The Infected (Book 3): Nightfall Read online

“Guns and ammo,” Sara answered and followed after Tina.

  “Damn, did you knock over a store?” he asked with excitement.

  “Yep,” Frank trailed the ladies and unzipped his bag to pull out the vials of medicine and get them into the refrigerator until they were needed.

  Cliff dropped the bags inside the foyer and then returned to help Jim over the last rail. They clasped hands and Cliff pulled Jim over onto the landing and helped steady his exhausted body.

  Tina emptied the contents of Jim’s backpack, “We need to get him up onto the kitchen counter. I might be at this for a while and can’t spend it squatting on the floor.” She placed the surgical kit on the counter and opened it. She had already found a flashlight and set it up on its end. Next to the kit she laid out the tapes and bandages and the suture kit. She was as prepped as she could possibly be given the current situation.

  Sara and the men took position next to Devon and in unison they lifted him up off of the floor. The sudden movement woke Devon, “What are you doing to me?” He looked to Jim for answers.

  “We got the supplies to fix your leg.” Jim carried the bulk of Devon’s torso and laid him gently onto the counter. Devon let out a string of whimpers and moans as the group released him.

  Tina stood in front of the kitchen sink. She scrubbed her hands and forearms with antibacterial soap. The reality of what she was about to do was hitting her like a punch to the stomach.

  Jim grabbed a chair from the dining room and placed it next to Devon’s head. He peeled off his leather jacket and set it on the back of the chair. He still had a set of soccer shin pads strapped to his forearm so he popped off the guard and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt.

  Tina pulled on a new set of rubber gloves as Sara worked to open the transfusion kit. Sara held the open box next to Jim. Tina looked over all of the tubing and equipment. Her hands moved efficiently as she figured out the kit’s system. She attached a clean needle. She quickly wiped his arm with an alcohol pad, found his vein and she gave no warning as she plunged the tip of the needle into Jim’s arm.

  “Guys, wash your hands too and get on a set of gloves.” Tina nodded at Cliff and Sara. Then she placed a chunk of tape onto the needle to secure it to Jim’s body. His O negative fluid had begun its journey down the translucent tube and into a bag attached to the system. “What was your name again?” She asked Frank.

  “Frank,” he responded as he pulled his duffle bag off of his shoulder.

  “Well Frank can you help your friend here and get him a big glass of water and something to eat from the fridge? He’s going to need the energy and I bet he’s starving.” Tina searched for Devon’s vein, found it and plunged away. Seconds later Jim’s blood hit the injured young man’s arm.

  Frank found his way through their kitchen and got the glass of water first. Sara and Cliff had their hands clean, gloves on and ready for instructions.

  Frank stepped from the kitchen with the water and handed it to Jim, “Any requests?”

  “Simple and fast would be best.” Jim took a sip of water.

  “Got it,” Frank had spotted a box of healthy cereal in the cupboard and milk in the fridge. There’s not much out there food wise that was faster than a bowl of cereal.

  “Alright, Sara You’re going to be my second set of hands and get me the tools and bandages as I call them out. Cliff you’re in charge of helping me keep the blood clear so I can see what I’m doing.” Tina said it and it was so.

  Jim heard the familiar sounds of breakfast being made and a short while later Frank appeared with a bowl and spoon in his hands.

  “Here you go.”

  Jim exchanged his empty glass for the full bowl and spoon, “Thank you.” He dug in right away. The sweet taste of the milk and the crunch of the flakes were as close to heaven.

  Devon drifted in and out of consciousness. The blood loss had taken its toll and he was as white as a racist’s sheet. Tina unwound the bandage from his leg until it was all clear.

  “Cliff, take the two pads and press them to the wound. Sara get me the scissors.”

  Cliff held one against the back of Devon’s leg and the other on the top of the thigh. Sara handed over the scissors and Tina began to cut the pant leg off.

