The Infected Read online

  And yeah, I told you about my R8 – let me just pack a few things, pick up some hot companions for the trip and I will be there!

  Chris, stick in there mate. I’m sure you’ll get through it. Be in touch with any news.

  Take care,

  Sam

  If there are people out there reading these blogs, please keep Chris in your thoughts. If you are religious, please say a prayer. If you are not religious, it won’t hurt, will it?

  Sam

  11:01am, June 20

  Just thought I’d check in and let you know that I have still not heard anything more from Chris. I mailed him first thing this morning on the last juice from my battery, but haven’t got a response yet, not even a Read Receipt.

  I also tried calling him on his cell but it was off. I’m not too worried though as I’ve only really chatted to him twice on the phone – he prefers to keep it off because of the noise and some crazy theory of his that the infected can pick up on the cellular waves. But I think he may have been stoned when he mentioned that.

  Will let you know as soon as I hear anything. Prayers and thoughts would still be appreciated.

  Cheers

  Sam W

  3:35pm, June 20

  Still nothing. I’m starting to get seriously worried.

  One bright ray of sunshine amidst the gloom – my herb/veggie garden has sprung its first bud (probably not the right term, but then again I am not a gardener). But I can see some growth coming through in the area where I planted the spring onions – awesome. I’ve been watering every day and making sure that no birds dig in the ‘bed’ so I’m pretty chuffed, and pleasantly surprised, that I might actually have a self sustaining system going on here. I gave it some thought the night after I did all my planting and was wondering whether I would have been better off doing all the planting in a bed downstairs? Now after all of this that has been happening to Chris, I am glad that access to my garden is right here, not out in the open, but in the future I may look into the possibility of adding a supplementary garden downstairs… if my crops are edible.

  That’s it for now – checking my mails every hour on the hour to see if I’ve heard from Chris. Will let you know.

  Sam

  7:43pm, June 21

  Bad news this morning. Very bad news…

  From: Chris

  Sent: 21 June 2009 05:39 AM

  To: Sam Ward

  Subject: Adios Amigo

  Sam. Samuel. Sammy. Brother, my time is coming.

  Sorry that I haven’t been in touch since Friday, I just couldn’t fucking bring myself around to it to be honest. The end is near my friend, and I fear that even if you get that hot R8 around to my place in the next few hours, it will be too late.

  These fuckers have been slowly but steadily coming round to my place since I last mailed you – my latest estimate? 200. Maybe 225. Eventually the weight of the fucks trying to climb over the fence got too much and it gave way, collapsing and letting them come in quicker than they had been able to before. Like I told you, my place is a double storey, but with no ground access – there is a place below mine, a single storey unit. So from the ground level you have to go up some stairs which I had barricaded, pretty well I thought. But I guess when there’s a couple of hungry zombie fuckers after you, you can’t secure yourself well enough.

  So they got through that yesterday morning, from my vantage point at the top level peering out of my bathroom window, my slap dash security gate/dining room table/door thingy, gave way, again because of the sheer weight of them fucks. So then they all crammed up the stairs, probably only about eight or nine of them (the stairs that is, not the zombies – there were about 60 of them then) and only about a metre wide, but they crammed in there. It reminded me of a email I got of some Chinese or Japanese train station where the police literally squeezed people into the trains, pushing them in from behind so that the doors could close. Crazy guys. The Chinese and the zombies.

  So more and more of them have been joining the back of the queue since then, trying to push their way to the front, reaching and clawing at my place even though they are still like 30 or 40 metres away. And all this means that they were then now just outside my front door. Well they were for a couple of hours. I’d barricaded myself upstairs with whatever I could – the door is secured by a combination of dining room table chair legs nailed to the door post. Then my computer cabinet. And then the bathroom door which I pulled off and wedged into place. Then a couple of side tables. And two 5kg weights… anything will help.

  I heard the fuckers breaking through into the lower level at just after 6pm yesterday. The sun was just going down, I was sipping on my third last beer and I could hear the dead fucks tripping over my bar stools – that used to be where I sat when I had breakfast at the little counter in my kitchen. They are pretty quiet these zombies… there must have been close on a hundred of them streaming into my house – were I have lived, slept, eaten, got fucked, been fucked... Apart from the odd plate breaking or couch being dragged across the new laminate flooring that I installed only two months ago in the lounge (dude, it’s a lot harder than they make it out to be. If you survive this and one day think of putting laminate flooring in a room in your new zombie-proof house, don’t. Get someone else to do it for you), they hardly make a sound. Except for that breathing. With so many of them just what, two metres, maybe one metre below me, it’s like a fucking pulse. It’s hoarse. It’s heaving. It’s fucking horrible.

  So I thought to myself, okay Chris, you’ll just have to live like this until you fucking eat all of your food and die of hunger. The steps up to the top level are barricaded too, by the way, with a bed, chairs, TV’s, an outside table and chairs, a Weber braai, basically anything I could find. So I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be able to come up through there, and even if they did, I have my gun to at least kill a couple. But then I realized that they’re not coming that way. Excellent. Excellent! Excellent?

