WorldLost- Week 1: An Infected Novel Read online

  The infected man turned and headed towards the sound of the broken bottle. I moved swiftly into the underground garage and prayed to God that there weren’t others waiting inside for me. I assume there weren’t sine they had not reacted to the bottle breaking.

  As I passed through the door, I hit the close button on the panel and the large solid garage door started to close. I could see the infected man in the alley turn and look in the direction of the closing door. He immediately let out a low moan when he saw me and changed his direction, starting to head back my way.

  All I could think was ‘come on door’. I silently wished it to move faster, come on, close I thought to myself. Please close. Close, you son of a bitch.

  The infected man bumped into the garage door just as it latched closed and I found myself in the apartment building garage looking around for any other threats.

  Not seeing anything I started to move slowly from car to car, using the walls and the pillars to keep in the shadows as I made my way to the elevator. Since the automatic garage door had worked, I assumed I had a pretty good chance that the elevator would work also. The electricity must have been working, so it would be easier to use the elevator versus the stairs.

  I hit the up button for the elevator and waited, finally hearing the whine of the elevator as it started to come down to the garage level. Not wanting to be surprised, I stood to the left of the elevator door and waited for it to land and the door to open.

  As I waited, I remembered a time when I was going to meet Amy in the garage and I thought it might be fun to scare her when she exited the elevator. I thought it would be a great prank, unfortunately, it quickly turned on me. Just as I was about to jump out at Amy, an older lady stepped out of the elevator. I was already moving and could stop, so I jumped out in front of her and screamed at the top of my lungs.

  Of course, she was surprised when she saw and heard me, but not so surprised that she didn’t place a solid foot, squarely to my balls. I immediately struck the classic pose of someone having their balls shoved into his stomach.

  My eyes popped out of my head, my jaw immediately hit the ground, my hands moved quickly to where my balls once were hanging and I was standing on my tippy toes, like MJ during his Thriller days.

  I was pretty sure we could have won the contest for funniest video on AFV.

  The old lady just looked at me with a look of disgust for scaring her. She shook her head at me and then used her hand to push me down to the pavement as she walked by me.

  I’m sure I heard a slight giggle as she made her way to her car.

  I, of course, did not giggle. All I could do was lay there and catch my breath.

  As I was standing there, remember that learning moment, I started to hear more of the infected at the garage door and fencing that protected the garage from the alley. It seemed the single infected now had other infected interested in what he saw and the dinner bell was on for everyone.

  Come on elevator. Let’s get a move on I thought.

  The bell for the elevator finally rang, announcing the elevator had arrived at the garage floor and then the doors opened, shining part of the garage in light.

  This time, I stayed hidden and waited to see if anything walked out of the elevator. I figured that any infected in the elevator would move out once it heard the moans of the other infected at the garage door. They were really creating a racket at the door and before long there would be a horde of infected trying to get in.

  I could only hope that once I was gone, they would lose interest since they wouldn’t be able to sense or hear me and would move on to find new prey.

  When nothing came out of the elevator, I made my move.

  I moved to the elevator door and then stepped into the elevator compartment. I pressed the second-floor button and the door started to close. I was hoping there wouldn’t be a stop on the first floor, but I could not tell.

  I wasn’t sure what might be waiting for me when the elevator doors opened, either on the first floor or on Amy’s floor, but I figured I could deal with it. So far, I had been lucky and made it to Amy’s without really having to deal with the infected. I had spent all my energy trying to outrun them instead of having to fight or kill them. I figured I could continue to duck and run if an infected bad was waiting on the other side of the elevator doors when they opened. I could use the bat I was still carrying to push any infected away from me as long as they weren’t the fast kind.

  They fast kind were agiler, they had better balance and they were quick to change directions when their prey tried to shake them off their scent.

  As the elevator moved slowly up, the two floors, passing the first floor without incident, I thought about my aversion to dealing with the infected.

  This was a problem for me and would be a problem for any companions that might be with me. I wondered if I would be able to defend myself when the time came that I had no other choice.

  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.

  Chapter 6

  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 sitt
ing 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.

  Chapter 7

  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. The
y 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.