Read Online Here We Stand (Book 1): Infected (Surviving The Evacuation) by Frank Tayell - Free Book Online Page A

something else. Something more guttural, almost a moan. He crossed the road and picked up his pace.
    One block west and one south, a bright yellow van had crashed into the window of a shoe-store. Sneakers of every lurid color had spilled into the road. There were no staff or security guards, and from the look of it, no one had come to steal the merchandise. Somehow, that was more troubling than anything else he’d seen.
    The rear of the van had been levered open. The inside was coated in a dusting of soil and a few broken wooden crates. From the fragments, he pieced together the logo of an organic grocery, but all the produce was gone. He thought of the two men who’d tried to rob that store. Had society really collapsed so swiftly? Had the perceived value of goods changed so fast?
    A cab had crashed into the side of the van, reducing the road to a single lane. As he continued south, he passed more wrecks, and more abandoned cars behind them. The complete absence of people was getting to him. New York was a city of millions, and Manhattan was one of the most densely populated areas of real estate on the planet, and yet it was almost as if he had it to himself.
    The ground under his foot changed, becoming sticky. He’d stepped in something. Blood. He heard a noise, similar to yet different from the moaning sigh he’d heard before. With it came a rustling bang as if someone was dragging themselves along a wall. He drew the revolver he’d taken from the now-dead thug and crossed to the middle of the road. Get to a boat. Put out to sea. He’d be safe. The idea lodged in his brain, going round and round, growing in appeal.
    A hand slapped against a car’s window, an inch from his side. A face appeared, a snarling, snapping apparition absent of all humanity. The hand banged against glass. Tom backed away. Something pulled on his coat. He spun around, tugging it free from the arm reaching out through an open window. The banging continued in stereo as it was joined by others. Not near, but not far enough away. He ran, sometimes in the road, sometimes along the sidewalk, only slowing when he reached a street almost clear of traffic. Something big had passed this way, shunting the stalled and abandoned cars away from the median. With some distance between himself and those steel tombs, he told himself to relax. There had been only four zombies. Maybe five. That’s all. Perhaps six. Seven at the outside. Maybe ten. Twenty. A hundred. A million. An undead city in which he was the only one left.
    He was running again. He forced himself to stop. Stay calm. Stay rational. There was no way not to think about the surrounding horror, so he tried to think about it constructively. How had those people ended up in the cars? They were in the southbound lane, as if they’d been heading toward the outbreak. Had they been infected by some passing refugee after they’d decided to flee? The questions were pointless and based on an assumption for which he had no evidence. He was assuming that the virus was passed on by blood and saliva because that was what the television had said. Sure, he’d seen video footage of people being bitten, but that wasn’t proof. It was an assumption, because that’s how it worked in the movies. The virus could be airborne, but only a fraction of the population was susceptible. Or only a fraction was immune. Or it could be somewhere in between, or almost anything else. There was no way of knowing, not right now, but that ignorance would kill him.
    Ahead came the sound of breaking glass. With it came voices. At any other time, he would have taken a different direction. After what had happened in the bodega, he knew he should. Right now, and above all else, he wanted to know that other people were alive. Not wanting to look openly hostile, he put the revolver in his pocket, but kept a hand on it as he approached.
    They were looters, and they were organized. A group of at least twenty were systematically emptying a