Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation (7 page)

After a few seconds, Joe let the zombie fall to the ground and turned his attention, as did the others, to the screams coming from the other parts of the house.

“Is everyone okay?
”
Walt quickly asked the others. They all nodded yes and then bolted down the hall to where the resident’s rooms were.

Most of the doors were closed, but they could still hear horrifying sounds as residents were being torn apart.

Steven ran as fast as he could past the others and turned around the corner.

What the hell are you doing
? Walt wondered.

Walt then ran into the first open door he came across and saw a child kneeling over the body of a resident. The child was so decomposed that Walt couldn’t determine what the child’s gender was. He saw that the creature had torn a chunk of meat out of the resident’s forearm, and he lay dead on the floor. The child ate hungrily as it took more bites even though its mouth was already full of blood and gore.

Walt ran into the room and kicked the child, its head hitting the wall with a wet thud. As the zombie fell to the ground, all Walt heard were the grunts and hisses that came from the child as it focused on trying to bite Walt.

Walt managed to get his foot on the child’s throat and pinned it to the ground, then realized his predicament. If he removed his foot, the thing would immediately leap up and bite his leg. Panic set in. Walt felt this was his swan song.

“Move!
”
he heard a grizzled voice shouting from the doorway as he saw Steven running toward him. Above his head, Steven held the nail-studded baseball bat, and at the exact moment Walt moved his foot, Steven brought the weapon down onto the top of the child’s head. The force of the blow smashed the child’s skull, and all that was left was brain and splintered bone.

Steven worked the nails out of the zombie’s head and floorboards and handed it to Walt.

“I believe this is yours,
”
Steven said as he handed Walt the bat.

“Thanks, Steven,
”
Walt said, out of breath. “I owe ya.”

“No shit,
”
Steven replied. “Come on
…
there’s more of these fucking things in the house.”

*****

Elsewhere in the house, the residents and staffers fought for their lives and the lives of each other as they tried to kill the deadly intruders.

Cheryl broke a wooden broom handle in half and pinned one of the infected to the wall through its chest. She snapped the infected woman’s neck with a roundhouse kick and ran to help others.

Joe found the stash of gardening tools they gathered, and used the hedging shears to take the heads off two of the zombies, and stabbed another through the eye socket as he rammed it into the wall.

A total of seven zombies managed to find their way into the center. In a short time, those seven had managed to reduce the survivors to only thirteen.

The remaining survivors gathered in the dining room and made sure none of them were scratched or bitten during the battle.

“What the fuck is everyone doing!
”
barked Steven. “Let’s go! Time’s running out!”

“What the hell are you talking about?
”
Joe barked back.

“What am
I
talking about?
”
repeated Steven. “Didn’t you hear a damn word I said earlier?”

The survivors just looked at each other.

“We’ve got less than twenty minutes to round up the fallen and burn the bodies,
”
Steven said. “If we don’t, then we’re gonna have twenty of those fuckers to deal with, and by the looks of y’all, I don’t think you have any more fight in ya today.”

The thought of twenty infected people waking up and attacking spurred them all into action. Jonas grabbed some latex medical gloves, and they all went room to room collecting the dead.

As Steven was dragging the body of a staff member down the hallway, he saw the others had piled up the bodies in the common room.

“What the hell are you doing?
”
Steven asked rhetorically. “Get these bodies outside. We can’t burn them in the fucking living room, can we?”

They all knew that time was quickly running out as they grabbed the bodies and dragged them outside.

“Let’s get these bodies to the pool,
”
said Cheryl.

They all looked around, trying to figure out the quickest way to get the bodies to the pool.

“Let’s move, everyone!
”
shouted Dennis. Walt was glad to see Dennis had made it through the battle. Dennis was there for alcoholism and had already lost his wife and kids. He was a fighter, though, and that was exactly the kind of person they needed on their side.

“Ya can’t burn bodies in water, ya idiot!
”
barked Steven.

“Well, then it’s a good thing the water was drained from the pool a few months ago,
”
said Cheryl.

They dragged the bodies and began throwing them unceremoniously into the waterless pool. Jonas ran over to the tool shed and grabbed a container of gasoline that was previously used by the groundskeeper’s for the lawnmowers.

Cheryl noticed some movement toward the bottom of the pile of dead bodies.

“Hurry up, Jonas!
”
Cheryl called out. Everyone heard the edge in her voice and looked down into the pool.

Jonas poured the gasoline onto the bodies and saw Steven drag the last body to the edge of the pool.

“This is the last…
”
but Steven never finished his sentence. Just as he was about to dump the body into the pool, the body sprung to life and sunk its teeth into Steven’s calf muscle.

Steven screamed when he felt the creature’s teeth penetrate the muscle and thrash its head back and forth.

Walt immediately swung the nail-studded baseball bat like a golf club, striking the zombie on the side of the head, and pushing it into the pool.

Steven immediately fell to the ground and held his leg as blood gushed from the wound.

Joe lit a small twig on fire with his zippo lighter and threw it into the pool. With a huge “whoosh
”
sound, the bodies went up in flames. They heard noises coming from the pool and realized it was fingernails scratching against the pool’s concrete walls as they tried to escape.

