The Infected (4 page)

So I then turned to the web, and reassuringly or disconcertingly, it depends on which way you look at it, we are not alone with this problem in South Africa. Although most of the major news agencies and web sites have not updated their sites in a couple of days, CNN does report “a strange outbreak of attacks on civilians, by civilians,” but they were “still investigating”. Over in the UK it’s a bit more bleak, but then isn’t it always? The Sky News website has features on a link to swine flu – who knows, it could be a more malicious strain – as well as reports on “eruptions of violence” on the tube, planes coming to and from Heathrow, and in the main tourist spots – along the Thames, at (and in, apparently) the London Eye, and at the Man United vs. Schalke Champions League semi-final on Wednesday. Imagine that? Sixty-odd thousand people in a confined space. If it’s contagious, which I am assuming it is, then that’s seriously scary. (I did some further research and it seems the game was called off before it kicked off due to safety concerns. I hope that’s not the end of professional sport).

Not too surprisingly, most of my ‘intel’ has come from other sources – blogs mainly, and Facebook before the site went haywire. My last Facebook status? “Sam Ward is… going to save the world!” Early reports from people across the world say that hospitals are being overwhelmed with people that were sick – I guess that if whatever this thing is is contagious, then it would have rapidly spread in a hospital environment, hence the telephones which are just ringing. Apparently, and don’t take my word for it, a guy in Mexico says that these
people
can be “immobilised” by chopping their heads off. Sounds like it is straight from a movie though, and I don’t know how willing you would be to do some head chopping? I’ll pass thanks.

I have seen a few
people
wandering up and down the street from my kitchen window, usually in groups of three or four, but sometimes alone. I have been avoiding this – naming them – because then it’s sort of like coming to a consensus that they exist, isn’t it? But I suppose it’s gotta be done. Are they zombies? I don’t know, they haven’t seemed to have died, I don’t think. So that also rules out the dead or the undead. So that basically leaves me with the
sick
or the
infected
. I think I’m going to go for the infected – the sick sort of implies that they are going to get better, and although I would hope for nothing more, from what I have seen, I doubt it. So ‘the infected’ it is.

Take care

Sam W

3:44pm, May 7

Thank God – I eventually spoke to my Dad – they are okay. But I still don’t know about Lil…

My folks, who live in Claremont in Cape Town, had forgotten to charge their phones – damn old people – and after charging them and going through all my frantic messages, they kindly decided to give me a call and let me know that they were alright. How considerate of them. They are safe though and have the company of a few other couples from their street – they’ve “joined forces” apparently. My Dad says that there have been some incidents in their area, but as it’s quite a big commercial and residential suburb, not as much as he would have thought. “Those things better not try get in here, because Bob used to be a professional boxer, you know?” he told me just before we said goodbye. Yes Dad, I know. I knew after the first time you told me and I knew after the thirtieth time you told me too.

We will be in touch every day also and I got hold of all the cell numbers of the people in the house just in case my parents forget to charge their phones again.

I’ve been quite surprised that the internet is still working, but I guess that it is an unmanned entity, isn’t it? So, holding thumbs – I hope I stay connected as I don’t know how I would cope without it.

Otherwise, I have just played Bloc Party’s track, Hunting For Witches (with the volume very low of course), which starts out with the lyric: “I’m sitting on the roof of my house, with a shotgun and a six pack of beer. The newscaster says the enemies amongst us.” And although the song is actually about the terrorist attacks on London and September 11, those words had been going through my head on a loop as I sat by my kitchen window, blinds drawn, peeking through a slight gap at the action on Erasmus Road – it neatly summed up everything for me, except for the shotgun and beers bit, although I would kill for a beer and maybe a shotgun is not a bad idea.

Although there weren’t as many of the infected in the street as there have been previously, there were still enough milling about to keep that sense of unease at the top of my mind. I have been studying them, well as briefly as I can as they lumber in and out of my sight line, and have noticed over the last day or two that, although they generally tend to be slow moving, at around midday their movements become even more laboured, and their numbers decrease. I have started making notes of their numbers and their movements that I can see outside my kitchen window, so will see if any patterns emerge. From my balcony, although I try not to go out there too often (I did spray the handle and the hinges liberally with Q20 to minimise the noise when I open and close the door), I can see a bit of Hendrick Potgieter Street. I have noticed a few of the infected headed up there, but the road does come to a dead-end about half a kilometre up.

That’s all I got to say for now.

Take care.

Sam W

7:23pm, May 7

About two hour ago, screeching sirens and a guy shouting something into a loudhailer woke me up from my sleep (I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, I think I just lay my head down on the couch for a minute and I drifted off through sheer exhaustion. It was the best rest that I had had in ages). But anyway, I came to with a start when the first siren pierced the silence that I have come to know over the last couple of days. And when another, then another and then maybe half a dozen more filled the air, I was already up at the kitchen window trying to crane my neck to see anything. In between the wailing sirens I could barely make out a voice coming through the racket. At first it sounded like random screaming, but as it got closer I started to recognise a few words and phrases – “come out”, “to help”, “safe”, “sick”.

