The Infected Read online

  So they are blaming food poisoning? So those 200 people, and all the others that have gone for treatment at other hospitals and clinics, and the ones that everyone has seen on the streets, at the cinemas, in McDonalds, they all ate the same thing? I’m not so sure.

  Lil’s starting to get quite scared now, and I don’t blame her. It seems that there’s a silence in the media about this whole thing – I mean, after hours of searching the net, this (above) is all I came up with, and the other two thirds of the article is all about treating food poisoning. I’ve had food poisoning before, and I know that I didn’t act like any of the people that I have seen or heard about. I just wish they would come out on TV and let us know what was going on.

  To try get back to a bit of normality I have been working on my guitar while Lil has been out catching up with friends. The little Black & Decker sander has made a significant impact in the progress, seeing as I only worked for about 15 minutes on the body this morning and about 30 minutes on the neck. The sander is nice because it leaves you with a surprisingly fine finish even though I'm using a fairly staunch 120g paper. It also has a vacuum attachment that keeps the work area (my kitchen!) considerably dust free. The noise is a drawback though – both the sander and the vacuum battling it out for supremacy in the noise stakes – and I feel bad for the townhouse next door, although they make enough noise themselves so I don’t really care and the one below is empty so that’s cool. Another downside; it's not as flat or true as a sanding block and I'll have to finish by hand.

  The body is primed, so I highly doubt that there's any sort of quality grain underneath it. Still not sure whether to check it out or not. The neck is not primed and has an ok'ish grain underneath. One dent is bothering me though, I may have to go digging...

  Alright then, I’ll keep you updated if I hear anything more about the “food poisoning.” Keep safe people.

  See ya

  Sam W

  7:48pm, April 29

  Things have been pretty quiet on the ‘food poisoning’ front. If I think about it, I haven’t heard anything on the news or got any mails from people with ‘sightings’. I supposed it’s a good thing but I was secretly enjoying all the suspense. Am I evil?

  Lil goes back on Monday, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! But I’m not thinking about that now, I’m enjoying my time with her while I can, and when she is away with the giraffes and lions, I will head back into emo kid mode (make a mental note to skip my posts from the 4th of May onwards).

  Work has been good – my favourite: high paying for hardly any work. Been designing a website for an online car sales company and my monthly furniture store catalogue. Riveting stuff.

  Of more interest (possibly) is my progress with my guitar, although I’m still sanding... the neck is being done by hand and is almost done. Then comes the fun part… the painting! I’ve narrowed my choices down to matte black, gloss white or digital camo – I’m 167% sure it will be digital camo though.

  Cool blogpeople – enjoy the last long weekend for a while (what is the public holiday for on Monday anyway? Do we even care?)

  See ya

  Sam W

  9:37am, May 2

  Damn, I’m really getting into this guitar project – I even woke up early this morning (on a Saturday!!!) to do some work on it. Lil had to go do a bit of shopping for her time back at work so I was able to make a big mess and get away with it! I am now almost done with the neck. The red paint has been sanded off and it's now natural with only the face of the headstock in the original black. My job this morning was to tackle the front of the body, and try to get through the paint and primer. It’s been long and arduous, I know, but the fun stuff is coming!

  UPDATE: It’s now just past 1pm and I am done! So now I’m nearly ready for painting, though I am still somewhat undecided as to the finish…

  Okay, let me go get cleaned up – I’m taking Lil out to the Butcher Shop at Sandton Square tonight for a nice dinner, meaning that I am going to shave and, get this, maybe even wear a button-up top (gasp!). So, enjoy your evening eating two minute noodles or peanut butter sammies, cos I’m going big!

  See ya

  Sam W

  9:03am, May 4

  Just popping in quick, can’t stay long – have to drop Lil off at the airport shortly. But I just had to say… May the fourth be with you.

  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

  See ya

  Sam W

  11:45am, May 5

  So Lily left yesterday morning and I am only now able to drag myself out of my depressive little stupor and sit down in front of my computer. Even the weather has turned horrible and seems depressed with me. I don’t know what to say…

  I feel like shit. I am missing her so much. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. She says she will probably do the game ranging until the end of the year and then come back and finish her Masters in Environmental Management, but still, that means that until January, I will only see her for probably 6 or 7 weeks. I don’t think I can handle that. But then I see her face when she describes her close encounters with the animals, and who am I to deny her that? It’s crazy, but at times she probably feels more connected to a pride of lions than me. But that makes her happy and that’s the person I fell in love with.

  My eyes have started leaking again…

  See ya

  Sam W

  1:23pm, May 5

  Holy shit. Turn on the news. Something fucked up is going on.

  4:41pm, May 5

  Oh man, we are so screwed. I don’t know what the hell to think. After seeing the reports on the news I just had to go out and see for myself. And I don’t know how I made it back alive. Crap – WHAT IS GOING ON?

  11:09pm, May 5

  Okay, here’s what I know. From my kitchen window – with my lights off, doors locked and windows shut – all I can hear are screams. Every now and again I see someone getting chased by… by one of them. Or hear a car screeching and coming to a sudden, crunching stop. I am scared. So fucking scared.

