The Infestation: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel Read online

  © Matt Shaw

  The right of Matt Shaw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without written consent from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

  The characters, and story, in this book are purely fictitious. Any likeness to person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  With thanks to Lauren McIntyre for her hard work on the cover - even with all my strange requests and demands!

  Want to find me?

  www.mattshawpublications.co.uk

  www.facebook.com/mattshawpublications

  FROM THE SAME AUTHOR

  Love Life

  The Vampire’s Treaty

  (The Peter Chronicles)

  Happy Ever After

  G.S.O.H Essential

  A Fresh Start

  PETER

  All Good Things

  9 Months Book One

  9 Months Book Two

  9 Months Book Three

  Non-Fiction titles

  im fine

  Still Fine

  PlentyOfFreaks

  Wasting Stamps

  Self-publishing: Releasing your book to the digital market

  Collections

  Scribblings From a Dark Place

  9 Months Trilogy

  Happy Ever After Trilogy

  Reviews, Critics & Mystery Shopping (DELETED TITLE)

  The Story Collection: Volume One

  The Story Collection: Volume Two

  Shorts

  A Taste of Your Fears (part of the Literature-Ly You range)

  A Taste of Your Fears 2 (part of the Literature-Ly You range)

  Novellas

  Smile

  The Dead Don’t Knock

  Writer’s Block

  Buried

  The Last Stop

  The Chosen Routes

  A Christmas to Remember (YOU choose the story)

  Romance is Dead

  The Breakdown

  The Cabin

  The 8th

  The Cabin II: Asylum

  The Missing Years of Thomas Pritchard

  Consumed

  Influenza: Strain ‘Z’

  The Lost Son

  Picture Books

  I Hate Fruit & Veg

  A W O R D

  F R O M T H E A U T H O R

  Okay, a confession; this isn’t the first time I’ve written this story. I mean, well, it’s the first time I’ve written this story but I’ve had the idea, and used it, before. You see, I also run a service called “Literature-Ly You” whereby I create stories based on the phobias of my readers, and their lives, giving them a personalised horror story.

  The chances are, you could have already read a version of this tale in the book “A Taste of your Fears”. If you have, fret not, this is a different story and not a ten page short story which that one was. Think of it like this - “Toxin” (the story in “A Taste of your Fears”) is part of the same world but the characters and world, in this story, are completely unrelated and it shows you more of what happened.

  In case you haven’t read “Toxin”, that particular story is a ten page story set in a room, showing the final scene of the two characters living in it. If you think of it as part of this world, the one you’re about to read, it would be set somewhere about halfway through this story. In “Toxin” you know something bad has happened but you don’t know how and you don’t know why. This particular story explains the how, the why and - more importantly - shows the complete conclusion.

  What’s the reason for turning it into a longer story? Simple. I’m not cashing in. It’s just that I absolutely loved the idea behind “Toxin”. I knew that it had legs (so to speak) and I knew that it had great potential to freak out many of my readers - as well as potentially attract new ones too.

  I liked the fact that I managed to come up with something new, original and exciting for a phobia which has been covered more times than I can remember with varying degrees of success.

  Anyway, I don’t wish to build it up too much. I just hope, as ever, that you enjoy my work and - once again - I thank you for the continued support. And I thank you - with a fresh batch of nightmares for your dreams.

  Regards,

  Matt Shaw

  T H E

  I N F E S T A T I O N

  P R O L O G U E

  I’ve never been a fan of spiders.

  Some people say they’re beautiful. Some people say they’re also necessary. I don’t think of them as beautiful or necessary though. The truth be told, they terrify me. The way they can scuttle across the floor at an alarming speed is enough to freak me out but it’s the fact that they then disappear into the smallest of cracks before you can do anything about getting them out of the house - or wherever you’ve seen them. Instead, you just get to stay there...Knowing...Just in that crack...There’s a spider...Watching...Waiting...As soon as you turn your back, you know it’s coming out and, from that moment on, it’s as good as lost until it wants you to find it.

  At least, that’s how I think.

  My irrational fear of spiders probably isn’t helped by my morbid curiosity either. I mean, I hate them and yet I still look into them. I Google image pictures of them. I read up about them. I know neither of those weird hobbies can be regarded as a healthy pastime and yet I can’t help myself. Even when I’ve read stuff which makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention and I feel my paranoia growing - I still can’t close the browser down or deny the need to fuel my constant yearning to learn more and give myself more reasons to hate them.

