explained that
the electric was out on the whole floor and that she should fill up her bathtub
and sinks with water just in case.  I offered to help, but she didn’t want me
to let me in her apartment. I came back here and got her some bottled water.”

“Seems like that was the right thing to do. We should try to do
the right when we can. There are too many people out there that seem to think it's
ok to disregard laws and do whatever they want.”

“Well, when I got back, she stuck the gun out the door at me and
told me to get the hell away from her place or she would shoot me. I don’t
think she is all there, maybe some early dementia or PTSD.”

“What did you do?” I asked as I pulled the bacon off the
stove and placed it on the paper towels.

“I started to walk away and when she closed the door, I left
the bottled water by her door and came back here.”

I started to make the eggs in the same pan that I had cooked
the bacon in. I cracked a few of the eggs open and let them slide into the
bacon grease in the pan. Next, I took some toast and lit another burner to get
some toast heated up. Since the toaster wasn’t working, I figured I’d just use
the burner to toast the bread. I’ve been a camper my whole life; toasting bread
on an open flame was simple.

“We’d better eat what we want from the freezer and fridge before
it goes bad, save the canned and packaged food for later,” I said as I moved
the bread around the flame and kept an eye on the eggs. We both turned as we
heard the moan from the living room. Amy stood up and grabbed her sword off the
table ready to take on whatever had made the sound.

“Hold on there!” Butch said as he eyed the sword raised above
his head. “I’m still with the living, although I do feel like someone stomped
on my head. That wasn’t you was it Amy?” He turned greener and quickly headed
to the bathroom.

We heard him praying to the porcelain god in no time.

“Idiot, he better clean my bathroom,” Amy said as sat back on
the stool, set her sword back down and looked at me. “You guys need to hold off
on the booze until this situation is back to normal. The last thing we need is
one of you boozing it up, dropping your guard and getting us all killed.”

“Agreed, but no guarantee that we might have a drink.”

Butch walked back into the living room and fell into the
couch moaning.

“You want scrambled eggs or over easy?” I asked.

“Over ea….” He jumped off the couch and ran back into the
bathroom to throw up a second time.

This was kind of fun.

“Over easy it is,” I said as I finished the toast and placed it
on his plate. I pulled the eggs off the stove and placed them on a plate for him.
Placing some of the bacon on the plate and handing it over to Amy. I started on
the next set of eggs and toast when Butch returned grabbing some bacon off of
Amy’s plate.

“Hey!” She screeched slapping his hand away.

“Ummm….BACON!

Butch sat next to Amy but smiled and winked at me. “Need some
water, please, barkeep.”

I handed him a bottle of water and continued to work on the
toast. Once it was done I put it on the plate and gave it to Butch as I turned back
to the stove and starting on my own plate.

“So the plan for today will be to go upstairs. Is that still it?”

“Um Hm.” Amy murmured through a mouth of food.

“Are we going to take the stairs?” I asked.

“Stairs,
” Butch replies. “Could be infected in the stairwell.”

“Can’t use the elevator, we don’t know what’s waiting on the
other side of the doors and the electricity is out,“ I said.

“The electricity is out and the elevator won’t work,” Amy said,
repeating what I had already said.

“We could check outside and see if we could climb up to the
next floor,” I replied. “We need to do something with the bodies anyway since
they are starting to smell.”

They both continued to eat while I finished cooking my plate.
I sat it down on the counter and started to chow down. I will say that I’m damn
good at making eggs and bacon. I should have been a cook at a breakfast diner.

Too bad finding bacon was going to be a problem in the next
few weeks.

“So let’s get ready and then take care of the bodies on the
balcony before we do anything else,” I said as I put all of the dirty dishes in
the trash.

“Hey, those are my dishes, what are you doing?” Amy said
watching me drop her plates and silverware in the trash can.

“We’re only going to be here another day or two max. We’ll
never see this place again.” I removed their plates and throw them in the trash
also. “What’s the point of cleaning them.?”

I move out of the kitchen and grab some gloves from the pile
of supplies. “Can we move Shelby to another apartment for the rest of the time
we are here?” I ask. “Till we’re ready to leave? It’s starting to smell in
here.”

“OK, but we need to take her with us, even if it’s just to
the courtyard to bury her. I’m not leaving her to rot in someone else's bed.”

I throw gloves to Butch and Amy as we headed out to the
balcony to get rid of the bodies. The stench was unbearable and I had to cover
my mouth and nose with my shirt.

We were only outside a few seconds when Butch headed back
inside to throw up again. “He should have waited to eat.” Amy laughed.

“How can you joke at a time like this? This is awful, it’s
got to be the worst thing I’ve ever smelled.”

“It’s my way of coping. Deal with it.”

We looked over the side of the balcony and looked down to the
ground two stories below us. There were a few infected roaming around, but the
streets were pretty empty with no pedestrians present from what we could see.

“Pitch them over the side?” I asked.

“No. What the hell is wrong with you? We move them into an
empty apartment down the hall away from us and close the door. Jesus.”

Amy  was right, what was I thinking? Why was my first thought
to throw them over the railing and watch them fall to the ground? What kind of
mess would that make I wondered, maybe that was why I thought to do it.

W
e picked up the first body on
the balcony and carried it to an apartment down the hall. We repeated the
process with the other body but putting it in another apartment. We figured
that the smell wouldn’t be too bad if we put them in different places instead
of placing them all in the same place.

We returned to Amy’s place and found Butch
on the couch looking a little bit green around the gills and sweat building up
on his forehead. We moved into Amy’s bedroom to move Shelby’s body out of the
apartment.

We still hadn’t decided what we were going to do with Shelby,
but there was no reason to have her body in the apartment with us. Amy had
already told us that she wasn’t Shelby anymore, so why we were even talking
about what to do, was beyond me. Amy needed to come to grips with it and let it
go.

Once we were back in the apartment, we moved to the balcony again
and discussed how we could scale up one floor. Even if we make it to the second
floor, we would have to move to the other side of the building to get to Amanda’s
apartment. There was no way we could move outside the building all the way
around. Taking the stairs would put us right next to the apartment.

“You think you can climb up to the next balcony?” Amy asked
me.

“I’m pretty sure I could. Maybe one of us could get up there
and create a distraction for the others.” I said, thinking this might be a good
job for me. Being the distraction might mean that I didn’t need to deal with
any of the infected.

“Good idea to create a distraction, but doesn’t it break rule
number 2?” Amy asked as she looked at me with a slight smile. She had caught me
ready to break a rule after I had just given her the “what for” for leaving the
apartment this morning.

“But if the apartment above is empty, it would be a lot less
risky situation,” I said with a wink. “The only thing I’m going to do is get in
the apartment, wait for your guys to get in place and then cause the
distraction. That should let you guys move in and check out Amanda’s apartment
for her parents.”

“You’re just trying to get out of having to deal with the infected,”
Butch said as he walked through the sliding glass door.

“I admit that I’m not the best person to take the lead. For
some reason beyond me, I have a problem with killing these people. I know
they’re no longer really people, but it’s still hard to bring myself to kill
them. I think having me as your backup is the wrong thing to do right now. You
and Amy are good together and more than capable of handling the infected.”

“He has a point,” Amy said walking away from us and into her
apartment. “You think you can get up there?”

“Yes and getting down would be easy to. If I did get into
trouble, I could easily get back down here and away. I think it’s a no-brainer.”
I moved through the door and into the apartment.

“Let me catch my breath. I need a drink of water to settle my
stomach.” Butch sat down on the couch looking at me.

“What? You want me to get you a drink of water?” I asked.