WorldLost- Week 1: An Infected Novel (5 page)

Being stuck in the elevator and not knowing what might be
waiting for me when the doors opened; I vowed to use the stairs from now on so
I wasn’t in this type of predicament going forward. The stairs would be better
for me anyway.

As the elevator doors opened on Amy’s second-floor
hallway, I stood to the side of the elevator and looked around the corner, into
the hallway. Looking through the elevator doors, I was glad to see that there
wasn’t an infected waiting for me but sad that Amy wasn’t either.

It would have been much easier to meet her and just move on.

I moved out of the elevator and looked down the hallway both
ways. Amy’s apartment building was 10 stories high, although she was on the
second floor. It had a courtyard in the middle that the building wrapped around,
basically a square with a hole in the middle. If you walked the hallway, you
would make a complete loop around it and end up back at the elevators.

Amy’s apartment was in the middle, on the side of the square
that faced onto the main street, so the good news was I would know the
situation of half of her floor by the time I got there. The bad news was there
were two corners that blocked my view of the hallway either way I moved.

I decided to move to the left and headed towards Amy’s
apartment. The first apartment I passed had its door closed, so I quietly made
my way past it.

The second and third doors were open and there was a blood
trail coming out of each one. I moved as silently as possible past both doors,
listening for any noise as I passed. I didn’t hear anything but stayed alert
anyway.

I stopped at the corner peeked around it to see if anything
was in the hallway. On this side of the building, there were five apartments
and three of the five had open doors, leaving two doors closed.

I snuck up to the first door and listened, waiting for any
sign of trouble. There wasn’t any noise, so I started to move to the next door.
Just as I passed halfway across the door, I heard a loud scream from the other
side the building. A loud crashing sound followed from the fourth door opened
in the hallway I was standing in.

I moved into the first apartment and slowly pushed the door
close. Footsteps could be heard coming down the hall and then past the door I
had just closed.

I turned around to checked out the apartment I was standing
in just in case there was someone there.

Blood was all over the floor of the apartment and the body of
an elderly man was lying in the hallway of the apartment. His face was gone,
just some flesh and bone with lots of blood pooled around him. His eyes were missing,
his nose was gone and you could see the bone on his skull.

His skull was caved in on the side and parts of his brains were
exposed inside his skull. I doubted that this guy would turn since so much was
missing, so I turned back around to face the door and opened the door just a bit
to look out into the hallway.

Since only one infected had reacted to the scream, I was
pretty confident that the other open apartments were empty and moved quickly past
them. I reached the next corner and peered around it looking at Amy’s apartment
door sitting wide open right in the middle of the hallway.

No other doors were open on this side of the building and the
hallway was empty. I listened with everything I had, but my heart was pumping
and felt like it was beating out of my body.

Moving fast down the hall, I was soon inside the hallway of Amy’s
apartment. There was blood on the entrance floor, the walls had blood smears
and some splatter was visible on the ceiling. I could see a body on the living
room floor. His head was squashed flat and there was dark black blood and
brains pooling around his head.

I heard a moan and a bang from down the hallway to my right
that led to Amy’s bedroom and bathroom area. I looked around the corner and saw
a guy, infected, standing at the bedroom door. He moaned and then banged his
head on the door, ten seconds later he repeated moan and the head bang.

I could hear a slight cry from within the bedroom. Since I
was here to help Amy, I would have to finally deal with this problem. It was
the only way I was going to help Amy. I had to kill this monster.

I jumped into the middle of the hallway with the bat raised,
ready to strike the infected guy.

“Hey you FUCKER! Come and get it!” I yelled.

The infected turned to look at me. He let out a moan and started
to move towards me.

I steadied myself and got ready to swing when the bedroom
door flew open. Amy stepped out holding a lava lamp over her head that she had
taken from her bedroom. She advanced on the infected man from behind and
crushed the lava lamp onto the guy’s head.

He stumbled a little and then fell to the hallway floor. Amy
used the heel of her boot to stomp on his head which cracked with a loud pop
and a splash of blood and brains all over the hallway walls and floor.