  Just some of what I’ve read is the stuff of nightmares. Such as, the Fringed Ornamental tarantula which has been known to cause a coma to some of the people it has bitten. Even if the victim doesn’t slip into a coma - they soon find themselves in intense pain. Or the Chinese Bird Spider - a large tarantula which can have a leg span as large as eight inches. Reports reveal it’s known for its extreme aggression. I even read, somewhere, that it was the cause of at least one infant death. Admittedly one infant death doesn’t sound a lot but when you then go on to read that 0.70mg/kg of the spider’s venom, a tiny amount, is enough to cause death in fifty percent of the lab mice it was tested on...Yeah, you don’t want to mess with these.

  And then of course you have the Mouse Spider and the Sydney Funnel-Web spider - both tiny spiders. Both more than capable of bringing down a full-sized adult if an anti-venom isn’t administered quickly enough. These fuckers...They’re the reason steel toe-capped boots were invented. You don’t bother trying to put a pint glass over these things, to merrily transport them outside your home - you simply stamp on them. Hell, be safe...Keep on stamping. Maybe a little harsh towards the Mouse Spider, though. They’ve caused far less deaths, from what I’ve read on the Internet. Apparently they give what is called a ‘dry-bite’. Basically, they bite you - they just don’t give you any venom...Actually, fuck it, stamp on them regardless. The fact they bite you? Clearly they deserve a stamping. Or two.

  Maybe you’ve read about the Brown recluse spider - or the sister species known as the Chilean recluse? Both species are extremely venomous too, just as the other spiders mentioned. The only plus sides are that they both have small fangs, making it hard for them to penetrate our clothes and - of course - the other plus side is in their name. They are reclusive. It doesn’t mean bites don’t happen. It just means they don’t happen as often. When they do, th
ough...Yeah, nasty. Some of the more dangerous symptoms of their bites are necrosis - the dying tissue at the site of the bite. Research found that there’s potential for the wound to grow up to ten inches. If that wasn’t bad enough - they can then become gangrenous. Brilliant.

  Three to four percent of Chilean bites ended in death whereby infection is caused throughout the body and can sometimes result in kidney failure. Another nasty bastard then.

  Bring on the boot.

  That’s not all though.

  There are more species which can kill us.

  Sadly.

  From the same family as the Black Widow, the Redback spider. Before an anti-venom was created - fourteen people had been killed by these spiders. Others simply suffered from swollen lymph nodes, headaches, fevers, nausea and tremors. Worse symptoms saw seizures, coma and - in some cases - respiratory failure.

  I weigh less than a gnat. Okay - not literally - I weight around nine stone. I’m six foot two and weigh around nine stone. I don’t need to be bitten by a Redback. Probably why I don’t often travel to Australia, I suppose.

  The Black Widow rarely causes death. A nice spider, I guess. He only causes severe muscle spasms and sometimes spinal or cerebral paralysis. Oh, wait - did I say he was a nice spider? Fuck that. No such thing.

  One late evening, browsing the net, I even found a six eyed spider which freaked me out, in the pictures I stumbled across. Called the Six-Eyed Sand spider - it’s one of the most venomous spiders in the world. Thankfully - says the Internet - it lives in areas where it doesn’t really have any issues with humans. Apparently it is also less aggressive than other spiders. Yeah, brilliant...Some species of dog are less aggressive than others too but that doesn’t mean you won’t get bitten by one of them on an off-day.

  It’s found in Africa and South Asia - a good reason not to visit, in my eyes. Speaking of eyes - if you do get bitten, you can end up bleeding from your eyes. I mean, seriously, what the hell is that about? Bleeding from the skin and orifices? Charming little spider with - they say - no anti-venom.

  Not that an anti-venom seems to mean fuck all in the many eyes of an arachnid. The Brazilian Wandering Spider - thought to be the most venomous, according to the Guinness World Records - has an anti-venom to its bite but, even then, people have been known to die after it has been administered. Oh but they did go on to say that the venom is currently being studied as a possible fix for erectile dysfunction.

  Thanks - but no thanks. I’d sooner suffer from a Floppy One.

  One bite leads to breathing problems, asphyxiation and death....Or something called priapism - meaning erections that last for a long time. Sometimes hours and sometimes days. That’s not right though, is it? I mean - who’d get a hard-on from being bitten by a spider? The only person I’ve known to get excited from a spider bite is Mary Jane. And, technically, she’s not even real!

  “It’s none of those spiders,” said Emma, my wife. She was standing in the doorway to our en-suite bathroom. “It’s just a house-spider.”

  “A house-spider? You just made that up,” I said.

  I was standing next to her, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around my waist as I had been on my way to have a shower, before work, when I suddenly spotted an unwanted house guest stuck on the wall of the shower, its front leg twitching.

  “Look,” I continued, “I don’t give a shit what kind of spider it is, or isn’t, I just want it out of the house so...Are you going to get rid of it for me, using your tried and tested method of a piece of paper and pint glass or am I going to hit it with something incredibly large until it’s no longer recognisable as a spider?”

