Finding Her Read online

  Chronicles of the Infected

  Book One

  Finding Her

  by Rick Wood

  © Copyright Rick Wood 2018

  Cover by superawesomebookcovers.com

  Copy-edited by LeeAnn @ FirstEditing.com

  With thanks to my street team.

  No part of this book may be reproduced without express permission from the author.

  Dedicated to the memory of George A. Romero – without whom, zombies would have just been an undiscovered dream, rather than an inevitable fate.

  1

  The bottom half of his right leg may as well have been ripped off and discarded into a nearby bin. It was a stubborn limb that needn’t be there, yet it clung to his knee without purpose or meaning, like a recurring memory that would not fade.

  It was an annoyance. It was a burden. But most of all, it was a severe irritation when he was in a hurry. Quite frequently, Gus considered wielding a machete and just chopping the damn thing off.

  The leg’s ineptness had been an unwelcome present from the Taliban that saw him discharged from the army without so much as a thank you. A bullet from a Kalashnikov assault rifle was lodged deep within the dead tissue of his right calf muscle, and it was a bullet that no doctor had been brave enough to remove. The pain was ongoing, but had grown tolerable; in the way that one could get used to a constant itching that won’t go away. The only times he ever really noticed it was either when it hindered his speed, or when puss chose to seep out; which often happened at the most inconvenient of times.

  Wasn’t exactly a great conversation starter at a dinner party, was it?

  “Oh, Gus, just so you know, your leg is leaking again.”

  Pathetic.

  As he snarled at the dead weight slowing him down, he rushed through the high street toward his motorbike.

  Something was happening.

  He had no idea what exactly it was, but he knew it wasn’t good. His older brother had always been into zombie movies, and Gus had always mocked him, telling him he was watching an unrealistic pile of trash and would be better off watching something that actually made sense.

  How little he knew.

  He had witnessed enough atrocities within the last hour to fill a whole tour of Afghanistan.

  It had started small.

  An elderly lady had fallen as she stepped off the bus. As she lay there, her body had convulsed like a dead fish thrashing for life. A crowd then proceeded to gather. One person had announced he was a doctor, and leant in to take her pulse.

  Her eyes opened. A sudden jolt. A twisted expression, like she was full of energetic anger, like there was a savage mania rising within her. Cloudy drool trickled across her chin.

  She stared at his open throat stretching out before her. Her jaw ripped open, and her sparse remaining teeth clamped into the tasty neck of the doctor.

  The gathered crowd immediately dispersed. What had been enquiries of concern rapidly turned into shrieks of terror. Grimaces of sympathy and wishes to help warped into faces of innocents ensuring their own survival.

  The doctor had sprung to his feet within seconds. The professional, caring visage was replaced with a yellow-eyed, carnivorous monster. It was inhuman – that was the only way Gus could describe the creature that rose; inhuman.

  It sprinted, snarling as it ran.

  And boy, could it run.

  Gus had never seen a person run so fast. The doctor overtook innocent bystanders fleeing upon bicycles with the ease of a morning stroll. He’d bitten a nearby bike-enthusiast, who had gotten up and bitten a nearby child kicking a ball against the wall, who had gotten up and bitten a policeman trying to intervene.

  So many were attacked and ripped apart, yet each and every one of them stood back up. Never mind how much they had been ravaged; never mind what fell out of their open torsos or hung off their mutilated faces – they stood up, and looked to feed.

  Those people who had been murdered, brutalised, destroyed, ripped apart – they climbed to their feet and bestowed their fate upon others. Running, bloody drool soaking their chins, ignoring their missing intestines, not caring about their arm that flew away in the aerodynamic resistance of their speed.

  All they seemed to want was to feed – and feed they did.

  Gus had considered helping. With his military experience, he could have calmed the situation, maybe even prevented chaos. But in the time he had taken to consider this, chaos had already ensued.

  How had this happened? Just a moment before Gus was buying milk; now the street had turned into an orgy of violence. It spread so fast he hadn’t been able to make sense of it. He lived in a small town on the outskirts of London, with a post office where everyone knew the clerk’s name, with a Bargain Booze that recognised the underage teenagers who always tried to buy alcohol, to the local pub whose barman greeted Gus by name – all of it had turned into a decoration of barbarity. Blood splashed across the post office windows, a loose head smashed against the shutters of Bargain Booze, and a horde of infected had filled the pub and devoured everyone within it.

  The town centre had turned from a budding working-class community and a peaceful town of cohabitation to a free-for-all open buffet littered with pieces of residents who had known each other by face or name. No one running by foot could react quickly enough – and even that minority who did make a hasty getaway were eventually caught and butchered. A happy toddler nibbling on a lolly screeched as it bit into the throat of its father and bathed in its blood. A young girl passionately kissing her teenage lover abruptly found that kiss turning into a bite, and the skin of her boyfriend’s face was stuck in her sharp teeth. Even a baby suckling on its mother’s breast growled as its eyes turned and it sank its underdeveloped teeth into its loving parent, forcing her to yelp with tears as her child ripped her mammary gland clean off.

