The Infected (7 page)

Take care

Sam W

11:34am, May 21

For a laugh I dialled the Mr. Delivery number to see if I could get out of venturing past my front door. Like all the other numbers I have tried though, no luck.

So, I am preparing myself. I have, how’s this, got my nail gun from my long forgotten guitar refinishing project which I am going to take with my as a weapon. I mean, if you need to pierce their skull and screw up their brain, then what better weapon than a nail gun? It is pretty quiet, and set to its quickest, most powerful setting, I am sure that it will be able to do some substantial damage. I’ve also got plenty of ‘ammo’ to take along. But I’m not just relying on the nail gun, I’ve also got like a butcher’s knife thingy… you know those ‘blocks’ of knives that you get? The ones you usually buy moms for Mother’s Day? Well I’m taking the biggest, strongest two knives from there too.

Shit. Less than twenty minutes until I leave my townhouse for the first time in two weeks. Wish me luck.

Sam

6:09pm, May 21

Sorry to disappoint you all, but I am still alive. And I have eaten so much that I actually feel sick. So what happened you may not be asking yourself? I’ll tell you anyways.

So just after 12pm, and after I had surveyed my surroundings very thoroughly, I quietly moved back all the furniture from my front door. I stood there for a while, key in hand, not praying, not rethinking, just... just... I don’t know. I just stood there.

Eventually I put the key in the key hole, turned it quietly (I had already sprayed it with a ton of my trusty Q20), and opened the door. I slipped out, ducked down and locked the door. I moved the metre or so on all fours to Steve’s front door and removed my backpack. I took out my screwdriver set, checked his door handle quick, and reached for the largest flat screwdriver. I had contemplated going over the balcony and in that way, but two things made me go for the front door. Firstly, I had peeked over the balcony and seen that the two windows were closed – I was secretly hoping that one of them had been left slightly ajar, but I know how much the dickhead hates cats (two have been found dead in the complex in the last eight months, and as his hate of felines is common knowledge, he is (was) the prime suspect), so I wasn’t holding out too much hope that they would be open anyways.

Secondly, because the front doors of the upper level (well the bottom half of them anyway) are blocked from view from the street by the corridor wall, and because I would have needed to go through the front doors of the other units – now and probably in the future – the practice of opening the door by removing the handle, while not taking a chance of being seen and being so close to the relative safety of my front door, could prove to be great practice.

So I got to it, unscrewed the door handle, removed the locking mechanism, and the door swung open. Luckily, like me, the false sense of security of living in a complex often meant that people didn’t worry with security gates, double locks, chains, lock bolts and the rest. I grabbed my nail gun from the backpack and crawled inside. It fucking stank. The cause of the stench? Bloody students... A half-eaten Debonairs pizza on the kitchen counter, luckily not a dead body.

I shut the door, stood up and had a look around. The townhouse, a mirror image of mine, was your typical dwelling of two guys – one couch, no frames or paintings in the lounge, but a huge flat screen TV. (I know it’s wrong, but it’s in my house now. If they come back, I’ll give it back to them, honest). It smelt funny though, and that was apart from the maggot and fly infested pizza – I am sure that that was the way it smelt before anyways. Both of them were smokers, and you could see it by the yellowed walls (the overflowing ashtrays, I suppose, were a dead giveaway too). But I didn’t care about any of that. Apart from the flies there was no movement in the flat. I quickly checked both rooms and bathrooms, nail gun in hand, but apart from one sparse room and adjoining bathroom (porn magazines visible under the bed) – Steve’s – and another strewn with dirty clothes – his son, Jared’s room – I was quite certain that I was alone in there.

So to business. I got some cloth bags out (plastic would have been too noisy), and headed for the kitchen. The fridge was, as I had predicted, a waste of time. There was no fresh food – and it probably wouldn’t have been too good anyways – but I did get another half a bottle of tomato sauce, some Italian salad dressing and two bottles of wine. Next I moved on to the pantry cupboard – almost a waste of time if I was only after food. But I wasn’t. It was filled with beer. YAY! I haven’t had a beer for ages! So earlier when I went back to ‘borrow’ the TV, I helped myself to two cases of Windhoek Draught, one case of Millers and a case of Heineken. There’s plenty left there but I didn’t want to be greedy. I guess having an alcoholic arsehole next door neighbour does have its advantages.