  No fucking way is it excellent… I heard the glass shattering on the lower level patio door at about 11pm – it actually woke me up. Believe it or not, I managed to actually fall asleep when there are a couple dozen blood thirsty, flesh craving zombie below me.

  I laughed… yeah, go back outside you thick fucks. Then it dawned on me… The way they got over the fence. What if they managed to do that from my bottom balcony to my top one? Where I only have glass doors and a glass window to fucking protect me? So I quietly opened the door to the balcony and crept out into the freezing fucking cold night air. I crawled slowly up to the balustrade and peered over. There were twenty pairs of dead eyes looking up at me. There was a collective fucking gasp as they saw me and they started scratching at the wall trying to get at me. I went back in slowly and locked the door (as if that would fucking help), and thought to myself – alright, well that’s the end of my sleep then.

  So I have been lying here awake since then, listening to them clawing at the concrete of the walls and the wooden pergola that provides bugger-all shade on that balcony, waiting for the first hand to appear and grab the balustrade. And it did three minutes ago. A scrawny white hand with a swallow tattooed between the thumb and forefinger. The owner’s other hand came up a bit later – this one only notable for a fucking horrible wedding ring – looks like a knuckle buster with a big green stone on it. What a chop.

  His head has just appeared now. You know the lead singer from Aha? Well he looks fucking nothing like that! More like that Robert Carlisle chap that acted as that psycho in Trainspotting. Except for a balding head and half his teeth missing. There are more hands now, three pairs, and a large women’s head just made an appearance. Dude, I better say my goodbyes. I don’t know how much longer I have. It’s been good knowing you this way – I have a feeling that we may have had a good couple of decent nights out if we had met back when the world was just a mad world, not a completely fucked one.

  Now I never get fucking sentimental or anything, but thanks for being there these last two
weeks. It’s made this inevitable end a wee bit easier.

  And dude, if you get out, like out of here, out of this fucking place with these fucking zombies, and get down to Bloemfontein and its safe, please do me a favour. Would you be able Shit – the Robert Carlisle dude is almost over onto the balcony. I gotta go. Peace dude, and don’t let these fuckers win!

  Catch you on the flipside.

  Chris

  There it is… I just read it again as I copied and pasted it here, and it sent shivers down my spine. Again. I can’t really expect the best, but knowing him – well, as well as you can know someone when you have never even seen them in person – I reckon Chris is going to go out – or went out – blazing with a smile on his face and his gun in his hand. And I reckon I know what his last word was… it starts with an ‘F’ if you need a clue.

  So in tribute to my cyber mate Chris, FUCK.

  Sam

  5:16pm, June 24

  Hi. Sorry that I haven’t posted in the last few days. To be honest though, you are probably lucky. You didn’t miss much and I wasn’t that great company anyways. The foreboding sense of doom that had been swarming around the last few weeks totally engulfed me after I heard from Chris. Again, it just seems like everyone I have ever known is dead, has recently died or is close to dying. I don’t want to get into it too much, but after wallowing in self pity and shedding a shite load of tears over the last few days, I think that I am at peace with what is happening around me. I am Will Smith. I am legend. Okay, not really…

  But I remember watching that movie and thinking, “Hey, that would actually be pretty cool. I reckon I could do that.” I could be the only person alive – I like my own company. And the same with that movie Castaway with Tom Hanks where his plane crashed and he was the lone survivor. Being stranded on a desert island wouldn’t be too bad. Apart from no one to have sex with. I could see myself enjoying that – the stranded on the island bit – I am seriously horny all the time now… the next hot infected girl that comes my way… I’m kidding. But they’re only movies. Made up. This isn’t actually that fun. An experience nonetheless, but no fun. But I’m over it – whatever happens, will happen. If I get surrounded by the infected overnight, then so be it. If I never hear from my Mom again, of course I will miss her deeply and will mourn her, but if it happens, then okay. If I never find Lil or hear from her, then I just hope that… that it was quick. No pain.

  I am here, I am alive, I am growing my own food. I can get through this.

  Take care and be positive.

  Sam W

  7:48pm, June 26

  It rained today. WTF? In the middle of winter!? As if it hadn’t been cold enough already. I was sitting on the kitchen counter watching two of the infected ambling side by side, even though they seemed oblivious of one another. One was old, probably in his sixties – he was wearing a black and white flannel shirt and the remains of what looked like cargo pants (apart from the shirt he might have been a pretty cool and ‘with it’ old dude. I mean, I was wearing cargo pants too, although mine were camouflage – one nil to me old man). His companion, definitely not his wife because she looked more than half his age… but in these times (well actually, those times), I guess you can never be too sure. Anyway, she was wearing a denim mini-skirt, one brown boot which I am sure used to be white and a T-shirt which read “Dolphins are just gay sharks”. She also had a seriously mangled right hand. I counted a couple of times but could only see three fingers at the most – there was something dangling to the one side but I am sure that that was just infected skin tissue. She held it close to her side, an indication, I think, that the infected could still feel pain, and she kept it as still as possible and I could see blood dripping from it even though I was pretty far away.

