WorldLost- Week 1: An Infected Novel Read online

  “Hey dude, what are you doing?” Brad asked from across my balcony.

  “Just checking to see if Wendy was home” I replied.

  “She’s in Denmark, left yesterday and said she wouldn’t be back home for a week or so,” he replied back. I climbed back over to my balcony and asked Brad, “You and Wendy talk, dude?”

  “Wendy and I talk all the time dude. She buys weed from me every few months and we get high together sometimes when she is home when she isn’t working,” he says as he takes a drag off his joint, holding it out to me again. “Did you know that I slept with her once?” he chuckled.

  “No way. That did not happen.” I said back to him with my eyes and mouth wide open.

  “Yes, sir. My one night of bliss with Miss Wendy. We got so high that one time and she got a little frisky and I said hell yea and jumped right in. What could it hurt? And it worked. She let me fly with her one night.” He sighed back as he watched a police call speed down the street with its siren whaling and the lights on the cruiser flashing.

  I turned to look at the police car just as it ran into a light pole at the end of the block. The front end of the cruiser folded around the pole and the policeman flew out the broken front window, just barely missing the pole and landed a good 25 feet further down the street. He laid there for a minute as Brad and I did a double take not believing what we had just witnessed. “We are in the shit now, dude,” I said.

  I needed to get dressed and try to find Amy and Butch, at least, that’s what my mind was telling me.I looked at my phone to see if either of them had replied to my texts.

  Amy had sent me two texts.

  The first one was a reply to my original text. She wrote, “Please help me. Something's going on with my neighbor and he’s trying to break into my apartment. Please help.”

  The second one was sent five minutes later and it stated, “Hurry.Please!!”

  I looked at Brad and told him I had to go. I turned around and headed into my apartment. I found my cleanest clothes and quickly pulled them. They were the jeans and shirt I had been wearing the night before and stunk just like a brewery. They were a little stiff in the pant leg; wonder why that was.

  SuddenlyI heard Brad outside.

  “I wouldn’t leave dude. The news says to stay in your home and not to go out. You’re just asking for trouble if you leave dude.” He said as he continued to watch the chaos down below.

  “Amy’s in trouble. I’ve got to try to help her.” I say to him as I poke my head out the door and look at him. “I could already be too late.” I ran back inside and grabbed my wallet. I put on a baseball cap and grabbed my keys from the bedside table. I yelled out the door, “Watch my place man and lock up after me. If I don’t come back, you can have everything.”

  Before leaving the apartment, I got out my phone and tried to call Butch without any luck, so I sent him a new text letting him know I am heading to Amy’s place and that she needed our help.

  I opened my front door and walked into the hallway. I headed towards the elevators and pressed the down button. I could hear an emergency ringing from the elevators going off like someone pushed the buttons to stop the cars in between floors.

  “The elevators aren’t working today dude,” Brad said from his open front door. “I tried to use them earlier today, but they wouldn’t work. I called Tony and left a message. Chances are he’s working on them now.”

  Tony was our building superintendent. He was a big hairy macho type guy with a small squeaky girlfriend that always hung around him when he was working. It was like she didn’t trust him to be alone in an apartment with another person like Tony was going to have a fling or something. Her name was Linda, but I just called her bitch behind her back. What Tony saw in the Bitch, was beyond me.

  As I pass Brad, heading to the stairs, I said, “Thanks for the heads up dude. Be safe and get back inside and lock up.”

  What was I going to find as I made my way to Amy’s? What horrific scenes of hell would I be a witness to?

  Chapter 2

  I pushed the door to the stairs open and stepped inside the empty stairwell, stopping to close the door as quietly as possible. I really didn’t want to let anyone know I was there. I stood in the stairwell and listened for any noise of someone else using the stairwell to enter or exit the building.

  After a few minutes and not hearing anything, I made my way down the stairs stopping at each floor to look through the small window in the stairwell door, looking out into the apartment hallways. All of the floors were deserted, no activity from people moving around or standing around talking, just empty hallways.

  It was kind or eerie. Where were all my fellow apartment dwellers?

  People must have locked their apartment doors to hide or had already left to go where ever they thought would be the safest place to go. Most were probably going to try and wait for this nightmare out and hope that the authorities would put everything back together.

  I had a different feeling, one that told me that we were screwed. The human race was on a collision course to extinction and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do to stop it. The best we could hope for was to make it somewhere safe and just survive.

  I finally made it to the main floor, stopping at the stairwell door and listened for any sign that someone or something was waiting on the other side. The door didn’t have a window to look through, but I could hear faint screaming coming from the lobby area.

  “Please don’t! Please, someone, help me! Plea…” Then there was silence, except for a low grumbling sound that sounded like someone was stuffing food in their mouth, just chowing down, trying to eat way too fast. The woman wasn’t screaming anymore which made a chill go through me.

  I pushed the door handle down just a bit and opened the stairwell door just enough for me to peek out into the apartment lobby area. I saw the usual lobby environment, the security desk straight across from the stairwell door, which hadn’t seen a security guard or doorman for as long as I had lived there.