  Let me just make myself a cup of coffee and I will come back and let you know what I know…

  I’m back. I can’t get hold of Lil. But that’s not unusual, she is out of cellphone range most of the time anyway. More worryingly, I can’t get hold of my folks and they always answer their phones. I hope and pray that they are alright.

  Just after 1pm today my friend Dave called me on my cell. I had never heard anyone sound like Dave did – breathless, terrified, despondent. I asked him what was wrong, but all he said was, “Put on the TV, man. Put on the fucking TV.” In those ten words I could tell that my life was about to change forever.

  So I put on the TV, and even though I was constantly flicking through the channels, the picture was still the same. I could make out the Nelson Mandela statue at the Nelson Mandela Square at the Sandton City shopping centre. I could also make out a few of the restaurants, especially the distinctive red seating of the Butcher Shop where I had taken Lily the other night. But I could also see a mass of people rioting, or at least that was what it looked like at first. Then I noticed one man in the bottom right hand corner of the picture. He was running to the left across the screen, a briefcase in his one hand, a suit jacket in his other. He must have been in his forties and his long brown hair at the back, although he was balding on top, was flapping in the wind as he ran. He was dodging people as he ran, and although he was pretty plump and had an impressive beer gut, he was moving pretty quickly. That was until a woman jumped out from the right and pulled him down by his legs. She knocked him off balance, and although it looked like he might have been able to get back up and keep on running, two other people, another lady and a young man, clambered up on him and seemed to be holding him down. And then the first woman bit his ear off.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And then I started to take in more and more of what was happening on the screen – it wasn’t a riot, it was a feeding frenzy. These people, the slower, dirtier looking ones, were herding the res
t together and randomly attacking them in the chaos. I have seen footage of how whale sharks and dolphins attack sardines in what is called a ‘bait ball’ during the annual Sardine Run, and this is what was happening these people.

  What I saw next sent shivers down my spine. A bloody woman that had been attacked, stood up and vomited. Just like I had seen people doing a couple of times before. While the madness ensued around her, and while blood streamed from a bite on her upper arm, she just emptied her guts. And then she tripped a young teenage boy as he tried to escape two other… people, and bent down and started mauling the boy’s thigh. They were mutating in front of my eyes.

  Next, the camera work which had been pretty shaky already, probably from trying to follow all the action at the same time, became seriously unstable. Then I saw why. Three people had broken from the crowd and were headed straight for the source of the footage. The face of the cameraman, a blonde guy probably in his late twenties, appeared in the top right corner of the screen as he tried to loosen the camera from probably what was a tripod. He looked panicked and, clearly, quite petrified. As he struggled with the camera, the three people, one woman and two men, all sporting bloodied mouths and shredded, unkempt clothes, kept on heading towards him in their somewhat ungainly walking style. The cameraman glanced over his left shoulder at them, and if there had been sound to the visuals I am sure I would have heard him groan or scream, or both. They were now close enough to make out their features, and what I noticed first were their eyes – there was no life, no emotion... just unblinking nothingness.

  The cameraman gave the camera one more desperate tug but only managed to change the video feed from colour to black and white. The three were almost upon him now – in monotone the blood was now just a black smear on their empty faces. The cameraman shot them another nervous look before discarding the camera and, I hope, making a run for it. The picture shook violently as the camera fell and rested on its side. Pandemonium in the background caused the picture to rapidly go in and out of focus. Suddenly a face appeared and the focus calmed down. A man, probably close to sixty though it was hard to tell because of the angle and the blood which covered the whole left hand side of his face, leaned forward and appeared to sniff the camera, his motionless eyes peering right through the television screen into my lounge. All of a sudden he lunged for the camera and I squealed, jumping back and slamming into the corner of my coffee table. Then the video loop started again.

  I am in so much shock it is unbelievable. People are eating each other…

  Alright. Well after watching that shit on TV I just had to go out and see what was going on with my own eyes. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near Nelson Mandela Square mind you. But even before I climbed into my car, Mrs. Myburg, one of my elderly neighbours, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. I was so close to doing the only thing I could think of to protect myself – poking my car key in my assailant’s eye – when I saw that it was her and noticed the tears rolling down her heavily wrinkled cheeks. “Please, Samuel… Its Walter… Walter is sick.” She broke down and threw her head onto my shoulder. I didn’t even have to ask what his symptoms were.

  After determining whether it was safe to check up on him – Mrs. Myburg assured me that he was ‘resting’ – I made my way to their ground floor simplex, just a few hundred metres from my townhouse. I nudged open the front door with a spade which I picked up from a pile of the garden service’s discarded tools, and called out, “Mr. Myburg? Mr. Myburg, its Sam. Are you okay?” I got no answer. Mrs. Myburg had told me that he was in the main bedroom so I made my way through the open plan kitchen and lounge, noting the typical array of ‘crapper’ (my term for the clutter old people usually have lying around – porcelain cats, Japanese fans, ornate frames which usually stand empty), which seemed to adorn every spare centimetre of space. “Mr. Myburg?” I called again, and this time I was sure that I heard him replying – but not the way I would have wanted him to reply – it was a guttural, primitive sound. I told Mrs. Myburg to wait in the lounge and she dutifully did what she was told, sitting down on the horrible mustard coloured couch as I inched my way to the room.

