WorldLost- Week 1: An Infected Novel (7 page)

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, another 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.”

“The doc had picked up the phone and was calling 911, but he
got a busy signal. We went back to the break room and found Melanie. She had
calmed down and told us what had happened. She explained that the pregnant woman
convulsed while checking out like she was having a seizure. She fell to the
floor and started to seizure. Vee rushed out to the waiting room to help her
while Melanie tried to call 911. Vee was on the ground trying to help the women
when Vee screamed. Melanie looked over the counter and she sees the pregnant
women ripping flesh off of Vee’s face.”

I poured another drink for myself and moved to a bar stool
next to Butch. The booze was starting to make me tired and standing up was
getting harder for me.

“Anyway, we hung out in the office trying to decide what to
do for a while, trying to contact the authorities and any emergency services we
could get a hold of. We didn’t have any luck, nothing was working and then I
got your text. I grabbed my backpack, grabbed some medical supplies, thinking
we might need them and headed to my place to pick up a few other things and
then got started towards Amy’s.“

He rubbed his eyes and saw that his hands had blood on them.
He got up and walked into the kitchen to wash the blood off.

“I got home without too much trouble, I just stayed to myself
on the way,tried to use the alley’s and went through the back door of my
building. If I saw anyone that looked sick or was acting weird, I moved away
from them. There were so many people on the streets, that it was easy to blend
in. At home, I grabbed some food, grabbed my hunting knife, a change of clothes
and headed out.

“What was it like out there trying to get to Amy’s? Did you
have any problems?”

“I stuck to the alley’s just like when I went home. I ran
into the Dumpster King. He said he had seen you and asked if I wanted to hang
out.”

“Dude’s not going to last hanging around that bakery,” I
said.

“I left there and ran into some trouble with a few of those
things. What are we calling them, anyway?”

“I’ve heard them called infected, zombies, and freaks.” I
smiled. “Take your pick.”

“Zombies? Sounds too much like a movie. Anyway, coming out of
the bakery alley, I ran into a group of them and once they saw me, they all
started after me. I pushed one to the ground, I kicked another in the knee
making it fall to the ground and jammed my elbow into another one’s face. I was
able to get free from them and just kept running.”

“Kung Fu Fighter!” I laughed.

“Not even close, dude. What the hell is going on? This is
crazy shit. What are we going to do?

I poured another shot and drank it, slamming the shot glass
on the counter. Butch gave me the eye, raising his eyebrow asking me to answer
him.

“We should gather some supplies, things we need to survive,
food, weapons, things like that. Then we need to get a car and head north to
your parent's place. They are out in the middle of nowhere and secluded, should
be safe out there.