Infectnation Chapter 6 & Photoshoot

Spread Infectnation!
Past this code into your website or next blog post:

<a href=”http://lestismitethee.wordpress.com/novels/”><img src=”http://lestismitethee.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/infectnationbanner1.jpg”></a>

Christine Lines, a.k.a Gally

Lots of big, exciting news headed your way!

First off, I’ve finally arrived in D.C. and got a badass job.  No worries — I’ll still have time for my novel and I plan to finish it sometime in 2011 since, given the circumstances of the past few months, I can’t make the December 31, 2010 deadline I originally set for myself.  I have roughly 30 chapters planned for the entire epic story, loaded with more monsters, more character development, and more badassness.

But with the completion of Chapter 6, I now have over 10k words.  This may be the last chapter I post.  Cmon, I can’t give you the entire story; you’ll have to buy my book if, or rather, when it comes out!

I also had the pleasure of conducting an Infectnation photoshoot with my good friend Betsy and created a cheesy cover for my novel.  It’s definitely not as professional as it could be, but it captures what I want in the real cover.  Maybe adding some more urban destruction and infected body parts would make it nicer.

Experimental Infectnation cover using my pen name

Part of what makes Infectnation so special is the relationship between Jade and Beatrix.  Many of you have even commented how eager you are to read more about them and their back-story.  What makes it even more special to me is that their relationship is based on my real friendship with Betsy: two girls who met in college and became best of friends despite having nearly opposite personalities.  It gives me hope that no matter what we’re like, it’s possible for all of us to get along.

Betsy, muse and model for Beatrix; photo part of Beatrix series by Christine Lines, © 2010

_______________________________________________________

Photo part of Beatrix series by Christine Lines, © 2010

Photo part of Beatrix series by Christine Lines, © 2010

Photo part of Beatrix series by Christine Lines, © 2010

Infectnation
Story by Christine Lines, © 2010

<<< <:/Log.05>
>>> <:/Log.07>

<:/Log.06>

Beatrix gasped awake, wide eyes darting wildly from side-to-side, hands grabbing at thin air, feet scraping backwards on the metal floor, lungs pumping shallow, rapid breaths into the shrieked words of “HELP, HELP, HELP!” Jade jumped up from the floor and tried to calm Beatrix, grabbing her wrists and holding them close.

“Beatrix,” she said softly, trying not to startle her friend any further. But Beatrix kept shaking, trying to free her hands, tear-soaked eyes looking for either an abomination or a salvation that wasn’t there.

Jade gripped her wrists tighter. “Beatrix!” she spoke more forcefully. Beatrix’s feet slid to a stop and her breathing gradually regained control. Her eyes slowly focused on Jade, as if just noticing her in the maglev train for the first time.

“J-Jade,” Beatrix whispered in a small, pitiful voice. “Th-they were–”

“Was it the nightmare?” Jade asked gently.

Beatrix slid her wrists out of Jade’s hands and wiped away her tears. “I’m fine,” she sniffled in a serious tone, composing herself.

Jade looked at Beatrix for another few seconds, knowing her friend was at the end of her nerves. They had witnessed the slaughter of the Red City and have since been dashing through hell for the past miserable week – if it was longer, Jade couldn’t tell since sheer exhaustion blurred the days together. There was simply no relief to be found wherever they traveled. Any stores they stumbled across along the way had either been looted, had dangerous new occupants to be avoided, had nothing left but rotting food, or had been destroyed due to the infected, armed forces, or desperate people with nothing left to lose. Houses and other living quarters were another story; there might be canned food and useful items inside, but getting through the bloody horror and vomit-inducing stench of half-eaten corpses or messy family suicides were taxing on the mind. The last thing Jade wanted was to end up in another metropolis, another Red City incident, with more monsters or crazed citizens living in anarchy.

“Alright,” Jade said. “It’ll be okay. Let’s get ready.” Jade kept saying things to help Beatrix hold on to hope, to have some sort of comfort, to keep warm a fire in her heart by which she could always see in the darkest hours.

But Jade kept none for herself.

She was a realist and knew they would probably never find a safe place with safe people and safe food. The world just didn’t function that way. It never had.

“What were you doing?” Beatrix asked as she got up to stretch her sore joints and muscles.

“Making sure our Statphones are charged. Maglevs can do resonant energy transfer, so they charged while we slept. We must really be in civilization again since we don’t have to use those outdated outlets and charging cables anymore. Can’t believe this train still works.”

“Yeah. I guess we’re just that lucky.”

