The Infected (Book 2): Karen's First Day by Joseph Zuko

Karen scanned the area around her. It was clear of infected
for the moment.
    Where the hell were the girl’s parents?
    Was that where the blood came from?
    All she wanted to do was pick up and comfort that baby.
Karen’s body was immediately covered in a layer of sweat. She was wracked with
indecision. She couldn’t leave her babies. But she couldn’t watch this one
suffer either. An idea formed. Robin would be asleep for a while and Valerie
would probably not look up from the computer screen for a long time.
    Karen stepped from the window and headed for the front
door. She pulled one of her steak knives from the wall as she unlocked the door.
She paused to think about this. Last time she left the apartment she almost got
killed by Steve.
    Could she live with herself if she let something
happen to that baby?
    No. She could not. Karen checked to make sure the gun was
on her hip. It was locked and loaded. She opened the door. The warm spring breeze
felt good on her damp skin. She locked the door and promised herself that she
would only be gone a minute. She just had to grab the child and get her to her
home safe and race back to her own children before they even noticed she was
gone. 
    She stepped softly out to the edge of the building and double-checked
her surroundings before stepping farther out into the parking lot. Behind her
and up on the second floor Tina’s front door opened. Karen turned and saw
Tina’s head popping out the door.
    “Did you see the baby out there?” Tina’s voice wavered.
She was as choked up as Karen about this abandoned child.
    “Yes,” Karen whispered up to her neighbor. Tina was
already out her door and heading down the steps before Karen finished her one
word sentence. Before Karen knew it she had a fellow Mama by her side and this
one was armed with a recently used butcher’s knife.
    The little girl was beginning to walk away from them.
    “What’s the plan?” Tina stood shoulder to shoulder with
Karen. Both of them were reluctant to leave the alcove of their apartment
building and venture out into the open where the monsters lay in wait. Karen
saw the look of absolute focus in this woman’s eyes and that gave her
confidence that they would be okay if they kept their heads about them.
    “I was gonna see if I could call her over here and figure
out which building she lives in, but with the two of us we could just go get
her.”
    “Sounds good.”
    The two women raced over the asphalt. Both of them were
trim, but they never worked out in the gym and they hated jogging. Twenty steps
at this sprinter’s pace told them both just how out of shape they really were. Karen’s
lungs burned. Her quads ached. Seeing the same pain on Tina’s face helped her
not feel so bad about her conditioning.
    “Sweetheart!” Karen called to the child.
    The toddler spun on her heels. When she saw the two women
racing towards her she let out a supersonic scream then turned back around and
started running away.
    “Don’t run! Come back! We won’t hurt you!” Tina cried out
after the little one. The little girl had some wheels on her. She was going to
be a future soccer star for sure, if she lived that long.
    Karen and Tina had to turn on the jets to keep up with
her. Behind one of the buildings on the far side of the property was a large,
well-kept grassy field that the neighbor children would play on. The little
girl sped out onto the field. She screamed at the top of her lungs the whole
way.
    As Tina and Karen gained on the toddler she changed
direction again and headed towards a large bush that sat in a flowerbed behind
the last building on the lot. She squeezed her body between the building’s wall
and the bush.
    Both women were out of breath and unable to string a sentence
together, but they finally had the little girl cornered. Karen and Tina both
clutched their knees and tried their best to catch their breath. They inched
along the wall trying to reach for the child.
    The little girl