Infected Freaks (Book 2): The Echo of Decay (3 page)

Thank God
, he thought turning away from the phantom sound. Then, he noticed a small glimmer of ambers, a dying campfire smoking in the back of the bus.

“Who are you?” he asked, facing the hazy shape of a tiny boy. It appeared someone had been living in the wreck. The shadow stirred about in the web of fungi, and the sound of the broken glass pressed against his boots. “Don’t make me shoot.”

***

Outside the wreck, Emme inched on her heels in the back of the Blazer. Touching her hearing aids, she turned to face the dense edge of the forest. She couldn’t see them, but her hearing aids were ringing. “The infected are coming.” Her tiny voice carried to Hunter and Sam, but she didn’t believe Abraham could hear her inside the bus.

Emme looked up and saw heavy rain clouds brewing like an old enemy. “The daylight, it’s gone,” she whispered, unable to process the circumstances. One instant the mountains were covered in sunshine, and the next, it was nothing but darkness. She knew it was the sun keeping the things trapped in dark places. Now it was gone.

“Sam, get the Blazer ready to go,” she heard her brother call out. She watched Hunter stare at the forest and snarl.

“Grandpa, get out!” Hunter yelled, moving closer to the wreck.

Emme tossed the keys to Sam and felt a little better when Sam gave it a twist. The exhaust pipe blasted out a thick, dense burp of smoke as the tires squealed. Emme wanted to leave; she needed to get away from this terrible sound.

***

Abraham struggled to make out the faint sounds amongst the chaos inside the overturned bus. Nevertheless, he was more concerned about what lurked in the shadows. After several tense seconds, a small boy with bright eyes scrambled forward, kicking and screaming at the glowing ambers of a camp fire. The boy’s skin was covered in charcoal and his clothing hung in shambles. He must have been living in the bus for a while.

“Are you bitten?” Abraham asked as his weak heart hammered away in his chest. Out of the blue, the boy with barren eyes flew forward, knocking the pistol from his hand.

“Dr. John,” the boy wailed as he maneuvered through Abraham and toward the exit like a frenzied monkey.

“Stupid boy,” Abraham muttered. He felt around the floor, and when he found the pistol grip, he snatched it tightly, then tore back toward the exit. Because of his size, he couldn’t move as fast as the tiny boy. Pushing and shoving, he stumbled. “Get back here,” he said, creasing his brow. It was too late the boy was already exiting the bus.

Then he felt something grip his forearm, and when he saw one of the dead passenger’s mouth open and poise for a bite, he fired without hesitation.

The muzzle flash blinded him as he fell back in a tangle of unanimated, brainless bodies. It felt like they were trying to drown him.
These freaks are already dead,
he reminded himself. Clambering up and then falling on all fours, he scrambled back, kicking at the infected woman’s robust jaw. The bullet had taken part of her left ear. Desperate, he understood he needed to get out of the bus in a hurry. Fighting in the small, dark space was a sure way to get killed.

***

Lunging out of the bus, the wild boy kicked and swung his arms. “Dr. John,” the boy said over and over, tearing out chunks of his oily black hair. He was in a manic rage.

“What the hell is this?” Hunter shrieked.

Emme wasn’t sure if the boy was infected or just crazy. “Get Grandpa,” she shrieked in shock, hanging out of the passenger door. She couldn’t see what happened in the bus, but she knew Abraham was still inside. “Grandpa, are you alright?” She shuddered as only a single grunt escaped the bus. “Do something,” she yelled to her brother.

Then, the sound of the infected freaks behind them stole the moment. The wail was getting so high-pitched she screamed as she tore out her hearing aids. She pictured a cave or something big with the infected hunched over, eagerly waiting for their time to overrun them. To the right, a band of fowl flapped their wings and flew away squawking. “Here they come!”

In the distance between the trees, the first of the nasty creatures appeared. They scurried toward the highway buzzing and breathing foul spores.

