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

Easier said than done
, Butsko grunted. He was used to being called in after the shit had hit the fan and splattered across the room, but this was unlike anything he’d seen. Every living thing acted as a carrier for the mutated nanites. Infected insects spread the virus to the animals. The infected animals then bit and ate humans, who would then go on to bite and eat other humans. When all the humans in an area were wiped out, the nanites would use flies and mosquitos, which consumed the infected bodies, to fly to a new area with more human beings to infect.

The one thing Butsko and his team learned was that the nanites made their hosts
’
bodies burn at a high metabolic rate. The nanites technology fused with a host’s biological systems, and that required a lot of energy to function. If the infected didn't eat constantly, the nanites inside would put the host into a state of hibernation until more food could be found.

The irony wasn’t lost on Butsko. Hibernation was what started this whole mess, and now the damned bio-nanites were using it as a survival tactic. Everything went pear shaped once the nanites mutated into self-preservation mode. They weren’t happy just riding along in a host’s body. They evolved and wanted to take over the host and control it.  Being bitten by another infected human, or even by an infected mosquito, would cause the body to die within minutes. The nanites then reactivated the host’s central nervous system and assumed control.

Everyone winced whenever Butsko dropped the “Z
”
word, but if those infected bastards didn’t fit the description of a zombie, he didn’t know what did. Butsko jumped back to reality when the static from his walkie-talkie hissed.

“Butsko,
”
Wilder panted into the headset, “I’m about thirty feet away from the barn.”

“I got you, Wilder,
”
Butsko said. “Is the cargo still following you?”

“If you mean ‘are the zombies still trying to bite my ass,
’
then yes!
”
Wilder exclaimed.

This was the plan that Wilder had come up with about a half a year ago. The infection might make the hosts smart, but the hunger made them predictable. Wilder knew from studying them that the infected would never turn down a hot meal.

The barn quickly approached as Wilder had a final burst of adrenaline and ran through the open doors. Hidden behind the doors stood two quiet and scared volunteers. As Wilder ran into the barn, the men waited until the zombies followed him in, then slammed the doors shut and secured them with battery-powered nail guns. In the far corner of the barn was a small trapdoor cut into the side of the barn. After Wilder safely exited the hidden door, another volunteer secured it and then everyone had seconds to run like hell.

“Now now now!
”
Wilder yelled into his headset at Butsko.

Butsko didn’t hesitate. With the press of a button, the barn imploded as the thermite bombs detonated, trapping the infected inside and instantly raising the heat. Small streams of molten iron jettisoned from the bombs, searing through infected flesh and melting through metal containers of gasoline and propane tanks found all over the barn. The tanks created a secondary explosion, ensuring there wouldn’t be any infected survivors.

Wilder lay on the ground and caught his breath while the volunteers kept their eyes on the barn. The barn might’ve been burning hotter than Hell in August, but they’d seen infected people escape infernos like this before. The first few times they’d tested this strategy, they didn’t think to implode the building in on itself. The results ended with flying, flaming infected people landing hundreds of feet away from the blast zone.

“Come in, Wilder!
”
Butsko barked into his headset. “Is everyone safe? Is the bread toasted?”

“We got ‘em all, Colonel,
”
Wilder responded as he caught his breath.

“Good job, soldier,
”
Butsko said, like a proud father.

“Seems we’re getting less and less of the bastards each time we do this,
”
Wilder reported.

“I was thinking the same thing,
”
Butsko said. “They keep getting smarter.”

“And faster,
”
Wilder said as he rubbed out a cramp in his calf muscle. “I think we need a new trick.”

“Come on in and I’ll buy you a drink,
”
Butsko said.

“You’re on.”

Wilder called out to the volunteers and asked them if everything was clear. All three of them gave him the thumbs up and he knew it would be safe to leave. The barn was in an open field, and they could let it burn to ashes without having to worry about setting a secondary fire.

Besides—there was no way any of the infected would walk out of that inferno. Fire had proven to be the best method of killing the bastards. Butsko called it the “complete destruction of the organism
”
approach. The only way to ensure that those things were destroyed,
really
destroyed, was to reduce them to little piles of ash. The original approach was to destroy the brain, but some hard lessons were learned. Shooting a zombie in the head would definitely stop them, but given enough time, the nanites repaired the brain enough to restore motor functions. Thousands of soldiers over the last two years were killed and infected as seemingly dead zombies attacked them after coming back to... what...
life?
Decapitation and fire were the only ways to ensure true death.

After the barn burned for a few more hours, more volunteers would head into the barn with armed soldiers to ensure there was nothing left. If anything in the barn resembled more than a heap of ashes, the volunteers would hit it with a flamethrower. The idea was to create remains that even a fly wouldn’t buzz around.

4

Will to Heal Center

Spicewood, Texas

Walton “Walt
”
Moses sat back in his office chair with a long sigh as he rubbed his eyes. He had been at it for a long time now, and just couldn’t make the pieces fit together.

“What I wouldn’t give for the internet,
”
Walt said out loud as he took a gulp of the bitter, cold coffee.

The internet had gone dark about a year ago. Walt hadn’t been surprised, especially not in the area he was in. Spicewood, Texas wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. The internet had been sketchy at best even before the end of the world. But the research he was trying to conduct would benefit greatly from some outside information.

