The Infected (Book 2): Karen's First Day (6 page)

What was the plan?

Was there a cure for this disease?

Could she save him if she stopped the bleeding?

Or should she drag Steve out the front door and leave
him to die?

Why wasn’t Jim here to help her?

Steve’s body twitched.

Karen was frozen.

Steve’s body shook violently against the sink. The bowls
and glasses rattled in the cabinet above. The puddle of blood pooled from the
sink across the floor all the way over to the refrigerator.

“Steve?” she called to him with a whisper. His head
turned immediately to face her. Steve had the same black eyes as the man she
shot. Karen reached for the gun in its holster. It was not there!

“Shit!”

It was on the range behind Steve.

Steve lunged toward her. Karen sped back down the hall
for the bedroom. She couldn’t let him into the room with her children. She
grabbed the knob and pulled the bedroom door shut closing her children in
behind it. The doors in this apartment were practically made of paper. A notch
above cardboard at best. It would take nothing for Steve to smash it down. The
sudden movement scared both girls. Their startled little screams made her heart
ache. Karen took a protective stance outside the door. She reached into her
back pocket for the knife.

Steve stumbled down the hall. She worked the blade open
and snapped it into place. At the exact same time Steve hit her. He shoved her
through the doorway that led into the computer room. Infected-Steve’s teeth were
so close to her face that she could feel the heat from its open mouth. It
landed on top of her as they crashed to the floor. The knife was knocked from
her hand and lost. She forced her knee up and in between their chests. It gave her
a little extra space to work. Karen anchored her elbow into its neck and pushed
away its jaw. For years Jim had tried to get her to go to his Krav Maga class,
but she was never interested. She now realized what a mistake that was.

When Karen was a kid she wrestled her older brother and
father. Plus Jim loved to wrestle and show her some of the moves he had learned
in class. She was slightly aware of where to put her legs and hands to keep his
mouth from tearing into her. Infected-Steve weighed so much and he forced himself
onto her. Her lungs were crushed as the top of her thigh was pushed deeper into
her sternum. She couldn’t breathe. Her arms were going to give. She couldn’t
push him away for much longer. Behind infected-Steve the bedroom door opened.
Valerie stepped out into the hall.

“MAMA!” she cried. The child had no sense of the danger
she just stepped into. All she could see was her Mama getting attacked by a
scary man. Valerie walked into the room and turned on the light. It got
infected-Steve’s attention and he sat up.

Valerie let out a terrified high-pitched scream. The monster
was easily distracted and it shifted its focus to the little one. In an instant
Karen went from pushing it off of her to fighting to keep a hold of it. It reached
and clawed at the five-year-old. Karen wrapped her legs around its waist and
threw her arm around its neck. She hit it so hard in the neck with her forearm that
it would have killed a regular human. Robin came out of the bedroom to see what
all of the noise was about. She joined in with her sister’s howling.

Seeing her children with tears running down their
horrified faces gave Karen a reason to fight harder. A parent’s worst fear. The
thought of it hurting or killing her children sent shockwaves of dread into her
soul.

With the light on she could see the knife laying a few
feet away. Karen stretched across the floor and her fingertips touched the
blade. His powerful body pulled her farther away from the weapon.

“VALERIE! Get out!” Karen struggled to form the words
over her strain.

The child was frozen with fear.

“RUN!”

Valerie’s little legs backpedaled as fast as they could
for the bedroom. Karen wanted its full attention so she open hand struck at its
head.

Valerie pushed her sister back into the bedroom and closed
the door. They banged at the barrier and called for their Mama.

The sound tore through Karen’s psyche. She slapped harder
at the side of its head. One of her fingers hit a home run and found its eye. She
forced her finger deep into the socket. The slimy squish and wet pop turned her
stomach, like sticking her hand into a bucket of snot, but now she had a handle
to yank its skull around with. She pulled it backwards and twisted its neck so
that its teeth were away from her. The more they fought, the farther away from
the blade she got. The only move she had left was to let go of it. If she landed
a kick she might get enough distance to reach the knife, but if she missed the
kick or the knife…well, she pushed that thought away.

She shoved it with her hands and then rolled up onto her
back. She tucked both knees to her chin, and then mule kicked him as hard as
she could. She landed it and slammed infected-Steve’s head into the sheetrock. Its
skull left a divot. The force of her kick slid her across the carpet and Karen
reached out for the knife. She fumbled it. The infected got out from under her
boots and climbed its way back up her body.

