by Scott Shoyer
Riker was about to reply to Teagan when a loud rumbling noise sounded nearby. Riker and Teagan grabbed their weapons. Hector and the others ran out of their trailers as the sound got louder.
“What the fuck is that noise?” asked Hector. “It’s shaking the trailers.”
“Are we being attacked?” Frye asked.
Before Teagan or Riker could answer, a huge black bus pulled up to the front gate of the trailer park. Whoever drove had taken pains to weld steel plates over the tires. Also scrawled across the bus in huge, white letters were the words “AC/DC ON TOUR NOW!”
“What the fuck?” muttered Jackson.
The guards had their M4s aimed at the bus and Riker kept his sights on where the driver would be seated.
The bus’s doors swung open and the guards stood fixed on the behemoth vehicle.
“Don’t shoot!” a voice yelled from inside the bus. “Don’t fucking shoot! We’re unarmed! We are unarmed!” the voice shouted as it emphasized every word in the sentence.
“Are we about to fucking meet AC/DC?” asked Noonan.
From the bus emerged an older man, who continued to hold up his arms as he repeated don’t shoot.
Riker nodded at Teagan as she opened the front gate and carefully approached the older man with her carbine aimed at his chest.
“Place your hands behind your head and turn around and face the bus,” Teagan ordered. The man followed her directions and pressed his right cheek against the bus.
“We’re unarmed,” the man repeated as Teagan frisked him. “We only have a few baseball bats, axes, and guitars.”
“Frye, Reilly, Greg!” Riker shouted. “Get the others off the bus. I don’t want any surprises.”
The three armed guards ran toward the bus and entered the opened door. Shouting ensued, and after a few seconds, seven people walked out of the bus with their hands up.
“Who the hell are you people?” Riker asked. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“My name’s Murphy,” said the older man who drove the bus. “I assure you that we’re no threat. We’re just a bunch of random people I’ve picked up since the outbreak.”
“You’ve survived the last two years on that bus?” asked Riker.
“No,” answered Murphy. “I’ve survived the last year and a half in this bus.”
“What happened to AC/DC?” Noonan asked.
“Who?” Murphy asked. Before Noonan could explain, Murphy must have realized the man was referring to the letters on the bus and replied, “I have no idea what happened to the band. They must’ve been playing in my city when the outbreak occurred.”
“What city was that?” Teagan asked.
“Philadelphia,” Murphy responded.
“You drove to Texas from Philly?” Greg asked.
“I’m in Texas?” Murphy asked.
“I told you we were in Texas,” said a thirty-something woman with a southern accent. “I saw the damn sign a ways back.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Paula,” Murphy said. “I can’t be expected to read every dang sign I pass.”
“Yeah, yeah you can,” said a redheaded teenager who wore glasses held together with duct tape. “You’re driving for fuck’s sake.”
“Look who’s talking, Brian!” another guy shouted over to the redhead. “You ain’t even old enough to drive yet.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” shouted Riker. “You all need to be quiet out here. You may be far away from Philly, but there are still zombies in Texas.”
“I told ya they were zombies,” said a middle-aged black man.
“Don’t fucking start that again, Stewart,” Paula said as the group began squabbling again.
“Hey! Hey!” Hector shouted. “If you all don’t shut the fuck up, you’re gonna attract some unwanted visitors.”
“Sorry,” Murphy said as he apologized for everyone. “We’ve been cooped up in that bus far too long.”
“Frye!” Riker called to the guard. “Drive that beast through the gate and then lock up tight. Hector, you go with him.”
The two men raced toward the bus like children running to open presents on Christmas morning.
“As for all of you,” Riker said as he turned to Murphy and the others, “let’s get inside. We need to know what it is like out there.”
Murphy’s face became flat and the faces of the other newcomers went expressionless. “It’s not a pleasant story, but we’d be happy to tell you anything you’d like to know,” Murphy said.
4
Brazos and 6th Street
Austin, Texas
Downtown Austin looked like the aftermath of a battle zone. The streets were littered with burned-out cars, trucks, buses, and military vehicles. Trash was strewn up and down the streets and all the windows of street-level buildings had been shattered. There’d indeed been a battle in downtown Austin, and it’d been a very one-sided war.
Austin had been the first major city to fall after the outbreak two-and-a-half years ago. It’d happened so quickly that most people had no idea what happened. News outlets had refused to report that the dead had reanimated and were infecting and killing the living. Even if they did, would the public have believed them?
