Infinite Pieces Volume 4, page 40
Measured. Deliberate. Not rushed.
Then he appeared.
Varane.
The alpha.
Still in grey prison pants. Bare chest streaked with blood, some dried, some fresh. His eyes were black-ringed and unblinking. His mouth slack.
But he didn’t lurch. Didn’t twitch. He walked. Straight and calm.
The other infected parted for him.
Steve stared.
Varane stepped into the chamber.
Stopped ten feet away. Tilted his head. Then he charged.
Steve swung the dead guard’s baton. Varane caught it in mid-air and snapped it clean. Steve drove a shoulder into Varane’s chest. It barely moved him. Varane slammed him into the wall.
Steve gasped. Dropped the broken handle.
He reached for the iron.
Too slow.
Varane grabbed his arm. Bit down. Steve screamed.
The pain was fire. Flesh tearing. Bone grinding.
He punched with the other hand. Once. Twice. Landed hard on the jaw.
Varane stumbled. Steve kicked his knee. Dropped him to the ground.
Grabbed the iron bar.
Swung it. Again. And again.
Blood sprayed the walls.
Varane convulsed. Then stilled.
Steve fell to one knee. Looked at his bitten arm.
Knew what it meant. But he couldn’t stop now.
33
Steve wandered, staggering, to the control panel. In fact, the infected along the way seemed to sense what had happened.
You kill the alpha, you become the alpha.
Blood soaked his sleeve. His vision swam. But he made it.
The override lever waited. Manual lockdown control.
Steve wondered if the likes of Dr. Ferris and the warden had ever considered what they were doing here. Did they know their experiments would turn them into these feral creatures? Or was there some loftier aim? Or perhaps a military application?
Didn’t matter right then. He pulled the lever.
It resisted at first. Then gave. The entire block shuddered.
Steel doors began to slide shut. One by one. Mostly unseen.
Across the chamber, the infected heard it. Reacted. Screamed without sound. Started running.
Too late.
The first door slammed closed. Then the second.
They turned back—confused. Trapped. Inside this one zone. With their alpha.
Steve lowered himself to the floor. Back against the panel. To rest. To wait for someone else to challenge him to the crown of alpha-infected. His pulse throbbed. In his chest. In his ears. In the center of his brain.
Above him, final locks sealed. One after another.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Then silence.
He looked through the viewing window.
Dozens of them. Clawing. Smashing. But caged now.
Forever, if the system held. Unless rescue came and didn’t understand the stakes.
34
Steve lay on the cold, tiled floor. The lever still jammed in the locked position. His bitten arm throbbed with a heat that like the bone itself was burning.
He tried to move his fingers. Felt swollen. Like ripe sausages. The taste of blood in his mouth. Metal and spit. His throat felt raw.
Like he’d been screaming. Maybe he had been. Who could tell anymore?
Through the glass, they watched him. They could break it if they chose.
Their eyes — those eyes — tracked him every time he shifted.
Hungry predators, or paying homage to their new leader.
How long until Steve changed? How long until he became something else? Something other than human?
Steve reached for the iron. Dropped it. Hand too slippery. He tried again. This time, he gripped it like a lifeline.
Then a sound. Distant at first.
Boots.
Footfalls in the stairwell. Steady. Light.
A door opened behind him.
He didn’t have the strength to turn.
Then a familiar voice.
“Jesus, Steve.”
Nina.
She dropped beside him. Her hands on his face. Her eyes scanning the wound.
He wanted to speak, but the words got stuck. His throat was a narrow pipe, jammed up with words.
She saw the bite. Said nothing for a long moment. Then nodded. “Okay. We move. We move now.”
She got him to his feet. One arm over her shoulder, the other clutching the wall.
They staggered through the security wing. Sirens still howling in some parts. Others dead silent.
Down one flight. Across a blast door. Each footstep a blur.
Steve’s vision tunneled. The world narrowed to her grip on his wrist.
They reached the emergency lift. Somehow still powered.
He fumbled Ferris’s card out to work the override. Used Nina to keep himself upright. The doors closed.
They didn’t speak. Just stood there.
She leaned against him. One arm still wrapped tight around his waist. She was shaking. Or maybe it was him.
The elevator rose.
The last time he would ever leave a place like that.
A cage built to keep danger in. Now a tomb.
The doors opened. A control room. No one there. Just radio chatter.
“This is Claremont Police Chief Howey Newsome, once more—please respond. Or we will have to come in by force.”