After discovering this goldmine I turned my attention to what I had actually come there for – food. I rifled through the rest of the kitchen cupboards and managed to find one small area dedicated to food. I filled my bags with all the tinned and packet food that I could find – I got some rice, pasta, tinned fruit (I left the three tins of frikking sweetcorn), sugar, assorted sweets, and for some reason I also took the carton of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes that was there, just in case. It seems like the end of the world, so maybe starting smoking would not be the worst thing I could do. Sorry Mom.

That was about it from the kitchen, although I did find some AA and AAA batteries which I slipped into the bag just in case. I had a quick look in Steve and Jared’s cupboards for anything which may come in handy, and added a couple of bottles of headache tablets from Steve’s bathroom, a few Steven King books (I’ve read all the books in my house that I had been meaning to read for years) and the Police Greatest Hits CD which I found in the lounge – always liked their music but never owned any of their stuff.

But there was something else… I have left it there for now, but at least I know that it’s there. Underneath a pile of, let’s say, adult orientated DVD’s at the bottom of Steve’s cupboard, was another pile of adult orientated DVD’s. But under that pile was a gun. A glistening black pistol and a box of bullets. I had thought before that a gun would be a great idea, but that was until I saw one. It’s pretty frightening. I toyed with the idea of taking it, but in the end thought I would rather leave it there – it’s close enough if I need it, but not too close.

So that was it from Steve’s place. I checked the kitchen window – he has pretty much the same view as me of Erasmus Road – and when there was a decent gap (only one of the infected), and he was facing the other way – well he his head was anyways – he must have suffered some sever trauma to his neck. His head faced to the right even when he walked straight, and it looked like a bone or two may have been protruding from around his neck and shoulders – I wasn’t too keen on looking too closely. He wore camo cargo pants, no shirt and only one shoe, and shuffled along as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders (I guess a broken neck would have that effect). He was seriously slow – a lot slower than the others. So when he was the only one I could see, and he was walking to the left so his face was facing the opposite way from me, I took my chance and slid my bags, which were already waiting by the door, out onto the landing, unlocked my door and slid in. After quickly unpacking I was ready to go again. Downstairs.

After the cursory checking of the street I slipped out again and locked my door. I snaked my way down the stairs and paused when I got to ground level, my car still at the bottom of the stairs where I left it many moons ago. I chuckled to myself (quietly) when I remembered how one of the neighbours had complained and got the security guards to come and tell me to move my car from almost exactly the same spot when I was moving in – even though there was plenty of space to get around it. Now it had been there for weeks and no-one had said a word.

I listened intently for a while but the only sound I could hear was a hadeda digging for worms in the small patch of grass, now longer than it had been since I moved in, next to the stairs. I peeked around the little wall and checked my surroundings. Nothing. No movement, no sign of life, nothing. The carports were less than half full – the initial main infection had happened mid-day, mid-week, so the majority of people would have been at work. Both bays for number 30 were empty, my first destination, so I breathed a short sigh of relief. 32, however, where I was planning to raid later, did have a car outside – a fucking Audi R8! In white. I almost did a sex-wee in my pants. That is (was) my dream car. I made a promise there and then to check number 32 thoroughly for those keys – it wasn’t the usual car that was there – if memory serves that was a black Renault Megane, but hey, finders keepers.

So after making sure that it was just me and the hadeda in the vicinity, I made a dash across the complex road in a half crouch, half run. When I got to number 30 I peered through the kitchen window and saw absolutely no sign of life. I got out my screwdriver, but in the end it turned out that I didn’t need it as the door was unlocked. I grabbed my nail gun and went in.

Again, I was alone. This unit, which belonged to a Chinese couple and their young daughter, was spotless, as if it had just been used for a photo shoot for a lifestyle magazine. The dark wood dining room table had a runner placed exactly down the middle of it, and exactly in the middle of the runner was a vase of flowers which, I am sure would have perfectly matched the pastel colours of the runner if they were not hanging down from the vase, brown and limp. The beds were all made like hotel beds, and although the world had been stopped for a couple of weeks, I couldn’t see any dust in the kitchen, lounge or bedrooms. But then I checked the bathroom.

Even just thinking of it now I don’t know how I didn’t throw up. I have never seen that much blood. It was on the floor, on the walls, on the mirror, in the bath, in the basin, and in some places, even on the ceiling. There were no bodies, only dark, thick, crimson blood and body parts. First I saw an ear. Then what looked like half a foot. And an eye. And then I slammed the door. I couldn’t give a fuck (then, but not a few minutes later) about what or who heard me. I was just... well, how would you be if you saw something like that?

