The Infected (Book 1): Jim's First Day (8 page)

“Find
some medical supplies and rubbing alcohol!” I yell over my shoulder at Devon.
He tears off into the closest bathroom.

“I
know it hurts! We’ve gotta clean it!” Devon comes back with a cheap medical kit
and a bottle of alcohol. I turn off the water, reach out for the bottle, snap
the lid open and hold it over her hand. “Sorry,” I pour out a little of the
rubbing alcohol onto her hand. You would have thought I bit another finger off.
I cut my hand on a dirty chicken coop I owned three years ago and I put alcohol
on that wound. It hurt more than the actual cut. “Get out a wrap and bandage,”
Devon pops open the medical kit and pulls out the roll of gauze and bandages. “Put
some Neosporin on it.”

“What?”

“I
don’t know. It’s worth a shot,” Devon goes back to her bathroom to rummage
through her cabinets.

“I’m
going to put a little more on to make sure it’s clean.”

“Please
don’t,” she can barely talk.

“I
have to,” I pour out a little more. I make sure I cover every part of the
wound. “Fight through the pain,” I tell her. Devon comes back into the kitchen
with the Neosporin. He squirts a large amount onto the bandage. “I’ve got to
put pressure on your wound so we can stop the bleeding.”

“Do
it.” is all she can say. I hold her up by her arm because she wants to fall to the
floor. Devon slides a kitchen chair over from the dining table. I get it under
her butt. I take the bandage from Devon and I carefully press it over the wound
on her hand. She passes out.

“Hand
me the gauze,” he hands me the roll and I carefully wrap it around her hand and
wrist. I use the whole roll on her to make sure I have enough pressure on it to
stop the bleeding.

“Tape,”
Devon tears off a few bits of tape for me to put on the gauze to hold it into
place.

“I
think we need more,” I reach out my hand and take the tape from him. I wrap it
around her wrist like a boxer. “Done,” she wakes up. Her face looks like she
gave birth to a baby fire truck. “What’s your name?” 

“Colleen.”

“I’m
Jim and this is Devon. It’s not going to be safe here. Do you have any family
close?”

“No.
Just Brad,” it takes a lot of effort to talk. I pick up the medical box and dig
around in it until I find some Tylenol. I pop out the pills.

“No.
Vicodin,” she says pointing to the bathroom. I motion to Devon to go. He makes
for the door.

Seconds
later Devon comes back into the kitchen with a little bottle of prescription
pills. He hands her one and she downs it with a hard swallow.

“Colleen,
we need to get moving. I’m heading North into Vancouver. You can come with us
but we need to go now. Do you have another car?”

“No.
We don’t have a car,” her eyes aren’t focused and the words come slowly. “We
have the Bronco,” she slurs. “It’s my husband’s baby. It’s down in the garage.”

I
pull Brad’s keys from my pocket and one of the keys has a custom FB stamped in
to it.

“Grab
a jacket and let’s move.”

“Wait,”
she looks at her bandaged hand. “My ring,” I look at Devon and then back into
the living room at Brad’s dead body.

“Really?”

“Please
help me?” she whimpers. I drop my head. This is going to be gross, but I can’t
leave her and steal her dead husbands Bronco. I pull out one of the knives I
have strapped to my hip. I walk over to Brad’s dead body and kneel down next to
his head. Devon steps into the living room with me. Colleen follows him. I look
at Brad’s destroyed face. I got him right between the eyes but the blade is so
big that it cut into his left eye. I have a thing about eyes. Touching them
grosses me out. My Dad wore contacts and I would almost throw up as a kid every
time he would put them in. My stomach turns a little so I look away from his
eyes and focus on the jaw. I take the back of the knife and slide it between
his lips. The metal clanks against the enamel of his teeth. I move the blade
back and forth until I get it to slide between his teeth. I pull down to open
his jaw. Blood dumps out onto the floor. I jump back a little when the blood
pours my way. It reminds me of when I was sixteen and my parents took my
brother and me to Disneyland. On our first night there we rode “It’s A Small
World.” It was a horrible ride. Long and boring. If you ever get a chance to
ride it, don’t. You are trapped on a little boat, floating in gross old water
with the same stupid song playing over and over. I am sitting in this little
boat with my family and I am wearing my brand new letterman’s jacket. I worked
really hard to earn this jacket and I was so proud of it. I think it might have
only been a month old at this point. The boat rocked and I thought some of the
nasty water was going to splash up onto my beautiful jacket. So I jumped. I
jumped like a shark was coming to get me. After that my parents loved to tell
everyone that I was scared and jumped on the “It’s A Small World” ride. I
jumped the same way just now. Like the blood was a shark coming to get me.

