Infection Z (Book 2) Read online

  Infection Z 2

  Ryan Casey

  Contents

  Bonus Content

  Previous Infection Z Books

  INFECTION Z: 2

  1. One

  2. Two

  3. Three

  4. Four

  5. Five

  6. Six

  7. Seven

  8. Eight

  9. Nine

  10. Ten

  11. Eleven

  12. Twelve

  13. Thirteen

  14. Fourteen

  15. Fifteen

  16. Sixteen

  17. Seventeen

  18. Eighteen

  19. Nineteen

  20. Twenty

  21. Twenty-One

  22. Twenty-Two

  23. Twenty-Three

  24. Twenty-Four

  25. Twenty-Five

  26. Twenty-Six

  27. Twenty-Seven

  28. Twenty-Eight

  29. Twenty-Nine

  30. Thirty

  31. Thirty-One

  32. Thirty-Two

  33. Thirty-Three

  34. Thirty-Four

  35. Thirty-Five

  36. Thirty-Six

  37. Thirty-Seven

  38. Thirty-Eight

  39. Thirty-Nine

  40. Forty

  41. Forty-One

  42. Forty-Two

  43. Forty-Three

  44. Forty-Four

  45. Forty-Five

  46. Forty-Six

  47. Forty-Seven

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  About the Author

  About This Book

  Copyright

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  Previous Infection Z Books

  Infection Z 2 is the sequel to Infection Z.

  If you’d like to read the first book, visit here:

  Infection Z

  INFECTION Z: 2

  One

  Charlie Harrison dragged the heavy shopping trolley of water bottles along the potholed road and prayed today wouldn’t be the day they finally caught up with him.

  Charity Lane hadn’t always been such a dumping ground. Not until the dead rose, and then the missiles struck. It was one of suburban Manchester’s nicer roads, for sure. Tall, evergreen trees at either side of the smoothly tarmacked pavements. The sound of birds whistling and singing overhead. The distant chatter of a friendly little row of cafes and shops constantly in the distance.

  But all that had gone.

  The trees lay across the road like they’d been put there intentionally as barriers or blockades. The pavement was a nightmare to walk along, let alone pull a trolley of water bottles along, with large chunks of it unearthed. One wrong step and you’d wander right into a hole the length of your leg, sprain or break your ankle.

  And you didn’t want that.

  Not with the dead around.

  Charlie swallowed. His throat was dry. He was desperate for a drink, but he was even more desperate to get the water bottles back to Sammy and his two kids, Renate and Sebastian. Their survival was ultimately more important than his. Which was why he found himself alone in the streets in the first place, scavenging whatever supplies he could.

  Because if the dead didn’t raid one of the last remaining shops, other people would.

  And Charlie was fast discovering that other people were just as much of a worry as the hungry dead in this harsh new world.

  He listened to the trolley’s wheels scrape along the pavement. The noise echoed against the shutters of the betting shops, the bookstores, on either side. He tried not to look at these stores. Tried to stay blissfully naive about what might be inside them. But every now and then, he found himself peeking through a smashed window, seeing the blood all over the white tiles of the floors, and wishing he’d not even come on this damned suicide mission at all.

  He looked ahead and saw the six storey, brown-bricked flat block ahead. He was nearly home. Nearly back to his family. Which made every ounce of risk worth it. Because if you weren’t willing to risk a thing for the vulnerable ones you cared for, then what was the point even having a family at all?

  He heard a crow caw somewhere overhead in the grey sky. Although it had been a week since the bombs landed on Manchester, there was still a smell of cool smoke in the air, like the remains of a forest fire days after it’d gone out. Charlie knew what that smell was like because Sammy and him had been caught up in one when they’d visited California back in 2002. Delayed their holiday a few months when it clashed with a friend’s wedding, then ended up getting caught in the frigging McNally Fire in the stifling heat of summer. Charlie remembered looking over the Inyo National Forest and tasting the burned pines in the air. And this brought that memory flashing back into his mind.

  Except it wasn’t burned pines he tasted and smelled in the air right now. It was barbecued meat.

  Human meat.

  He pulled on the heavy trolley filled with water bottles. His palms were sweating, and his fingers felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. He staggered over the holes in the concrete. Just a few hundred yards from the flats his family were holed up in now. Shit. He’d expected to go out and find about five or six half-drank bottles lying around. But he’d found a whole store’s worth, packed with thirty unopened bottles. Enough to last them days. Weeks, even.

  A part of Charlie hoped that events would resolve themselves in the first days. That no matter how bad events got, the government would step in. And if they didn’t, another country’s government would step in. They always did, right?

  But as Charlie looked at the devastation on the street—the smashed windows of abandoned cars, the splattering of blood on the concrete reminding him of the horrible screams he’d heard when the dead first started walking—he knew nobody was coming for him. Nobody was coming to save him or his family.