So I sat down on the Chinese family’s perfectly straight couch and let my stomach settle. I listened for any new noises but there was nothing. I was here to do a job, and my survival, not the person who had once been in the bathroom, depended on it. Predictably, the fridge contents were no use except for an unopened two litre Coke, a jar of pickled onions and a huge block of gouda cheese, and maybe predictably, the cupboards consisted of quite a few noodles – not my favourite, but at this juncture I wasn’t being picky (except if it came to sweetcorn). Other useful additions to my cooking arsenal included a bunch of spices which will liven up anything, plenty of biscuits, both sweet and savoury, some tinned mussels (not sure how those will taste, but something different for the palate) some chewy sweets, peanuts and raisins, Marmite, apricot jam, some more coffee and sugar (I seem to be drinking a lot of the stuff) and some frozen bacon, sosaties, chicken goulash and quite a substantial beef roast. All in all, bathroom apart, not a bad house to clean out. And then I saw it…

It was there on the dining table, the one that I had walked past a couple times since I had entered the unit. An Apple Macbook. Still in the box, unopened. It was beautiful… machined from a solid piece of aluminum, the new MacBook not only looks stunning, it's also thinner, lighter, greener and more powerful than ever… Okay, that’s directly from the box, but this thing is awesome – an ultrathin 1 280-by-800-pixel LED-backlit display, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor, a Multi-Touch glass trackpad, Lithium-polymer battery, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, 2GB DDR3 Memory, 160GB hard drive… I don’t know what half of that stuff actually means, but it sounds damn sexy and it looks damn sexy too. So I took it.

I do have my reasons of course – I am not just a casual looter – it will be faster than this desktop of mine, it is portable so I can use it anywhere in my place, and outside of my place if needed, and the fact that it has a battery means that I am not totally reliant on electricity to use it. It’s sitting next to me now, but in the next day or two I’ll move everything across to it.

Okay, it’s getting late and I am tired, and although I still have a lot to tell you, I am going to go to bed now and will carry on in the morning. I binged on my new found wealth of food when I got back so I think that’s why I feel a bit sluggish now (or that could be the three Windhoek Draughts that I’ve had while typing this?), but whatever it is, I’m buggered.

Cool. Catch up with you again in the morning.

Sam W

9:11am, May 22

Morning. Just had some cereal (powdered milk and Coco Pops – got both from flat number 30, don’t know if I mentioned those acquisitions?) And a good night’s sleep – maybe it was my excursions that had taken it all out of me, but that was one good sleep. And it is seriously cold today, again. Don’t know if a cold front is on its way or here or whatever. But either way, this weather is not doing me any favours in the ‘downstairs’ department. Not that that would make a difference anyways – still waiting to hear from my new blonde, 18 to 30 roommate with the body of a swimwear model. Just clicked Send/Receive on my mails and still nothing...

So yeah, I was going to continue my exploration adventure story, wasn’t I? Sorry, just had to check where I left off – okay, so I grabbed the Macbook, made sure that the complex was clear and headed back to my place to drop off the loot. On the way I quickly glanced at the Myburg’s place, expecting to see Mr. Myburg with his grubby, unshaven face against the window, licking his bloodied lips in anticipation of chewing on my elbow. What did I see? A porcelain duck with an oversized, smiling beak staring back at me. Scary shit.

I dropped off everything at my place, did another check of the surroundings and headed back downstairs, this time to number 31. I wasn’t that lucky again with the door and had to get the screwdriver out, my proficiency with it now impressing even myself. This time, thank fuck, no bloody bathroom to contend with, just your average townhouse unit. I think that the occupant of number 31 was a single guy, maybe nearing his thirties – I had often seen a cute brunette with long hair almost down to her bum with him, but I’m pretty sure that she never lived there (I checked the cupboards and she didn’t). Wait, that makes me sound like a freak, as if I would have stolen a pair of her panties or something. Hey, I resent that – I’ll have you know that I only steal high quality electronic goods... Well anyways, I was just checking the cupboards for anything which may have been of use and noticed only male clothing. So there.

This guy, Gary or Grant or Greg or Graham, I thought, until I saw his post and saw that his name was Barry, was a serious technical nut and had boxes and cupboards full of electrical gadgets and gizmos, three quarters of which I have no clue what they were – and I thought I knew quite a lot about ‘stuff’. So anyways, if I ever need anything electrical I’m sure he’ll have it.