“I
can’t do this. You’re gonna have to do it. I’ll hold it open,” I fight back
against the puke. She stumbles over to her dead husbands body. With her good
hand she digs her fingers down into the blood. I pull on the jaw to open it as
far as it will go. She digs down deep almost to her wrist. Tears stream down
her cheeks. She gets a hold of something and pulls her hand out of his mouth.
It is so coated in blood I can’t tell if she has got it. She stands up, walks
back into the kitchen and turns on the water at the sink. The water reveals a
severed finger with a diamond ring on it. She works the ring off the finger.

“Should
I put it on ice? Maybe they can put it back on.”

“The
hospitals are overrun,” I tell her. She nods her head and picks her jacket off
the back of a dining chair. She tosses the severed finger into the sink like it
was a spoiled hotdog.  

“The
stairs are down here,” she leads the way into a hall. Devon and I follow her
down into the tight stairway. At the bottom of the stairs is another door. She
opens it and turns on the lights. When I enter the room I am blown away. It is
a rebuilt Ford Bronco. I am not a car guy, but it is a good-looking machine.
The silver paint looks 3D. The tires are big and knobby. They look like they
can climb straight up a wall. This room is a shrine to all things Ford Bronco,
old posters, toy cars and books. One of the posters on the wall is of this
exact Bronco. It has the year 1974 written across the top of the poster. This
guy loved this car and I am about to take it and probably destroy it. We will
be lucky if it even makes it to the river.

“What’s
the plan?” Colleen asks.

“I’m
gonna take the side roads and get to Vancouver,” I open the door and slide into
the driver’s seat. She pops open the passenger door. “Get in kid,” she says to
Devon. He pops the lever on the front seat to get it to fold forward and climbs
up into the backseat. I slide the key into the ignition, push in the clutch and
turn the key. The V8 roars to life. I click the garage door opener. The door
slowly rises. I give the gas a few pumps and the body of the SUV shakes. This
thing has got a lot of torque. There is a small pack of infected in the street.
A couple of teens and an old woman, all three of them look like they were shot
out of a meat grinder.

“What
happened to them?” Colleen looks over to me.

“They’re
infected,” I slip it into first and let off the clutch and the Bronco takes off
out of the garage. The infected race to meet us.

I
have only driven this car for two seconds and I have already put a dent into
it. At this speed the infected bounce off the Bronco’s front end. An old lady’s
arm is ripped off and it lays flat against the windshield. I hit the switch
that runs the wipers as I take a right out of the garage. They help push the
arm off the window and onto the asphalt. The wipers also do a great job of
smearing the blood and gore all over the windshield. I click on the spray and
the dark black blood turns pink as the wipers wash the window clean. Colleen
covers her eyes. The police have been overrun at the intersection. The cruisers
are covered in blood. Infected bodies wearing riot gear mill about in the
streets. They make a beeline for us.

“It’s
worse than…I never would have thought…” Colleen shakes her head.

I
take a left to avoid the growing horde. There is an old Catholic church up
ahead. Groups of people fight against the infected on the steps. They are armed
with bats, hockey sticks and a few machetes. People see the world going to hell
and they go to church. It makes sense. The group on the stairs beat the hell
out of the infected. They deliver head blow after head blow. The massive
staircase that leads up into the church is coated in their black blood.

I
check my watch and it is a little after one o’clock. If I can keep this Bronco
on the road I will be home in about twenty minutes. On the street a family tries
to load their car and a group of infected has spotted them.

“Should
we help them?” asks Colleen. I don’t answer her. There is no good answer. Yes,
I want to help them, but I can’t. I can’t stop every time a family is in
trouble. I would never get home.

“Holy
shit!” I blurt out. A man, completely covered in blood, jogs down the sidewalk
with a running chainsaw. He looks like Leatherface in the
Texas Chain Saw
Massacre
movie. 

“Damn!”
exclaims Devon.

“Where’s
he going?” asks Colleen.

“That’s
such a bad idea. He’s gonna lose a limb,” I shake my head.

Every
other driveway on the street has a family loading up their vehicle. Where the
hell do they think they are going? Does everyone have a safe house that they
can bug out to? Like it is safer out here on the street. Here I am trying to
get home and they are leaving theirs. If it is like this everywhere then the
streets are going to be swamped. The roads are about to become an all you can
eat buffet for the infected. The dinner bell is ringing. We are coming up on a
large cemetery. I downshift to get ready for a turn, but at the end of the
block there is an overturned semi. It lies across the street and blocks my right
turn. A big Ford truck is jammed in between the semi and the trailer. The
pickup is on fire. The driver of the semi fights to get out of the cab. He gets
to his feet and looks around. It is an eight-foot drop to the ground. I look
for a place to squeeze by the accident. The truck driver leaps out into the air
the second the semi explodes. He is engulfed in flames. He rolls on the ground
unable to put himself out. Fire has spread everywhere around the semi truck.
All of the brush and trees are going up in flames. I can’t turn right anymore.
Going left sends me in the wrong direction. A fence surrounds the graveyard
that is dead ahead of us. I drop the Bronco into second gear and punch it.