The outside world, trying to get in. To help. To rescue.
Steve turned back to the elevator to ask Nina what they should do. Keep going? Or warn them to just burn the place to the ground?
But she was not there.
Not dead or dying. Just not there.
He looked at his wrist. As if expecting to find her still holding him.
Then he realized: she’d helped him leave, but she’d never recovered from her wounds. She wasn’t there for him. He’d just needed that push.
A hallucination from whatever Varane had delivered into his veins? Or something conjured from deep within his psyche.
Like so much tonight, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that somewhere in his bloodstream… something else moved.
Waiting.
And Steve needed to figure out what to do next.
35
It must have been a week later.
Somewhere inland. Somewhere, where a dirt road snaked through empty hills. Dust kicked up behind the rickety van—Nina’s, which he’d taken from the lot. Or they had taken from the lot. After the breach. Before they could know the truth about him.
Inside, Steve sat in the passenger seat. Wrapped in a blanket offered to him as he emerged from the stricken prison. Face gaunt. Pale under the bruises.
His bitten arm was hidden beneath layers of gauze and tape. He hadn’t looked at it since day three.
Didn’t need to.
He knew he was alive. Somehow. Knew, maybe, that was what the alpha’s saliva did.
Every couple of hours, the fever came back. Then broke. But he didn’t turn.
Then the fever returned. Worse.
But it hadn’t taken him. Not yet. He didn’t know what that meant.
Nina drove.
Or did she?
How could she?
Was he driving?
Was this a symptom of the infection?
They hadn’t talked much since the escape. Words felt too fragile. Like saying them out loud would break whatever spell was keeping him together.
He sensed her watching him. At night. During the day. In silence. Hand always near a weapon. But she stayed.
Through the grimy window, the world looked clean and safe. Empty fields. Telephone poles leaning into the wind. A hawk circling high.
Steve leaned his head against the glass.
He opened the pouch in his lap. Pulled out the photo.
Two kids on a beach. Sunburnt shoulders. Wind in their hair. Nina was holding a crab up to the lens, grinning. Proud. Steve hadn’t dared touch it.
He smiled. Faint. Then tucked the photo back into his jacket.
They passed a road sign half-swallowed by weeds:
NEXT TOWN – 12 MILES
No sirens. No soldiers. No fences. No one chasing him.
For all he knew, the teams that breached Clarehouse had fallen prey to the same thing the rest of them did. Nothing to warn what was buried behind those walls, except Steve’s rambling warnings as he emerged and was fobbed off toward an ambulance.
No warning of what might still be inside him. Waiting to wake up.
Steve sat back. Closed his eyes.
Felt the road carry him forward. Or was he propelling himself?
And the thing in his blood — quiet, for now — waiting.
Like a fuse.
Ready.
Just not lit.
And one day, soon, or years from now, he was certain it would wake up. And he had to be strong enough to finish it himself before then.
If Nina would let him.
Want more?
Some doors should never be opened.
Scott Dawson’s life is shattering. His business failed and his wife disappeared after discovering his infidelity. So when he sees his young daughter talking to a man in an expensive suit, he’s sure things can’t get worse. He has no idea.
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About The Authors
Sean Platt has always been an entrepreneur, but knew he’d rather tell stories. When his wife bought him a laptop for his birthday in 2007 he dropped everything to start writing fiction.
Since making the leap, Sean has written hundreds of novels (including the international best-sellers Yesterday’s Gone and Invasion), penned dozens of scripts, and founded the IP Incubator Sterling & Stone where more than thirty storytellers work together to create world changing IP. Sterling & Stone’s stable of writers come to Sean for ideas, mentorship, and “better words.”
Kathryn Cottam spent over ten years writing screenplays before turning to novels, penning multiple books with her co-writer sister. In 2022, her dream of joining Sterling & Stone came true and she has been able to expand her creativity by exploring more genres and ideas than she ever thought possible. Kathryn currently lives with her two cats in a one-traffic light town on Vancouver Island, Canada. Home is tucked between a mountain, the lake, and the ocean. Which is exactly how she likes it.
Kim M. Watt Originally from New Zealand, Kim (she/her) now inhabits a slightly different world, crafting funny fantasies and off-beat cosy (or cozy) mysteries in which tea-drinking dragons collude with resourceful ladies of a certain age, baking-obsessed reapers run petting cafes for baby ghouls, and cats always bring the snark.