“Totally. That thing definitely won’t be chasing us anymore, unless there’s a bloody pancake variety of infected we don’t know about.”

Beatrix smiled and went to sit on the floor next to Jade to check her backpack.

“Unfortunately,” Jade sighed, “my bag might not be so much full of luck.”

Jade pulled out a couple cans of food from her backpack. They were dented into dripping, pulpy mush.

“Some got crushed when I fell trying to find you. Or rather, when that thing attacked me on the cliff.”

“Geez, are you okay?”

“Yeah, just sore as hell. These broke my fall, so I guess they weren’t a complete waste.”

“But your stuff…” Beatrix peered into Jade’s bag.

“Yeah, about that… Can I borrow some clothes for now?”

“Sure! I’ve got–”

“Black.”

“But I’ve got–”

“Black.”

“Ugh!” Beatrix dug into her bag of colorful clothes as assorted as the rainbow and pulled out the only black things she had: a baby-doll T-shirt with slits on the shoulders, a wavy mini-skirt, and a pair of stockings.

“You never let me dress you up,” Beatrix pouted.

“Aren’t you dressing me up right now?” Jade asked, glancing sideways at the mini-skirt.

“No! You always just wanna wear black,” Beatrix moaned.

“I’m allergic to bright color. Are you gunna turn around or are you gunna be lesbo and look at my boobs?”

Beatrix mockingly stuck out her tongue then turned around to change clothes as well, then took inventory of her bag, which they were interrupted from finishing that morning.

Jade was eager to get out of her dusty, sweaty clothes and put on something fresh. She wondered if they would find a working laundry facility in the metropolis. The T-shirt fit alright despite Beatrix having double the breast size – of which Jade was sometimes jealous, but not especially when they were running for dear life – and the skirt was at least more comfortable to wear than her own strappy pants. And after slipping on the stockings and buckling up her knee-high boots over them, Jade decided it wasn’t so bad either since it showed off her ass-kicking potential.

“By the way…” Beatrix hesitated.

“Yeah?” Jade turned to face Beatrix having just finished getting dressed.

Then she reeled back at the sight of what Beatrix held out to her.

In her hands gleamed the shiny black surface of a large handgun.

“Where the fuck did you get that?!”

“I… I found it in that construction district when I was hiding in one of the buildings. I ran and ducked under a desk, but then I noticed it lying in an open drawer. I don’t know why whoever owned it didn’t take it with them. But I was so scared of the monster, I just grabbed it and held on to it. After a while, I couldn’t hear the monster anymore so I put it in my backpack then went out to try and find you. But I guess you found me first. I don’t know if I could’ve shot it.”

Jade stared hard at Beatrix.

“Give it to me.”

Beatrix slowly extended her hand. Jade grabbed it carefully, the small contraption strangely heavy in her hand, and made sure the safety switch was in the right position before placing it in her bag.

Just then the train’s automated female voice called, “Arriving in Bethune in five minutes.”

Beatrix turned to Jade. “Hey, isn’t this…”

Jade didn’t look up to acknowledge her, just continued to check the contents of her bag. She kept as much as she could separated and sealed in plastic baggies, but the clothes she had stuffed in a rush that morning had all gotten soaked when those food cans busted. At least some of the cans were intact and none of the metal tools in the front pocket, like the flashlight, knife, and multi-tool, got wet or they might rust.

“Alexander was from Bethune, wasn’t he?”

At the sound of his name, Jade froze.

“I mean…”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Beatrix slowly turned back to her bag. After Jade and Beatrix had finished securing their backpacks, they stood to look out of the large train windows. Their surroundings had completely changed to the familiar sights of a metropolis.

One of the largest metropolises in the country, and the largest seaside metropolis in the world, Bethune stretched nearly 150 kilometers in diameter over sparkling Bethune Bay. Heavenly blue skyscrapers penetrated the pristine clouds two thousand meters above and reached beyond to the azure sky. Below the shimmering turquoise waves of the bay, Bethune dove below into underwater living quarters, restaurants, clubs, and all the luxuries of a typical metropolis.

A flickering, half-dead electric sign whipped past the window stating,

Bethune
The City of the Bay
pop. 104,964,827

“Not anymore…” whispered Jade as she squinted at the numbers.

Jade and Beatrix strapped on their backpacks, waiting for the train to stop somewhere in the heart of the metropolis.

Jade focused her shining emerald eyes on her friend. “No matter what happens, stay with me this time, okay?”

“I will, I didn’t mean to get separated from you in the woods.”

