WorldLost- Week 1: An Infected Novel Page 6

  I grabbed those and sat them next to the front door. Weapons would be handy, so anything I found might be worth taking.

  I went into his kitchen and started to search through his cabinets. I found tuna, baked beans, and top ramen. His refrigerator had bottled water and two packages of steaks. I placed everything in the gym bag I had gotten from Amy’s and moved into his bathroom. Again, a typical guy’s apartment, the bathroom needed to be cleaned. Who was I to complain, though; my own bathroom was left with puke all over the wall.

  I found a first aid kit, cool, and some antibiotics that might be useful.

  In Mike’s bedroom, I found a .45 caliber pistol and a box of shells next to his bed. They went into the gym bag also.

  I took another sweep through the apartment but didn’t find anything more of use. I grabbed the gym bag of supplies, picked up the swords and headed back into the hallway.

  I opened Amy’s door with the keys and dropped the items onto the couch behind the front door. I was sure it was best to stash them before looking for more supplies. I was right there, so no big deal.

  Looking down the hallway, next door to Mike’s place, there were two more apartments with their doors shut. I tried the handle of the first door but it was locked.

  The second door was locked to and I was pretty sure at this point that most doors that were closed meant that people were either not home or were locked in for the duration. It was a weekday and I assumed most people were just getting to work or on their way when the worst of the problems had happened. Chances were they would not be back if they had been out.

  I made my way to the end of the hallway and looked around the corner. There were five doors which were all shut. I moved forward and tried each one. Of course, they were all locked. The good news was that I didn’t hear anything from behind the closed doors. Once Amy was up, maybe we could break into a few of the apartments and grab the things that might help us get out of the city.

  I found myself back at the elevator which meant that I had finished a complete walk around the 2nd-floor of the building. I turned the corner to the elevators and headed back the way I had originally come. I was planning to stop in the three apartments that I had seen the door open. At this point, I was pretty certain that Amy and I were the only ones on this floor.

  As I walked past the elevator, I heard it starting to head up. I stepped to the side of the doors and waited, just in case it stopped on the 2nd-floor.

  It did stop and after the ding of the elevator bell, the door’s opened. No one came out, so I stepped in front of the doors and looked inside. I found Butch on the elevator floor with a petite woman on top of him. Butch had his forearm stuck under her neck trying to keep her snapping jaws from his face.

  “A little help, Dude,” Butch screamed. I could see that Butch was trying to reach a hunting knife on the other side of the compartment.

  I grabbed the women around the waist and with all of my strength lifted her off of Butch and threw her out of the elevator. I turned around to help Butch up as the doors to the elevator closed heading further up to god only knew what.

  Butch was on his feet and punched the fourth-floor button. “There’s no telling who or what pushed the up button. It would be best if we get out before we find out.” He stated as he picked up his knife, winked and smiled at me.

  “Your girlfriend seemed a little into you there, you sure you needed my help?” I laughed as the elevator came to a stop and we both moved to the sides of the car as the doors opened. Thankfully, nothing came running in, so we both moved out of the elevator and look down the hallway in both directions. “We should take the stairs back down. I bet your girlfriend is waiting patiently at the elevator doors for you to return.”

  “Not funny, dude, but you might have something there. Let’s hit the stairs.” He whispered as he headed towards the door to the stairs.

  I quickly followed him to the stairwell entrance and we headed down to the 2nd-floor. We slowly made our way to the second floor and stopped to listen. “We should come up with a plan,” I whispered.

  “What do you have in mind?” Butch asked.

  “This door is right by the corner opposite of the elevator. Maybe one of us should try to sneak out and hide around the corner. Then the other can open the door and get her attention. Then close the door. That will draw her over to the stairwell and while she is trying to get in, the other one could sneak up on her and take care of business.”

  “Ok. Sounds like a plan. Which do you want, be the bait or the killer?” Butch asked.

  I really didn’t have any desire to kill the infected, even if they were already dead. I decided to be the bait.

  I knew Butch would have zero problems killing them. He lived on a farm growing up and was taught at a young age how to quickly kill something.

  Is that what I thought of these poor souls, that they were just something like a farm animal?

  We opened the stairwell door and Butch moved out, heading around the corner. Thankfully there was carpet on the floor which helped to hide his movement. Butch pulled out his knife after making it around the corner and stood ready to finish off his girlfriend. He flashed me a thumbs up and another wink and smile.

  Smug son of a bitch.

  I gave him the one finger salute and said out loud. “Hey good looking, I got what you need right here. Let’s have some fun. ”

  Butch had to hold back a laugh. I’m sure I looked like a frightened little baby and not some guy with swagger.

  The infected woman moaned, turned at the sound of my voice and started to speed walk towards the stairwell door. She was pretty fast and I wondered how long she had been this way. I estimated she had been turned about four hours based on what we had heard on the news.

  I waited too long to close the door because I wanted to make sure she was totally focused on me to give Butch as much of a chance as possible. She turned out to be much stronger than I thought for such a small woman and she slammed the door back into me causing me to fall back against the wall with the door blocking her access to me. I dropped the bat as I tried to hold the door pulled tight so she couldn’t get to me.

