Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation (39 page)

“It’s okay, everyone,
”
Wilder said as he looked around. “They all dropped. The bomb worked.”

“I’d never thought I’d say this,
”
Butsko said as a smile crept along his face, “but thank God for Nazi scientists.”

“I wonder what the range of the blast was,
”
Walt pondered.

“There’s no telling,
”
Butsko said. “I figured the bomb only reached a few hundred feet before it detonated.”

“You read the specs on the computer,
”
Mears said. “What kind of range did the scientists expect?”

“The scientists who worked on this,
”
said Butsko, “estimated that even at a height of five miles, the effects of the blast would cover eighty square miles.
”
Butsko paused. “This blast may have affected around five square miles,
”
Butsko said. “Give or take.”

“That’s not bad,
”
Cheryl said. “That’s like a five mile safe zone around us.”

“Think we should start bashing in some heads while they are down?
”
Steele asked as he looked around.

In some areas, the yellow-eyed creatures were piled four to five bodies high. Around the truck at the front gate, it was impossible to count how many there were. They all looked around at the bodies and couldn’t help but smile. Some of them even laughed.

“I do believe this war just turned in our favor, Sir,
”
Wilder said to Butsko.

Mears shot his head toward the front gate.

“You okay, Mears?
”
asked Fisher. “You looked spooked.”

“I’m, uh, I’m okay,
”
Mears said. “It’s just kind of creepy standing ankle-deep in dead zombies.”

Fisher raised her left eyebrow as she nodded in agreement.

“There’s two more of those EMP bombs down there, and they’re both the same size as the first one,
”
Butsko said. There was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before: hope and excitement.

“I was thinking about the launch pad,
”
Butsko continued. “There’s other settings on there I didn’t have time to learn about, but I think we can set how high up the bomb will travel before it detonates.
”
The excitement in Butsko’s voice, though still reserved, energized the others. “If we can set the EMP bomb to go off at an altitude of one-hundred-and-twenty miles, the blast might just cover the entire United States.”

As Butsko talked, Mears walked toward the front gate. He didn’t see any more movement, but he also knew he wasn’t the kind of person to see ghosts. Mears unsheathed his machete as he approached the burnt shell of the church bus. There were bodies of the yellow-eyed creatures everywhere he looked. He was careful not to step on any of the creatures as he walked among them.

Nothing.

As he looked at the dead creatures closer, Mears realized what had made him uneasy about them. He knew the yellow-eyed creatures were different from the zombies they’d fought before, but these zombies had no wounds. There were no bite wounds or scratches or any kind of marks on their bodies.

Were these creatures able to heal their wounds
? Mears thought.

Mears could hear Butsko going over his plan about getting to the middle of the country, shooting another EMP bomb about a hundred miles into the air, and then detonating it, thereby successfully killing all the creatures in the U.S..

It was too easy
, Mears thought.
These things went down too easy
.

Mears suddenly felt six hands claw at his legs and feet. He screamed as he felt nails find its way under his pants leg and scratch his skin, drawing blood.

“You mother fucker!
”
screamed Mears as he slashed the hand with the machete.

The bodies of the dead around Mears began to move. The bodies of all the creatures around the property began to move. They were slow and looked like they had been drugged, but there was no mistaking that they were reanimating.

Again.

The zombies around Mears held him in place by his pants legs. Wilder began to sprint to Mears, but Wilder saw Mears fall over into a pile of the yellow-eyed creatures. In the still air, Mears
’
screams traveled further than the blast radius of the EMP bomb.

The dead became more animated the more they ripped and tore at Mears
’
body. His screams became gurgles as the blood filled his lungs and throat.

Wilder stopped running toward Mears and looked around. The yellow-eyed creatures began to stir everywhere. The property of Schoepke Springs looked like a field filled with writhing worms after a heavy rain. The zombies moaned and clawed at each other as they reanimated.

“I think we better get our asses back underground,
”
Walt said as he raised his voice.

“What the hell happened?
”
Butsko asked. “It worked
…
it killed them all
…
How can they be moving again?”

“Come on, Sir,
”
Wilder said as he put his hand on Butsko’s shoulder and turned his body around. “We really need to get to the elevator.”

“It’s gone,
”
Cheryl said as she ran toward the elevator. She looked around for the trap door they’d originally gone through, but it was sealed tight.

“The trap door only works if the elevator is on the ground level,
”
Butsko explained. “It must have gone all the way to the bottom.”

“But how,
”
Cheryl began to ask, but stopped when she saw Butsko remove what looked like a garage door opener from his pocket.

“I got the key,
”
Butsko said as he pressed the button.

Walt, Wilder, Fisher, and Steele joined Butsko and Cheryl as they waited for the elevator. Some of the yellow-eyed creatures had already stood, but they looked dazed.

“I can’t believe that blast only fucking stunned them,
”
Steele said. “How the hell could they survive that?”

The creatures walked toward them, and Fisher couldn’t help but think they finally moved like the zombies in the movies. They were slow, lumbering, and uncoordinated. She also knew they were still recovering from the EMP blast and at any time could regain their previous level of strength.