  Gus had only one thought on his mind.

  My family.

  Ignoring the searing pain of the bullet stuck inside his leg, he revved his motorbike into action and twisted through the streets, avoiding as much death and mayhem as he could. It was as if the entire civilisation had turned to madness. Cars beeped manically as they drove into each other, barely able to outrun the racing, rampaging creatures. Gus weaved in and out of wayward vehicles with as much precision and haste as his Marauder would allow him.

  Still, their faces circled his thoughts. Those he loved.

  My wife. My daughter.

  Probably barricaded in their family home.

  Once he reached the bypass, the numbers of these monsters grew sparse and he was able to avoid hitting any.

  One group of infected attempted to run after him. They almost kept pace they were so fast, but he lurched his motorbike forward and managed to lose them.With his spare hand, he dialled Janet’s number.

  “Janet? Janet?”

  “Gus! Please! Help us!”

  His body tensed. Terror consumed him, hairs on his arm stuck on end, his brow furiously perspiring.

  His wife. His childhood sweetheart.

  His four-year-old daughter.

  Janet.

  Laney.

  “Janet, are you okay?”

  “Have you seen the news? They are saying London has gone to madness. The army quarantined us. They are telling anyone still alive to leave the city we don’t have long!”

  Shit.

  He knew the military’s ruthless mindset well enough to know that they meant it. If London was the main hive of this mess, he knew they would simply shut the gates. And, to anyone who was left inside… well, may the Lord take pity upon their souls.

  “I’m on my way to you, Janet, is Laney there?”

  “Yes, she’s here.”

  “Hide. Take her and hide somewhere in the house, whatever
it takes, just–”

  “Gus!”

  Janet’s high-pitched scream pounded harshly against his eardrums, but despite the harsh ache against his ear, Gus did not move the phone away.

  “Janet? Janet?!”

  She did not respond.

  Her screams continued to echo, growing distant.

  “Janet!”

  The call ended.

  No…

  He would not let them down. He couldn’t. They were all he had.

  He would die before he let any harm come to them.

  He picked up his speed. He twisted the handles, forcing the bike to accelerate, swinging around the corners at such dangerous speed he surprised himself that he managed to keep balance.

  His calf stung, but he ignored it. He didn’t have the luxury of acknowledging pain.

  He passed his local neighbourhood, ignoring the loving family next door getting set upon by a group of undead youths.

  He brought his bike to a sudden stop, allowing it to collapse as he jumped off and ran across his porch.

  A lump grew in his throat. There were already so many infected visible through the smashed windows of his living room. Groaning. Searching. Clawing at one another to find the family hid within. They had descended upon his family home like flies upon shit.

  He reached under a garden gnome and took out a knife. Janet had told him he was ridiculous for being so paranoid, that no one from the Taliban was going to come hunting for him, and that he needed help.

  For the first time, he was glad she was wrong.

  The hallway was crowded with undead. He used his muscle weight to launch himself forward, forcing them aside like a bowling ball into stubborn pins. He snarled and screamed and wretched and growled as he dug his knife into one throat, into the skull of another, into the cheek of another.

  He tried to tread his way through, but there were so many, and they were piling on top of him.

  He swiped his knife back and forth, back and forth, repeatedly back and forth. He took out whoever he could, slicing throats, dislodging guts, and smearing the blood of their skulls over the loving family pictures he’d hung upon the wall.

  As he twisted his knife into another neck, he sent the heavy fist of his free hand into another face and climbed the stairs.

  “Janet!”

  All he could hear were snarls.

  Then he stopped. Stood still. Motionless.

  He saw her.

  Janet’s empty face as she stumbled out of the bedroom.

  Except, they were no longer Janet’s eyes.

  Her face was pale like theirs. Her cheek was missing, revealing a torn skull bone beneath the gap in her flesh. She limped forward, a mocking imitation of his awkward strut. Her pupils were yellow and her eyes were red.

  Behind her was a four-year-old girl.

  His four-year-old girl.

  Crawling across the floor. Both of her legs missing, entrails dragging behind her from her absent waist.

  “No…” he gasped.

  It couldn’t be true.

  He had arrived in time. He was sure of it. He must have. He must have.

  But there they were.

  Murdered. Ripped apart. Helpless.

  If only he’d have driven faster. Gotten to his motorbike sooner. It could have been seconds, that’s all, just seconds.

  If only his damn leg hadn’t held him back.

  Had his daughter’s legs been ripped off whilst she was alive?

  Was she forced to watch?

  Did his wife do it?

  Did his daughter have to watch as her own mother–

  No. No, she couldn’t have.

  It couldn’t be true…

  Just a few seconds earlier… If only…

  His wife. His childhood sweetheart. The woman he had loved since he was sixteen. The woman he had proposed to atop the hill where he had first confessed his love for her.

  His daughter. Conceived after years of trying.