She writhed and wormed underneath him. Its teeth couldn’t
find a target. Losing its eye had thrown off its aim. Karen finally got a grip on
the knife’s old wooden handle. She fought for millimeters to get some distance
from the monster. This wouldn’t be the end. She would not fail. There was no
way she was letting Jim come home to find them dead.

The infected leapt onto her as she stabbed into the side
of its skull. The blade drove through skin, then bone and finally his brain. The
full weight of its body buried her. She struggled out from under him.

The hot sting of tears filled her eyes. Her clothes were
wet with water and blood. Her whole body felt sticky with sweat from the
exertion. She hopped up to her feet and kicked at the dead body to make sure he
was truly dead before she opened up the bedroom door. Karen did not linger. One
last harder kick just to be sure. Poor Steve, he was always such a good guy.

She closed the door behind her and opened the one that
separated her from the children. She swung the door open a little too fast and
it pushed the girls back. Karen fell to her knees and clutched her babies.

“It’s okay! It’s okay! Mama’s okay!” The three ladies
poured tears over each other. The little ones couldn’t form even the simplest
of words. Every part of her body shook, from fear, from exhaustion, from the
horror movie flashes that played out in her mind if he had gotten hold of the
girls. She wasn’t given a moment of peace. The infected at the back door kept
slamming its hands over and over into the glass.

The three ladies had the full on snubs. “Snubs” was when
you couldn’t talk because you were crying so hard that your body fought to take
in large breaths of air. Karen’s family had called it that her whole life.

For a long time she held her children. Their wet tears fell
onto Karen’s neck and they wiped the snot that accumulated on their upper lips
across her shoulders. She did not care. Ever since Valerie was born, Karen had
called them sugar boogers. A little snot was a small price to pay for this
priceless embrace.

It might have been twenty minutes before any of them were
willing to let go of each other. The infected man at the back door had lost
interest and finally shuffled away to find easier prey.

Valerie got her breath under control, “Mama, I don’t
think he’s handsome anymore.”

“I think you’re right baby.”

“Mama, what happened to him?”

How do you answer that?

What should she say?
There were no parenting books
for this kind of situation.

“He was bitten by a man that was sick and then he got
sick.”

Valerie thought about what her Mama had said, “Did you
get bit?”

“No.”

“Has Daddy been bit?”

Karen coughed up some more tears. Her features distorted into
the saddest face possible, “We have to think good thoughts, okay. Tell yourself
Daddy will be home any minute and he just might.”

Robin pointed at her new tears, “What? You sad?” was the
best she can muster.

“Yes, baby, Mama is very sad, but I’m happy that I have
you two,” she said as she pulled them in for another hug. Her knees ached so
she pulled them up to the bed. There laid Botchy. Asleep. She was blind, deaf
and would have barked at the wrong person anyway. What a crummy attack dog.  

Karen got everyone, including herself, calmed as much as
possible. It took a little time to get the girls back into the computer game.

“Mama needs to get something from the kitchen. I will be
right back.” Karen stepped into the kitchen. She moved so fast she slipped on
the blood and almost fell on her ass. Karen slid the gun back into its holster.
The water in the sink was running the whole time. Karen turned off the hot tap.
Even with all the blood on the floor and the shock she was almost certainly suffering
from, she still felt hungry.

“What a weird time to be hungry.” It was normal for her
to talk to herself. The girls needed to eat for sure. Eating would make her
feel better. It always had. She found a pizza in the freezer and fired up the
oven. A few of the towels that hit the floor earlier had sopped up some of the
mess, but she would need to clean it all.

Who was going to clean up Steve’s body?

There was no way she could drag his body anywhere.

Fuck, what a horrible day.

“Where are you Mama?” Valerie asked from the bedroom.

“I’m cleaning and making pizza. Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Play your game and I’ll be there in a minute.” She
pushed the towels around on the floor with her foot. Then Karen remembered she
had rubber gloves in the bathroom for when she dyed her hair. Karen put on a
pair and lifted the heavy, wet towels into the garbage can. She was on the
verge of puking the whole time she cleaned the bloody mess. She sprayed bleach
all over the floor and used a whole roll of paper towels to clean the last of
the crimson goo.

A few minutes later she snapped off the gloves and tossed
them into the garbage. She placed the pizza into the pre-heated oven. The bleach
smell gave her a headache. Karen did not want to open a window so she flipped
on the exhaust fans to vent the room out. Her mind was all over the place. She couldn’t
focus.