  “I’ve got to get the kids to school - can’t you just shower with it in there?”

  “You want me to shower with the spider? You seen the film ‘Bird on a Wire’? Goldie Hawn? She has a shower in that film and a cockroach lands on her, whilst she’s showering...She opens her eyes...Sees it....Screams the place down....You want me to recreate that with a spider?!”

  “It will run off as soon as you go in there,” my wife continued.

  “It’s tapping its foot. It’s like it is patting the wall saying, ‘Yeah - come here so I can bite you’...I mean - don’t worry about it - it’s fine. If you want to go to school and leave me with the spider because you’re too scared to get it...Fine...Not a problem. But, I will be killing it.”

  “Jesus Christ - get me a pint glass.” I pointed to an empty glass by the side of the bed - left there from my previous night’s drink. Emma sighed and walked over to where it sat. “Got any paper?”

  “I’m standing here in a towel, what do you think?”

  She sighed, again, as she opened one of my bedside cabinet’s drawers. I turned back to the spider, to keep an eye on it, just in case it made a run for it whilst she was getting ready the paper.

  “No wonder my shampoo has been going down faster than usual,” I said, “little fucker has been going through it like there’s no tomorrow...”

  “He isn’t using your shampoo,” Emma called from the other room. She appeared behind me, “Out of the way then,” she instructed me.

  I didn’t need asking twice and I stepped into the bedroom.

  I know my fear of spiders is irrational. I mean, going by the list of poisonous spiders I found online, I could understand a fear if I lived in some exotic area but not in Great Britain. Sure we get spiders but nothing that kills us. In fact, most of the time we don’t even have spiders that have fangs which can even penetrate our skin. I just hate them. Perhaps it’s my own father’s fault. He hated them too, when he was alive. I remember seeing him - actually, it was more or less in this situation I find myself in today - he was standing, in a towel, whilst my mum got rid of a spider from the bathroom he was trying to use. Maybe it is his fault.

  Like my receding hairline.

  “Okay, I’ve got it...” Emma called from the other room.

  I moved back against the wall, to give her room to be able to come out of the en-suite bathroom without having to bring the spider close to me. She appeared within a split second - pint glass in hand. Inside the glass, the large spider sitting there.

  “You can actually see the hairs on his legs,” she informed me - like I wanted to know that.

  “Why do you think I’d want to know that? I mean - seriously...In your brain...”

  “Have a look!”

  “Seriously...In your brain...What made you think...”

  “Look!”

  She started walking towards me.

  “Fuck off!” I yelled as I bounced past her, dropping my towel in the process, and shut myself in the shower room. I locked the door to ensure she couldn’t come in after me. “Just get rid of the fucking thing, yeah?”

  “Relax, it’s going out of the window!” she called through.

  “Not out the window...It just means it will land on the ground, outside, and then climb back up...”

  “The fall will kill it...”

  “First of all,” I said as I heard the window open, “it will probably break the fucking concrete out there, second of all...You do realise they float down, right? Something they do with their legs which enables them to float down...I don’t fucking know...Just something I read online...They don’t die. They just land and think, “How the fuck did I get out here?” and then they come straight back up the wall through the window again...”

  I heard the window shut.

  “You’re right,” she said. “He’s alive but he ran off into the bushes.”

  “And did he crack the concrete?”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Pot-holes. In the roads. Common knowledge they’re caused by people throwing spiders out of their houses. They open the window, toss the fuckers out...Crack!...Crack!.....Bang! FACT!”

  “You’re an idiot. Enjoy your shower - I’ve got to get the children to school.”

  Her footsteps got fainter as she walked away from the room - the last thing I heard her say was that sh
e hoped I had a nice day.

  I’m sure other things had happened that morning too but - well - that’s as much as I could remember. A lot has happened since then. Memories have since become blurred no matter how I’d wish them to remain clear and things have been forgotten - both intentionally and unintentionally.

  Had I known that was going to be the last time I got to speak to her, I’d have wished her the very same thing. I’d also have told her how much I loved her and that I was grateful for the time we shared together and the children she had given me.

  But I didn’t know and the words were never said.

  I hope she knew.

  D A Y O N E

  T h e E n d O f T h e W o r l d

  When I came out of the en-suite bathroom, I didn’t pick the towel up that I had earlier dropped when my wife was chasing me with the pint glass. Instead, I kicked it towards the pile of washing in the corner of the room and opted for a fresh towel from the airing cupboard. It meant dripping water, off my body, through the bedroom and across the landing to get one but I’d rather a wet carpet than the shock of inadvertently picking up a spider. I mean, sure, she told me it ran into the bushes and that she had closed the window behind her but that doesn’t mean it didn’t figure out how to get back into the house and that it didn’t decide, as punishment to me, to hide in my towel.