“I know. We’ve got to be more careful here, though. When it was just us in the rural areas outside Radcliff heading towards the sea, we didn’t have to worry as much about running into dangerous people or infected. But there are bound to be plenty of shady bastards here. And that means more infected to stalk the prey. This is a hunting ground. We need to find shelter fast. Stay quick and quiet. After tonight, we’ll figure out where we should go next.”

“So… we’re not staying here?”

“Of course not.” Jade faced Beatrix. “Did you think we were going to stay?”

“Well, I was thinki–”

“Forget it. It’s too dangerous. We need to stick together, on our own. We can’t trust anyone else. Got it?”

“Fine.” Beatrix turned away from Jade, frustrated. She smoothed down her white blouse and mini-skirt then gazed out as the train zigzagged through cobalt buildings of dizzying heights.

The automated voice announced, “Bethune, platform one, level one.”

Finally, the maglev came to a stop at the first station inside Bethune. Jade reached back and pulled out the large knife in the front pocket of her backpack while Beatrix unsheathed the one strapped to her thick belt. When the doors opened, Jade’s heavy black boot was the first to step out onto the dusty landing area, followed closely by Beatrix’s soft brown boots.

Jade twirled in a circle, taking in the surroundings. The air was thick and stagnant. Part of the landing area to their left was smashed in by fallen chunks of buildings. To their right was a wall with the big, yellow letters “Level 1” smeared on it. Next to it were stairs leading up to a series of bridges stretching like a web in all directions.

When the maglev left for the next station, they took the stairs, the only route open to them. As they climbed higher through the metropolis’s multitude of levels, they saw debris everywhere, as if some violent battle had raged inside the bowels of the city. Some bridges had collapsed, others were piled high with twisted metal and shards of glass, and some stretched into abandoned streets that trailed like blue veins all through the metropolis.

They turned onto the first intact bridge leading into the streets. Jade wanted to get to the cover of buildings quickly so they wouldn’t be exposed to any onlookers in the open roads. They wove through piles of crumpled electric cars, blue steel, and trash. Guard rails were punched in and mangled into metal spaghetti by vehicles that had tumbled over the edge and fallen into the indigo bay below.

As they made their way to the other side of the street, they peered into shattered shop windows and broken doorways. Stench and filth flowed freely from them, as if nasty things had crawled in dragging something dead, laid waste to the place, and crawled back out to wreak more havoc on the rest of the metropolis. Jade suppressed her growing fear; she couldn’t think of the infected abominations that must still be roaming the city, she just had to find a secluded place for them to lay low.

Having no luck finding shelter along the ravaged street of the shopping district, they turned down an alleyway, seeking city levels with living quarters. If they were lucky, they’d find one with working water, electricity, even food. But the most important thing was a way to keep them safe inside and the dangerous ones locked out.

Jade knew the large luxury suites would be in the lower levels of the metropolis below the water; Bethune was famous for them. But that also meant it was a more tempting target for other survivors, and therefore, the infected. Jade led Beatrix up to higher city levels, darting between buildings, alleys, and debris, hoping they remained unnoticed.

“What do you think happened here?” Beatrix whispered.

“Hm?”

“There’s rubble everywhere. Even Radcliff wasn’t this bad when we left.”

“It might’ve been. We didn’t stick around to wait and see.”

“I just mean it looks like tanks or something shot this place to pieces. It’s crazy-looking. Look over there.”

Beatrix pointed through a gap between buildings. Somewhere deep inside the city, beyond the bridges, streets, and treacherous open space above the frigid water, the damage was so bad that Jade could see demolished skyscrapers leaning on each other like dead blue giants.

“Holy shit…” Jade breathed in astonishment.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. What could’ve done that?”

“Let’s not think about it. Let’s just focus on finding a place to stay for the night. It’ll get dark soon.”

As if the cruel world heeded Jade’s words, a bone-chilling breeze swept up from the bay to slither through the buildings and bridges of the metropolis. The clouds seemed to darken, impaling themselves lower on the needles and spires of the skyscrapers.

“Fog,” Jade whispered. “We’re on a bay swirling with cold water flowing in from the arctic north. We need to find a place fast.”

Beatrix looked around, combing back the red hair blowing over her pale face. Then her blue eyes caught on something.

“There,” she pointed.

Jade followed her gaze to a window that wasn’t grimy or smashed out in an abandoned apartment complex one level above where they stood.

“Can we get up there?” Beatrix asked in a hushed tone.

Jade smirked. “No reason why we can’t. Let’s go check it out.”

“Alright, follow me!”