Now I knew what happened to the guy in the living room. He must
have gotten a boot to the head also.

After several more stomps to the guy’s head, I moved to Amy
and grabbed her by the shoulders and told her it was ok, she could stop.

“I can’t these bastards killed Shelby,” Amy said as she
started to cry, stomping one more time to make sure the guy was gone. She fell
into my arms after that last stomp and cried even louder into my shoulder. The
noise was of her crying was freaking me out. If there were more infected on the
second floor, they might hear Amy crying. I had to get the door closed and
locked. Then we could discuss what was going on and what we were going to do
next.

“Please quiet down Amy. The noise will attract more of these
things. You need to be quiet.” I pleaded in a whisper to her. “Let’s get the
door closed and barricaded so we can catch our breath and decide on what we are
going to do.”

She stepped away from me, wiped her eyes with her sleeve and
walked back to her bedroom.

I moved to the front door and closed it, locking the deadbolt
and doorknobs. I moved to the living room and moved one of the couches in front
of the door, blocking the hallway.  Once it was snugly against the front door,
I moved into the bedroom to see what Amy was doing.

Amy was on the floor holding her partner, Shelby in her arms.
Shelby had an eye missing and there was a bloody nailfile lying next to Amy. 
“What happened?” I asked.

Amy looked up at me after a few seconds of
me standing there and waiting for her answer. She started to cry and lowered
her head again.

I stood there and let her cry, she needed it and there wasn’t
anything I could do to help her. After a few minutes, she wiped the tears away
and said.
“Do you
remember being at the club last night.”

“I remember parts of it,” I replied kind of unsure. I was a
bit drunk and some of the night was a blur or you could even say it was a black
out.

“I was at the club last night watching you guys get drunk, tending
bar and things. I was trying to make sure you guys didn’t go too far off the
deep end. I also wanted to make sure that you were good to the staff.”

“You were celebrating the fact that you had gotten fired
earlier yesterday.”

“I remember the why.”

“Needless to say, you guys got pretty rowdy and really loud
at the end.” she continued. “Shelby came in around seven o’clock and once she
saw you two partying, she headed straight to your table.”

“You know how she always looked for a good time and if she
could get it for free, even better,” I replied as I looked around the room.

The blood was all over the place and all over Amy. It’s
amazing how much blood a human has I thought. Amy was saying something, but my
mind wondered to the relationship of Amy and Shelby.

Amy and Shelby had known each other for about a year and had
been on again off again partners for most of that time. They were currently off
again; at least that’s what Amy had said a few weeks ago.

This didn’t mean that they didn’t hang out with each other;
just that they weren’t exclusive. Their relationship was rocky and volatile,
neither liked to be told what to do, how to do it, yet they were drawn to each
other like magnets. They say opposites attach, but that wasn’t the case with
these girls. They were very similar in personality, beliefs, and behaviors.
Both were very stubborn and direct.

Their stubborn attitudes came from a rough upbringing in
Charleston. They were both forced to into adulthood at a very young age, an age
when most children are playing in the school yard and going to Chuckie Cheese.

I hadn’t spent a lot of time talking to Shelby about her
life, so I really didn’t know her story, but what little I knew, I could tell
she had a rough time of it, very much like Amy.

Amy’s story was an interesting one by itself. She told me the
story one night soon after we had met. We were drinking, go figure, and she got
a little tipsy. When she was feeling pretty good, she opened up and spilled the
beans.

Amy was a young girl when her father passed away. Amy would
always say he died from abuse and loneliness caused by her mother. Her mother
liked to party; party from morning to morning. She loved nothing better than to
go off for long periods of time partying with whoever she could find. Her
favorite thing to do was to find an up and coming band and latch on for as long
as they would have her around. Of course, her idea of up and coming wasn’t what
most would be involved in. Most of the bands she befriended were older cover
bands that worked the various bar scene up and down the east coast.

If she happened to find a band she liked, one that would
allow her to hang around, basically one looking for a groupie, she would drop
everything and hitch a ride for as long as they would have her.