  Their loving creation.

  Both clambering toward him with nothing but evil in their eyes, desperate to kill him, desperate to tear him apart.

  No.

  No, it can’t be.

  This is a fate worse than death.

  Just a few seconds, that’s all it would have taken. Just a few seconds more.

  He did the best thing he could for them.

  Wiping tears away on his sleeve, he slid his knife into the skull of his wife.

  He crouched beside his daughter. His loving, doting daughter, who had just learnt to read. Who had just learnt to add.

  Don’t do this… he thought. Don’t do this…

  He ignored his own protestations.

  He drove the knife into the back of his daughter’s skull.

  The rest of them burst through the door, their open hands grabbing for him.

  And even though he jumped out of the window, he left himself in that house with his family. His wife. His daughter. And the walls he had built around them.

  And although he survived, he didn’t. That day, he became the person who lived in a home with no mirrors because he couldn’t bear to look in one. That day, he decided forevermore to see everyone, and everything, as the enemy.

  That day, Gus Harvey both lived, and died.

  Six months later

  2

  London was tearing itself apart.

  Not metaphorically, not symbolically, and not in any way one may interpret a tired cliché – London was tearing itself apart, in the complete, literal meaning of the word. It was utter anarchy.

  For the undead it was a place of safety, where you would be squashed among many, fighting for the rare pieces of meat left in the quarantined zone like a pack of feral pigeons competing for torn pieces of bread; except that slice of bread was the flesh of the poor, helpless human who had managed to survive the city’s chaos long enough to simply die in that moment.

  Upon the onset of the zombie apocalypse the government had been quick to act, despite Parliament’s depleting numbers. Even though the highest-ranked members of Parliament had been eaten or transformed into the infected within days, they had still created well-kept and well-hidden plans for what to do in the event of a viral outbreak. Although the cause of the chaos was unknown, these plans were deemed competent enough to be put into action immediately.

  Part of this plan involved separating the central part of the outbreak from the rest of the country. In this case, that meant the capital city.

  London was the hive of the undead. Yes, the population of walking corpses existed across the country, but in more dense numbers; numbers the authorities had deemed more manageable. London, however, was home to the vast numbers of jaw-snapping, flesh-seeking, maggot-ridden, living undead. Within days, almost the entire living population of the city had been wiped out and replaced by hungry beasts with one instinct – to feed.

  There was only one solution:

  Get rid of London.

  Wooden walls were mounted and, although they shivered against the weight of the hundreds of thousands of bodies pushing against them, they stood sturdily enough to contain what could be contained.

  Outside of London had seen its own rising, but with more sparse populations, the death toll hadn’t been the same. You would likely cross a gang of them on the road whilst out driving, or even get chased down by one on the way home. People still died every day – but through being surprised by the few, not descended upon by the thousands.

  General Boris Hayes stood atop the wall, gazing pitifully upon the wretched faces that used to have a soul, and now did nothing but hunt and feed.

  He assumed they had caught his faint scent from afar and surged toward him, as they were now amassing in devastating quantities. They reached up, helplessly scraping for the face peering down at them, driven by nothing but their animalistic urges. Their bodies moved with a disjointed peculiarity, yet they travelled with the speed of exceptional sprinters. They pounded against the wall that quivered beneath Hayes, yet the
ir clambering hands did nothing to break or falter his hateful gaze.

  He would never be deterred by the enemy. Saddam Hussain never scared him. The Taliban never scared him. He could have come face-to-face with Bin Goddamn Laden and the entirety of Al Qaeda and he still would have laughed mockingly as he spat in their faces. He would die before he allowed the enemy to dent his pride.

  But this was something else.

  These undead creatures were not driven by a lust for power or a hatred of the West; they were driven by something far stronger. They were quick, robust, and determined to get their prey. They could smell him, sense him, perhaps even hear the blood pumping through his veins. Given the opportunity, they would sink their teeth in him, rip the skin from his bones, and feast upon his bloody entrails.

  On their own they were a formidable opponent. But as an army…

  It was staggering.

  Hayes peered into the city, down the streets, and he could not see the end of them. The city was bursting, full of them, hundreds of thousands snarling below him, craving his living flesh.

  The only thing Hayes could say against them is that they weren’t organised. But, with such numbers and such strength, they didn’t need to be.

  His radio hissed a crackle of static and a voice sounded through the speaker.

  “Hayes, are you receiving, over?”

  Hayes picked the radio off his belt and lifted it to his mouth. Only his arm moved. The rest of his body remained in his military at-ease stance, his feet shoulder-width apart, his left hand behind his back.

  “This is Hayes.”

  “General, we have eyes, we are ready to deploy, over.”

  “What’s the ETA?”

  “To get the bombs all coordinated over target and ready, we estimate detonation in T-minus two days six hours, over.”

  Two days.

  That’s how long it took them to arrange a bunch of explosives.

  “Two days?”

  “It’s the best we could do, over.”

  “Where’s our fire-power?”