Beatrix led the way with a skip in her step, hiking up another flight of stairs to level 36 and heading to the front doors of the apartment. As she approached, the electric doors didn’t respond. She tried manually sliding one open with a latch on the side, but it refused to budge.

“Must be fried,” Jade remarked.

“Let’s check the side. Maybe there’s a window we can crawl through.”

Beatrix circled the complex. A broken first floor window gaped at her like a ravenous mouth with glass teeth.

“We could try that one,” she said.

“But there’s sharp glass all over it.”

“Uhm… maybe I can put clothes over the shards so they won’t cut us. Gimme a boost.”

They put away their knives, then Jade wove her fingers together and let Beatrix step into her palms. Beatrix slung some clothes over the glass and carefully placed her hand on top.

“I think it’s safe now. I’ll climb in and see if I can find the emergency release button for the doors.”

Beatrix slowly slid through. When her legs disappeared altogether, Jade turned to head to the doors.

A sharp thud came from inside. Jade turned back and was about to call for Beatrix when she heard her high voice call softly, “I’m okay! I got this!”

“Clumsy, as always,” whispered Jade with a smirk.

Jade waited patiently by the double doors, twirling her blade in-between her fingers. When she neither saw nor heard Beatrix after a few minutes, worry weighed heavily on her. She put her knife away and set the backpack down then tried tugging the doors in, out, side-to-side. She decided to go back to the window to check for Beatrix and turned around the corner when the door slid open on its own with an airy woosh.

Jade quickly slammed her back up against the wall for cover and listened quietly. Footsteps. More than a pair of feet would make. Sounds as if someone was humming. She slowly tried peeking around the corner to see who had come out of the apartment.

Two figures stood in front of the doorway. She saw a raggedy man in torn, mismatched clothes holding Beatrix tightly against him while his other hand covered her mouth. Beatrix struggled to break free and made sounds as if to scream, but they only came out as small, desperate squeals.

The man looked around, his dirty, shaggy hair drooping over his worn face, as if expecting someone else to be there. Then he laid his eyes on the backpack Jade had set next to the doors.

Jade quickly ducked back into the cover of the apartment wall. She had to think fast.

“Well, well… What’s this?” the man called in a low, hushed voice. “Someone lose their treasure? You may wanna come back for it. That, and your friend.”

“I am,” Jade growled as she suddenly appeared around the other side of the apartment and launched into a flying drop-kick.

She slammed into his back, her big boots pounding into his bones, and knocked him down. But his hands were still locked around Beatrix and she fell with him. Jade lunged and landed on top of the man’s back, pinning him and snatching his hair in her fist to force his head up and shove her blade up under his throat before he could even roll over to face his attacker.

“Stay down,” she snarled. “Bea, you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” Beatrix said as she brushed herself off.

“Listen up, you shit. You struggle, you speak without my permission, and your blood paints the street. Understood?”

She could barely make out a “Yes” under his painful grumbles.

“What do you want?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to groan quietly.

She shoved his head forward to give it a good pop into the pavement, then yanked his head back up again. Beatrix gasped while the man began whimpering in pain.

“Let’s try that again. What do you want with us?”

“I d-don’t want anything to do with y-you,” he stuttered in agony. “I was ch-checking out the area for sup-p-plies and ran into the red-head.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Jade hissed. “Why’d you try to take her hostage?”

“I wasn’t, I-I was just trying to keep her q-quiet. I s-startled her and was afraid she’d scream.”

“And who wouldn’t scream at that ugly face of yours?”

“N-no, you d-don’t get it, I saw them f-from the window up there and came down, they’re c-comi–”

Low rumbling shuddered through the ground and rattled their bones.

“Oh g-god, the s-s-sucker,” the man dribbled pathetically. Jade felt him go limp under her.

A deafening crash echoed through the buildings and dust plumed up all around them. A screech from somewhere directly above penetrated the choking cloud. Jade reached out for her backpack and grabbed Beatrix’s arm then launched forward into a sprint, leaving the weeping man in the dust.

They clambered through the suffocating debris cloud back toward the lower level stairs with eyes squinted against the stinging dust and breaths sucked through gritted teeth. As the air cleared, Jade chanced a glance back and saw the horribly hideous infected darting along the walls of buildings.

Its feet looked like giant suction cups with fat, slimy toes sticking to skyscraper surfaces. Its body was like a slick, slithering worm with bloated lumps bubbling all over its sticky skin. The head was a twitching, angular bump with many rolling, bulbous eyes and a mouth stretched absurdly ajar, slobbering mucus the color of bloody vomit.

And as it looked back into Jade’s eyes, its screech blew spit so foul and acidic it melted through any metal and pavement it fell upon.

