The Infected Read online

  So I felt more comfortable with them thinking I was still in there in the roof somewhere as I made my way across the golf course. I only came across one of them on my way to the other side, a suburb called Linksfield, but you’d know that, wouldn’t you? And the guy I ran into was no match for my spade...

  I have been living in around the King David Primary School since then, scrounging for food, supplies and weapons in the nearby shops and restaurants. Dude, the roads are a fucking mess here! There are cars everywhere! My plan was to grab a car and drive to Bloemfontein, but not yet, not here...

  This morning on my early morning forage – I think this fucking cold makes them slower, and they don’t really come out until later in the day – I came across this internet cafe, Nico’s

  Lounge it’s called, and luckily they have a UPS that I have used to write this, and fucking get this, make myself a hot cappuccino! Luckily I remembered your email address, otherwise this would have been a long, pointless email to no-one in particular.

  But the UPS isn’t going to last forever, so I better end off here before it cuts me off. But hey, I am alive and fucking kicking, and who knows? Maybe we’ll both get to Bloemfontein?

  If I can get hold of you again, I will, but if not, safe travelling pal!

  No fuckers are going to take us down!

  Cheers

  Chris

  2:44pm, July 16

  Great news on the veggie garden front – things are sprouting up left, right and centre (left being lettuce, right is where I planted the spring onions and centre = tomatoes). I can’t wait to sample some fresh food, it’s been ages – I could devour the leaves and stems right now! But I’ll wait... Maybe two weeks or three weeks down the line I will be able to eat something that I have grown for myself – that will be awesome!

  It’s been pretty damn quiet around here lately since Baldy and Big Boobs had their fight. That evening three of the infected found their way in (or maybe they were already in?) and picked at her – gouged out her eyes, bit off her tongue, chewed on her toes and fingers, but she’s still mostly there – the smell when I open the balcony door is testament to that… maybe that’s why the veggies are growing so well… gross… Other than that I haven’t seen any of the infected at such close proximity for a while. Baldy has, however, drawn quite a large crowd of mice, birds, insects and even another cat. Ironic, isn’t it? She died fighting over the right to eat a cat, now a skinny, malnourished excuse for a cat is licking her ocular cavities. It’s odd how things work themselves out.

  Okay then, almost time for me to try and take Middleborough into the unchartered territory of European football – wish me luck.

  Take care

  Sam W

  4:17pm, July 19

  I am seriously in my Mom’s bad books. Why, you may ask? Well, because I told her about my plan to drive to Bloemfontein and try find this, in her words, “mythical place”. I am sure that she is just being maternal, but she shot down my idea as if I was a fat kid and I had just asked her whether I could have another jelly-filled doughnut. “Absolutely no way, my boy,” she had snapped when I told her my plan yesterday during our daily call. I hadn’t meant to tell her yet, but there is not really much else to talk about these days.

  “I forbid for you to go,” she had continued. “Well, Mom, there’s not really much you can do to stop me,” I had replied before biting my tongue and instantly regretting what had left my mouth. Then she cried. A lot. “Mom, please,” I eventually said. “I am going to go insane if I don’t anyways. You at least have people with you – I haven’t seen another person… well another normal, living person, in ages.” This seemed to calm her down a bit. But I can see her point – if the shoe was on the other foot, and it was Lil who wanted to abandon her safety for a long shot in the dark, I would also strongly object. “I just can’t go on knowing that you are out there, vulnerable, alone, with nothing to protect you from those monsters…” she trailed off again in a stream of tears. “I’ll be fine I assured her,” but as we said our goodbyes I heard the apprehension in her voice. To make her feel better I said, “But hey Mom, who knows, maybe by the time I’m ready to go in a month or two things will have changed. Nobody predicted this mess, maybe it will all be over as soon as it started.” She agreed, but not wholeheartedly, and I know that she would bring it up again in the future. Maybe, just to protect her, I’ll tell her that I shelved the plans until I am actually on the road.