Walt dropped the baseball bat as he bent down to attend to Steven.

“Get away from me, Walt,
”
said Steven through clenched teeth. “I’m infected.”

Walt ignored him as he held Steven in his arms. Walt pushed Steven’s head onto his lap and let the tears begin to well up in his eyes.

Steven would be dead in a few minutes.

“I’m so sorry, Steven,
”
said Walt through the tears. “I
…
I’m so sorry.”

Steven breathed heavier, and Walt watched him as he tried to catch his breath.

“Promise me, Walt,
”
said Steven, his voice getting weaker. “Promise me you’ll fight on and never look back.”

“I owe you everything,
”
said Walt, fully crying now. “I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me nothing, Walt,
”
Steven said as he smiled. “Just never forget to keep putting the nails in the baseball bat. You need to be a sharper than ever now on if you’re gonna survive.”

Walt couldn’t talk as the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Just promise that you’ll throw my body into the pool after I’m dead,
”
Steven requested. “I don’t wanna come back and hurt anyone.”

Walt shook his head. “I promise.
”

Choking back more tears, Walt took one last look down at Steven. “I love you, Steven.”

Steven never heard Walt’s words. He was already dead.

Walt kissed Steven on the forehead and rolled his body into the burning pool. He watched as the flames engulfed Steven’s body and said goodbye one last time.

Walt looked at the others and then bent down and picked up his nail-studded baseball bat.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,
”
said Walt as he nodded in the direction of the center. “We’ve got a lot of work.”

The bat felt heavy in his hand, but he refused to drag it through the dirt and leaves. The bat was a symbol of his accomplishments and strength of overcoming his addiction. But now the bat would forever be a tribute to the man who had saved his life and had given him a new one.

From now on, Walt would never let Stevie out of his sight.

6

Will to Heal Center

Spicewood, TX

Present Time

The tears fell from Walt’s face as he thought about losing Steven. He allowed himself to mourn Steven a few moments longer, but knew that just like there was a lot of work to be done two years ago, there was still a lot to be done today.

Walt wiped away his tears, grabbed Stevie, and headed down to the common room.

It was time to get back to work.

7

Somewhere Outside Austin, TX

Her feet shuffled through the dirt and dead grass as she made her way through the park. She had a faint memory of playing here in a different time.

In a different life.

All she could recall with any accuracy was that she was something new. Something inside her kept saying that she’s a new creature; a new player to the chessboard.

She knew the others around her had the hunger. She could see it in their dead eyes as she walked past them. She couldn’t imagine what that felt like—that feeling of constantly being hungry and being unable to satisfy it no matter how many you killed and how much you ate. She was glad she didn’t have that insatiable hunger.

Fi did, though, have anger. It was always present, but she could control it most of the time. The anger was always there as a faint ache in the pit of what was left of her stomach. She could ignore the anger at this point, but Fi knew that it would grow. The anger always grew. It built up over time like an air pump slowly filling a tire. Eventually the anger would spread through her until it was the only thing she could focus on. By then the anger would have consumed her, and the only way to dull and deaden it would be to release it on the others around her.

Sometimes she released her anger on uninfected humans. Humans, though, weren’t much fun to play with. They died so quickly and didn’t quell her anger.

Fi knew the only thing that eased the pain was to play with other infected creatures. Only when she tore and ripped apart a body did the anger go away. The longer she played, the longer the anger subsided. Humans just didn’t provide enough play time.

A small smile came across Fi’s face as she walked through the park.

Humans were
good for meals,
Fi thought.

On some level, Fi understood how different she was from the other infected creatures. They constantly ate and
needed
to constantly eat. Sometimes she sat and watched the other infected things eat after they’d caught a human.

Fi thought back to the time when she’d watched four of the infected chase down a group of six humans. She’d thought the humans would get away, but the zombies—she remembered someone using that word around her once—had just been too fast.

She remembered being impressed as the zombies took down all six of the humans. The humans had run so far they’d been visibly exhausted, and as such, easy prey.

Then the feast had begun. Some of the creatures had gone right for the body and ripped open the stomach, while others had torn limbs off the torso, and ripped the flesh off still-bleeding arms and legs with their teeth. Looking into their lifeless eyes, Fi had seen the creatures take no pleasure in what they did. They didn’t enjoy it as they tore apart and ate the non-infected. It was just something they needed to do. Something inside them compelled them to eat.

She knew it was their insatiable hunger.

Fi also knew that something other than hunger drove her. Something different was inside her.

At first she fed all the time like the monsters before her. Nowadays, she ate once every few days. When she killed the uninfected, it was just for meat. But she preferred to kill the monsters rather than the weak, non-infected. When she killed the infected it was for fun. The monsters were more fun, put up more of a struggle, and fought back. The humans were weak and not worthy of her playtime. They died so quickly and never dulled her anger.

The nearby infected left her alone. Occasionally, one or two would approach as they tried to figure out what she was. She usually ignored the curious, because as much as she liked to play, she also liked to hunt.