  Tina removed the fabric from Devon’s leg, “I need to clean this out and make sure there are no foreign objects in the wound before we stich it up.” She held a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and surgical tweezers. Tina poured out a small amount of peroxide onto the open wound. It fizzed up and bubbled for a while. Once it cleared she gently looked into the bullet hole with the flashlight. She couldn’t see any fabric from the pants or shards of the bullet. Blood raised up out of the hole.

  “Give it a gentle wipe please,” she asked Cliff.

  He grazed the top of Devon’s leg and wiped away the extra blood. Once she was sure that it was clear she dropped a little more peroxide onto it and let it bubble up again. Tina readied a sterile needle and thread. She had never stitched anyone before but she did make Alex’s Halloween costume last year and she hoped it would be close to the same principle. She made her first incision and started to stitch the wound closed. It didn’t take her very long to close up the little hole. Sara already had a bandage and tape ready to go and placed it on Devon’s thigh shortly after Tina cut the string of the thread.

  “Okay, let’s roll him over onto his side so I can get at the back of his leg.” Tina said as she lifted Devon’s leg. Frank helped and grabbed Devon’s shoulders and rolled the young man to his side. She poured a helping of peroxide down the back of his thigh and it bubbled up again. Cliff wiped away a layer of excess blood and Tina held up the light to take a look. This time she did see something. It looked like a little hunk of his pants had passed through to the back of his leg.

  “Shit!” Tina cursed as she picked up her tweezers.

  “What?” Sara’s voice raised with concern.

  “There’s something in there. I think I can get it.” Tina dug into Devon’s leg. That woke him up and he pulled his leg away from Tina.

  “AAAHHH!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!!!” Devon fought against Frank’s grip.

  “Get his leg!” Tina commanded Sara and Cliff.

  “Hold on kid! There’s something in there and she’s got to get it out,” Frank said as he tightened his grip on Devon’s shoulders to keep him in one place.

  They held him down as she poked around in the back of his thigh. He cried out. Begged them to please stop, but she couldn’t. Tina had to make sure the wound was clean.

  Finally she got it. She poured more peroxide onto it to make sure it was fully cleaned. Tina prepared another needle and string. Devon’s screams ramped back up when she started in on fixing the bullet hole. Everyone felt horrible for the guy. Jim especially. He just had two stitch jobs done a few hours ago. He knew exactly how bad it hurt to have a needle threaded through your skin.

  “Done!” Tina snipped the string and Sara placed the bandage on the back of his leg. They rolled Devon on to his back and Tina began to wrap his leg to secure the bandages and keep them from bleeding. Devon had passed back out and laid silent on the cheap counter top. The room was quiet. Except for Morgan. She was giggling at an episode of Futurama.

  “Alright, that was fun. Now what?” Sara’s voice was exhausted.

  Everyone turned to Jim.

  The man with a plan.

  The guy that always seemed to know what to do.

  Jim’s eyes were shut, his head had dropped and he let out a soft snore.

  CHAPTER 11

  Karen clung to the side of the cabinet of the kitchen island. She was too afraid to look over the counter because, whoever was wielding the gun would take her head clean off. She was frozen with fear. It was her first time being shot at.

  BOOM! BOOM!

  The shots were fired at the garage door. The shooter must have seen Leon. Karen pulled her gun. Her trembling hand lost its grip and it crashed to the floor. Her nerves had gone haywire and were s
ending her muscles mixed signals on how to move. Footsteps crept across the hardwood floor. They were heading in her direction. Everything was happening so fast. Not even ten seconds ago the first round whizzed past her head.

  Leon’s shotgun whipped around the corner of the garage door and he fired blindly into the kitchen.

  A scream bellowed out of what sounded like a woman. It was followed by the sound of a body falling to the kitchen floor.

  “Karen!” Leon called from the garage.

  “I’m okay!” Karen snuck a look around the edge of the island. A bullet punched the floor inches from her face. Karen recoiled back, “FUCK!”