She was rarely home to take care of young Amy and that put a
lot of stress on Amy’s father, not to mention the fact that his wife was out
with other men. Having to be a single father, work 60 hours a week as a trash
collector was hard enough, but constantly hearing about his wife’s whoring
around really weighed on him and Amy was sure that was the main reason he
passed away at such a young age.

Amy would dream about what it could have been like if her mom
had left for good or even if she had passed away, leaving her father to live
his life without the constant heartbreak.

Once Amy’s father was gone, her mom was forced to stay home
more or lose Amy to social services. This didn’t stop Beth from playing around
or partying every day, she just did it all at home. As a result, Amy had to
learn how to take care of herself even more then when her dad was around. In a
short time, Amy became the head of the household, being the most responsible of
the two, forced her to take control.

She would take the money her mom got from unemployment and
other shady dealings to pay the bills, buy groceries and make sure that they
had the basics they needed to live. Her mother would get upset when the money
was missing from the tin can she kept in the kitchen, but she was usually so
wasted, she couldn’t remember if she gave the money to Amy or spent it
somewhere else. It generally resulted in Amy getting a beating if her mother
found out the truth, but Amy continued to do it because she got away with it
more times then she got caught.

Through all of this, Amy would also have to deal with the men
her mom would drag home from the bars. They were usually someone with the band,
only around a for a short period while the band played the bars circuit around
town. Some stayed longer than others.

If the guy was around for more than a week, her mom would
start calling him her boyfriend, she just couldn’t be alone for long. Some of
the guys were nice and treated Amy well, but most were just losers that were
just around for the party, the sex and the free place to live.

Many of them were violent when they were high or drunk and
would take it out on Amy’s mom. If they weren’t satisfied with beating her mom,
they would look for Amy. This didn’t happen many times before Amy was quick to
learn when to get out of the house or hide. She also picked up a few things
that she could use as a defense, pepper spray, a knife; things like that. Her
mom would always take the guys side when it did happen, she was scared to lose
them. More scared to lose them, then to see her daughter abused.

Through these experiences, Amy learned to not trust men and
started to look for opportunities to bond with women as partial partners. Over
time, Amy had noticed how her mom’s girlfriends would always be around when the
boyfriend of the day would leave.

They’d be there to support her mom, to be a shoulder to cry
on and someone to party with. Even though her mom’s girlfriends encouraged her
to party, they at least were people she felt she could trust and liked being
around. They were always nice to Amy, many times trying to include Amy in the
party.

This was a positive to Amy, having friends that seemed to
care about you and their tender touch what helped Amy decide to get involved
with women.

Amy’s mother died of liver failure when Amy turned twenty-one
and although she didn’t have much, she did leave a little something that Amy
used to get out of the apartment they had in the Taylor Heights area of town
and move to the South Charleston area where her current place was. This was a
good thing for Amy as it got her away from the people her mom used to hang out
with and stopped the occasional ex-boyfriend from knocking on the door when
they were in town.

It was a fresh start for Amy. Something she really needed,
even if it meant that she was alone in the world.

A short time after moving to her new place, Amy got a job at
the Get-A-Way club and over the next year she became the club manager. She
could be nice, could be tough, but always knew how to treat her clients.

When I met her, she was the bartender and acting bar manager.
I had just got into town and was still mourning the loss of my dad and really
needed to talk with someone. I spent that night in the club pouring my heart
out to this beautiful bartender serving me drinks and I promptly got shit
faced.

I’m pretty sure I asked her to marry me.

I passed out and Amy took care of me. She found out where I
lived by checking my driver's license and she didn’t even steal the little
money I had left in my wallet. She was nice enough to call a cab and made sure
I got in it safely. She told the cabby where I lived and watched me get driven
away.

Thanks to her, I didn’t spend the night in the gutter on the
side of the street and I didn’t get taken advantage of by some thief. Why she
did this is still something that Amy won’t talk about, I’ve always assumed she
was just that kind of person, someone who cared. When I ask her about, she jokingly
remarks that she should have just treated me the same way she normally treated
any drunk and just kicked my ass out the door.