Emme looked to Hunter and saw him dumbfounded with the strange boy. Then, Sam hit the gas in a panic. Sam’s knee-jerk reaction brought the front bumper of the Blazer into the tail of the bus. The force sent Emme reeling back and forth, fighting for balance.

“I’m sorry,” Sam stuttered, reversing the vehicle with a jolt. But the dark-skinned girl’s apology offered no comfort to Emme as she watched the bus spin slow and steady with her grandpa still trapped inside.

“Hunter,” she screamed. It was all she could do.

***

The sudden motion of the spinning bus forced Abraham to his knees. The jerk also brought the infected women right on top of his back. Twisting away, he hammered his boots against her face. Part of her jawline splintered under the force and seemed to shock her enough to give him more time.

At that moment, pockets of fungus caked over the broken windows popped like a zit. The sudden clouded light revealed the lady’s dreadful face of boils and folds of mold. She was dressed in red silky panamas and he couldn’t help but think that the men in yellow must have come for her in the middle of the night. The sudden change gave the corpse a jolt. She lunged on top of Abraham opening and closing her mouth inches from his face.
I can’t die like this.

As the abomination screamed, Abraham pistol whipped her in the teeth, smashing her rotten bones. The continuous rotating motion made him dizzy. He punched at her bleeding gums as he reached around, trying to find balance and safety. But most of all, he tried to stay alive. Abraham heard the frantic voices of his grandchildren. He felt a second wind as he jammed his pistol in the infected women’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Nothing was going to keep him from protecting his grandchildren.

***

“Get Grandpa,” Emme said to her brother. “Hunter, do it.” She looked back over her shoulder and saw the ground crawling in scurrying dead.

She heard Hunter asking the wild boy if he was infected. She wanted to tell her brother if he was, he would be fighting for his life.
Who’s stupid now?
The torn shirt of the odd boy was flaked in dry blood. Dabs of moldy flesh crumbled about with each stomp the boy took. Emme didn’t know what to do, but she wasn’t leaving without Grandpa.

A second gunshot erupted in the guts of the bus. Emme shifted her concern toward the shell of the vehicle, thinking only of her grandfather. Then she watched something covered in flakes of filth emerge from the bus door facing the sky. She watched Hunter take aim. Her swirling mind wondered if the awful sight was similar to watching a natural birth. “Don’t shoot,” she said, able to recognize her grandpa.

Hunter lowered his rifle and looked back. “The infected are coming,” he said, pointing back.

***

Abraham brushed off a cord of foul secretion and jumped off the slow-moving bus. He listened to Hunter ask the furious wild boy if he was infected.

The boy yowled. “Dr. John!”

The shrill sound of buzzing forced Abraham to make a tough choice. He could leave the strange boy. But the infected freaks would tear him apart. He could take the boy and risk contamination, if the boy was infected.

“Dammit!” Abraham shrieked as his fist plowed the temple of the wild boy screaming that same name over and over. The hit was a clean blow. “Help me get him to the car,” Abraham slurred, shaking in adrenaline.

“We don’t have time,” Emme howled, fidgeting in the back seat.

Abraham turned back and saw a wave of infected freaks breaking the plain of the asphalt twenty feet back.

“You damn fool,” she muttered, bursting into tears. It amazed Abraham how much she sounded like him.

His heart raced as he struggled to move the boy. He stared at the Blazer and then back to the infestation of corpses buzzing like a swarm of devil bees. Hunter pulled the boy up into the front seat as Abraham gave a final push. The vehicle squealed as it shook from the sudden rush of gas. Abraham climbed up and in as Sam steered off the highway and back up on the other side.

“Watch out,” blurted Emme.

“Shit,” Abraham said, pulling the passenger door closed. Behind him, the first surge of infected ran around the bus and fingered the tailgate of the moving Blazer. Sam slammed the brakes and Abraham squirmed as the undead spattered against the back. Their awful faces pressed up against the glass like a group of dead flies and then peeled back. “Keep moving!”

As quick as a fox, Sam pressed the gas again and maintained control of the wheel.

