The Infection by Craig DiLouie Read Free Book Online

growling deep in her throat. His heart pounded against his ribs. Books and papers crashed to the floor in the den. The woman yelped and paced, shouldering the walls as she moved. At least there was only one and not a pack of them in the house. He forced himself to breathe in and out, in and out, his bowels liquefying. Feeling the weapon in his hands, he felt a sudden stabbing urge to rush in there and bash her brains out, but the moment passed quickly, leaving him feeling dry-mouthed and drained and even more terrified.
    Ethan slipped out of the front door, leaving it open, and began running to the car, which he had left parked on the street. Instantly, people in neighboring yards saw him and began howling, the sound echoing all over the neighborhood. Something snarled and thrashed through the rosebushes. Dropping the suitcases in a blind panic, he ran to the car, started the engine and stomped on the gas pedal just as a man threw himself against it, leaving a massive dent in the door. The car roared, building speed rapidly.
    “Get out of the way!” he cried, jerking the wheel.
    People were running out of driveways and lawns. The car jolted as a woman bolted directly into the passenger side window, cobwebbing the glass and leaving a red smear clotted with tufts of hair. A man surged into the back door, bounced off, and then ran alongside, pounding on the glass with bloody fists until losing his balance and falling hard onto the pavement. Ethan speeded up but then began weaving erratically, trying to avoid hitting an overturned truck and another man running at him from the open front door of a house.
    “Oh God, no, please no,” he begged, leaning on the horn.
    The sound only attracted more. The shapes burst against the car like human missiles, impacting and bouncing off with heart-stopping bangs, leaving blood and cobweb fractures in the windows and dents in the body. Ethan drove past a burning house with a burning tree in its front yard, screaming his head off and gunning the engine again, plowing into a snarling young woman in a red dress who went flying over the roof. Another blurred against the door on his side, cracking its nose against the window and leaving a long squirt of blood.
    “Stop it!” he screamed, almost blinded by tears. “Fucking stop it!”
    The neighborhood began to turn from residential to commercial. He glanced into his rearview mirror and saw a horde of his neighbors shrieking at his heels. He suddenly became aware that an old Beatles song was playing on the car’s speakers. After a few moments, his pursuers began to lag behind, and gave up the chase, glaring at him.
    It’s over, he thought, letting out a ragged sound that was part chuckle, part sob.
    By the time he glanced back at the road it was too late to avoid the small mob running directly at him from the front. The car plowed into their bodies and flung them over the car like ragdolls. One became stuck like a nightmarish ornament, flailing with its one good arm, the crumpled hood spraying scalding water onto the body and the windshield. Ethan gunned the engine, half blinded, until the man, writhing and shrieking, detached and became caught in the right wheel hub, which ground and broke up the body with an awful cracking sound. The car jerked to the right and everything went black.
    Ethan awoke on the sidewalk, stumbling away from his car that rested half-smashed against the wall of a department store. He tried to run, holding onto his backpack, and fell to his knees vomiting. People howled behind him. He heard the tramp of feet. One of the department store’s display windows was broken and he climbed in, then began limping through the store past selections of men’s ties and belts and leather shoes. Several men clawed their way in behind and gave chase at a loping gait, hunting him as a pack through the cosmetics department.
    They steadily gained on him, yelping. They almost sounded happy. He ran blindly now, dropping his pack, seeing