So other than a horde of spare parts for PlayStation’s, radios, computers and remote controlled cars, the former occupant of number 31 was able to offer up the standard fare of bachelor food that I had become accustomed to – the savoury stuff: assorted flavours of chips, some tasty varieties of pretzels, and Baz, I hope you don’t mind me calling you Baz, thank you so much for the unopened, 1kg bag of assorted nuts – I love my nuts – cashews, almonds, pistachios, the lot. I am trying to ration myself with these nuts as I could honestly eat the whole bag in one sitting, so I have separated them into ten Tupperwares (more on that now), measured meticulously 100g into each, and I am going to limit myself to one a day. Mmmmnnnnn...

So yes, Tupperware. What self-respecting male has more than three Tupperware boxes in his kitchen? Unfortunately, I do. I have the stuff everywhere but I have not bought a single one. Both my mother and Lil are compulsive Tupperware buyers, and I am led to believe that most women are, so I was constantly being given every conceivable size, shape and colour of the stuff. So I now have a collection of Tupperware to rival Martha Stewart. At least I have somewhere to put my nuts.

Back to the food and onto the sweet stuff – a couple of packets of sour worms (Baz, you rock), Halls in a couple of flavours, a few slabs of chocolate, a lot of instant jelly, that caramelised popcorn stuff, some boxed custard, and then I’m assuming that this dude had a sweet tooth, because my favourite collection of goodies from any of the units, was his three tins of condensed milk, and eight, yes… eight… tins of Caramel Treat! That has to be the sweetest, tastiest stuff in the world! Double mmmmnnnnn. I also got a couple of two litre Coke Zero’s – doesn’t make any sense – he’s got all this sugar that he obviously loves, but then drinks Coke Zero? Guess you gotta start somewhere...

Also worth mentioning was his assortment of medical supplies – I now have medicine for every known ailment to man – headaches, cuts, bruises, sprains and… piles… Baz obviously took every precaution necessary, which is good news for me, as I simply emptied the contents of his medicine cabinet (which I am sure was custom made as I have never seen one that big) into my kit bag and another cloth bag, and I can now take something for those frikking headaches that I keep getting. Other than food, an assortment of medicines, pain killers and cold and flu stuff (it is winter here in the southern hemisphere you know, and I do get a cold at least once every year, so was glad I got that), were pretty high on the list of must-haves. So again, thank you Baz for that.

So yeah, I went back to my place, laid everything out in the kitchen, had a bit of a munch (there was just so much choice), and then after I’d had my fill, wrote down everything that I procured so that I can keep track of what I have, what I need, and what I desperately need. I am pretty set for now, but always, in the back of my mind, I know that I’ll have to go out again, and eventually, I’ll exhaust the food left behind in the complex (and the food that hasn’t gone bad) and will have to venture out there. Into their domain.

But I’ll worry about that later.

Take care,

Sam W

11:23am, May 22

Hey, just thought of this – what if I turn my balcony into a veggie garden? It gets good sun, is close at hand, will get rain in summer and is easy to water – just need to get some soil up here and get some seeds, then Bob’s your mother’s brother. Just had to make note of that otherwise I would forget!

To be honest, I never was much a fan of veggies and salad, but fuck it, I would almost give one of my pinkie toes for a juicy tomato.

Anyways, copied everything over to my new Macbook and am sooooooo happy! It is so much faster, like comparing a cheetah to a tortoise. A dead tortoise. With a Jacuzzi strapped to its back. It’s gorgeous and that’s putting it mildly – if it was alive I would hump it. And that is seriously not the lack of action talking. I think. So yes, I am now mobile and loving it – just getting used to a few of the shortcuts and things that differ from a PC to a Mac, like no Ctrl key – it’s an apple – but I am sure I’ll get used to it soon. So excuse me while I go play around with my new toy…

See ya,

Sam W

5:41pm, May 24

Hi out there. Not much news to report. Owen and Johan are still surviving at Eastgate – they report that quite a crowd of infected is building up around the centre but they are confident that their defences won’t be breached. I asked Johan what their food resources are like and he said, quote, “Okay, hey. We eat like kings most of the time.” Doesn’t sound like much is being done to preserve their resources or plan for a bit down the line, which is a bit short sighted if you ask me. He got pretty defensive when I told him what I thought, but hey, they have their own little community there and should be able to care for themselves. I’m not going to worry about them. Or try not to at least.

I still try Melanie’s phone every day. It’s still dead.

My folks seem to be having a great time although I did pick up on a bit of... I don’t know... impatience maybe, in my dad’s voice. He’s never advocated violence and I can’t recall more than two times when I actually remember him raising his voice at someone. But on the phone now it’s like he is a different person. He hates the infected – calls them “the fucked ones”. Over and over again. Before this happened the worst swear word that I heard him use was ‘bollocks’, and that was only when things went really wrong, like the time we drove to Cape Town to visit his sister, my aunt Shelley, and we got two punctures within the space of 20 kilometres. The way he sounded when I spoke to him on the phone this morning reminded me of that day. It wasn’t nice.