  “Karen?” Leon’s voice strained and then he pumped a few more rounds around the corner in the direction the shot came from. The woman yelped and her gun clattered to the floor. Karen inched her way around the other side of the island until she saw a woman’s legs splayed out on the floor. She had a pair of brand new Nikes and yoga pants on. Crimson fluid pooled around her thighs. Karen kept her gun trained on the legs as she crept closer to the body on the floor.

  “Karen?” Leon peeked one eye around the corner of the doorway and saw that she was fine and moved slowly towards the body slumped over on the floor.

  “I’m fine,” Karen whispered. She could see more of the woman now. Her lungs were still taking in air but the shotgun’s pellets had devastated her torso.

  Leon moved with haste from the garage and stared down the barrel of the shotgun, keeping the woman dead in his sights. Her body laid flat along the floor and a half gallon of blood had already collected under her. A revolver sat inches from her outstretched hand. The shotgun blasts had shredded her left arm and carved a hole into her chest.

  Karen’s hand moved to cover her mouth as shock and dismay covered her face. She recognized the woman from the photos. This was her house.

  The woman’s pretty blue eyes flicked up at the two of them and then she coughed out, “Mike…went to go get the kids…from school…he…he never came back.” Blood seeped from her mouth. There was no saving her. Which meant she was about to turn.

  “Oh my god! I’m so sorry. You were shooting and…oh God,” Leon ran his hand through his hair and his voice shook like a leaf.

  Karen knelt down next to the woman. Her trembling hand reached out to comfort the woman, but she didn’t know how.

  “If Mike comes back…with Tyler and Maegan…tell them I love them…” The woman’s breathing became erratic. The pool of blood on the floor had doubled in size.

  “I will. I promise. We are so sorry. We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.” Karen’s words felt cheap and useless. The woman’s breaths came to a stop. It would not be long until she became infected.

  “Is she dead!? I killed her! I fucking killed her!” Leon was breaking down. This was more than he could take, but someone had to finish the job. Karen lifted the revolver from the ground and handed it to Leon. “No! I can’t! I can’t do it!”

  “This is the world we live in! This is how it is now!” Karen was filled with anger, rage and sorrow. Her words came out like poisonous venom. She felt equally responsible for what happened. She may not have pulled the trigger but it was her idea to find a car and break into this house. “Leon, you have to do this!”

  The woman convulsed on the floor. They only had seconds.

  “I can’t do it! Please!” He begged. She didn’t want to be the one to do it either.

  The woman’s lips drew tight. Her eyes opened and they were black. She began to push herself up off of the floor.

  “Leon, do it! You have to!” she scolded him like a child.

  “No!” he sounded like a toddler.

  The infected woman’s arm reached out for Karen’s leg. There was no more time to argue. She had to make a difficult choice and it looked like Leon was not up to the task.

  She grabbed the gun, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

  The infected woman’s brains splattered all over the perfectly clean hardwood floor. The revolver smoked in Karen’s hand. Her arm dropped to her side and she turned away from Leon.

  A few minutes passed and not a word was spoken.

  “Thank you.” Leon spoke so quietly Karen could barely hear him. Robin pulled the same act every time she got in trouble and had to apologize to her sister for hitting or pulling her hair.

  “Yeah.” Karen stepped out of the kitchen and headed for the steps that lead to the second floor. “Get the booze and meet me in the car.” She said it with no emotion. No inflection. Like a robot rattling off commands.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Her bedroom.”

  “Why?”

  “There is probably a box of ammo on the nightstand or in the closet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She stomped up the steps, “That’s where I would keep it.”

  Leon lifted the bag and the bottles clanked together. He moped out of the kitchen and back to the car.

  Karen pushed open the door to what she guessed was the bedroom and there on the nightstand was a box of shells. The woman’s walk-in closet door was open and the light was on. Much like the kitchen, it was spotless and everything was color coded. Karen took a few steps closer to the closet to investigate more. It was beautiful. Exactly the closet Karen had dreamed of her whole adult life. All of the articles of clothing were from Nordstrom or some even nicer store that Karen had never heard of. She took another step into the small room and a full length mirror revealed the nasty pile of a mess that was Karen. Her outfit had been doused with so much blood and gore today that it could never be clean enough to wear again. The dead woman downstairs was about the same size as Karen.

