Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation (8 page)

When her anger became too intense and she felt the urge to play, nothing would ease the anger as she hunted and butchered the infected.

Fi had trouble remembering what her life used to be like, but she remembered in the tiniest details all the times she played with the infected. Her first playmates were her mommy and daddy, though she didn’t really remember what those words meant anymore.

She did, though, remember how fun they were.

The feel of her fingers sinking into the dead flesh of those playmates made her smile. Cracking bones to get to organs, and then squeezing those organs, was so much fun. She used her sharp nails as she pulled long strips of flesh off her playmates. This was one of her favorite games. She would flay the flesh from her playmates and then line the bloodied lengths of flesh besides one another to see which was the longest.

She liked the daddy kinds of creatures best. They had extra flesh between their legs that was fun to play with. The first time she discovered this, she just tore it off, but after she played with other male zombies she learned there was more fun things that could be done with them.

Fi liked to crush the two round, semi-firm ovals in her hands. She liked the feeling in her palms as they popped. It was also fun to use her fingers to dig into the sack they were held in and remove the crushed ovals. There was no denying that simply tearing the sack off whole also provided her with a lot of fun.

The long, fleshy thing wasn’t as fun, but she always gave it special attention. Sometimes she tore it off her playmate with her teeth, while other times she liked to see how long it could get before she ripped it off with her hands.

Some of the infected creatures were too decomposed and didn’t have enough flesh to make it a fun playtime. Sometimes the flesh was so rotten that when she raked her fingers down a monster’s arm, it was like tearing wet tissue paper.

When she got a rotten playmate, she didn’t spend as much time on them. They came apart too easily and didn’t ebb her anger.

Fi also thought the really rotted ones didn’t feel anything when she played with them.

That was a surprise she stumbled upon one day. She never even considered the dead things she played with felt anything. She realized they reacted to her invasions, fought back, and even tried to get away from her, but she never thought they felt anything.

The one time she played with a creature and realized they felt something was an especially fun time. The anger in her at that time had been more than others. She tried ignoring the anger inside as long as she could until she thought she was going to explode. Fi had found, and then tracked down, one of the monsters and was having so much fun with it. When she ignored the anger and let it grow, that made the playing part even more fun.

She’d used her teeth a lot on that one. She had stripped many long pieces of flesh from the body and even bit off the hard little pointy things on the chest. Fi had pinned the monster on its stomach and straddled it. She’d leaned over it and sunk her teeth into its neck. She’d wanted to see if she could tear a strip of flesh from the neck all the way down its leg. As she’d secured a mound of flesh between her teeth, she’d heard the monster exhale as it made a sound. The sound had been faint, but Fi was certain there had indeed been a sound.

It’d sounded like a whimper.

At first Fi had ignored the noise. She’d been able to get a strip of flesh from the neck down to the buttocks until it ripped. When she’d leaned over the monster this time, though, that faint whimper was more audible. Fi couldn’t ignore it that time. She’d turned the thing over onto its back and had started to experiment.

That monster was strong and had clung to whatever kind of existence it had longer than most. Fi had paid more attention with this one. With everything she did she waited for a reaction, waited for that whimper. Fi had made the thing whimper many times and had even managed to make it physically wince in what she assumed was pain as she tore out parts of its colon through the ass hole.

That day had changed everything for Fi.

She continued through the park but picked up the pace more. Many of her injuries from the daddy-thing were fading away. The place where she tucked her intestines back into her tummy had healed over. Her skin still had a faded bluish-grey hue to it, but she had the full use of her arms and legs.

She walked through the park with the memories of discovering that the monsters still felt pain. A tiny smile spread across her face.

Deep in her stomach, she could feel the anger beginning to get warmer. Soon it would become more aggressive and spread throughout her body. Fi smiled when she thought about seeing how long she could ignore the anger.

I’m gonna ignore it for a long time today,
Fi thought.
I wanna have a really fun time later.

Fi walked a little faster and could feel the spring in her step as she anticipated the fun she would have after the anger grew too strong for her to ignore.

She walked faster to make sure she was in a location where there were many monsters. She always liked choosing just the right one.

And then Fi would play. She was going to play for a long time.

Chapter Three

1

Around Lago Vista, Texas

Wilder sat behind the wheel of the M939 heavy truck that led a caravan of one other M939 as well as two M1161 Growler fast attack vehicles. What was normally a sixty-five-mile, one–and-a-half hour trip had taken the convoy two days to travel. Wilder doubted there was such a thing as a clear and open road anymore. Whether it was a side road or a major highway, every road was littered with the debris of abandoned vehicles, hundreds of dead animals, and the decayed victims of zombie attacks that were so devastated there was nothing left to reanimate.

Outside of Georgetown, TX, there was even the debris of two airplanes that had collided mid-air. The debris was scattered over a few mile
s
worth of land and the fires long ago extinguished.

Wilder’s mind drifted back two years to the time when he was unknowingly dragged into this war. He and his team had transported the body of what Wilder now knew was one of the first human victims of the mutated bio-nanites. He’d taken the body to the Sils Advanced Research Lab where Butsko had waited.