“Shelby stayed till you guys left last night because she wanted
to be with me. After cleaning up and closing the bar, we headed back to my
apartment to chill.” Amy said, bring me back to the conversation. “On the way
home, we saw some very strange things, but with Shelby drunk and needing help
to walk straight, we just headed home and didn’t stop for anything.” she
finished.

Amy got up, laying Shelby’s head down on the carpet gently
and walked to the kitchen. I followed her and sat down on a stool at the
breakfast counter. She pulled out a wine bottle from the liquor cabinet and
pulled the cork out discarding it on the counter. She stood there and looked at
me, then she took a long drink straight from the bottle.

She then said, “We sat down on the couch and talked when we
got home, not about anything in particular, just about life. What she had been up
to, what she was doing, those types of things.” She took another drink.

“After a while, there was a loud knock on the door. It was
strange, we both looked at each other, like who the hell would be knocking on
our door at this time of night. Shelby got up from the couch and went to open
the door.” Amy looked at the front door and then took another long drink from
the wine bottle.  “She didn’t check the peephole, just unlocked the door and
opened it.

I took the bottle of wine from her hands and sat it on the
coffee table. She had already drunk about half of it.  

“When Shelby opened the door, Mike pushed the door open, just
forced his way in. Shelby put up her hand to stop him and he grabbed her arm
and bit her. Tore a chunk of skin out of her are. Just like that. Didn’t say
anything, nothing just bit her. She was speechless, she couldn’t believe that
he had done that.”

Mike was the poor guy lying on the floor in the living room
just on the other side of the coffee table. He was Amy’s neighbor, someone she
knew and someone she trusted. He was constantly over at her apartment, hanging
out. Really a nice guy.

“I mean, he just lunged at her. Ripped a chunk out of her
arm. What the hell? I couldn’t believe it; I couldn’t believe what I just saw.
Shit, Shelby couldn’t believe it. “

I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her a squeeze to show
support. I could tell she was in shock and just talking about it was like
living it all over again.

“Shelby was surprised and stumbled backward falling down into
the kitchen. I jumped up and screamed at Mike. He headed straight towards me,
chewing on the flesh from Shelby’s arm with blood dripping down his chin. I used
the coffee table to block him from reaching me.”

Amy grabbed the wine off the coffee table in question and took
another swig. Setting the bottle out of my reach while giving me a stare that
said don’t try and take it away again. “While I was circling the coffee table,
trying to reason with Mike, Shelby walked over, holding the wooden butcher
block from my kitchen and whacked Mike over the head with all of her strength.
Mike dropped to the floor like he was just turned off. Shelby hit him a couple
more time in the head while he laid there on the floor.” She continued to take
a drink of the wine after every couple of sentences.

At this rate, she’s going to be useless for a while.

“I was beside myself. Couldn’t believe she had done that. I
mean, she killed Mike, right there. Just like that. I didn’t know what to do.”
Another swig.

“Shelby continued to hit Mike, so I finally stepped over to
her and wrapped my arms around her chest, stopping her from hitting him
anymore. Look at his head, I mean, what is left to hit?” She took another swig
of the wine.

“I knew from the way his head was smashed, I mean look at it;
not to mention the amount of blood, that he was a goner. I took the butcher
block from Shelby and moved her into the bathroom to clean her wound.” She took
the last swig of the wine and set the bottle on the coffee table.

“We cleaned the wound and discussed going to the emergency
room, but before we could that, I wanted to call the police to report the death
of Mike.” She looked around, got up and went back into the kitchen, returning
with another bottle of wine.

“I tried calling 911 and just got a busy signal. I tried a
few different times, using both of our phones, but couldn’t get through.” She
drank some of the wine from the new bottle. “While I was trying to call the
police, Shelby had turned on the TV in my bedroom and was watching the news.
That’s when we found out that something big was happening all over the city.”

Amy took another drink and looked at me. ”The news said to
stay indoors and don’t travel, so we figured we shouldn’t go to the emergency
room. We sat on the bed, watching the news and applying pressure to the bite on
Shelby’s arm. Eventually, Shelby stopped complaining and seemed to pass out. I
kept trying 911. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound was a dark color.”