  Tony’s apartment door was to the left of the front desk and it was currently closed.

  To the right of the front desk, I saw three your teenagers that I knew lived in the building. I’d seen them off and on since I moved in and they were always very polite and said hello. They were constantly together in the hallways or lobby.

  Right now they were hunched over what looked to be an older women lying on the lobby couch. There was a red puddle under the couch, which had to be blood. From my point of view, the teenagers were also covered in blood since they were ripping the woman’s flesh off of her body, shredding her to the bone.

  The woman wasn’t moving or trying to stop the boys, she wasn’t even screaming anymore, she was just lying there and letting them do this to her.

  I couldn’t stand to watch anymore and I was too terrified to go out into the lobby to stop it. I closed the door without an ounce of noise and then immediately puked all of the remaining contents of my stomach all over the stairs and tiled floor. Thankfully there wasn’t much left, but the slight smell of tequila and beer made me continue to dry heave for a few minutes. I was very scared that puking might expose me to the teenagers in the lobby.

  I wasn’t sure what I had just seen, so I opened the door again and peeked out once more. The teenagers were still hunched over the woman, but then I noticed Tony charge out of his apartment, holding a bat in his hand and in just six large steps Tony was on the teenagers and raised the bat over his head and hit the teenager closest to him, yelling, “Get the fuck off of her, you fucking assholes!!”

  The teenagers head explodes and his brains and black tar-like blood sprays all over the woman and the other two teenagers.

  Tony was surprised by how the teenagers head had exploded and staggered a little. He stepped back as the two teenagers slowly turn their heads towards him. One of the teenagers growled at Tony, a primal growl, like the alpha wolf giving a warning to the rest of the pack to back off. It was deep from within his b
ody, rumbling up his throat, but so deep and low that you could feel the vibration on your skin.

  Tony was awestruck at the devastation his head strike caused and failed to notice the reaction of the other two teenagers, but the growl got him focused again on the teenagers, but he was too slow to lift his bat and wasn’t ready to strike again.

  The two teenagers moved with lightning speed, charging Tony and forcing him to the floor with their weight and momentum. He hit the floor hard with his head banging on the floor and losing his bat. A slight murmur came out of Tony, but he went immediately silent once his head hit.

  The teenagers started to rip chunks of flesh out of Tony’s large arms that were exposed. They tore off his shirt and once his chest was exposed, they started to tear open his stomach.

  Tony laid there without moving and based on the blood and missing flesh he had to be dead. There was a tremendous amount of blood and it was pooling around him very quickly. Tony’s face was facing towards the stairwell door and was looking right at me. I knew he was dead, but it was weird the way he is just looking at me, almost like he knew I was there and thought I was going to do something to stop what was happening to him.

  I just could not bring myself to walk into the lobby and try to stop what was happening. Something deep inside said to stay put and don’t draw attention. I was trying to not make a sound;there was no way I wanted to attract the teenager's attention. I wasn’t ready to have to defend myself. Hell, I didn’t have anything to defend myself with.

  I’m not against defending myself against an attack and quite honestly, I am generally a tough person and can handle pain, but the way these two teenagers just took down Tony, someone twice my size, told me that I didn’t want to mess with them.

  Without a weapon, I was screwed. I knew this, I could feel it. Stealth and silence were the keys in this situation and I needed to fight every urge to move to ensure I was not noticed.

  During all of this, I noted that Tony’s full throttle swing to the head of the teenager immediately dropped the kid to the floor, as if whatever life he had was released from his body.

  I then remembered that the car thief had shot the woman in the car multiple times in her body and it didn’t stop her from trying to get out of the car and to him, but the single shot to her head immediately stopped her.

  Was a head shot the answer to stopping whatever was driving these people to act this way? I decided then to pay attention to every situation that involved anyone that is acting in this way. It was almost like they were infected. I also decided that this is what I would start to call them; the infected.

  I let out a slow low breath to help calm my stomach which was still rumbling from last night and stop my head from spinning. I was slightly dizzy and had a hard time focusing on things. If I moved too quickly I was holding onto the wall to keep myself from falling down.

  I noticed that one of the teenagers had stopped feeding on Tony and was standing there looking around the lobby. He moved his eye around the room like he was searching for something, his kept his head stationary, but his eyes were checking out the room moving around rapidly. He must have heard me breathe out and he was looking for his next target.

  All of a sudden the other teenager lifted his head from Tony’s stomach, pulling out a mouthful of intestines and started to smell the air like a dog. He kept chewing on the intestines, but he was very interested in the smells around him. It looked like they were sharing their senses, one smelling and one looking around and they knew what the other was seeing and smelling.

  They continued to look and smell around for their next meal, but it seemed that they couldn’t pinpoint my location just yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they found me. I needed to close the door and hide till they lost my scent.

  I moved as slow as I could, closing the door as quietly as possible and backed away from the stairwell door opening. Could this be the end for me? Did the two remaining teenagers know I was there or did I get away with them not seeing, hearing or smelling me?