She wondered if she could pull the knife out of
Steve’s head?

She needed to carry another blade, but what if she pulled
the knife out and he came back alive?

Does it work that way?

Fuck!

Karen wanted to punch something! She did not have another
sheathed knife in this house and she couldn’t carry a blade in her back pocket.
She could slice her ass cheek off. Then it hit her. She knew what she could do.
Karen opened the drawer and pulled out a handful of butcher and steak knives.

She left one on the counter by the sink. Karen then
stabbed a knife into the sheetrock by the backdoor. She stabbed two more into
the wall close to the front door. The last three she forced into the wall in
the bedroom. It felt great to stab the walls of the shitty apartment. It also
felt like the act of a crazy person. Stabbing the walls just so she had a knife
at the ready.

“What are you doing? Do you hate the wall?” Valerie
looked up from the game.

“No baby. Mama is just trying to be prepared.” She forced
the last knife into position. Outside Karen’s apartment some tires screeched
across the parking lot. Karen stepped to the window. She peeked without
disturbing the blinds and giving away that she was home. The neighbors’ van
ripped into the parking lot. It was Cliff and Tina.

Blood coated the front of Cliff and Tina’s van. Chunks of
human remains were wedged into the grill. The infected man that was banging at
Karen’s back window stood in the center of their parking space. Cliff spotted
the infected as it bolted for their moving vehicle. When he got closer to it
Cliff popped open his door, swerved the van and the open door knocked the shit
out of it. He jammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, then put the van into
reverse and backed over the dead body just to make sure the job was done.

Cliff did a sloppy job backing his van into his parking
spot.  The back wheels hit the curb hard. Cliff and Tina looked around.
They made sure the coast was clear.

Inside the van Tina gave Cliff a nod, “Let’s go!” she
clutched the bloodstained butcher knife and was ready to strike. Cliff hit the
button to power the sliding side door and helped the oldest child, Eve, out
first. Tina took her by the hand and pulled her toward the stairs that led up
to their place. Cliff scooped the two younger girls out of the van but took
care to angle his cleaver’s blade away from their soft skin.

He tapped the button on his keys and the van’s door powered
shut. He stomped up the flight of stairs two at a time. The noise boomed throughout
the complex. If there were any more of those monsters close by, Cliff just rang
the dinner bell.  

Tina got the door to their place open and the five of
them scooted safely into their home. Cliff set down the two girls and they ran
off to play with their sister as if it were any other day. Cliff felt a little
lightheaded. It was only one flight of stairs but he did not normally do them
two at a time with a girl in each arm. He only had to climb the stairs about
twenty more times to unload the van.

He was super stoked about that.

“Be my lookout from the bedroom window,” Cliff asked his
wife as he gave his back a stretch.

“I’m coming with you,” Tina said in a way that told Cliff
not to argue the point.

“Eve, watch out the window for any of the sick people.
Only call down to us if you see them. Do you understand?” Cliff waited for her
head to nod before he headed back out the front door. On the trip down the
stairs they did a better job of keeping quiet. Cliff took the lead as they crept
to the main floor. The window opened above them.

“I don’t see anything,” Eve whispered down to her
parents. From this window she could survey the entire complex.

Cliff hit the button to open the back hatch and put the
keys in his pocket. The giant pile of food waited to be lugged up the fifteen
steps behind them. The boxes of beer were on the top of the pile so they took
them first and dropped them off in the front hallway.

Up and down the stairs they went. Nothing was bagged at
the store. On the second trip they brought a set of tote bags to help load out
more. Sweat dripped from their every pore.

During one of the drop-offs, Eve’s panicked voice called
them from their bedroom, “Mama, Daddy someone’s taking the food!”

“Motherfuckers!” Tina darted out and down the steps.

Cliff was on her heels.

“Get away from our van!” Cliff threw his dad voice at the
twenty-year-old guys standing at the back of their van. One of them had a neck
tattoo just below his ear. He had a big bag of rice tossed up onto his
shoulder. The other had long black hair and an armful of steaks.

“Holy shit!” screamed Tattoo Neck.

A couple of steaks hit the ground as Long Hair retreated.
“Move it, bro!”

The guys took off running the second they saw Tina’s
knife. Cliff spotted a rock the size of a baseball in the flower garden in front
of the apartment. As he zipped by the rock he snatched it up. Every spring
Cliff played centerfielder on the company softball team. They were six games
into the season and undefeated. Cliff planted his leg and fired the rock. The
thing was a heater. A definite strike. The rock hit the small of Long Hair’s
back. It knocked the wind out of Long Hair and he dropped to his knees. The packages
of steak tumbled to the ground as he fell to his face. Cliff and Tina closed
the gap between them.

