Free Designated (Book 1): Designated Infected by Ricky Cooper

reason for
his second-in-command to know as much as he did. 'Calm down my
friend, I know what you're thinking.'
    Baker smirked behind his gas mask, a single solitary
thought dancing through his head.
    ' Bet
he would love to know what I am thinking right now. '
    Gervasii smiled tightly at Baker, sending a chill
through the latter's spine. The look in Gervasii's eyes saying
infinitely more than anything else just then. The only thing that
those eyes held for him was the confirmation that he knew exactly
what Baker thought then and at whom it was directed.
    Gervasii returned his scrutinizing gaze to Fadei as the
man's mind continued to melt inside his cranium. 'You want to know
how I know all this. Well it's quite simple, I didn't just sit here
and wait for something to try and eat my face; I holed myself up in
the area manager's office and whilst in there I passed the time with
idle file surfing and the occasional game of solitaire.'
    Fadei's face split into a wide grin as he looked at his
friend.
    'Baker, I owe you my condolences. I saw what happened to
your friend on the monitors. Unfortunately for me, they are the one
thing not on their own circuit. Just let me tell you that he went
down fighting. It was a good death.'
    Baker spun and walked away from the smiling eyes of
Gervasii tossing his reply over his shoulder as he moved away. 'No
death is ever a good one.' The smile in Gervasii's eyes deepened as
he heard the discarded statement.

9

    The cameras blank dead stare looked back at Kingsley
with all the indifference of a bored house cat.
    The bulbous lobe of the motion tracking sensor locked
onto his every movement as he toyed with it.
    'King sit the fuck down, you're being an annoying
prick.'
    Kingsley laughed at Bolton's whining tone as he
continued to comically dance about in front of the constantly
whirring camera. 'Just keeping the levity going, Oh Two; just keeping
the levity going.'
    Rawlings sighed as he sat against the wall of the office
they were in. 'King, seriously, pack it in mate. Who knows how long
we're going to be in here and we don't need Bolton bitching us into
the grave.' A mischievous glint hung in Kingsley's eye as he glanced
back at Rawlings.
    'Don't even think about cracking that one out,' Bolton's
warning tones were undercut buy the sharp slapping of skin on skin as
Rawlings smacked the ball of his hand into his forehead struggling to
stifle the rising groan of annoyance.
    'Cheap racism jokes, that's how low in the barrel you've
gotten, sit the fuck down before I do their job for them.' Rawlings
growled as he waved at the reinforced security glass that made up the
office's door.
    The cold pallid faces of the Infected pressed against
the glass as they futilely beat against the six inch thick Perspex
door. The slightly more self-aware paced back and forth like angry
lions, searching with a calculating gaze that set Rawlings' teeth on
edge. Rawlings winced sharply as one of them hurled themselves
against the office widow, the pane of Perspex wobbling in its frame
with a hollow thunk. The room's florescent lights cast dancing lines
of reflected yellow light over the warping surface.
    'Fucking arse
holes! ' Rawlings
screamed as he watched another slam it's body into the window. 'Do we
know how long that is going to last?'
    Kingsley shrugged. 'It's a high grade security glass so
it could be hours. It could be months, or it could shatter in the
next fifty seconds depends on what it's rated to withstand really.'
    A steel framed chair bounced off the outside of the wall
length window as one of the infected threw it in a desperate attempt
to break through. Light scratches covered its surface from the
cutting disks that now lay buried deep in the chests of their
wielders.
    His bellowed, raging tantrum awarded him little more
than a light scuff mark alongside the other marks adorning the
otherwise pristine outer surface. 'Guess that answers that question.'
    Rawlings pulled his side arm from its holster on