The sirens were almost deafening now and were coming from the left up Erasmus Road towards Pallister. I saw a woman in her twenties sprinting down the road towards the sound of the sirens, easily dodging between two of the infected, one a boy who must have been barely 16 and the other an old man of an indeterminate age. Seven or eight more (healthy) people followed over the next minute or two, waving their arms and shouting in the direction of all the noise. I recognised one or two of them from around the complex – maybe I had bumped into them at the AGM or seen them on my way to the pool. I almost turned to run out the door and join them, but something stopped me. A minute later, the two infected had become twenty. A further minute and that number had doubled again. All the while, people tried to head in the direction of the sirens, which I believe at that point had stopped moving because the noise wasn’t getting any louder. One unlucky man wearing an Arsenal football shirt tried to barge past two of the infected, only to trip in a pothole which had obviously been hidden behind them. The two of them who had been knocked over were on their feet before Arsenal was able to drag himself up (it looked like he was in serious pain and, from the distance of my kitchen window, it looked like his ankle was pointing out at an improbable angle). Then a young guy ran past him towards the safety of the sirens, and hesitated, almost stopping to help, and from maybe 100m away I could hear Arsenal pleading to this youngster in a black vest. But the guy took one look at the two infected hovering over Arsenal and sped off. Luckily, I suppose, my view of the rest of this saga was obscured by a tree – I could hear Arsenal screaming in pain, but thankfully not for long.

By this time the cacophony of noise coming from down the street to my left was almost unbearable. The sirens sang a disconcerting tune while the guy on the loudhailer pleaded for calm. Screams pierced the air and then gunshots started to ring out. All this noise just attracted more of the infected, and they continued to amble their way towards the sound of the sirens. Fuck, judging by the amount of them out there I was glad I didn’t try and go out.

“Abort, abort!” screamed the man on the loudhailer as more rounds were fired off. He must have decided that enough was enough, as the next sound I heard was the loudhailer clanging to the floor and a high pitched shriek of feedback. And then the groaning of the infected.

The screaming continued for another few minutes, interrupted briefly by the odd gunshot, and the last siren eventually died about fifteen minutes ago. The infected, many of them now sporting a new crimson shade of red down their fronts, have been milling about the area ever since. I won’t forget this afternoon in a hurry…

Sam

8:28am, May 8

Just spoke to Johan and they are still okay at Eastgate, another twenty or so people have joined their group, and although he says that there has been some in-fighting, in his words, “Typical fuckin’ jocks having a who has got the bigger dick contest,” things seem to be going alright for them there. It seems that they are struggling though to find a ‘leader’ for their large group. But it sounds like they are quite sorted – beds from the bed stores, food from the food stores, clothes from the clothes stores. They have drafted up shifts for guarding the exits and seem to be pretty secure. He says that there are a couple of the infected hanging around the parking lot but not too many to be worried about. Melanie also called and they are settled in Westville just outside Dur Oh fuck. There’s one of them outside. I heard a noise and can see him in the garden of the unit below. Fuck.

10:09am, May 8

Okay, he’s gone, and my heart rate has finally dropped back to normal. Fuck! That was too close for comfort. Apart from my encounters in the car when I was taking Mrs. Myburg to her sister-in-law, I haven’t really seen any of the infected other than on TV or in the street from the relative safety of my kitchen window behind a six foot wall, electric fence and closed gate. (I can actually see the complexes main gate from my spare room if I press my left cheek flush against the glass, and I check it, probably on an hourly basis, to make sure that the perimeter has not been breached). At first I thought he was one of those from yesterday afternoon (there’s still plenty hanging around in the street), but unless he is a world champion pole-vaulter, which I seriously doubt, he must originate from inside the complex.

This was too close for comfort though. After a few minutes of watching him in the garden I realised that I recognised him – I have seen the guy around the complex before – I think he stays/stayed close to the pool – a bachelor, I think. Quite a scrawny guy, mid-20’s, glasses, thinning dark hair (I reckon he’ll be balding before he hits 30). Well, mid-sentence of my last blog post I heard a noise, which turned out to be Balding knocking over an empty bin – no-one has stayed there for two months. I rushed to the main bedroom window to see what was happening, and there he was, hunched over the empty flower bed, and it looked like he was digging for something in the barren soil. Watching him with one eye through a kink in the curtain, I saw him shovelling something into his mouth. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t sand – what good could that do for him? Eventually, after two or three minutes I figured out what he was eating – earthworms. The unseasonal rains that had fallen in the early hours of this morning must have brought them to the surface, and here, Balding was eating them. Maybe all the noise yesterday had stirred him into action? Maybe hearing all his mates feasting had got his tummy rumbling?

Having one of them so close, unaware of me, was a terrifying experience. His movements were awkward and contrived, and his sounds were a mixture of grunts and whimpers, almost animal-like. His clothes were dirty, obviously unchanged since he was infected, and the back of his neck had a large slash which was oozing some honey coloured, and, probably honey textured liquid. It was, although terrifying, also fascinating. It was like the first time that I had seen an animal in the wild – I was enthralled with every little movement, any tiny sound that Balding made. He was a perfect specimen of the infected just a couple metres from me. And then I sneezed.

I jumped back from the window, too scared to breathe in case he heard me. Slowly I found the courage to see if Balding had been alerted to my presence, watching him from above. I inched closer to the window, slowly pulling the curtain away. He wasn’t there. “Shit,” I thought. “Shit, shit, shit.” I changed my position to get a better look of the garden below, and sure enough, there was Balding having a good look around. I was sure that he wouldn’t have been able to see me, but still, I limited my movements as much as I could. Balding was, it seemed, systematically scanning, not just my place, but everything above the height of his head. This scared me. Not the fact that he thought I may be in a tree – that was actually quite comforting – but that he was actually being methodical in trying to find the source of the noise. I breathed probably the biggest sigh of relief that I have ever done when I realised that he wasn’t being logical and organized, but it was just the way he moved in general. It was almost mechanical, robotic in a way, so when he had come to the conclusion that my sneeze had not represented any danger (or possibly food), he returned to the earthworms in a stuttering, bending motion.