“Jesus, Cliff!” She couldn’t believe her husband almost
killed a man over thirty dollars worth of meat. Cliff couldn’t believe it either.
He was not thinking straight. He knew you needed a certain amount of calories a
day to survive and the primal part of Cliff’s brain equated this theft to his
family’s premature death. Maybe he overreacted a little, but after the shit day
he was having who wouldn’t want to kill someone?

Neck Tattoo dropped the bag of rice and tried to help his
injured friend. Tina and Cliff were too close for him to get his buddy up.

Neck Tattoo put his hands up in the air, “I’m sorry! I’m
sorry! Don’t kill me!”

Long Hair writhed on the ground in agony. Cliff and
Tina’s knives were at the ready, but they were not exactly sure what the hell
to do.

“Our kitchen is empty! We don’t have any food! I’m
sorry!” Neck Tattoo screeched.

Cliff and Tina shared a quick glance. Neither of them had
ever been in a situation like this.

What is the right move here?
Tina thought as she
lowered her knife and squatted down next to Long Hair.

“Let me see it,” she said as she pushed him to his
stomach and lifted up his t-shirt. A dark red circle had already formed next to
his spine.

“Do you live around here?” Tina asked.

“We just moved into D eight.” Answered Neck Tattoo

“If you have any spare ice or a cold pack you should ice
this to keep the swelling down. Take a few Tylenol. I hope this is a lesson to
you. Don’t steal someone’s food. They might fuck you up big time.” She stood
back up. Tina aimed the tip of the blade at the food on the ground. “You can
have this, but that’s it.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Cliff took a step closer
to his wife.

“They need to eat too. We’re neighbors,” she said as she
turned and headed back to the van.

“Are we feeding the whole complex now?” Cliff called
after her.

“No, just them! I don’t know, maybe the ones that need
help. Goddamn it, Cliff. I don’t know! Let’s go!” Tina did not stop to look
back. The conversation was over as far as she was concerned. Cliff gave the two
thieves a nasty stare as Long Hair fought to get to his feet.

Neck Tattoo gathered up the packages of meat and the bag
of rice.

Cliff followed his wife back to the van. All the time he
kept his eyes on the two young men. Long Hair hobbled his way over to building
D as Neck Tattoo carried all of the food. Cliff scanned the apartment complex.
Eyes watched them from every building.

How many other people are sitting with empty kitchens?

It had not even been a half hour since tons of shit exploded
into the fan and they were already throwing rocks and fighting for food. They muscled
the last of the supplies up into their place. Tina locked the door and turned
her back to it. She leaned against the door and could feel the cold metal
through her shirt. The cold felt great against her sweaty skin.

She dropped down to her butt and joined the massive pile
of food in the front hallway of their place. The butcher knife shook in her
hand. She let it fall to the floor and rubbed her palms together. A headache
had already started to creep its way in. Stress, dehydration, fear and muscle
fatigue were taking their toll. The muscles in her quads ached from the steps
and she could already feel the knots forming tight in her back.  

One of the cases of beer sat beside her. She ripped into
it and took out two cans. Cliff stepped over a bag of beans and joined his wife
on the floor. She handed him one.

“Thank you.” Cliff said with a grunt as his butt landed
on the floor.

They popped the tops and took long drags of warm beer.
The children played quietly in the back bedroom. Two of them pretended to be
puppies as Eve trained them to roll over and play dead.

“This is a…situation we are in here,” Tina took another
sip and rubbed at her thighs.

“If this thing is worldwide…then we’re in it deep,” Cliff
wiped some sweat off his forehead.

“Oh fuck!” Tina gritted her teeth.

“What?” he sat up straight.

“Your Mother!” Tina held her hand to her mouth as if
another word could further curse the situation. Cliff’s mom lived in a
retirement community a mile away. She was in her seventies, but her body had
withered away after years of substance abuse. She had been quite the rocker
chick and lived the hard life for decades. “You have to go get her!”

“I can’t leave you and the girls!”

“You can’t leave her there alone. That would tear you up
inside. You know it. You have to go, now!”

“We can’t take care of her here! We don’t have the right
equipment.”

“If it’s her time to pass, she would want to be here with
family. Not in that cold old folks home.”