  I asked if they’d be able to get out of where they are but she didn’t sound too positive. Since my Dad did what he did, it seems as if the infected have been drawn to their presence and she now estimates that there are between a hundred and a hundred and fifty of them milling around in the street. Never a good sign.

  Take care

  Sam W

  11:00am, July 22

  Hi. I’ve been quiet lately because everything has been quiet. It is driving me fucking insane!

  Sorry about that the F-word, but man… it is so frustrating doing nothing. Well, I lie… since I last updated my blog I have been doing some research on the now defunct www.weathersa.co.za website (it was last updated on May 8th). Specifically I have been looking into the rainfall patterns in Gauteng and the Free State, the province where Bloemfontein is located.

  It’s taken a while, but going back five years, and I’ve had to go back through each day manually, October and November are the best months for rain across both Gauteng and the Free State. But, and here’s the bit of info which got me excited, is that the rainy season has been steadily moving forward over the last few years – where there was previously a tiny amount of rain in August in 2005 and 2006, in 2009 there was almost as much in August as there was in September. Interestingly too, in September 2008 there was a period of nine days where it rained throughout the country (with the exception of the Cape). Now, if we have a spell of rain like that, and the infected hate water as much as I think they do, then that would be the perfect time to get to Bloem…

  I reckon, to get the 760km to Bloem, with the roads in a pretty bad state with abandoned cars, possibly multiple car pile-ups, I’ll need three or four days max. And before I’d even think of leaving I’d want at least a full days’ worth of rain to make sure that the infected in my immediate vicinity are out of action. Four days of rain? That’s not too much to ask for is it?

  Take care

  Sam W

  7:34pm, July 25

  Hi. Still as bored as a squirrel with no nuts. If that makes any sense. Thank God for the solar power that lets me charge my iPod through my computer, as I don’t know what I would do without my music.

  Over the last few weeks I have moved away from the folky, downcast, basically very depressing stuff for this situation (Fleet Foxes, Turin Brakes, Jose Gonzalez, Ray LaMontagne) in favour of the more punky, hard rocking stuff (Hundred Reasons, Hell is for Heroes, A, Biffy Clyro, 3 Colours Red) which puts a smile on my face – there’s nothing like a chugging, palm muted electric guitar to lift the spirits! I must admit though that I have given up playing my guitar (along with the refinishing project I was busy with when the shit hit the fan). There’s just no point, is there?

  Oh, and no rain yet. Haha! But there is good news – I saw my first onion in my veggie garden today! It feels like such an accomplishment, and even though it’s probably only the size of a R2 coin at the moment, I am still tempted to take it out and eat it! Things are looking good on the lettuce front too – there is lots growing which doesn’t look too edible yet but I am sure it will be. I can’t wait to eat something fresh – I am sick of eating things that come in packets or boxes.

  Well, until they grow I’ll just have to be patient. Thankfully the water services haven’t stopped like the electricity has (I have a feeling that I am just using what’s left in the reservoir or wherever it is kept). Hopefully I don’t drain it – or other people like me who are out there don’t drain it either – but I still fill up my bath and basins every day just in case.

  Take ca
re

  Sam W

  3:19pm, July 27

  Oh my word, oh my fuck. I just received a mail from my Lil. Thank you God, thank you Allah, thank you Buddha – thank you any and every mighty being out there for answering my prayers. Will update you tomorrow, but for now all you need to know is that she is fine and surviving. Just.

  Sam

  6:29am, July 28

  I couldn’t sleep last night, probably unsurprisingly considering the news that I had just got, and when I did eventually drift off, sometime after 3:15am, I had dreams about Lil. Lots of dreams about Lil. But okay, I was lying on my couch yesterday and had just finished listening to an album by Symposium, a 90s punk rock band from the UK, when I glanced up at my computer and saw that next to the dwindling battery indicator there was a mail icon in the bottom right hand corner. I was tired and was tempted to just turn the computer off and deal with it in the morning – the only mails I am getting nowadays anyway are automated newsletters (blank, by the way) – but I decided to have a look just in case.