“What
are you doing?” Colleen props up in her seat, appalled.

“Shortcut,”
I answer. We pop the curb at forty miles an hour and smash the fence down. It
folds easily under the knobby tires and we zip across the grass.

“You’re
a crazy man,” announces Devon.

“It’s
gonna save us time,” I tell him.

“My
Grandpa is buried in this cemetery,” Colleen’s eyes are drooping.

“I’m
sorry,” Devon mutters.

“It’s
okay. He passed when I was a kid. I forget to go see him, even though I live so
close,” her words come slow and are slurred together. I steal a quick glance
over at her. She is a beautiful woman, but what I am looking for are dark veins
running up her arm from her wrist. I don’t see anything on her. Yet.

I
get to the gravel road that runs through the cemetery. There is no infected
anywhere in sight.

“Look
over there!” Devon reaches into the front seat and points his arm in front of
my face. A young girl is under attack. The infected have her on the ground.
Wait. Her attackers are not infected they are four teenage boys. Two of the
boys fight to get her pants off and the other two pin her arms to the ground. I
can’t believe this shit. My face goes flush.

“Jim?”
Colleen slurs.

I
tap the brakes and turn the wheel. I cut back across the graveyard. They are so
busy with their disgusting act they don’t notice the Bronco. I jam on the brakes
and come to a skidding stop.

One
of the assholes works to get his little penis out of his jeans. I am so full of
rage, I am not thinking straight. I am not thinking at all. I am on autopilot.
The ones holding her arms have their backs to me. I quickly step away from the
Bronco and I stomp down hard onto one of their lower backs. The hard rubber
sole of my boot grinds down his vertebrae. He lets out a high-pitched scream
and falls to the ground, clutching his spine. This alerts the other three
assholes that I am not here to be friends.

The
rest of this happens so fast it is only the click of a few seconds. I hit the
one holding down her other arm, with a fast hammer fist. I aim for the top of
his sternum. It crunches. He falls to his back gasping. To make sure they don’t
go anywhere I stomp down on their thighs. You hit someone in the iliotibial
band that runs down the side of their femur and they can’t walk. I know because
I have been kicked there and needed to take five minutes before I could keep
going in my class.

The
girl on the ground fights back and lands a solid kick. She gives the kid a
bloody nose. He falls backwards and tries to crab walk out of here. I take a
few quick steps towards him and throw a kick. My boot lands hard in his ass
crack. I hit him so hard that he falls on his neck and does a backwards somersault
landing on his stomach. He screams like a baby with his face down in the dirt.
I drop a heavy knee down onto the back of his neck. It forces his face down
deep into the grass. He panics for air. The last one still has his little pee
pee hanging out of his pants. I reach out and catch him by the collar of his
shirt. Stepping off his buddy as he turns to face me, I have my other knee
ready to greet him. My hands are around his skinny neck as my knee hits every
square inch of his exposed privates. He doesn’t scream. He grunts. I use his
neck to slam him to the ground. I come down on this guy and it is all elbows. I
keep a tight hold of his throat and hit him in his teeth and nose. Colleen yells
my name. It brings me back to my senses. I look at the bloody mess I made. His
face looks like raw hamburger meat. I think I broke his eye socket. I get to my
feet. The girl works to get her pants on. I have never been in a real fight
before. I have only sparred in class. I have forty or fifty pounds on each of these
punks lying on the ground writhing in pain, but I am going to count it as a
fight that I won.

“You
okay?” I already know the answer but I still ask. She kind of shakes her head.

“You
got any family?”

She
has her pants on and works on her one shoe that fell off. “No.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”
     

“What’s
your name?”

“Sara,”
I am still not thinking straight. I have never been this mad before. My wife,
family and coworkers tease me about never ever getting mad or losing my cool,
but I have never had a day like this. I am a normal husband and father. I sell
appliances to people that have first world problems.

“Are
you coming?”

“What?”
she asks. I walk to the Bronco and pull the lever that releases the front seat
so it falls forward.

“Get
in.”

She
moves quickly for the car, pulls her hair back out of her face and readjusts
her clothes. She is a beautiful young redhead, about five seven, a hundred and
ten pounds and twenty years old. She climbs up and into the back of the Bronco
next to Devon. They sit there awkwardly. What is he supposed to say? I climb
back into the driver’s seat and slam the door shut. I take one last look at the
little turds on the ground.