Kim’s stories blend myth and reality in small and spectacular ways, where the Apocalypse comes on a Vespa, and the healing magic of tea and a really good lemon drizzle cake is unquestioned. But most of all, her tales are about friendship, loyalty, and people of all species looking out for one another. Because these, above all things, are magic.
David W. Wright is the co-author of edge-of-your seat thrillers including the best-selling post-apocalyptic series Yesterday’s Gone, the paranoid sci-fi WhiteSpace series, and the vigilante series, No Justice, as well as standalone thrillers 12, and Crash which was recently optioned for a movie.
David is an accomplished, though intermittent, cartoonist who lives in [LOCATION REDACTED] with his wife and son [NAMES REDACTED.]
He is not at all paranoid.
He is “the grumpy one” on the The Story Studio Podcast with fellow Sterling and Stone founders, Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant.
David writes about books, TV shows, movies, and video games he enjoys; his struggles with anxiety and OCD; writing; and posts the occasional drawing at his personal blog at davidwwright.com
You can email him at david@sterlingandstone.net
We swear, he almost never bites. Unless you feed him after midnight.
L.B. Milano is the pen name of award-winning author Linda Bleser. Linda began her writing career publishing short fiction for women’s magazines. Since then, she’s published several award-winning novels in multiple genres, from rib-tickling comedy to bone-chilling suspense. Reviewers have hailed her work as unique, original, and impossible to put down.
Writing as both Linda Bleser and L.B. Milano, she has over a dozen books, short stories, and novellas in print. Linda is the proud recipient of the EPPIE Award, the Dream Realm Award, the Dorothy Parker Reviewers Choice Award, the Royal Palm Literary Award, and several readers’ choice awards. She also received a top ten placement in the Preditors and Editors poll.
A transplanted New Yorker, Linda, and her husband have retired to sunny Florida, where she continues to dream up new stories on the beach.
Nestled between the ocean and a mountain on Vancouver Island, Canada, Roberta Cottam spins mysteries of both the thrilling and cozy kind. Often with a hint of humor, her stories drop ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances, where they teeter between good and evil, making razor-edged choices, sometimes with a wink, sometimes with a knife. When she’s not stirring up trouble on the page, she shares a lakeside property with Kathryn, her sister (and sometimes co-author), three cats who compete for the sunny spots, and seven fruit trees that know a thing or two about creativity. Between them, the sisters trade infinite ideas, a variety of fruit crumbles, and theories about what really goes bump in the night.
Emme Jackson is a lover of books, coffee and treasure hunts. When she’s not writing, she’s usually off on an adventure dragging her beleaguered children behind her. She resides in Southern Indiana with her husband, three children and countless fur babies. If Josh Gates wants to know where the South Carolina box is, tell him to give me a ring.
Multi-genre writer Ebony Graves has been writing professionally since 2014 but unprofessionally since she discovered stringing words together sometime in the first grade. Her novels have run the gamut from hardcore horror to fluffy fantasy and that is what keeps her coming back for more. There’s always something else to try. Living alone in the self-proclaimed Most Haunted City in America, Savannah, GA, she enjoys hanging out with her cats (Tegami and Lt. Uhura), reading things that keep her up at night, exploring random subjects with the hyperfixation of ADHD, and working in technology.
Wade Peterson crafts award-winning stories that linger in your mind long after you've finished them. He's poured his heart and soul into these worlds, drawing inspiration from his love for tabletop gaming, '80s and '90s hair metal, electrical engineering mishaps, and his collection of dog-eared paperback novels.
When he's not forging tales, you can find Wade unraveling the arcane mysteries of Texas barbecue in his backyard, deciphering the passive-aggressive demands of two cats, or nodding in agreement with whatever wine his wife chooses to accompany their evening feast.
Jordan Bach is a lifelong lover of horror and dark thriller fiction. As a high-schooler, he and his friends would consume Stephen King and James Herbert books in days, and his early ambition was to be an author of such work. Sadly, life got in the way, and it took him several years to rekindle his love of writing, but he now pens his favorite genre and is loving every minute of it.
Jordan lives in Staffordshire, UK, with his wife and two children, the children being particularly useful as beta readers as they grow older. In his spare time, he is a cyclist, runner, and martial arts enthusiast, and hopes one day to take his family traveling to many foreign countries, as he did as a younger man.
Sean Platt, Infinite Pieces Volume 4