  It was from a Lourens Stadler. And I don’t know a Lourens Stadler, but apparently he knew me because the subject line was “Hi Sam.” So I opened it and this is what I saw:

  From: Lourens Stadler

  Sent: 27 July 2009 2:43 PM

  To: Sam Ward

  Subject: Hi Sam

  My dear Sammie! It’s me, Lily. I am well and I hope you are too – I know that you are alive and that makes me happier than you could ever know (I have been reading your blog). I miss you so much my peanut.

  I am okay, scared, but okay. I am with some guests who were at the lodge when this whole ‘episode’ started. We are making our way to Bloemfontein because we had also heard, like you, through some peoples family that we met, that a ‘safe house’ for survivors has been set up there. It has been a rough ride so far for the six of us, and I’ll tell you everything, but we are now in a small town just outside of Bethlehem, so we are over half way there.

  Just after I came back here at the beginning of May, maybe a week or two into my stint, a bus load of tourists arrived from Sweden – they were all oldies, probably in their 50s and 60s, but as soon as I saw them I knew something was wrong – they were all pale with bloodshot eyes and seemed very irritable (well more than normal for Europeans). I wasn’t driving them as I had a South African group – Lourens, whose email address I am using to mail you, his wife Sandra, their two kids, Luke and Paige and his brother, Corne. We were just leaving a sighting of lions finishing off a buffalo carcass when Harold, one of the rangers with the Swede’s came over the radio (you remember Harold? He’s the one whose wife had cancer? Well, as there were so many in the group, he and the new ranger, Andrew, were taking them in convey). Well Harold sounded different – the only other time I could recall him talking in that voice was when he discovered the first white lion cubs on our property. But that time it was excitement – this time it was fear I could hear in his voice.

  “Come in. Come in!” he said. “They are attacking Andrew.” At first I thought it must have been the wild dogs that they had been on their way to find, but I couldn’t see that happening without the dogs being seriously provoked – they are notoriously shy animals – and there is no way that Harold would have allowed anything like that to happen. I got on the radio immediately, but what I heard made me wish that I hadn’t… it wasn’t the wild dogs or any other animals that were attacking Andrew, it was his guests. Briefly Andrew’s radio clicked on – it must have been accidentally turned on during the struggle – and I heard Andrew whimpering through the muffled noises and grunts (it did sound like animals, but Harold assured me that it wasn’t) and then I heard gun shots – Harold had decided to take the matter into his own hands.

  First there were two warning shots, and then louder shots aimed towards the radio signal I was picking up from Andrew. Then the radio went off. Harold wouldn’t answer my calls either. I was in such a state that I hardly even remembered that I had guests with me until I heard the little girl sobbing. I turned around to see their anxious faces and apologised, I don’t know what for, but I did. And then I headed for the airstrip – Harold and Andrew’s last location.

  Sammie, I have never driven that fast, in a game reserve or on the open road, and if it hadn’t been for the screams of the little girl probably warning animals of our approach I am sure I would have hit more than just the one impala. By this time Lourens had joined me in the front of the landie – I could tell by his eyes that he was afraid but that he was willing to do whatever needed to be done. We didn’t speak, I just drove like my life depended on it. Maybe it did.

  By the time I got to the air strip, Harold had stopped answering my calls on the radio. The last I heard from him was a muffled, “Get out of here Lily. Just get the fuck out.” Well at least that is what it sounded like at the speed I was going. What I saw when we turned the corner and emerged from the mopane thicket into the open at the edge of the airstrip was just like a scene from one of those horror movies you used to enjoy watching – people eating people… blood… people dead… people dying. Sammie, it was horrible. Andrew was nowhere to be seen, and Harold… Harold was everywhere…