  Chapter 3

  Life is funny sometimes and timing is everything, one second your life is in danger and the next you are safe a cozy in your own private stairwell.

  Just as I close the door and think I’m found out, I heard a screaming from the outside of the front of the building and then I hear the sound of a car speeding past the building. I hear the lobby doors crash open and then footsteps running out of the building. There is a long period of silence before I decide to look out the door.

  Slowly I opened the door just an inch and peeked into the lobby. The two teenage boys were gone and the lobby was empty. The glass at the front of the lobby was cracked from being slammed open and Tony, the teenager with the head crushed in and the woman victim are still in the lobby dead.

  I opened the door the rest of the way and stepped into the lobby looking both ways to make sure there wasn’t another infected waiting for me. I made my way over to Tony’s body and picked up the bat, which Tony had dropped, up. It was covered in blood from lying in the pool of blood that was around Tony and had hair and brain matter from the teenager that Tony had hit on the tip. My stomach was starting to turn again, but I suppress the urge and try to focus on what I have to do. Amy is still in need of my help and I have to make it her apartment.

  I turned and walked towards the back of the apartment building.

  As I walked past Tony’s apartment, the door opened and Linda stepped out and stopped me.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she said to me with that irritating high pitched voice she had. Before I can answer she turned and saw Tony’s lifeless bloody body lying on the floor in the middle of the lobby.

  Linda let out a loud and agonizing scream and fell to her knees.

  “WHAT HAPPENED? TONY!!!” she screamed as she begins to stand and moves towards him. I knew I couldn’t leave her right now, not with the situation in the lobby and me carrying Tony’s bat, so I walked over to her and said, “Tony was trying to help that lady over there and the teenager guys that were attacking her turned on him and tore him apart. There wasn’t anything I could do, but Tony did get one of the guys.” Which I was pointing at so she saw what I was talking about.

  Linda looked at me, then at the guy on the sofa and then at the lady. “How did this happen? What kind of drugs were these guys on? We’ve got to call the police.” she said as she held Tony’s head in her lap.

  She was had a point, what the hell was going on, how did this happen? What was causing people to go crazy and attack others?

  “I tried calling the police just a few minutes ago and the line was busy. “ I said in response. “I think whatever is going on is overwhelming the phone lines and the authorities can’t keep up with the calls.”

  “What?” she asked. She was in shock, the look on face was total shell shock and she was not able to comprehend what I was saying. I thought about slapping her to get her to focus, but then I noticed the woman on the couch stir and fall off the sofa. She was actually alive.

  She started to twitch, kind of like she was having a seizure and then started to push herself off the floor to stand up. I knew this was impossible because her stomach and her intestines were laying there on the floor underneath her and no one could still be alive with their stomach and intestines lying there outside their body.

  But I’ll be damned if she didn’t stand up and look around. She hadn’t fully recognized us with Linda on the floor and me just standing there with the bat in my hand. She just kind of moved her eyes around like the teenage boy had with her head still as a statue until she finally locked onto me. I immediately started to back away.

  She moved slowly towards me as I raised the bat and used it to pushed her back towards the sofa. She stepped back and fell into the sofa sitting down with her feet all tangled in her intestines and slipping on the blood all over the floor.

  Linda looked at me then at the woman and threw up. The woman couldn’t stand back up or was having troubl
e because of the blood.

  After wiping her mouth, Linda said, “Holy Shit! What the fuck is happening?”

  Linda started to stand up after laying Tony’s head on the ground. The Tony’s hand reached up, grabbed Linda’s arm and pulled it to his mouth. With an ear piercing scream from Linda, Tony pulled a large chunk of Linda’s forearm off and started to chew and swallow the forearm meat like it was a juicy steak.

  Linda stood up the rest of the way and stumbled backward away from Tony while she continued screaming and looking at Tony with this shocked expression. This all happened within a few seconds and I couldn’t react to anything. I was stuck in my spot, super glued to the slick tile floor.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, I began to move my feet towards the back of the lobby, trying to move quickly through the door. As I was moving, I was thinking, if a bite from one of the infected resulted in you turning into one of them, then Linda was a goner and there was nothing more I could do, it was how I was going to justify taking off without helping Linda.

  I just couldn’t bring myself to use the bat to fight back, I could only use it as a pole to push the infected away. Did that make me a coward?

  I exited through the back door, telling myself it was a good idea based on what I had seen out front. I heard the door click shut behind me and but could still hear Linda screaming from inside the lobby.

  It was a closed in parking lot for the tenets and the gate required a code to open it. It should be free of any of the infected and it opened into the alley that would take me directly to the street Amy lives on. Worst case I might have to deal with a few homeless people like Frank the Dumpster King.

  I moved quickly to the gate exit, not seeing any infected and punched in my code to open the gate.

  As the gate opened I took a minute to look at the parking lot and noticed one of the apartment tenants sitting in their car, trying with all their might to get out. A closer look showed that they had turned and were trying to get out because they had seen me.