They
are kids. What the hell were they thinking? Why aren’t they home with their
families? Even though I shouldn’t feel bad for them I still do. They deserved
what they got, but I fucked them up so much they will have a tough time getting
back to safety. I might have sentenced them to death. I probably could have
scared them away. I didn’t have to beat the shit out of them. I didn’t have to
elbow the kid in the face so many times. I don’t know what to think. My moral
compass has a magnet sitting next to it.

I
punch the gas and head back for the gravel road. Colleen turns around in her
seat to face Sara.

“It’s
going to be okay,” she tells her.

“I
knew them,” Sara gets her seat belt across her lap and clicks the ends
together.

“Sweetheart,
I’m so sorry,” Colleen holds out her good hand and places it on Sara’s knee.
Devon shifts around in the back seat. He slides a sheathed knife off his belt
and hands it to Sara.

“You
can have this,” she takes it.

“Thank
you.”

“These
knives are awesomely sharp. So like be, careful,” Devon nods his head at her.
She reaches over the drivers seat and grabs my shoulder.

“Thank
you,” she says to me.

“You’re
welcome,” it sounds awkward when I say it. I don’t know how to talk to kids. The
deeper I get into my thirties the more uncomfortable I feel around them. It is
why I struggle to talk with Devon. They make me feel old. I am not old, but
they make me feel that way for some reason. “Do you live around here?” 

“Yes,”
she says softly.

“You
want me to drop you off?”

“No.
It’s not safe,” she stares out the window.

“You
got any place to go?” asks Colleen.

“No.”

“You
can stay with us,” Devon tells her. I look up at the mirror and back at her. I
wish I had something I could say to her and help her feel better, but I have
nothing.

I
head for the farthest northeast corner of the cemetery. There is no outlet back
onto the main streets. It is all fenced in. North of the cemetery sits a row of
houses and their backyards butt up against the fence.

“I’m
gonna go through it,” I tell them. “Hold on,” I aim for what looks like a space
between the houses. I hope I don’t hit a parked car or a kid. The fence folds
under the weight of the Bronco. A couple of feet later we hit a wood fence. I
aim for the spot between the two posts that anchor it to the ground. The two by
fours snap and the fence crumbles. We have entered into a small alley that
separates the two houses.  

At
the next intersection there is a burning car in the middle of the street. Gangs
of monsters run from house to house looking for their next victims to feed upon.
There is a dump truck crashed halfway into a house across the street. A horde
of infected has spotted us.

“Keep
going, man!” Devon yells.

I
punch it and pull away. The street comes to a dead end. There is a row of four-foot
high scrubs blocking us from the next street. A parking lot sits on the other
side of the bushes.

“Drive
over it!” Devon encourages me. I put the pedal down. We blast over the plant
divider. An apartment complex sits to our right and a bunch of people are
packing up their cars right in front of us. I almost run over a few kids carrying
armfuls of toys. What are these parents doing? Strap the kids into the car or
leave them in the apartment until it is safe. The horde has entered the lot
behind us. I screwed up. Shit. I led the lions to the lambs. Most of the people
are single moms and their kids, a couple of old folks. A dozen infected spill
out into the lot. I have to fix this. I slam on the brakes and throw the Bronco
into reverse and step on the gas. I head right for the infected.

“Get
down!”

Devon
and Sara duck down under the backseat. A spare tire hangs from the back of the
Bronco and it takes the brunt of the impact. The Bronco takes down six of the
dead bastards. I mash on the brakes. The tires slide on blood and guts. I grab
my spear.

“Come
on, kid!” I yell back at Devon. One of the infected lies on the ground under my
door, its legs destroyed, but it still grabs and claws up at me. I open the
door fast and hard to bang it in the skull. I step out from the vehicle and
stab its brains. Devon struggles to cross over Sara’s lap but he finally gets
out and is right behind me. I lunge at the next infected and slice at its head.
The blade takes the cranium off with one easy swipe. Its body falls forward and
its neck hole shoots me with, what feels like, every ounce of blood it has to
offer. Devon jumps out with his spear and stabs an oncoming infected in the
face. His first solo kill.

“Sweet,”
I tell him. It was all he needed to hear. On the other side of the car the last
few infected scratch and claw at the windows. Colleen’s first up close look at
the infected. She is frozen with fear. I run around the front of the car and I
stab the one staring at Colleen. Blood spurts up onto the window. Devon is a
second behind me and he takes out the last one. He lets out a battle cry as he
cuts the monster’s head in two. I scan the parking lot. That was the last one
in this area. I turn to face the people.