The Infected (19 page)

I went back inside my place and wondered what I could use to store petrol that could also, ultimately, be carried in a car. I thought of buckets, but the petrol fumes would have been too much. And then it hit me. Balloons. Maybe it was because my cheeks were still sore and I was still having flashbacks of blowing up balloons for my cousin Sean’s fifteenth birthday, but what a great idea if I do say so myself. They can hold quite a bit, are flexible, meaning that I could load them easily into the car (in between cases and stuff, under chairs) and they would be easy to empty into the car. Just one snag though. I didn’t have any balloons…

Usually I would have just popped out to the shops – Karaglen shopping centre in Edenvale is probably just two and half kilometres away and there is like a party-cum-flower shop there which would definitely have had balloons. But if I went there now I would probably die. And that wasn’t what I felt like doing. As I was thinking of this I remembered of the birthday party that some kid had had a few days before this whole infected episode. I only remember it because I almost ran over some little brat… if it hadn’t been for the balloons he was holding as he ran across the street in the complex I would have probably killed him. The mother glowered at me as I drove past and I had half a mind to shout out the window, “Hey, if I had killed that brat it would have been your fault – teach him how to cross a bloody road!” But I didn’t.

I grabbed my nail gun, again, and headed in the general direction of where the balloon kid had been running. There are still no more of the infected in the complex that I know of, by the way. I went towards where I had almost committed involuntary manslaughter and started looking through the windows. Bingo! The third unit that I looked into was the one – there were toys everywhere. A kid definitely stayed there.

Luckily this was a garden unit so I hopped over the tiny wall and went around the back, hoping that the patio doors would be open. No luck though, so I smashed the small pane next to the handle – because I could see the keys hanging in the handle on the inside – with the ‘butt’ of the nail gun and let myself in. This was definitely the place. Toys were strewn around the house, and if I didn’t know better I would have probably assumed that one of the infected was inside. I don’t know the reason why I did it, but I looked in the fridge and there was the conclusive proof – a stinky, awfully stinky really, piece of birthday cake with two candles still protruding from its greeney, browney, black mould. Horrible.

So where were the damn balloons? I looked in the kitchen drawers but no joy. Kids room – nada. Folks room – nothing. Then I checked behind the couch – there they were, seven deflated balloons still tied to their strings. That’s where mine had always ended up when I was a kid. Good start. I eventually, after about 15 minutes of searching, found another six unused ones in the bottom drawer of their TV cabinet. Bonus. But there was nothing else in the house worth taking – all the food was off, there was no booze and cigarettes and even if the power had been working I would not have taken the mammoth collection of Barney and Noddy DVDs to watch back at my place.

So I went back to the Mercedes Benz, and although it was a bit messier this way, I managed to fill up most of the balloons with petrol. I have stored them in the bathroom for now but will, when I am not so bloody tired after all my running around today, start loading them into the R8.

Okay, well that’s it for now. I am going to go have another wash and an early night. Oh, and the rain has stopped already in case you are interested. Guess I won’t be going to Bloem any time too soon then.

See ya

Sam W

11:56am, August 9

Just noticed on my calendar that today is a public holiday. Don’t know which one it is, but happy public holiday anyways. Hope that you don’t have to go in to work and can stay home like me.

Take care

Sam W

4:08pm, August 14

I heard from Lil again today – they haven’t been able to get too far since we last spoke, but here, read for yourself. It is seriously long (and I mean seriously long – like a half hour read), but Lil was always a damn fast typer:

From:
Lourens Stadler
Sent:
14 August 2011 14:12PM
To:
Sam Ward
Subject:
Re: Hi Sam

Greetings my gorgeous Sammie! We are all well, hope that you are too and that you are enjoying your veggies (I read your blog)! I would never have imagined the day when you would be craving homegrown, healthy food! I guess that is what the imminent end of the world does to you.

Last time I emailed you we were just outside Standerton on our way towards Bethlehem. We are now just a little further outside Standerton and just a little closer to Bethlehem. Well… that makes it sound like we have hardly moved, so let me explain…

After I last mailed you we spent another day around the town looking for clothes, food, batteries and stuff like that to take with us. It was a pretty quiet town when it came to seeing those
things
– I think if we killed five in those two days it was a lot – so we thought we would use the opportunity to scavenge while we could (the word scavenge doesn’t sound right – it make us sound… savage… but scavenge was what we were doing anyway).

When we eventually took stock and decided to leave, we were in for the shock of our lives. As we left town, probably only two or three kilometres out, we went over a rise, and as we did, Corne slammed on brakes. I went flying into the seat in front (I was trying on clothes that we had sourced, silly me) and ended up splitting the skin above my right eye. Blood was streaming down my face as I got up to see what was going on, and as I made my way to the front, half blinded by a stream of red, the silence from everyone else on board the bus filled me with fear.

I wiped the blood from my brow onto my already dirty pants and took a few tentative steps forward. Sammie, the pain in my head disappeared as soon as I looked out the window. The potholed tar road stretched out before us, empty for a kilometre or so – even devoid of painted lines – then this serenity was punctured by the first car, a maroon Opel Corsa. On its side. A few metres further on, maybe thirty or forty, was a police car, doors open and back windscreen smashed, jack-knifed with a white Toyota Hilux bakkie. After the smashed glass littered on the floor around these two wrecks, my eyes lost their focus and I saw car after car, crumpled, crashed, some on their sides, some on their roofs. Some on fire. And in amongst the cars, on them, in them, jumping from one to another, were
them
. They weren’t alone – there were some normal people too, but they were being overrun and attacked. Savagely.