They all felt the elevator rumble underneath their feet as it made its way up the shaft.

“Come on, come on, you slow son of a bitch,
”
Steele said as he tightly gripped his sledgehammer.

Out of the ground, the elevator appeared, and they ran into it before the doors had even completely opened.

Walt walked over to one of the yellow-eyed creatures who was still moving on the ground.

“Come on, Walt!
”
Cheryl yelled over to him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I need to see something!
”
Walt yelled back.

Walt removed one of the syringes of antipsychotic drugs and thrust it into the chest of the zombie. Walt waited and looked at his watch to see how long until the effects of the drugs kicked in. The zombie lunged at Walt, and Walt bolted to a standing position. He took another syringe and repeated his previous actions.

“We don’t have time for this, Walt,
”
Wilder said through clenched teeth.

The zombie sat up, pulled the syringe from his chest, and looked directly into Walt’s eyes. Walt was caught in the creature’s stare, but shook it off when he felt Wilder’s hand on his shoulder.

“We really need to go,
”
Wilder insisted.

Walt shook his head in agreement as his eyes stared off into the distance. Everywhere Walt looked, the yellow-eyed creatures either walked toward the elevator or were still struggling to stand.

Wilder pushed Walt into the elevator, and Cheryl pushed the button to descend to the facility.

“It doesn’t work anymore,
”
Walt mumbled, more to himself than to the others. “The drugs no longer have any effect on the virus.”

The elevator rocked back and forth as everyone looked at Walt. Walt felt Butsko’s eyes on him.

“I know what you’re thinking,
”
Wilder said to Butsko. “You think I’m crazy, and that the drugs probably never worked.”

“No way,
”
said Cheryl as she interrupted. “I saw the effects those drugs had on the infected with my own two eyes. Those drugs saved us.”

“You just said the key word,
”
Wilder said as he took a step forward. “You said the drugs worked on ‘the infected.’”

“Yeah,
”
Walt said. “Well, they did.”

“But these things all around us aren’t the same zombies we’ve been fighting for the last two years. We’ve been trying to figure out exactly what they are, and the best we’ve come up with is that they’re some kind of mutation of the original infected creatures.”

“Or an evolution,
”
whispered Fisher.

“Evolution?
”
Butsko asked.

“I’m no science whiz,
”
Fisher said, “and I’m certainly not Melvin, but from what I can remember from my science classes, a mutation is a singular event that changes an organism.”

“That’s right,
”
said Butsko.

“But evolution is kind of like a bunch of mutations that changes an organism,
”
Fisher continued.

“But evolution is a really long process that takes place over several years,
”
Steele said. “In a human, it could take millions of years, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,
”
Butsko answered, “and there’s other differences as well. A mutation occurs in the DNA of an organism and is random.
”
Butsko hesitated when he thought he heard a noise from the elevator shaft.

“Evolution,
”
Butsko continued, “usually consists of beneficial changes that shape an organism over long periods of time and are useful to the overall survival of a species.”

“So what it sounds like,
”
Cheryl said, “is that these yellow-eyed creatures are experiencing evolutionary changes on a smaller, mutation-level scale. Am I right?”

“That’s a pretty damn good summary,
”
Walt said.

“But this still doesn’t make sense,
”
Butsko said. “If this was true, the change would occur only in the zombie that was affected by the new weapon. But we’re seeing these changes in all the yellow-eyed creatures.”

“Maybe it has something to do with that hive intellect we talked about a few days ago,
”
Fisher said.

Butsko became silent as he thought about what Fisher had just said. “If that’s true,
”
Butsko said as he finally broke his silence, “than these creatures are able to exchange more than just the information they experience.
”
Butsko looked up and saw that the elevator was almost on the bottom ground.

“So Walt sticks one of those bastards with a syringe full of happy juice,
”
Butsko explained, “and not only does the creature ‘spread the word
’
to watch out for syringes, but before it dies, the nanites inside of it transfer all the data on what was in the syringe, how the drugs affected and killed it, and how it could defend itself against it in the future.”

“Fuck me,
”
Cheryl said. “The military actually has something that advanced? I thought nanotechnology was a relatively new thing.”

“It is,
”
Butsko replied, “but if there’s one thing the military is good at, it’s keeping secrets. You’re standing in what was one of the nation’s top research facilities up until 1990, and after that it became one of the world’s most cutting-edge facilities. Ever hear of it?”

“Shit,
”
Walt said, “I used to swim here four, five times a summer.”

The elevator came to a stop as it hit the bottom floor.

“I think we need to get back to Section A and B and find out if there are any other surprises we might be able to use against those yellow-eyed assholes,
”
Butsko said.

Walt, Cheryl, Fisher, and Steele moved to the front of the elevator and waited for the doors to open.

Wilder heard noises on the other side of the door, but before he could say anything, the door slid open and they found themselves face-to-face with four of the yellow-eyed creatures.