“Faster,” Abraham muttered as he gazed out the rear. A dozen more infected freaks lunged at the side of the vehicle from different angles. Their nasty fingers ran down the car as they slipped behind.

“I said faster!” Abraham bellowed at the girl.

Sam gave the vehicle everything it had and this allowed them to out run the swarming freaks. The rest of the horde swarmed the highway, giving chase. It was a race the monsters wouldn’t win.

The highway was quiet compared to Abraham’s constant-running mind. The vehicle drove by countless mountain homes and propane ranches written in the same white paint with the same frightful words.
INFECTED! STAY AWAY
. The farther they went, the more his chest weighed him down. In his mind’s eye, he remembered the clustered faces of the dead in the shadowy bus. There was the crazy woman who attacked him, dressed in nightclothes spoiled in the alien mold. He blew her brains out in an instant of absolute adrenaline. There were numerous strangers with various bullet holes already in their infected brains. They sat still in the mesh of decay, their cold stare itching at his investigative thoughts. Then, there was the wild child, the boy who kept repeating the same damn name.

Abraham frowned and looked back at the odd little boy, tied in bungee cords and sleeping off the hard hit. He couldn’t have been older than Emme, judging by his small size.
More teens
, he growled.

After tense moments of silence, his granddaughter exhaled. “So are you going to tell us?”

“Tell you what?” Abraham questioned. He pushed his frameless glasses back up the slope of his marred nose and waited for his sassy granddaughter to speak her bold mind.

“Who was in the bus?”

Abraham tugged at his heavy coat sleeve.

“Hello?” she said, waving her hand. “Earth to Grandpa.”

Closing his eyes, he pictured the dead faces on the bus. They were fractured and brainless. Then Abraham’s fear vanished with a half-smile. “Those people were long expired. Most of them had been shot in the head before the bus crashed.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Emme said.

He saw the trickle of tears falling down her face. The pain in her quaking features hurt Abraham. “No,” he replied, unable to blink. “That bus wasn’t the one that visited our farm. I think it must be the same people, but those corpses have been dead for weeks. That crash happened a while back. So no, it wasn’t them.”

“What about the boy?” Hunter snapped.

“The boy’s in shock. I’d bet a container of fuel his parents were one of those dead things in the bus. He must have been camping in there since the crash. He had a damn camp fire in the back by the looks of it. I don’t know how he survived.”

“Whatever his problem, he’s still a risk,” Hunter said.

Abraham paused. “The boy is a menace, but we can’t leave him. We must never become animals.”

“Grandpa, if he screams, all of the infected freaks in the Rocky Mountains will be after us.”

Abraham didn’t like the idea of keeping something he couldn’t tame. But what choice did he have? “What would you have me do?” Abraham knew Hunter was right. His grandson was getting smarter by the second. Nonetheless, Abraham couldn’t leave the offbeat boy for the monsters of his dying world. “Let’s cross that bridge later.”

Hunter blew out his cheeks. His shoulders sagged under the weight of what his grandfather had ordered. It was apparent he had a bad feeling about their newest member.

“So where are we heading?” Sam questioned. “The clouds are getting thick.”

A faded green sign hung on the highways desolate edge.
Fairplay
, it read, the cheap metal holding it up curved and bent as if a truck had slammed into it long ago.

“Only a few more miles to town,” he replied, unsure of his plan. Abraham had a bad feeling about traveling through such a big mountain town. His guts told him to ignore the blooming smoke that seemed to have permanently settled in the sky above the high county town. Glancing back, he knew several other ways that avoided Fairplay, but it would eat up the rest of his limited fuel well before the next town. He needed to stay on the highways to conserve gasoline. This was the only way he was going to reach Denver by dusk. “The city’s got fuel and an old friend.”

“Who do you know in Fairplay?” Hunter asked, coughing into his fist. He contained his asthma with his half-empty inhaler. Two puffs seemed to give him instant relief. Abraham worried what would happen when the albuterol ran out.