  He had to look after his family himself. Provide for them. Handle things as they came. And that wasn’t easy when you had two seven-year-old twins who didn’t know why the hell they weren’t allowed to go to school—which they loved, gracefully—all of a sudden. Or why they couldn’t go round to their friends’ houses for tea, or why they weren’t allowed to go play on the street no matter how much Sammy and Charlie used to let them cycle along the pavement.

  Life had changed. It had changed for everyone. And as far as Charlie could see, it was going to keep on changing.

  He just dreaded to imagine how much it might change.

  And what that change might involve.

  He picked up his pace as he approached the block of flats. He was so close he could see the window of his apartment block now. The shutter blinds were closed. And no, he wasn’t looking forward to locking himself away in that sweaty, dingy apartment with just the one bedroom and not a fragment of privacy. But life wasn’t about the luxuries anymore. It was about sticking together.

  And who knows? If they stuck together long enough, maybe they’d be able to look for an upgrade. A new place to live.

  The model home that Sammy had always dreamed of but that Charlie’s job in the lower echelons of the council had never been able to provide.

  He stared up at the window. Sometimes, when he came out to collect food or water or any kind of supplies, Sebastian or Renate would peek through the blinds and smile and wave at their dad. And although Charlie told them not to do it because it risked attracting the attention of other not-so-living things out here in the streets, he had to admit he liked that greetin
g. Loved it, in fact.

  It was a reminder that he was home. He’d survived another day. All was well.

  He reached the crossing in the debris-laden road and he stopped when he heard movement to his right.

  Hearing any sort of movement triggered an instant reaction since the dead started walking. Like a reflex muscle, one that had always been there since the dangerous days of our ancestors, but one that had nullified as the dangers of everyday life minimised.

  A reflex muscle that had reactivated in full force.

  He looked down the street. He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The usual: abandoned cars, smashed glass covering the chewed-up concrete. The occasional charred remains of a fallen tree, an electricity pylon. A body.

  He took in a deep breath of the smoky air and carried on dragging the trolley across the road. He knew he was probably just being paranoid. Truth be told, this area had proven a decent place to hide out when it came to avoiding both the dead and other people. Yes, he did wake at night to the awful sound of their cold, rotting corpses dragging their feet along the road, and he did suffer intense nightmares where he was running away from them, but not just any of them—running away from his wife, his two children, who always caught up with him and tore him apart …

  An echoing noise from behind him. Like an empty Coke can hitting the road.

  He swung around. Stared back in the direction he’d come from. Although it was freezing, he could taste sweat from his wrinkly, unshaven face. Nothing there. Just the wind. Just the…

  He turned back around and he saw something in the corner of his eye.

  It was down the road where he swore he’d heard the first noise. Just a small movement that he couldn’t make out initially.

  But something coming towards him.

  Something moving … fast.

  He started to drag the trolley of water bottles along when he froze.

  He saw the movement getting closer, and to his short-sighted eyes, it started to make more sense. And yet … it was impossible. It had to be impossible. He’d never seen them in that kind of number before. They usually travelled in groups, but not groups that big.

  He gripped tighter hold of the water bottle trolley and jogged across the street. In the apartment block, he could see the blinds twitching as one of his children looked out at him.

  He could hear the footsteps getting closer. He had to get to his family. He had to hide. He had to get the heavy load of water inside and he had to keep quiet. Because this was unlike anything else. This was on a whole new level. This was …

  He heard the footsteps from behind.

  And then from ahead.

  He held his breath. Kept on holding on to the trolley handle with his sweaty hand.

  This couldn’t be real. This had to be a nightmare. He had to be dreaming.

  He turned around.

  Masses of dead unlike any he’d ever seen were piling down the street in his direction.

  Just like they were from the right.

  And from up ahead.

  Running, and getting closer by the second.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat. Felt a warm tear roll down his cheek.

  He looked up at the window of the flat he was staying in. Saw Sebastian wave at him.

  He lifted a hand and waved back, and then he closed his eyes when he saw Sebastian’s little brown eyes widen at the oncoming mass of the dead.

  “I’m sorry,” Charlie muttered, as the footsteps and the gasps got closer, as the rotting smell overwhelmed his senses. “I’m so sorry.”

  Sammy didn’t see her husband get torn to shreds by the zombies outside.

  But she’d never forget her son’s scream as he watched every second of his father being ripped apart.

  Two

  Hayden McCall looked at the crowd of zombies gathered around the green metal fences of the abandoned bunker and felt a familiar sense of deflation.

  Sarah stood beside him. They were peeking out of a metal grated opening that looked right out beyond the parking area of the bunker and at the fences. Hayden could see his breath, feel his teeth chattering, but that was just a feeling he’d got used to now. In the week since the rise of the dead, it was a rarity if he wasn’t shivering.

  “This is exactly why we can’t just rely on this place,” Sarah said. She was wearing a navy blue coat and blue jeans, with muddy brown walking boots on her feet. Her dark hair was tied back behind her head. It was greasy and shiny, but that was just a normality of a life without fresh water to shower or bathe in. There was a constant smell of sweat in the air. Sweat, urine, shit.