  I poked my head around the door, not knowing what to expect, so what I saw, not unexpectedly, was a huge shock. There was Mr. Myburg, a tall, lanky man, crouched on the bed, his back at an angle which wouldn’t have pleased his chiropractor, grumbling and moaning in low, rhythmic bursts. The bedspread was coated in what I think must have been puke, and the smell was utterly foul – I can remember that it made my eyes water when I first entered.

  After what I had just seen on TV, I was tempted to start swinging with the spade (it seemed so unlike me – I run at the first hint of a fight – but I don’t know if it was the survival instinct or what, but I was ready to kill. But then I remembered Mrs. Myburg. I couldn’t exactly go around trying to decapitate her husband while she was waiting in the lounge on that horrible couch, could I?). So I thought that I would go back to her and explain that we needed to go get help. As I turned around to go tell her though, the spade, which I must have lifted to a striking position when I was contemplating murder, clanged against the most horrid bronze door handle that I have ever seen. That eyesore was the least of my worries though, as Mr. Myburg groaned louder than before and slowly turned his head to face me. And I saw his eyes. The same eyes that had struck me on the TV. I fumbled for the key in the lock – which was on the bedroom side as luck would have it, and quickly slammed the door shut as the former Mr. Myburg started to make his way ungainly off the bed. I locked the door and checked the handle twice, then went back and checked it a third a time. As Mrs. Myburg asked, “Is everything alright?” I heard a thumping on the door.

  “Um, yes, it is. We just need to go get some help for Mr. Myburg. A doctor,” I said. “Why, what’s wrong with him?” she asked me, fidgeting with her wedding ring with her right hand. “Why can’t we take him with?” she almost whined. At that point, her husband let out a… roar would probably be the best way to describe it. She didn’t even have to look at me to understand that that was why.

  I almost dragged her to my car, let her in and jumped into the front seat. Apart from a Staffordshire bull terrier that was wandering around the undercover parking bays, the complex was deserted – even the security guards had deserted their posts. I pressed the remote that each resident has to enter and exit the complex, and made sure that the gate closed behind me as we drove out. We were now out in the open and I had no idea what to expect.

  I asked Mrs. Myburg if there was anywhere I could take her, any family or friends nearby who she could stay with. I think we both knew that a doctor wouldn’t do her husband any good. She said that her sister-in-law lived in Greenstone, a relatively new suburb a short two or three kilometres from my complex (thankfully), so I eased the car onto the street, which was unusually deserted for an afternoon during the week. We turned right on Pallister Road and headed towards Terrace Road, one of the busiest roads in Edenvale, which we had to cross over to head towards Greenstone. But we didn’t get that far. An overturned Honda was blocking the road, but it wasn’t that that was the real problem – it was the gang, maybe ten, maybe more, of those people, dragging a young man out of the upturned car which was more disconcerting.

  Now I have always taken pride in my car, a pitch black 1,6 Comfortline Special Edition Volkswagen Polo – I am sure you will recall me mentioning it a couple of times in my blogs – but my love for my car vanished the second I threw it into first and headed for the overturned car. I was within a mere few metres when Mrs. Myburg, who I had actually forgotten was sitting next to me, said in a voice which was barely audible, “It’s too late. Look, he’s dead.” I slammed on brakes and screeched to a standstill as I noticed that the guy who was being yanked from the car was indeed dead, his neck hanging at an unnatural angle as a man in nothing but luminous yellow running shorts tried to pull the dead man’s body out of the exposed and broken windscreen by his arm. Running Shorts man yanked at Dead Man again w
ith all his might, while two others, a lady in a miniskirt which was riding up so high her mother would have had something to say, and another guy with a mullet of some distinction, clambered around the side to try and help. That was until they noticed us, a good ten or fifteen seconds after the sound of my Polo braking had sliced through the silence of the carnage like an owl’s call on a still night.

  Running Shorts, just when he was starting to make progress, although by now the dead guy’s shoulder was severely dislocated, raised his head slowly and looked at us with those empty eyes, and made a sound between groaning and growling. Miniskirt, Mullet and their friends all turned towards us in unison and I could hear Mrs. Myburg’s breathing rapidly speeding up, as I am sure mine was. As they arduously got to their feet, I ground the gears into reverse and sped into a gravel driveway, the wheels spinning as I slammed on the brakes again and shifted into first. I heard a howl to my left and a scratching from behind as Mullet, probably the fittest looking of the lot, managed to grab hold of the back windscreen wiper. I thrust my foot down as if my life depended on it (and maybe it did), and we were off. I glanced in my rear view mirror as we sped away from Terrace Road, and saw Mullet, through a cloud of dust, clutching to my windscreen wiper as his friends hovered around, unsure of whether to go back to Dead Man in the car or chase us.