And Lil. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. Part of me believes that she’s okay and that it’s just because she is in such a remote part of the country that I haven’t heard from her. But part of me doesn’t think that. That part of me is starting to overpower the optimistic part. And when that happens, like it did last night, I often turn to the booze stash that I inherited from my neighbours. I try drink in moderation now after the last ‘episode’, and it does numb the pain slightly. I know what Lil would say – Don’t hide from the problem, face it – she was always quick to dispense advice, and 99% of the time she was right.

I miss you babe.

Sam

9:54am, May 25

Shit, I’m cold! I have always hated winter, but now, since… since the infection or whatever it is that has happened, I totally abhor it! You’ve gotta know how cold it is at 4am when one of those idiots manages to set off a car alarm in the complex! I managed to get out onto the balcony to have a look, and this woman, huge, seriously huge – closing in on 150kgs if she wasn’t there already, was scratching at this car, a Nissan Livina, across the ‘road’ (the complex road) and three units down. She’s the first one of them that I have seen in the complex for well over a week…

I got out a pair of binoculars to see what Huge was so interested in (my Dad had given them to me as a birthday present once – when I had a fleeting interest in birds – and I think I used them twice), but I couldn’t see anything in the car or on it. But what did get me giggling was the fact that the back door was unlocked! Good news – it seems that with the loss of whatever made them this way (life?) along with a loss of dexterity, it seems that they also lost most of their intelligence. Although it was freezing out there – don’t they say that it’s coldest the hour before dawn? Or is it darkest? – I couldn’t take my eyes off her – what was it that was making her so frantic? Eventually, after about 20 minutes of fumbling, scratching and hitting at the car, she managed, I am sure by accident, to push the door handle up. She threw herself into the car, and only because of the binoculars was I able to see what she was after. A dog. One that was well and truly dead.

Well, that should be obvious – it had been in the car for two weeks, maybe more. If it wasn’t for the collar and the paws I don’t think I would have recognised it – it was basically a mush of meat and fur. Absolutely gross. That didn’t seem to bother Huge though as she dug in with relish, obviously not for the first time in her life. Fur, bones, everything went in – she even licked or chewed the car seat, I couldn’t tell from where I was standing spying on her. The wind shifted at one point and I got a whiff of such a revolting smell that I had to stop myself from retching. That prompted me to go back inside and try get some more sleep. It wasn’t to be though as the flipping car alarm put paid to that. I tried a pillow over the head and cotton wool in my ears, but no luck. It must be like a form of Chinese Torture Therapy because I was tempted on many occasions to go out there and try and find the keys!

Thankfully, at around 8am I heard a change in the alarm – the car’s battery was dying. It turned out to be a slow death out as the alarm only ground to a monotonous halt just after nine – thank fuck for that. Huge, on the other hand is still trying to get whatever remains of the dog out of the car and into her substantial belly.

Okay, an update – just checked and she is nowhere to be seen. The car looks spotless, although while I was outside I did get another whiff of Thing In Car Formerly Known As Dog and it was not pretty. Will keep an eye and an ear out for Huge – worryingly was the fact that she found TICFKAD… they must be able to smell things out… Mental note – use more deodorant.

Take care

Sam W

4:27pm, May 26

Oh fuck, oh shit! The power has just gone out – well ten minutes ago. Oh crap… Powering down to save battery life.

11:43pm, May 26

Hell, I’ve been dreading this day for a while now. The power hasn’t come back on yet and I have serious concerns whether it ever will.

Shit. I’ve only got like seven minutes left of battery life on this computer – I hope this won’t be the last you hear from me. Spoken to Owen at Eastgate and theirs has gone too – well sort of. Just after 1pm they heard the power clicking and going off. It was only dark for 30 seconds or so, Owen said, until they heard the generators kicking in. Because of serious power cuts over the last few years due to Eskom failing to heed the warning that their current power stations were not going to cope with our countries growing infrastructure, many of the main areas of the country were plagued by daily power cuts (they tried to soften the blow by naming these power cuts ‘load shedding’). To prevent losing business, many companies invested in UPS’s and generators – shopping centres like Eastgate needed serious generators if they were to stay in business. This year wasn’t as bad, but the generators were kept just in case, and luckily for a couple hundred people using Eastgate as a safe haven, they were kept.