  About fifteen minutes before the odd couple came into view I thought that I had heard thunder. I’d been daydreaming about something and may actually have drifted off (you know when you are just about to fall asleep and you snap out of it? You had been thinking about something for ages, maybe in a subconscious sense, and when you come around you can’t remember a damn thing of what you had been thinking? I’m sure that that’s were all the best ideas in the world come from – being able to remember what you had been thinking about just before you fall asleep.) Well anyways, I think I was in that place when the thunder disturbed me, although I had serious doubts about it being thunder. It was a miserable, overcast, dreary day, but surely it wouldn’t rain in winter? Sure, global warming is a bitch, but it couldn’t rain here in June in Jo’burg, could it?

  But it did. As the old man and young lady trundled along next to each other, the rain started to fall, slow at first but gradually getting harder. They stopped in their tracks and eventually acknowledged each other’s presence with a glance to their sides. Then, seriously unexpectedly, they both let out what was at first a low, grumbling howl, which then escalated into a full blown, ear shattering wail. It sent shivers down the back of my neck. And my arms. And then I heard similar screams coming from all around me. I had goosebumps everywhere.

  The two that I had been watching then broke out into a run – well as much of a run as they could manage – and headed for shelter, a carport in a house across the road from my complex where a Toyota Hilux still stood, door open, indicator long dead from a flat battery due to the engine running, and the gate wide open. The owner must have been in the middle of arriving home one day, getting ready to be welcomed by his wife, maybe with a cold beer in her hand and the warm smell of a delicious roast bursting from the kitchen. Maybe he would have sat down with the paper and caught up with the happenings of the day, or if he had kids, spent the last few hours of winter sunshine pushing them on their swings in the back garden or playing hide-and-go-seek in amongst the tall trees. But he didn’t. He was probably unexpectedly attacked from behind by one, maybe two, maybe even six or seven of the infected, and bitten, mauled, maybe even partially eaten before he died. And now two of the infected were using his carport for shelter from the rain.

  The old dude was haphazardly trying to dry himself while the mini-skirt girl was trying to do the same but with only one hand. I watched them as a stream of rain from the street slowly inched its way down the brick driveway towards the two. Their eyes grew bigger as they stood, mesmerised by the stream of water that was growing in length and steadily gathering pace. The old man, showing a spring in his step which belied his years (and letting out an ear aching scream which belied his gender), nudged the girl out the way as he jumped onto the bonnet of the car parked next to what would have been the Hilux’s spot, an almost metallic turquoise Toyota Corolla – the family obviously liked that make of car.

  Mini-skirt shrieked. I don’t know whether it was aimed at Old Dude or the fast approaching water, but she shrieked nonetheless and clambered onto the car, making a meal of it and slipping a couple of times. But she did eventually get on, and just as the stream of water, well, by that time it had broken up into three streams, reached the car and disappeared into its shadow. As the odd couple stood gingerly on the bonnet of the horribly coloured car, I found myself thinking…hey, they don’t like water. They hate it. In fact, they are absolutely petrified of it. I started praying for more and more rain. Not only would it be good for my veggie garden, but it also seemed – and I had the evidence right in front of me – that the infected are scared of water.

  Interesting.

  Sam

  4:32pm, June 27

  Hi there bloggers – if there are any of you still out there. My email has been quiet. And when I say quiet, that means that I have not received anything for days. Not even junk mail or spam, which I am sure would, like cockroaches, survive even the end of the world.

  I’ve been thinking today. A lot. After yesterday’s rain (which lasted for less than an hour – today is a typical Highveld winter day – deep blue sky, not a cloud in sight and not a breath of wind). But I’ve been thinking that when the rains come I’ll make my move. For Bloemfontein.

 
; If there is a period of extended rain (and I am not sure how I will know that it will be an extended period because I have not seen a weather forecast since sometime in April). But if say, just for speculation sake, there is a week of rain – and I’m not expecting it anytime soon, maybe September at the earliest – then it should be safe enough for me to get out of Johannesburg and head towards Bloemfontein without being chased by a horde of the infected. Well at least I hope so. I don’t expect there to be many of them once I leave the confines of urban Gauteng, so I should be safe as soon as I get out of ‘town’ and then, in my R8 (I still smile whenever I think of ‘my’ car parked downstairs), I’d be there in a jiffy. Shit… that’s something my Dad used to say. In a jiffy…

  Sorry about that. Um, where was I? Oh yes. So as soon as the rains come I’ll head for, hopefully, a safe retreat in the middle of the Free State. I still search the web occasionally looking for any info about this… place… but nothing concrete has come up. I reckon that I’ll still try – I mean, I need a change of scenery for starters – I am usually bored out of my mind and I am so tired lately, oddly from doing nothing, that I sleep a good 10 hours a night and may nap for two or three hours during the day – usually in half an hour or hour bursts – that I think a change of scenery may be just what I need.