The Infected (Book 3): Nightfall (16 page)

Jim and Karen’s wedding
video, their wedding photos, photos of the children, computers, a massive DVD
collection and every other memento that Jim cherished were now barbequed. There
was no home for him and his family to go back to.

What more could this
day throw at me?
Jim thought as he gripped
the steering wheel tightly.

Jim had worked in sales
for a decade and he was always astonished when people freaked out and lost
their cool over simple mistakes or problems.

This dishwasher you
sold me doesn’t fit and now I want a free one for the inconvenience!

The refrigerator you
sold me has a scratch and now I want a new one and money off and I want it here
before five o’clock today or else I’ll call my lawyer!

Jim always wondered what
these people would do if something really bad happened to them. What if they
lost a leg or a family member was murdered violently in front of them? How absolutely
nuts would they go then? Because Jim had to deal with people like that on a
weekly basis he had developed a strong attitude of “it could always be worse” to
help keep things in perspective and not lose his cool when a shit storm
exploded into the fan.

Your rental car got broken
into and you have to pay for a new window out of pocket.

At least you can walk with
your own two legs.

Lost your house because
you couldn’t make the payments.

At least you are not
blind.

Your home burned down and
you’re forced to make a run for it in the middle of the night with flesh eating
monsters around every corner.

Well, at least you are
upright and breathing and not one of these zombie assholes. There was no time
to waste throwing a fit about how screwed up everything was. It would only get
him and his crew killed. Devon let out a howl as they crossed a speed bump.

“Sorry,” Jim said as he
aimed to miss the next one.

“He’s fine.” Sara spoke on
Devon’s behalf. She had liberated a medical kit out of Jim’s backpack and was
trying to wrap another layer around his leg to stop the bleeding. “Get us
somewhere safe.” She cinched the wrap down on his wound and tied off the knot.

Jim glanced at the
rearview mirror. Cliff’s van was right behind him. Speed in this circumstance
was not their ally. It was better safe than sorry. The PT Cruiser’s engine was
weak sauce and it was weighed down by the four bodies and hundreds of pound of
weaponry in the back. They traveled the backstreets of Vancouver at a leisurely
twenty-five miles per hour. They wouldn’t set any land speed records, but Jim
hoped they would get there in one piece. He left the high-beams on and the headlights
cut through the night like a knife. Jim wanted to get home to his family more
than anything, but he didn’t want to make this run in the middle of the night.
He couldn’t see the monsters until they stepped out onto the street and they
all made a beeline for his car’s front grill. Jim weaved between their outstretched
arms and he feathered the gas pedal to zip by the fast ones. Clusters of
recently turned humans choked the intersections. There was an army of monsters
and they were growing by the minute.

Frank quickly reloaded his
Berettas and rolled down his window. Shooting at moving targets while traveling
at this speed was new for him. His accuracy went, well, out the window, but he
did pulverize any beast that climbed up onto the hood and tried to smash their
way through the windshield.

Ahead of Jim’s convoy a
dump truck laid across the street and blocked their route. He turned north and
zipped across an empty parking lot. He started to head back east when an
infected woman raced out in front of them. Jim didn’t have time to swerve and
miss her. The passenger side tires were about to travel directly over her. The
car’s headlights caught a reflection off of a giant Bowie knife that jutted
five inches out of her stomach. Someone had stuck her in the back and skewered
her like a kebab with the ridiculously long blade. Her light frame crunched
against the fiberglass bumper and she was sucked under the front wheel. Her
bones snapped under the weight and the front of the car jumped a little into
the air.

“Did you see that?” Frank
asked in a panic.

“What?” Jim blurted out as
he dodged another zombie.

“She had a knife stuck in
her!”

“So?”

It didn’t take long for
Jim to hear and feel what Frank was worried about. The front tires felt
sluggish and the car began to pull to the right.

“Damn it! We have a flat!”
Jim backed off the gas.

“What are we going to do?”
Sara let go of Devon’s leg and began to reload her shotgun.

“Keep rolling!” Frank
urged. “Who gives a shit if you wreck the wheel?”

As the tire fully deflated
Jim slowed to under twenty.

“If we grind it to the
rims we’ll have no traction. I have to slow down or I’m gonna burn up the
tire.” Jim let up even more on the gas and now the convoy was only going ten
miles an hour.

Cliff tapped the brakes
and slowed to match Jim’s speed.

“Mama, where are we
going?” Eve rubbed a tear from her cheek.

“We’re going to a safe
place.” Tina did not sound very convincing. “What’s going on?” she asked Cliff
as she fished a handful of shells from her pocket to reload the .38 special.

“I don’t know maybe he
sees something we can’t.” Cliff thumbed beads of sweat from his forehead. The
anxiety of the whole situation was crushing down on the couple. They felt like
they were truly driving out into the unknown. No safety net. No guarantees. No
way of knowing if this was the right move. It seemed like the only choice.
Safety in numbers. If Jim and his people made it out of Portland alive then
maybe he could get this group across Vancouver.

“Maybe he’s lost?” Morgan
patted at her son’s shoulder.

“Maybe, he said it was his
mother-in-law’s house. He’s gotta know how to get there.”

They were heading down a
clear and infected free section of street. Cliff put his foot into the gas and
pulled alongside Jim.

He powered down his
window. “What’s going on?!” Cliff called out over the grinding tire.

“We got a flat!” Frank
hollered.

Cliff mouthed
fuck
and then asked, “How much farther?”

“Three miles, at least!”
Jim pulled the steering wheel to the left to compensate.