“Bob Hatchet,” Abraham replied. “Assuming he didn’t get chewed up and spit out by the infected freaks.”

“You think he’s alive?” Hunter asked.

“Bob’s got a lot of guns and a dozen men working for him. If anybody made it, it has to be Bob.”

“No, no, no,” Emme whined, as she leaned forward. “Bob is a terrible man. Remember he was selling drugs to Uncle Benjamin?” She shrugged out of her purple hoodie she’d worn over her black sheath blouse. “Grandma told me bad men before all of this only turn worse. She said they spoil like milk.”

“Have you seen the world?” Hunter asked his little sister. “Bob’s the only chance we’ve got at getting back our family. We need a tough guy like that on our side.” Hunter was too excited to see Bob. This troubled Abraham. He knew what Bob was capable of and didn’t want that kind of mentality to rub off on Hunter.

Some business-minded man had purchased a large plot of land and took the simple town of Fairplay and turned it into an industry right before the war. It was like he knew what was coming. Dozens of apartment complexes were built to house the expected rush of war refugees. However, many of the buildings remained vacant. Only a small amount of migrants came to Colorado. For years the town was only a grocery store, hardware store, and pizza parlor. Now, the town was a web of empty buildings nested in the Rocky Mountains.

“We don’t have a choice,” Abraham said. “Maybe Bob will have food, cold beer, and some fuel.”
Maybe he knows something about the men in yellow,
he thought, plotting his desires.

***

Abraham appeared sleep deprived when he took the wheel from Sam at the edge of town. His soiled coat and jeans were disheveled, his white hair a mess, and his boots stomped in filth. Still, he pressed the gas as the Blazer entered the outskirts of Fairplay. On the left and right were a series of mandatory evacuation notices on each of the abandoned buildings. Two burned police cars formed a wedge in the middle of the road. Abraham cringed as he witnessed the skeletal remains of what once must have been a police officer sitting in the front of one of the charred vehicles.

“What happened here?” Emme asked.

“Looks like these folks had some sort of notice to evacuate. The evacuation signs are the same ones posted up at the farm,” Abraham replied.

“This is a good sign,” Hunter added.

“How is this good?” questioned Abraham. “The town is destroyed.”

“But the evacuation means people got out. We only need to find where they’re staying.”

“You might be right,” Abraham agreed. “Some of these vehicles might have fuel. Let’s check.”

Abraham was upset the check produced nothing. He gathered his party and kept the vehicle rolling deeper into town. He studied the several warnings painted in big, bold letters across the tops of some of the buildings. All of the warnings suggested outsiders should stay away. Chain-linked fences that must have been put in place to keep the infected out were now trampled down in several places. For obvious reasons, he believed the town must have tried to set up its own quarantine and failed.

His face turned pallid as he watched hundreds of birds feast upon the festering body parts left to spoil in the daylight. There were dozens of brainless bodies blooming in an array of mold stung about.

“It must have been a massacre,” Abraham said, rolling his tense shoulders. “But the fungus continues to thrive in the human tissue even after the true death.”

“I don’t understand,” Hunter said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

Abraham observed the misty cloud of spores orbiting the sick growths. “The fungus is still searching for carriers. The brain is dead, but the flesh is perfect for supporting the fungus.” He blew out hard as the Blazer crept farther down the damaged road. A few of the blood-eyed birds fluttered their wings and gave a harsh, grating sound. Abraham had to turn away to keep his composure after witnessing the awful sight.

“Don’t look,” Abraham said to Emme, wiping the pouring sweat from his crumpled brow. He wanted to avert his gaze, but the picture of death called out to the old man.

“Do you think Grandma is alive?” Emme asked. “What about my mom and dad?”

Abraham didn’t expect his sweet little granddaughter to understand the trouble of not knowing.
I have to believe my family is alive.
“They’re safe. The people in the yellow chemical suits took them somewhere free from the infected. We only need to find them.” He didn’t know what to say about his missing son, Emme’s father, or her mother. So he remained tight-lipped.