We looked at this massacre in dumbfounded silence. Even the usually boisterous Sandra was just staring at this scene in front of us aghast, not saying a word. By the time anyone even said anything, the first few
things
had spotted us and were ambling their way towards our bus. We weren’t worried though – it would have taken them ages to get to us – we were just transfixed by what was in front of us. Was this what the world had come to? Was this how we would eventually come to an end? Was this a close-up view, well, a couple of hundred metres away, of our future? I cried Sammie. I cried a lot. It wasn’t because of the savagery going on, or that lonely, buckled baby chair which must have been flung from one of the cars in the pile-up. At least I think not. I just cried and cried until eventually Sandra put her arm around me and cried too. I noticed that Corne had a tear in his eye too when he backed up the bus and we turned around, looking for another way through or around the town.

What we had just seen couldn’t have happened, or started to happen, too long before we got there. If we had left just a few minutes earlier that day we could have ended up smack bang in the middle of all of that. It gives me the shivers Sam whenever I think of that. And I still can’t get that bloody car seat out of my mind… I dream about it.

The GPS which we had been using had given up the ghost by then (what a truly awful saying that is) so we had to rely on a map book of South Africa which we had ‘bought’ from a deserted and ransacked petrol station a few days before. After a couple of false starts, dead ends, and, in one case, the road just ending as an overgrown forest of some seriously scary looking trees, seemingly intent on devouring the road, we managed to find our way onto the highway again, having bypassed the monster pile-up which still left us in silence on the bus.

But we weren’t on the road for long until disaster struck. Lourens was behind the wheel when it happened, chatting quietly to Corne as we headed out again on our journey towards Bloemfontein. It was getting late – probably just after 4pm – and we would have to soon decide where we were going to spend the night. Sammie, that was the worst part of the day for me… sometimes we would pull off the road and find a safe, sheltered place, perhaps behind a clump of trees out of sight or over a small hill. Other times, if we were in a built up area and we were sure that there were none of those
things
running around, we would basically use the bus as a barricade, pulling it up as close to the door of the petrol station or shop or house or whatever place we were staying in (we didn’t worry about scratching or damaging the side of the bus by the way!). And then we would have a quick getaway straight into the bus if anything happened or our nightspotters saw anything. I never slept well though Sammie. Ever.

Just as I got up to go and speak to Corne and Lourens about our plans for the night, the bus lurched violently to the left, and my first thought was, “Oh no, another pile up.” I grabbed onto the nearest chair as Lourens straightened the bus, but was soon off my feet again as we swayed again, this time to the right. I covered my face, especially the cut above my eye (which we had cleaned and bandaged from our dwindling first aid kit) but came down hard on my side, whacking my ribs on the metal ‘leg’ thing of the bus chair. I was instantly winded and was bashed and dragged around as the bus weaved back and forth for what seemed like ages. The bandage came down and covered my eyes, and as I was thrown helplessly along the slippery floor of the bus, curled as tightly into a ball as I could get, I faintly remember hearing the children screaming. In the chaos I got to thinking of how damn good they had been through all of this – if this whole thing had happened while I was their age I doubt I would have been as well behaved as they had been. Heck, they were so good and well behaved that half of the time I even forgot that they were there.

After what seemed like an age the bus came to a stop, and a few seconds later, so did I. I uncoiled and could feel the pain flaring up through most parts of my body – I had been bashed around badly Sam, and even now I still have bruises, admittedly in that going away, greeney, yellowy, purpley phase, over my arms, thighs, back, neck and sides. I sat up groggily and tried to take stock of what was going on. I lifted the bandage to see that I was now facing the back of the bus and that my cut was bleeding again.

I stood up and flinched at the pain in my side – I thought then, and still think now, that I had broken a rib or two on my left side. There was stuff everywhere – whatever we had packed nicely at the back of the bus – clothes, food, magazines – was now littered everywhere. I scanned the bus and saw Sandra and the kids up front and to my right – I went over as quickly as I could. “Are you all okay?” I asked. “Just,” said Sandra as she attended to Luke and Paige – Paige had somehow managed to get herself caught up in a jersey and seemed to be battling to breathe (I found out later that she was busy putting her jersey on when this happened and she had almost strangled herself whilst being flung around). I saw that they were okay so headed on further to the front of the bus, slipping on a You magazine as I strode forward through the pain.

I looked out the large front window of the bus, now speckled with hundreds of small dead insects, and saw nothing but a peaceful, open country road. No
things
attacking people as I had expected. No crashed cars, no fires.

“Are you alright Lily?” Lourens asked. “Sorry about that,” he continued without waiting to hear my answer. “Yeah, a bit sore and battered, but okay. What happened? Did you lose control?” “Come see,” he said as he picked up one of the rifles from the floor and pulled the lever that opened the door. Lourens, Corne and myself stepped out into the heat – even late afternoon in winter in Mpumalanga can take your breath away due to the dry nature of the heat. We scanned the surroundings as we went around to the front of the bus. “Shit, its burst,” said Corne as we looked at the front left tire – it was shredded. Just what we needed. At least we knew that there was a spare – we had had to lift it to get at the blankets on that first night. “Guys…” a bad word, especially in this situation. Especially when said so downcast as it was. Lourens was pointing at the right tire. It too was shredded into what looked like a bad dress that Lady Gaga would wear. “I felt the first one go, so I tried to correct the steering – that’s probably when this one went too.” Sammie, I felt like crying. I feel like crying too often these days…