“You’re right. I’m just scared to go outside again.” Tears
formed in his eyes.

Tina reached out and pulled him in for a hug. He rubbed
the tears out of his eyes and pushed himself up off the floor. He drained the
rest of his beer and then opened the hallway closet, took out his heavy leather
welding jacket that he wore to work.

“Girls, come here.” Cliff called his children. The little
ones gathered around him.

“Daddy has to go get Granny. You stay as quiet as you can
and behave for your Mama.” He squatted down to their level and wrapped his arms
around all three of them.

“I love you.”

“We love you too Daddy,” Eve dropped her head onto his
shoulder.

Alex, the five-year-old noticed his red eyes, “Why are
you crying, Daddy?”

Cliff struggled to find the words.

“Daddy’s worried about Granny. That’s all,” Tina rose
from the floor and finished off her beer.

“That’s it. Daddy’s worried.” He gave each of them a kiss
and one last good squeeze.

“Don’t worry Daddy, it will be okay,” Eve whispered.

His grip on them was tighter than normal and they grunted
from the pressure. He gave each girl a little bonk on the noggin. A forehead-to-forehead
kiss.

“Bonk, bonk, bonk,” they said it together. He stood back
up, zipped his jacket and reached for his truck keys that hung off a hook by
the front door. His hand rested on the doorknob as he turned back to face his
wife.

“I’ll see you, girl.” It was something he had said to her
thousands of times over the years, but it was the first time it brought Tina to
tears. Cliff checked the peephole.

All clear.

He raced out the door and Tina locked it behind him.
Again his boots crashed down onto the concrete steps leading out of his place.
His heart pounded, not from the run, but from the Mount Everest sized pile of
fear that was piling up around him. He felt stupid for leaving his family, but
the idea of someone chewing up his mother ripped out his heart. It was a
five-minute drive to her place. He should be there and back in fifteen.

Cliff unlocked his 2002 black Dodge truck. He needed to
drive it to carry his mom’s wheelchair back home. A bunch of building supplies lay
in the bed. Some extra stuff he had to clean up yesterday at work. He looked
back at his apartment before hopping into the cab. Four heads looked down at
him from his bedroom window. He looked back at the top of the stairs to his
place. He could build a barrier with these supplies. A little something to keep
the freaks from his front door. He gave his family one last wave and tossed the
meat cleaver into the passenger seat as he hopped up into the truck.

The Dodge always smelled like the job site. Dirt and
fresh cut lumber. He slammed the door shut. He had to because it was the only
way to get the damn thing to close anymore. It had been like that ever since he
was at work and moved his truck out of the way of a cement mixer. He left his
door open because he needed to move fast and get back to his spot on the
concrete pour. He tapped the gas and had only moved backwards a couple of feet
when his door crashed into his boss’s brand new seventy thousand dollar Ford F-450
Platinum. It screwed up the hinges on his door a little and he could never
afford to get them properly fixed, but the damage to his boss’s truck, oh baby.
He destroyed the fender, passenger door and rear quarter panel. Almost lost his
job and the ribbing that followed lasted for months. No insurance meant that he
had to pay out of pocket. No cash meant that his boss had to garnish his wages
for a year. It was a rough twelve months.

Every time Cliff got into his truck he was reminded about
that horrible day. This time the thought of that horrible day only lasted half
a second. Today was ten times worse. He twisted the key. Both the engine and
the radio kicked on. The beefy system spewed brutal heavy metal. The tires threw
little chunks of asphalt as he sped backwards. He jammed it into first and tore
out of the lot. He watched as a few families loaded up their cars to bug out of
town.

Should he load up his family and head out to the
woods?

Or batten down the hatches and hold tight till all
this shit blew over?

Will it blow over?

Could the government rally and stop this from
spreading?

It was so hard to tell which move was the right one. The
heavy metal music got his blood pumping. He hammered his fist down onto the
steering wheel and kept beat with the song. At the edge of the lot Cliff came
to a stop and checked the street. He did a quick look to his right and his
heart wanted to shoot out of his butt. A young woman sprinted across the
street. Her face torqued with fear. A pack of infected monsters pursued her relentlessly.
She changed course and headed for Cliff’s truck the second she saw him.

“Please!” she called out to him. Her blood stained hands
waved in the air to make sure he had seen her. Cliff was compelled to help her
but the six infected were so close to reaching her. He pulled the emergency
brake, reached for the cleaver and threw open his door.