  Nothing at Mama’s is going to fit me. She thought.

  I need the clothes and that poor lady is never going to wear them again.

  A backpack sat in the far corner of the closet. Karen moved to it and unzipped the zipper. She scanned the room and found jeans, tank tops, another sports bra, socks and a light weight black leather jacket. To save space she wore the jacket. The backpack was only half full.

  What about the girls and Leon?

  Leon’s clothes were pretty gnarly after what he did to that infected kid.

  Karen left the lady’s closet and stepped into the husband’s. She flipped on the light and found it as well organized as the wife’s. She took a pair of jeans and a long sleeved flannel shirt from American Eagle.

  Before leaving the master bedroom she made sure to pick up the box of ammo. It was a case of fifty rounds minus the six that had been taken to fill the gun. An expensive looking frame held a photo taken by a professional photographer. It was the family sitting on a massive boulder on the Oregon coast. The vast Pacific Ocean stretched out behind them on a perfect summer’s day. The family wore matching tan pants, white t-shirts and had their bare feet dug into the sand. Karen stared at the photo and before she left the room she took the picture with her.

  Karen stepped across the hall to a bedroom. Its door was painted bright pink. Inside was a pink bunk bed set, pink dressers and pink walls. It reminded her of a book she would read to Valerie at bedtime. It was about a young girl named Pinkalicious who had to have everything pink. One of the stories was about her eating so many pink cupcakes that she turned bright pink herself. Valerie loved that book and requested it two or three times a week. The book drove Karen nuts and one day when Valerie wasn’t looking Karen donated it to a children’s shelter. The owner of this room was very Pinkalicious. Karen tried her best not to think about the fact that she was about to take clothing from a child that was most likely dead, but again her girls needed them more than a dead girl. She filled the rest of the backpack with hyper colored pants, shirts and underwear. They would be too big for Robin, but it was better than nothing.

  Karen stepped down off of the last stair and headed for the garage where Leon sat, waiting for her. She joined him in the front seat of the Subaru.

  Leon pointed to the backpack, “What’s all that?�
� he tried his best to get the conversation rolling and back on track.

  “Clothes for us to change into.” Karen held the framed photo in her good hand.

  “And that?” Leon asked softly.

  “We don’t have time to bury her body properly. I’m going to bury this instead.” Karen looked forward out the windshield. She knew it sounded crazy, but she did not care. She was going to mourn this lady’s death one way or another.

  Shit! I forgot to find out her name.

  Karen popped open the glovebox and leafed through the insurance papers.

  Lizzie! Okay, we will have a drink for Lizzie tonight.

  “Let’s get home.” Leon tapped a garage door clicker that hung from the sun visor and the door shimmied up the tracks. He put the car into drive and pulled out the moment the door was all the way open.

  The ride back took less than a minute. The streets of the neighborhood were still clear of the infected. Karen had the opener ready and Leon squeezed the Subaru into the overstuffed garage. They waited for the large door to come to a full stop. The lip of the door banged loudly against the concrete surface behind them. Karen stayed in the passenger’s seat with her arms wrapped around the backpack and photo. Leon put the car into park and killed the engine. They sat in silence for a little while.

  “When we do another run like that-”

  Karen’s words were cut off by Leon’s, “We will do better.”

  “We have to. We cannot afford to have innocent blood on our hands. What happened to Lizzie is all our fault. We have to live with that for the rest of our lives. Not one more drop.”

  “Not another drop of innocent blood. I promise.” Leon extended his hand for them to shake on it. Karen released the photo and gripped his palm tightly as they sealed the deal. “Did I tell you that I was a bartender for five years?”

  “No,” she said as she let go of his hand and pulled at the car doors latch.

  “I make one hell of a drink.”

  “Good.” Karen climbed out of the car.