The faces of his old team flashed before his eyes. Laning, Kane, and Reynolds had been great soldiers and great men. None of them could have known what had waited for them at the Sils lab. They hadn’t even known what, or as it turned out who, they were transporting.

Jim
, Wilder remembered.
I think the subject’s name was Jim
.

“Wilder, come in,
”
said the voice over the truck’s CB radio. The sudden noise shook the memories from Wilder’s mind.

“This is Wilder,
”
he said.

“We just entered the town of Lago Vista,
”
the gruff voice on the other end of the CB replied. “Let’s find a place to hole up for the night.”

“Roger that,
”
Wilder said as he started looking around at the landscape.

When the small convoy had left Fort Hood, they’d purposely went southwest in order to give Austin a wide berth. Though none of them had been there for over a year, the last reports hadn’t been good. The city was overrun with the infected. It drove Wilder crazy knowing that there were pockets of survivors in the city, and that there was nothing he could do to help them. They had neither the manpower nor the backup to stage a successful rescue operation. Besides, there was no way to know exactly where the survivors hid. His best guess was underground, and how the hell would they be able to find them there?

Wilder shook off his thoughts as he continued to look around. Lago Vista was a peaceful-looking town with lots of rolling hills and open space. Off in the distance, Wilder could see what looked like a golf course. A little beyond that, he saw the shores of Lake Travis, and smiled.

“Come in, Sir,
”
Wilder said into the handset to Butsko.

“I’m here,
”
said Butsko.

“Follow me, Sir,
”
Wilder said as he turned off of route 71.

*****

The roar of the trucks started to draw unwanted company, and Wilder could see an increase in the infected. He looked through his rearview mirror and knew the others had seen the same thing.

Mears, one of the soldiers in the second Growler, unlatched the .50-calibre BMG machine gun and swiveled it back and forth.

Of the twelve men and women that had joined Wilder and Butsko, only five of them were trained soldiers. In this new world, everyone was a fighter, but the amount of professionals was quickly dwindling.

Butsko had made sure the five soldiers were distributed among the four vehicles so that there was combat experience spread among them all. In the lead truck with Wilder was Wallack and Fisher. Fisher had grown up on a farm in west Texas and was a skilled hunter, fisher, and handled any gun Wilder put in her hands. Wallack, on the other hand, was a city boy and didn’t have the survival instinct like Fisher. During a few running missions, though, Wallack had proven his courage and willingness to do what it took to get the job done.

Cain was the other civilian-warrior, as they called themselves, in the truck with Wilder. He’d been in Austin on a business trip from Colorado when the shit hit the fan. He thought about his wife and kids every day, but there was no way to get back to his family in the early days of the outbreak. He’d stayed with his old college roommate in Austin, and his roommate thought it was a good idea to get out of the city and head to Fort Hood. Cain agreed that the military base would be a safe haven. Why wouldn’t it be? Little did he and the rest of the world know that the outbreak originated at military bases worldwide.

In the Growler behind Wilder was Vasquez, a tough-as-nails, combat-proven soldier that Wilder felt lucky to have along for the ride. The others in the Growler were Melvin and Steele. Melvin looked exactly like his name and had never so much as held a weapon in his life. Melvin had been a video game developer and was also the smartest guy Wilder ever met. What Melvin lacked in practical combat experience he made up for in knowledge. In order to create realistic types of battle/combat video games, Melvin had studied and intellectually mastered many various disciplines, including the tactics of some of history’s greatest strategists. He’d studied everyone from Homer and Thucydides to J.C. Wylie, Julian Corbett, Carl von Clausewitz, and everyone in between. One night, he and Wilder had talked for hours about classical historical battles, and Melvin had pointed out to Wilder where the strategists had gone wrong. Melvin was also a walking encyclopedia on most topics that had anything to do with science and technology.

Steele, on the other hand, was a monster of a man, standing at six-foot-ten, and covered in muscles and attitude. In the first days of the outbreak, Steele had lost his wife and twin baby girls. Every time Wilder looked into the man’s eyes, he saw the pain and the anger that constantly burned. Two years had done nothing to extinguish Steele’s experiences, and Wilder was secretly glad. He was afraid that if the pain and anger weren’t still there that Steele would be an empty husk of a man, and the truth was that they needed Steele. Steele was the best fighter they had who wasn't a soldier. He was deadly with a gun and even deadlier with a sledgehammer, his weapon of choice.

*****

Steele leaned against the wall of the truck and felt the vibrations against his back. He felt the weight of the wooden handle of the sledgehammer as he remembered the first time he used the weapon. It’d been in the early days of the outbreak. Steele, like the majority of the people in the world, had thought the infection was just a new strain of the flu that the media had blown out of proportion.

When it became clear that it wasn’t the flu, Steele had started to listen more closely to the advice of the medical experts. He bulked up on supplies, hunkered down in his house with his family, and avoided populated areas. That wasn’t too difficult. Steele had built his home in a secluded area. He liked his privacy.

As most people early on during the outbreak learned, you could isolate yourself and loved ones for only so long from the infection. Eventually the infection found you.