  Butch ran up from behind and used his knife to end her life. It was quick and there was a ton of blood. “You’re clear, dude,” Butch whispered as he stepped into the hallway and wiped his knife off on the blouse of the dead woman. He helped me up and we stepped into the hallway closing the door behind us.

  “Thanks. She was stronger than she looked and caught me by surprise on how quick she was.”

  “Ha, are you sure you’re just not weaker than we knew. The look on your face was priceless. I’m surprised you didn’t scream like a little bitch.” He laughed and started walking to the elevator doors.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned to me, “We need to shut this elevator down so nothing can use it and we should think about locking or blocking the stairway door till we know what our plan is.” He turned back around and continued to walk to the elevator. “You said the floor was clear, so let’s keep it that way.”

  I followed him to the elevator door where he pushed the down button. We stepped to the side and waited till the car arrive and the doors opened. When nothing came out, he grabbed a chair sitting by a table near the doors and blocked the elevator doors from being able to close all the way. “Now we need to block the stairway door.” He said to me as he turned and headed back the way we had come.

  I followed him.

  “Maybe we could find a couch or a dresser from one of the open apartments?” I replied.

  I headed towards the closet apartment next to the stairs with its door open and walked in. We moved the couch we found in the living room out of the apartment. I was a heavy couch with a hide a bed. This would be good as it was heavier than a typical couch. We lifted the couch onto its side and leaned it across the door opening.

  Since the stairwell door opened inwards to the hallway, the best we could do was to block the door access and hope
we heard it being moved as a warning. It might give us a few extra minutes to get out.

  After placing the couch to block the stairway, we wondered over to Amy’s place and went inside.

  Chapter 10

  Amy was still sleeping when we came into the apartment, so we grabbed the supplies I had left on the couch and laid everything on the kitchen counter.

  I was still pretty hungry, even after the Indian food so I got the steaks I had taken from Mike’s place and laid them on the counter. ”You’re hungry dude?” I asked Butch. I gave him my best wink and smile….

  He just shook his head at me. “Seriously, how can you eat at a time like this?”

  “Well, after a night like last night, food is something I crave and we should eat when we can. You never know when you won’t have a chance to eat.” I smiled and winked at him again. “Besides, its steak and it’s free and it’s from Mike. Can’t beat that.”

  Another wink and smile….Nothing? Really?

  I found some seasoning in a draw which was amazing, considering that Amy’s cooking lacked any seasoning, of course, that’s if she ever cooked. I remembered one time, right after we had met, that she tried to cook for me.

  She invited me over to her place for dinner. She even made a big deal out of it. She sent me a letter to invite me to a night of fun, interesting conversation and good food.

  A written card inviting me to her place? I mean, who sends an actual invitation anymore?

  She had everything set out, the wine on the counter, the fixings for a killer Sazerac and what she said was a Cajun jumbo.

  I say ‘what she said’, because what was in the pot on the stove looked more like a mix of water, carrots, celery, and hamburger.

  As I said, she didn’t cook.

  On that particular night, we ended up getting really drunk on the Sazerac’s and ordering take out from the crappy Chinese place down the block from her place. She really didn’t cook and I ended up with a weeklong case of the shits.

  I rubbed the seasoning on the steak after opening them. “And, yes, I’m very hungry. I haven’t had anything to really eat since last night, except for the leftover Indian food I found in Amy’s refrigerator. I might still be a little hung over.”

  “I’m not sure the Indian food was a good thing to eat,” Butch said. “We had that for dinner two weeks ago.” He winked and smiled at me.

  “Tasted good to me,” I said as I continued to rub the seasoning on the steak.I hope I don’t get sick I thought.

  Butch shrugged and pulled up his backpack, placing it on the counter. He laid out his supplies, adding them to the other items I had grabbed from Mike’s.

  He had medical supplies, a few canned veggies, and some bottled water.

  “Not much, but it’s all that was in the breakroom at work. We were all going out today to celebrate Cindy’s birthday, so slim picking's.”

  “What happened at work today? Was it bad?” I asked, generally interested in what his day was like. Of course, I winked and smiled at him.

  He smirked and began to tell me what happened to him since we had parted ways last night.

  “I got up at my usual time this morning. I wasn’t feeling too bad, I mean, since I only drank one drink for every two you had. Dude, you were wasted.”

  “Yea, and who was responsible for me getting that drunk? From what little I remember, there was always a drink in my hand and I remember that you said you were buying.” I said to him, remembering that my credit card balance was fucked.

  “Oh, yeah, about that….” He smiled and winked at me. “If we ever get back to normal, if things go back to normal, you might notice a slight increase on your credit card balance. Just saying.”

  “Might be the only good thing about what’s happening right now. No more bills to worry about, I don’t have to look for a job and I don’t have to answer to anyone but myself.” I laughed. It felt good to laugh a little considering what was going on.

  “So, what happened?” I asked.

  “My walk to work wasn’t anything unusual. A few bizarre things I saw on the street, but nothing that made me do a double take. I went to the corner coffee shop, as usual, and got my daily caffeine shot. I grabbed a Twix bar at the store in the lobby of the Blake Building and took the elevator up to my floor. Just like every other day. I might have still been a little hung over.”