Walt let out a groan as he sat straight up in his chair. His large hand wrapped around the coffee mug as he remembered a time when there would’ve been more than just coffee in that mug. Walt was only forty years old, but had been through a lot in his years. His knees ached as he stood to get more coffee. As he poured the black liquid, he wondered how many more pots of Colombian gold he had left. As much as he drank, he knew it wouldn’t last long.

Walt had been the director at the Will to Heal rehab center for the last five years and couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. He had traveled a tough road to get where he was and knew that anyone could make the same journey if they only got the right kind of help.

He’d been twelve years old the first time he snuck down to the kitchen the morning after his parents had one of their epic parties and sampled various liquids from the scattered cups. He wasn’t crazy about the taste, but couldn’t deny the effect the liquids had on his body. They made his body tingle while his head swam in a numbing swirl. Cigarettes had been next, and he’d loved to inhale the smoke deep into his lungs to feel the rush it gave his body.

As Walt looked back on those early days of experimenting with alcohol and cigarettes, he understood what was happening to his body. It was like a switch had turned on in his brain, and if he tried to stop his experimentation, his body responded with pain and uncontrollable craving. He hadn’t experimented with marijuana for too long. It’d never given his brain the kind of stimulation he craved. But the pills...oh, those pills. That was when addiction had grabbed him.

Uppers, speed, bennies, black beauties, kibbles and bits, r-ball, vitamin-R...you name it and Walt was all over it. His friend’s older brother, Devin, had introduced him to amphetamines and Walt had never looked back. Devin had said that the great thing about them was that they were found in a lot of people’s medicine cabinets. He’d even told Walt what to look for.

Adderall, Dexedrine, Procentra, Zenzedi…you see any of these, you grab ‘em, bro,
Devin had told him.

Soon he’d been raiding both his parent’s and his friend’s bathrooms looking for a score. It hadn’t taken long for him to start breaking into houses. The first time Walt had gone to juvie was when he’d tried to break into his neighborhood Walgreens pharmacy. Juvie had been the first place he’d had contact with a drug counselor. At the time, he’d laughed it off. He remembered thinking that there was no way he was an addict. Like many before him, he thought he could quit at any time.

You’re on a very dangerous road, Walt,
his counselor had lectured.
The decisions you make here will affect you the rest of your life.

The counselor had been absolutely right, but Walt hadn’t wanted any of it. He did his time, and when he’d been released, picked right up where he’d left off.

Walt had just been shy of turning fourteen.

From pills, Walt slid into cocaine and heroin, and the era of his heavy using began. His life had revolved around drugs, and his only thoughts had been about when and where his next score would come from. His ‘downs
’
had eventually progressed to the point where using wouldn’t even make him high anymore. He’d been using just to get ‘normal.’

He’d been lucky, though, and he laughed at using the term ‘lucky.
’
He’d been young, and there’d always been an older guy willing to support his habit in return for favors. By the time he turned seventeen years old, Walt had seen and done things that no teenager should’ve ever been exposed to.

Ironically, a life-threatening drug overdose was what saved his life. An icy-cold shudder ran up and down his spine as he thought about how close he’d come to dying. It’d happened when he was eighteen. His usual dealer had been busted, so he’d had to buy from a new one who had recently relocated from Canada. Walt had been told that this dealer had the purest heroin around, and that he wouldn’t have to use as much in order to get high. This had been the perfect opportunity to actually
feel
high again instead of just using to get back to ‘normal.’

The next thing he remembered was waking up in the emergency room. He’d looked and felt like a walking corpse, and that had been his rock-bottom moment. He’d been nineteen years old and had been living on the streets, selling his body since he was fifteen. He had nothing. No family came to visit, and he’d always known he didn’t have any friends. He’d been on his own, and at the time, faced the biggest crossroads of his life. He would either sober up, or he could die.

A pounding sound outside his office snapped Walt back to reality. He stood and slowly approached the window. In the last two years, something as simple as looking out the window could end your life.

Get a grip on yourself old man
, Walt thought as he expected to see an errant branch banging against the building.

Without having to look where it was, Walt grabbed his trusty baseball bat. Good old Stevie. Stevie wasn’t just any kind of baseball bat—Stevie was studded with nails. Just holding it made him feel safe. That baseball bat had gone through hell with him, and there was nothing in this world he valued more. It gave him safety, provided him clarity, and assured him that his past was just that—in the past. But in the last two years, his old baseball bat had also provided him with protection, and that was something that didn’t come easy in the world nowadays.

He slowly approached the window and gripped Stevie with two hands. Being his only connection to the outside world, Walt refused to board up the window. He’d lived in darkness for so long that he needed to see the light of the sun every day. Seeing that light energized him and gave him hope. He knew many of his co-workers called him foolish, but anything that got you through the days was something worth holding onto.

Walt looked cautiously out the window as he tried to find the source of the noise, but was met with only darkness. He lowered his bat and slowly released the breath he’d been holding. A crooked smile formed across his mouth before a pale, gray arm crashed through the window and grabbed Walt by his shirt collar. The shock as the glass sprayed in his face made Walt drop Stevie.

Walt looked into the eyes of the infected woman outside the window. Most of her hair was missing, and she had only a clump off to the side. Her head was full of deep lacerations, and Walt could see parts of her skull where the scalp had been torn away. Her left eye bulged out of its socket, and the skin was completely gone from the right side of her face.

“Son of a bitch!
”
was all Walt managed to say as the thing pulled him closer to the window.