Infected (Book 2): The Flight by Caleb Cleek Read Free Book Online Page A

freedom from lawless, marauding criminals and the infected.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Part 2
    Atlanta, Georgia
    Thursday Morning

Chapte r 7
    Zeke immediately noticed two things when he opened his eyes. First, he was lying on his left side, his right thigh pulled up perpendicular to his body with his knee bent at ninety degrees.  It was the same position he had assumed just prior to falling asleep. He hadn’t moved all night.  Second, and more important, he realized the ache that had racked his body for the last two days was completely gone.  There was no uncomfortable bloating in his abdomen, no pressure building within his bowels.  There was no excessive saliva accumulating in his mouth, signaling the onslaught of another round of vomiting.
    He had felt “off” when he left work Monday afternoon.  He wasn’t really sick; he just didn’t feel right.  It was a slow day and he had put in six or seven hours at the office over the weekend, so he decided to leave early. 
    The moment he opened the door to his apartment, he was overcome by the aroma of simmering beans wafting out the door.  The smell normally had an effect similar to what Pavlov’s bell had on his dogs: instant salivation from the anticipation of food.
    But on Monday afternoon, the smell brought on a wave of nausea that he was barely able to suppress.  All he could do was unplug his Crock Pot, hurriedly move the beans onto the balcony, and turn on the vent fan above the stove to pull the offending odor out of the apartment before the nausea drove him to his knees in front of the toilet.
    The fan didn’t have the power to draw the smell out of the apartment in a timely manner.  Although he didn’t want to, Zeke finally resorted to opening a window and turning on the whole house fan in the hallway.  In a matter of minutes, the smell was gone and along with it, the crippling nausea. 
    The monstrous fan blades created another dilemma, however.  Although the fan had effectively removed every vestige of the provoking scent, it could not work in a vacuum.   Every liter of air the fan drew from the house had to be replaced with another liter of air from outside.  The house was now full of ninety degree air saturated with moisture from the brewing Georgia thunderstorm. The humidity was nearly one hundred percent.  Within twenty minutes at most, the charcoal clouds would be thoroughly impregnated with moisture and would begin to vent excess liquid in the form of rain.
    The hot, humid air filling his house was almost as bad as the smell of food had been.  He quickly closed the window and turned the fan off.  
    In a continuous motion, he moved his hand to the thermostat and dropped the temperature to fifty-eight degrees.  It was as low as it could be set.  He intellectually knew setting it at fifty-eight wouldn’t cool the house any faster than leaving it at seventy-two where it had been.  He also knew fifty-eight would be too cold. 
    That knowledge didn’t matter.  All that mattered was sweat was beading on his forehead. It had already soaked through his t-shirt, and was beginning to saturate his dress shirt around the armpits.  The muggy air felt like it was suffocating him.  Dropping the thermostat to fifty-eight had psychological implications: somehow, it made him feel cooler.
    His body suddenly began to ache, as if the hot, damp air had catalyzed some sort of reaction that had been slowly steeping away within his joints.  His gut was roiling in discomfort.  It felt like part of the storm developing outside had moved inside his belly and was about to reach a crescendo. 
    In an instant, he knew he only had moments to get his besieged body to the bathroom.  Upon his arrival, he couldn’t decide whether to raise the seat and kneel before the toilet or leave it in the down position and sit on it instead.  In the end, he sat on the seat and picked up the wastebasket resting beside the porcelain throne.  Whether the vomiting came