  And rot. The decomposition process had well and truly set in on the zombies now.

  “How many do you count?” Hayden asked, as he stared across the parking area at the zombies pressed up to the fence. He could hear the metal creaking under their weight, but the fences were strong enough to keep them out. And that’s why finding this bunker in the hills just outside of Smileston and Preston was an absolute godsend.

  Sarah puffed out her lips. “Six. Seven. Six or seven too many.”

  “We can handle six or seven,” Hayden said. “We’ve handled more. Are you gonna give me a hand?”

  Sarah sighed. “It might be six or seven now, but what about when six or seven becomes sixty or seventy? What about then?”

  Hayden turned around and looked into the darkness of the bunker. He held his breath. “We cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, all we can do is take every situation as it comes.”

  He grabbed the sharp steel pipe that he used to pierce the heads of the zombies pressed up against the fences and stepped to the green door.

  “I know you care about Clarice. She’s your sister. So you’re bound to be protective of her. I … I get that, I really do. But we’re freezing here. We’re freezing and we’re starving. There has to be some place better than here. And if there isn’t some place better than here, then … then I don’t know what. But we can’t give up hope on there being other places to stay. Other places to live. We can’t rule that out.”

  Hayden pondered Sarah’s words. She was right about his sister. He did want to keep her safe. After losing his mum and dad on the first day of the outbreak—or rather, killing his mum and dad on the first day of the outbreak—the will and urge to protect his sister had grown even stronger. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t fail her. And right now, the bunker they’d found five days ago was the safest place they had. Safer than the cold treacherous outside, that was for sure.

  Hayden turned back around and looked at Sarah. “You’re right. I am protective of my sister. But that’s not the only reason we’re staying here. We’re staying here because we don’t have a choice. Sure, there might be something better out there over the hills and whatever. But we don’t know that. For all we know, this place could be the best place there is now. And we can’t just let it go on the off chance there might be something better. I … I’m not willing to do that.”

  Sarah opened her mouth to object. Then, she closed it again, looked to her feet and sighed. The gasps from the zombies gathered around the fences got louder, loud enough to send a person insane through fear if they weren’t dealt with fast.

  “Are you going to help me clear the fences?” Hayden asked. “Because regardless of whether we do eventually move on from here or not, I dunno about you but I’m not so happy having a bunch of those things pressed up against the railings. Their gasping, it’ll only alert others.”

  Sarah didn’t say anything. She just nodded, walked up to Hayden and grabbed a sharpened pipe much like the one he had in his hand, only this one was a little smaller. The pair of them walked to the door and yanked it open, the metal screeching against the dusty white tiles as they pulled it back.

  The cold was understandably much more intense outside. It nipped at Hayden’s itchy, unshaven cheeks, bit away at his protruding kneecaps. The thermal socks he’d fished out in an abandoned house just outside of Smileston on the first day f
ollowing the infection had gone damp and soggy, but they were better than nothing. It was in times like these that you really came to appreciate just what a luxury central heating was.

  Another luxury lost to the zombies.

  Hayden and Sarah walked down the slippery concrete walkway towards the green fences of the bunker complex. It wasn’t a huge place. The bunkers themselves were covered with grass and had little watchtowers on top of them. There was enough room for about twenty or so people to stay, but some of the bunkers weren’t in as good condition as the one Hayden, Sarah, Clarice and Newbie stayed in. The damp was so bad inside that it got on Hayden’s chest. Most of the graffiti-covered doors had their locks broken by urban explorers, so it wasn’t the safest place in the world.

  But it was safe enough. And safe enough was exactly what they had to settle for right now.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Sarah said, as they approached the seven zombies pressed right up against the fences. Their cold blood dripped down the metal from where they were pressing themselves. Flies buzzed around them. Specks of ice were attached to their skin, which no doubt did something to stop the decomposition—but not enough to banish the smell.

  “About what?” Hayden asked. He stopped in front of a female zombie about half his height. She was mixed race, wearing a green jogging outfit. A large chunk had been bitten out of her leg that maggots and other creepy bugs gnawed at.

  Sarah lifted the sharp pipe and poked it through the fence at a dark-haired man in an expensive looking black suit. He had a hole in his head. Hayden could see right through his cracked skull at the bites on his brain. But of course, it took more than just a movie bash to the head to kill these zombies. Actual neck damage was required. But it helped to have them down on the ground, paralysed or weakened in some way.

  “About this place,” Sarah said. She pressed the pipe into the suited man’s open mouth. Pushed it right back as his teeth snapped at the metal. Cold blood sprayed out as Sarah wedged the pipe even further into the zombie’s throat, twisting it when she reached the back of its throat and slamming it through its neck. The zombie shook a little, its glassy eyes rolled up into the back of its head, and its body went limp and slid further onto the end of the metal pipe.