And one warm, sunny afternoon the infection had found Steele and his family.

Steele remembered watching his wife hanging the laundry in the backyard when the infected came running out of the woods around his property. It had happened so quickly that Steele hadn’t had time to do anything but watch as four of the infected tore his wife apart.

Steele gathered his kids together and hid them in a closet. He knew his kids would wait there until he returned. They ran daily drills practicing such a scenario.

He kissed his kids, grabbed his weapon, and went to the window.

In the early days of the outbreak, Steele’s weapon of choice was his AK-47. Before he was married, he collected guns and sold them all to buy his wife a ring, but he never parted with his AK-47.

In his anger, Steele had kicked down the backdoor and walked outside as he sprayed the zombies huddled over his wife with bullets. The gun buckled in his arms, but his powerful six-foot-ten frame easily absorbed the recoil.

The bullets tore through the zombies, and by the time the AK-47 was empty, there was barely anything recognizable about any of the creatures.

Behind him, Steele heard glass shatter and knew the infected were in the house. He’d turned toward the house and felt something behind him.

He leveled his weapon and was about to shoot, but as he turned, he found himself staring his wife in the face.

He hesitated, a mistake he would never make again.

His wife jumped on him, her mouth wide open.

Steele dropped the machine gun as he tried to get his dead wife off him. They stumbled around as if in some bizarre dance until Steele had tripped over the stump of a tree.

They’d fallen to the ground, and Steele had kept his wife’s mouth away from him. She’d been a petite woman, and Steele had been surprised at her newfound strength.

With a final push, Steele had thrown his wife off, and she’d landed with a thud on the tree stump. Steele had been using a sledgehammer to pound metal rods around the stump to remove it. He’d tried to pull one of the metal rods out of the ground, but it’d been lodged securely in the tree’s dead roots.

He’d seen the sledgehammer next to the stump and grabbed it.

He’d slammed the head of the sledgehammer into his wife’s chest and could feel all her ribs shatter as her torso caved in.

His blow had knocked her back, but had not killed her. Not giving her the chance to attack, he’d raised the heavy weapon and brought it down on her skull. Her head had split like a watermelon, and her lifeless corpse had fallen to the ground forever.

A tear had pooled in the corner of his eye, but he hadn’t the time to mourn his wife.

Steele had heard the screams from inside the house and knew his kids were in danger.

But he’d been too late.

As Steele sat in the large transport truck, his back vibrating against the wall, a cold shiver ran up his spine as he remembered finding those bastards in the living room fighting over the bodies of his children.

Steele didn’t remember much after that other than the uncontrollable rage that’d filled his head. With the sledgehammer, he’d killed five more of the infected on that day.

When it was all over, he’d held a bloodied sledgehammer in his hands as he looked at the crushed bodies of five zombies. Steele had stood there with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. The muscles in his shoulders and arms were on fire from swinging around the sledgehammer.

He looked down at his children and cried. Steele had never cried before and hadn’t cried since, but the sight of his dead, bloodied children had been more than he could handle.

He hadn’t been there for them. On that day, he’d failed his family.

He’d watched his younger child’s foot twitch and had known what was about to happen. He hadn’t want to see his kids reanimated. He hadn’t had it in him to watch them become monsters.

So, with his remaining strength, Steele had raised that sledgehammer two final times that day, and had made sure his children would never come back.

He’d sat on the couch and cried for what felt like days.

*****

In the other M939 transport truck were Butsko, Mane, Trunst, and Megan. Mane was a soldier Wilder and Butsko had met at Fort Hood and proved to be invaluable as they fortified the military base. Mane had seen combat in a few different theaters before the outbreak and had made it his job to learn every nook and cranny of Fort Hood once he was stationed there. He was a meticulous soldier, trained in explosives, and a fierce warrior.

Trunst and Megan had originally made their way to Fort Hood from San Marcos, but had made the mistake of going through Austin to try and shave time off the hundred-mile trip. They’d worked together at the Nike outlet store, and when it had become clear that the infection had gotten out of control, they’d grabbed some baseball bats and headed over to the Williams-Sonoma outlet where they’d loaded up on all kinds of knives before hitting the road. They still didn’t talk about what had happened in Austin, and when either thought about it, their eyes glazed over. Wilder had seen that before in soldiers who suffered from PTSD.

The last vehicle in their caravan was the other Growler. Since it was the final vehicle, Butsko had decided to have the three combat-ready soldiers ride together. Mears manned the fifty-calibre machine gun, Jones drove, and Hall was the spotter. They worked well together, and had not only gone through basic training alongside one another, but had also served three tours in the Middle East as comrades

Everyone in the convoy was a volunteer, the soldiers included. Wilder and Butsko had told the group the mission they would be going on was dangerous, and that it was most likely a one-way trip. The five soldiers who’d joined them hadn’t thought twice about it. They knew what kind of leader Butsko was and what kind of fighter Wilder was. The soldiers also knew Wilder and Butsko weren’t reckless. If they were prepared to leave the safety of Fort Hood, they were doing so for a reason. A good reason.