  “I knew it! It wasn’t just me.” I laughed, turning on the oven.

  “Nothing too weird happened the whole time, I mean now that I can reflect on it, maybe I should have noticed something, but, dude, I was focused on getting to work.”

  He looked at me and asked, “Can you hand me the bottle of Jack in the cabinet there on you left?”

  I opened the cabinet door and grabbed a half-full bottle of Jack, sliding it across the counter.

  “Since she’s passed out, might as well drink her booze.” He smiled and winked at me.

  I put the steaks on a baking sheet and then into the oven, turned the timer on and grabbed two shot glasses from Amy’s glass cabinet. “Just a couple shots, we don’t want to get drunk.”

  “Fuck that. Just pour me a shot.” Butch said, so I poured the drinks.

  “So anyway, I was at work. We had three staff members call in sick this morning. Kind of odd to have so many out sick, but the bigger problem was that it meant that I would have to pick up their workload. That was not a good thing. I wasn’t happy about that, I had a full load of blood draws and having to help with the front desk wasn’t on my to-do list today.” Butch said.

  “Our waiting room had three women waiting by the time we were ready to take our first appointment. Then this lady shows up in the blood lab, she was pregnant and I’m sure she was ready to pop any minute. Dude, she looked sick, her skin tone was ashen and that is never a good thing. Her eyes were bloodshot. She just looked like shit. I asked her how she was doing and she just said she felt bad, that she must have caught the flu.”

  “So I get her situated in the blood draw chair and rolled up her sleeve. She had a bandage on her arm and it was a little bloody. I ask her, ‘what happened?’.” Butch drank his shot I had placed in front of him and he set the glass down on the counter. He pointed to the shot glass, the universal sign for another.

  I drank my shot and poured us both another shot.

  “She says to me that her husband got a little physical with her this morning…wink..wink, before she was able to make it out the door to her appointment. I’m not sure what shit they are into, but, dude, I like the freaky stuff, but biting? Biting that draws blood? Kind of too freaky for me. ”

  “Did you call the police, I mean isn’t that considered abuse?” I asked.

  “She said that it wasn’t like that, that he was trying to get some morning action and got a little rough. Anyway, I rolled up the other sleeve and drew the blood. I took the bloody bandage off and cleaned out the wound and put a new bandage on.” He shook his head. “Dude, the bite mark looked like it was rotten and had this smell to it. I told her she should go have it looked at by the doctor. I mean, we’re an OB-GYN office, not the emergency room for a wound like that.”

  Butch and I clinked our glasses together and took another shot.

  “Anyway, I’m cleaning up the lab and I hear this screaming out in the front office. So I head out there as Melanie runs past me screaming. Normally we have three staff at the front, but as I said, one of the front desk staff, April, had called in sick today, so that meant that Vee and Melanie were manning the front desk. I got there and Vee wasn’t around.”

  I poured us another drink. I was intrigued by his story and wasn’t paying attention to how many shots we were having.

  “I was about to turn around to go after Melanie to see what had her so freaked out and all of a sudden the pregnant woman stands up on the other side of the front counter. She’s got all this blood all over her face and down her blouse. She was literally chewing on a piece of flesh.”

  Another clink of the shot glasses, an
other shot down the hatch and another pour.

  “Shit dude, I’m thinking what kind of sick prank are people pulling on me today. I mean, I like a good prank in the office, but this was over the top.”

  “You think,” I stated as I downed another shot. “Keep up. Down the hatch.”

  “The pregnant women reached for me from across the counter, but I stepped back before she could get a hold of me and I tell her that this isn’t funny. She looked at me, her eyes are still all bloodshot, but she couldn’t seem to focus on me. Then she moaned. It was like an animal, deep from her gut and I knew that something was wrong with her.”

  He drank his shot and put his shot glass upside down on the counter. This was the signal that he was done drinking for now. I was feeling the booze, a little light headed, that warm booze feeling flowing through my body.

  The timer went off on the oven so I pulled the steaks out and flipped them over placing them back into the oven and resetting the timer.

  “Anyway, I turned away from the pregnant woman and headed to the back of the office to find Melanie and Doctor Griffin. I found them in the break room with Doctor Griffin holding Melanie as she cried. He was trying to calm her down. I explained what I had just seen and that’s when the doctor pointed to the TV screen hanging on the breakroom wall. There was a news program on and they were showing all kinds of video of people attacking each other and all the destruction from around the world.”

  “The TV news anchors were saying to stay indoors and not to go outside.” He rubbed his eyes and stretched his neck. “The doc went out to the lobby to see what was going on so I followed him. We found the pregnant women on the floor attacking another woman. Vee was also on top of the new women and was tearing out chunks of her flesh.”

  “The office door was open because the woman on the floor was blocking it from closing. A scream came from outside the office and the two flesh eating freaks got up and stumbled out the office door. I took this opportunity to jump the counter, push the newly dead women out into the hallway and close the door, locking it from the inside.”