Beatrix screamed at the death sludge it spewed at them and turned to run down the stairs, but she slipped on a step and tumbled down to the bottom. Jade skipped three, four, five steps at a time after her then helped her get to her feet.

But before them stood a second abomination. It was smaller than the spiky tank they met at the construction district and the slimy one crawling after them one level above. It wobbled crookedly on long, skinny legs while dozens of clawed fingers twitched violently all over its lumpy, round body. Orifices rimmed with rows of tiny, razor-sharp teeth slowly opened and little noises like the cooing of babies wafted out of them. Two large, lidless eyes resting on top of the bulgy body stared unflinchingly at its prey.

“Fuck–” was all Jade could utter before the dripping demon descended from above and landed with a moist, meaty crash behind them. The infected tingling with searching fingers and hungry mouths wobbled and twitched closer.

Jade and Beatrix were trapped between being mauled or melted alive.

The little mouth monster started twitching peculiarly as the sticky acid creature drew closer. Then hundreds of thorny teeth and finger missiles shot out. Jade and Beatrix were suddenly tackled to the ground, the flying body parts narrowly missing them as they blasted past and penetrated the slimy infected. It screeched and coiled and flopped on the pavement like a dying snake, its many eyes flicking around madly and its stretched mouth spraying acid saliva everywhere until it finally rolled over the edge of the level and fell with a bone-crushing smack into the cold water 35 levels below.

Another man had suddenly appeared, resting protectively over Jade and Beatrix as the lidless infected regenerated its clawed, twitching fingers through its stretched skin and tiny razor teeth in its legion of hungry mouths. Without skipping a beat, the guy whipped out a weird handgun and pulled the trigger. A split-second sound of air sucking into the weapon and then the pulse blasted the twitchy-finger abomination, the sheer force snapping its bony legs into flailing segments and sending it’s fat, round body rolling backwards until it barreled past the edge of the level and plummeted down into the bay like the sticky creature.

All around them, holes were smoking and sizzling from the acid spit. Jade wriggled out from underneath the man and stood in a defensive position. The guy got up and eyed her with cool blue eyes, then Beatrix, who was sitting on the ground coughing from having the wind knocked out of her when the man tackled them. He was dressed in dusty, mismatched clothes under a faded black trench coat with gray boots tied over his pant legs. He holstered the gun at his leg straps and whipped back his head to move the dirty-blonde strands of hair out of his face.

“Seems like I came just in the nick of time. Glad to be of service, ladies. You certainly look like you’re not from around here, but maybe you’ve seen my partner wandering around? A lean old man in dirty clothes like me. We got separated when we spotted that damn sucker and spitter.”

Beatrix stood next to Jade and cast a cautious glance at her. Jade only kept her eyes fixed on the man, gauging him. After a moment, Jade raised an arm and pointed up.

“I saw someone one level above, but we were all attacked by the… sucker.”

The man hung his head and shook it disappointingly. “He’s probably dead then. Never could get him to stand up to those things. At least I found you. Cmon, let’s get out of here before more come.”

“Hold it.” Jade stood her ground. “Where are you taking us?”

“Where do you think, lady? To the colony. We got food, beds, and enough people with wits and weapons about them to fend off the damn infected.”

Beatrix’s face lit up but Jade’s remained dark and skeptical.

“Don’t look at me like that. If I wanted you dead, I’d have let those monsters make a feast outta you and your friend here.”

Beatrix tugged at Jade’s arm eagerly, but she didn’t take a single step closer to the man.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t interested. You’d rather take your chances out here? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound like you don’t even know what you’re dealing with, lady.”

Jade glared at the man and sighed deeply, realizing their best option was to trust the man and go with him to the shelter. Fog began moving into the streets like cold wraiths mourning the dead metropolis.

“Well,” the man raised his arms out to the sides, “I’m not waiting around all day. You can follow me or be on your way. But I’m warning you, there’s a lot more to worry about than suckers and spitters.”

“Fine,” Jade relented. “We’ll come with you.”

Beatrix smiled and did a little gleeful bounce on her toes.

“But I’m warning you: the second I think you’re leading us into a trap, you’ll wish I was as easy to dispatch as that spitter.“

The man shrugged and walked deeper into the fog. Jade and Beatrix followed him as he headed down into Bethune’s underwater levels.

+X+ Gally

Photos © Christine Lines 2010
Novel © Christine Lines 2010
Blog post © Christine Lines 11.06.10

http://lestismitethee.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/writing-infectnation-chapter-6-and-photoshoot/