Three miles on a flat?
Cliff was sure they wouldn’t make it. He remembered ten
years ago when Tina tried to drive home on a flat. She was young and didn’t
think it was going to be a big deal. She also had no desire to figure out how
to change out the spare. She didn’t make it two miles. A passing car, honked
and pointed at her. The passenger yelled the word “FIRE” at her. She pulled to
the side of the road, got out and when she looked at the tire it was flickering
and definitely on fire. They almost lost the whole car because of that burning
tire. An idea came to Cliff.

“Follow me!” Cliff stepped
on it and pulled ahead of Jim.

“Where you headed?” Tina
loaded the last shell into the gun.

“Rich’s garage.” Cliff
turned south. Cliff had spent a full summer after high school graduation
working at a local garage. Rich was the owner and the main mechanic for almost
forty years. One summer of changing oil and busting his knuckles under hot cars
was enough for Cliff, but he had remained friends with Rich and still went to
him for oil changes and car repairs. The guy was in his late sixties and had
been talking about retirement for the last five years, but had not hung up his
wrenches yet. Cliff just hoped the spare key was still in its normal place.

A few minutes later Cliff
had led the convoy into the parking lot. A giant red sign above the building
read:

Rich’s Garage.

The building had four metal
bay doors connected to the main office. Rich’s business had suffered from some
theft over the years and he had mounted steel bars on every window. The place
was not completely impossible to break into, but it would be very difficult.
Rich had been a creature of habit so Cliff crossed all of his fingers and toes
that the key to get in would be where he last saw it.

A bakers dozen of infected
zombies creeped out of the shadows. Cliff parked the van and Jim pulled in next
to him. Their headlights reflected off the metal doors and lit up the garage’s
parking lot. Cliff quickly hopped out of the van with his saw blade in hand,
“Stay with the girls.” Tina nodded at him.

Jim climbed out of his car
with his spear. Frank finished reloading another round of magazines for his
Berettas and he clicked the last one into the butt of the gun as he popped open
his door. Sara cocked the shotgun and joined them outside of the PT Cruiser. Sara
and Frank opened fire on the scrambling pack of monsters. Cliff and Jim chopped
and stabbed at the beasts.

Cliff’s saw cleaved chunks
out of the infected as they approached. It was a ripper and a shredder. On one
strike it got stuck for a second. Thank God he had put the lanyard at the end
of the handle. The blade came to a stop five inches into the skull of an
infected teen. As the body dropped, the paracord pulled tight around Cliff’s
wrist and he was able to get another grip on its handle before the dead body
took it away from him.

Jim’s spear was more
surgical and precise. After a day of stabbing fools in the face Jim could hit
the exact target he aimed for.

Left eye! Check.

Right eye! Nailed it.

Dead center of the nose!
No problem.

Shave and a haircut before
he delivers the kill strike? Maybe, if he had to do this for another year he
might have that kind of skill. He was not sure what Cliff’s plan was, but he
prayed it was more than just killing zombies in front of this garage.

A big mama of a zombie
lumbered toward Sara. It wore a ratty blood soaked t-shirt that claimed she was
“With Stupid” and an arrow below indicating who stupid was. The arrow pointed
to a bean pole of an infected man and judging by the look on its face, he was
stupid. Deep down Sara wished she wasn’t so tired. If she could have gotten her
full eight hours of beauty sleep, she could have come up with a clever line to
say at their expense, but at this early hour all she could fabricate was,
“Stupid is as stupid dies!” and then she cut the two of them down with a double
blast of twelve gauge pellets. After she said the line she looked around to
make sure no one heard her. The late hour had made her feel a little loopy. She
hoped that’s what caused the lapse in judgement. 

Between shots, Frank had
heard Sara’s one liner. He thought it was funny, but he was too tired. He had
always been an early riser but this was crazy. Especially after the day they
had. He took out six of the closest freaks and then watched everyone’s backs as
they dispatched the rest of the zombies. They were all clustered a little close
for comfort and Frank didn’t want to shoot one of them by accident.

Jim finished off the last
creep. He extracted the spear’s blade from its skull and turned to Cliff, “How
do we get in?”

Cliff was already jogging
over to a small tree that was growing in a brown ceramic pot next to one of the
bay doors. He tipped it over on its side and searched for the spare key. Cliff
had called Rich late one night after the garage was closed. Cliff’s alternator
had gone bad and he needed to replace it and the battery that night, but didn’t
have the tools to do it himself. After five minutes of begging Rich finally
told him where the spare key was so he could let himself in and fix his truck.
The old man had sworn Cliff to secrecy and that he would take the keys location
to the grave. Cliff’s fingers searched and searched, but there was no key.

Maybe Rich hid it under
the other tree around the corner of the building?
Cliff thought as he leveled the pot back out. He was
just about to go search under the next tree when the office door opened.

A husky voice whispered
across the lot, “Cliff, is that you?”

Cliff recognized the man,
it was Rich. “It’s me,” said Cliff. “Hey, we got a flat tire can you let us
in?”

“Goddamn it! Hold on,”
Rich shut and locked the office door and disappeared into the building. Two bay
doors began to rise and Cliff and Jim were back into their cars. They quickly
pulled into the garage. Frank zapped a few more zombie stragglers as the metal
doors descended. He ducked under the closing door at the last second and
entered the garage.

They killed the engines as
Rich flipped on four rows of florescent lighting.

Rich still had on a gray
work shirt with a patch above the left breast pocket that spelled out “Rich” in
cursive. His thick silver hair had black streaks in it. Reminiscent of the
color it once was. He wore it slicked back into a pompadour. They could tell he
had been sleeping because the back of his hair was a mess. As soon as the
lights came on fully he had whipped out a comb from his back pocket and fixed
the disaster. He replaced his comb and walked over to Cliff as he was stepping
out of the van.