After a few more blocks, he tapped the brakes. Stacks of abandoned vehicles threaded with barbed wire blocked the road. “This is the work of Bob,” he said, unbuttoning his collar and letting his neck breathe. The forest green color of his flannel infused with the flakes of gore gave it a nasty mud color. The putrid shade did little to calm his nerves as he searched for a different route.

“Let’s go back,” Emme pleaded.

Abraham regarded the faces of the long-abandoned buildings in the distance supplemented by eerie alleyways. Numerous windows were broken and the furnishings meant for the inside were thrown about in the streets. Somebody had set up a series of blockades. “If only we didn’t need fuel.”

“What if Bob killed all of those people?” she said, turning back to the flock of dining birds behind them.

“Bob is bat-shit crazy, but this isn’t him. Those people died fighting the infected.” Abraham didn’t believe his own words. He knew Bob was a dark man with sinister beliefs.
Things have changed,
he thought taking in the daunting words of his granddaughter.

“Whoever killed them did it to stop the infection,” Hunter said, sitting up straight. “Look! Over there is a narrow path big enough for the vehicle. I bet it leads to Bob’s garage.” The ruined sight didn’t seem to scare Hunter, at least not on the surface. The boy looked over to Sam, and then turned when she looked back at him. Abraham could all but hear his grandson’s heart beat quickening at the sight of Sam.

“This is a well-fortified defense,” Abraham said. “But is it to keep out the infected freaks or keep them trapped in?”

Nobody answered because nobody knew.

The Blazer rolled onward through the serpentine of abandoned furniture and poorly erected, improvised fences. He felt like he was being forced into an ambush. Abraham weaved the vehicle through the broken part of town, and after a sharp curve, he came to a tight space. A single ramp led up and down. Abraham kept the vehicle rolling through the constricted space. His eyes searched the high walls for men with guns. But only the smooth bricks of the buildings greeted him.

“Do you think this place is abandoned?” Sam inquired.

“It looks that way. Bob wouldn’t want people to come into his town. I think the place is meant to scare survivors away. But then again, we saw the smoke rising from the road, so maybe Bob doesn’t care.”

The vehicle navigated deeper into the network of buildings, traveling the only path possible. There was only one way in and one way out and it was a tight squeeze. A cement truck on cinder blocks was surrounded by boards blocking one of the routes, a stack of Dumpsters blocked another path, and the last alley was obstructed by a pile of tables and poorly wielded gates. For an end-of-the-world scenario, Abraham thought the defenses were stout.

“I bet the dead are watching from the windows,” Emme said, running her hands through her pockets. Next to her, the peculiar boy snored in a deep sleep. It was hard to fathom how the boy was still out cold.

“We won’t be long,” Hunter said as if he were the boss. “Get some information and some fuel, and with any luck be in Denver before sunset.”

Abraham ignored the boy as the growl of the tires brought the Blazer to a sudden stop. The maze ended at a long building connecting to a lofty series of warehouses. The first floor windows were all boarded up with the words
NO TRESPASSING
painted in red.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Sam said.

Killing the rhythm of the engine, he had a growing suspicion they would have to walk the rest of the way. Muttering curses under his breath, he cracked open the door and made his way to a shoddy ladder running up the side of the long buildings. The residence didn’t look inviting. Dropping down to a knee, he picked up a few 55.6 casings and then looked up toward the roofs.

“What about the roll door?” Hunter asked, slipping out of the vehicle after his grandfather.

Abraham gave it a lift. “It’s locked.” He looked up toward the roof again and then back to the vehicle. Smears of infected bodies being dragged toward the roll down door gave him pause. “Whoever is running this town has been killing the infected at this choke point.” He pointed his finger back to the door. “And it looks like they’re dragging their corpses inside.”
This has to be Bob.

Abraham felt a set of unseen eyes drilling his back. Nevertheless, when he turned to look, he saw only Sam kneading at her wrists. She looked charming in his daughter Alison’s fancy pea-coat.

“Shall we have a look?” Hunter asked.