  The things that had attacked everybody – they weren’t people, they could not have been – eventually noticed us when Lourens’ wife couldn’t take what she could see in front of her any longer and started shouting, “Stop it! What are you doing? Stop!” Lourens and Corne tried to shush her (as they had been doing with the kids) but the ten or 11 things had already been alerted to our presence and were coming for us – slowly, but still heading our way nonetheless. I grabbed my rifle and shot at the one nearest to us, a Swede with a beer belly and a bad mullet. But I missed by a mile… I have been charged by elephants Sammie, almost walked into a pride of lions and been in touching distance of a hyena, and never a flutter or a shake, but then I was shaking like a leaf in a gale. I steadied myself, took two deep breaths and pulled the trigger again, this time the bullet hitting him dead on in the heart. Dead probably being the wrong word, as apart from a stumble, the thing kept on heading our way.

  I panicked and shot twice again in quick succession, one bullet sent up a tuft of grass a metre or so behind him while the other took out a tennis ball sized chunk of arm. He didn’t flinch. It was then that Lourens spoke for the first time since he climbed into the front with me. “Take your time. Relax. Then shoot. Aim for the head this time,” he said in probably the most calming and soothing voice I have ever heard. So I did that. I closed my eyes, and do you know what I saw Sammie? I saw you. Your smiling face staring back at me! I opened my eyes, saw the guy gaining on us – he was probably under ten metres away now, and I fired. I have had to shoot an impala before – I am sure I told you about it – and that time I was amazed at the amount of blood, but with him… it was like a shower. And I know that’s so gross and I am sorry, but I have to tell you everything, even if it’s just to get it off my chest.

  So he was no longer a problem, but the other ones were and I only had four bullets left. With Lourens’ help I took out the three closest to us – I wanted to keep one bullet for a ‘just in case’ scenario – and then we decided to go – the land rover was still idling so I put it into first and headed for the camp. I looked once in the rear view mirror and saw the remaining things slowly following the car…

  By the time we got back to camp (I spotted Ngala, my favourite leopard in a tree on the way back, and usually I would have stopped to see her no matter what, but not that day), it was getting dark but it was deserted. Remember from when you were here that weekend that dusk is when the whole place comes alive? The boma fire gets started, the chefs sing, the bar staff get ready for the night – but that night it was dead. Again, maybe a bad choice of word.

  Lourens, Corne and I decided (Lourens’ wife and kids were all in a state so it was left to us) that we would pack some essentials and head for the safety – we thought – of the nearest town, Hoedspruit. I grabbed two more rifles from the ran
ger room and a couple boxes of ammo while Lourens filled up on some food from the kitchen. Corne kept tabs on the rest of the family and kept lookout with my original rifle. As they had just arrived that afternoon they were luckily able to just grab their unpacked suitcases while I, on the other hand, quickly grabbed what I could and threw it into a bag. Luckily the bus that had brought in the Swedish tourists was still there, so we took that rather than Corne’s smaller Nissan Livina or my clapped out little Golf.

  We were all in the bus and just about to leave – I was behind the wheel, because even though Lourens insisted that he drive, I insisted that I drove because I knew the roads… he eventually gave in and handed me the keys which we had found above the wheel on the driver’s side – when we heard a mumbling, grumbling sound in the bushes just beyond the reception. At first I thought it might have been a hippo, but there are no water holes big enough to cater for a hippo anywhere near the camp. And then we saw them – five things coming through the bush towards us. The bar staff.

  I struggled to start the bus – the engine just wouldn’t take – and they were close now, almost close enough to smell. I prayed. Lourens prayed. Corne prayed. And it suddenly started. I pulled out from under the thatch entrance as quickly as I could, Lourens’ son Luke sliding off his chair and screaming as his head connected with the metal arm of the seat across from him. Usually I would have worried, but right then I didn’t care. I floored it. And I hit Petros. He was always so nice and friendly to me, I really liked him, but the way he was then I was glad to see him motionless as I roared down the sand road, leaving the rest of the bar staff reaching for us in the dust.