Most outbreak scenarios the CDC hypothesized about always had a hospital as ground zero. The reasoning was sound. When people got sick, they went to the emergency room of their nearest hospital, and would proceed to infect others. The outbreak in Austin, though, was far from your typical scenario.
Epidemiologists from the CDC traced the infection back to the Austin Zoo. The animals were infected with some kind of fast-acting virus that spread among all the animals before it mutated and made the leap to human beings. From the zoo, the epidemiologists were able to trace the infected animals back to the Hudson Research Facility where the original infected animals were released by animal rights activists. After the CDC was able to cut through all the red tape and top-secret bullshit, they discovered that the military was experimenting with bio-nanotechnology when the experiments mutated and became deadly.
But what the CDC scientists didn’t and couldn’t have known was that the current global infection began in 1956 after malevolent aliens designed a bio-nano weapon to wipe humanity off the face of the earth.
Austin, Texas was just one of the many city-cadavers that was left behind in the wake of destruction. The city was dead, but it was far from being still. Tens of thousands of infected people freely wandered the streets of Austin. The zombies searched burned-out buildings and homes and vehicles as they looked for any human survivors. If a human was discovered, a horde of creatures descended upon them and tore them apart.
The zombies haven’t found a survivor in a long time. If there were any, they were hidden away in the city’s sewer system. But even there they wouldn’t last for long. Hundreds of creatures wandered through the sewers as they looked for the uninfected.
The infected were aware that they went through some kind of change, but they didn’t fully understand the scope of that change. What they understood was that their sole purpose was to infect other human beings. But these creatures, the first generation, were flawed in their design. The bio-nano infection required a lot of energy. To provide that energy, the creatures had to constantly eat. When a zombie took down an uninfected human, instead of just biting or scratching them to pass along the infection, the creatures often times ate the uninfected to the point there wasn’t enough body left to reanimate.
The infection, though, adapted. The nanites recognized this weakness and changed itself. The new generation of creatures were stronger, smarter, and could survive without food for longer intervals. The infection even altered the eye color of the next generation to yellow to strike fear into the hearts of the surviving human beings.
There were still weaknesses, though. The virus itself was vulnerable to a large electromagnetic pulse. An EMP was capable of harming and even killing the nanites in the infection. The Consciousness learned the hard way about this weakness at Sch
oepke Springs. The Consciousness had no idea the humans had such a weapon, but after it infected the human named Butsko, they knew everything. The Consciousness now knew about the underground facility at the Springs.
It also knew there was nothing else at Schoepke Springs that could hurt it.
The ability to adapt is what The Consciousness and the aliens were best at. A species doesn’t survive for hundreds of thousands of years without learning how to adapt.
The endgame was quickly approaching. There was nothing the remaining uninfected humans could do to stop The Convergence. The mothership near Earth had been awakened and the other motherships had been summoned. The Convergence was unstoppable.
It was inevitable.
The man slowly opened his eyes. He felt the soft sheets and comforter from the bed, but had a difficult time remembering where he was. He stared at the ceiling and saw everything through a thick, milky white film. He remained oddly calm at the prospect of being blind.
As he lay on the bed, he tried to recall how long he’d been in the room, and to remember what happened. Something in the back of his head screamed out to him, but he wasn’t ready to hear it.
A hotel. He remembered he was in a hotel because he was away from home. Memories flooded back. His job kept him on the road and he’d been in this hotel room when something bad had happened.
Something bad, the man thought. What happened in this room?
News reports and radio warnings echoed in his head as he remembered. Something did happen… something bad. And not just in this hotel room and city.
In the world.
As the man pushed himself up on his elbows, his eyes began to clear. The milkiness in his eyes disappeared like the drawings on an Etch-A-Sketch after someone shook it. He looked around the room and could see his surroundings in the most minute detail. The crack in the mirror across the room, the dented wall behind the television, the scratches on the door to his room.
He felt as though he should be afraid, but whatever had happened to him made him calm, and he accepted the changes his body was going through.
The man stood and felt stronger than he ever had. He remembered that his job put a lot of pressure on him and he used to exercise to manage his stress, but he’d never felt this good before. His muscles were tight, but not sore, and he felt like he could lift the entire hotel off its foundation.
He slowly walked onto the balcony and looked out at the city before him.
Austin, the man thought as he remembered. I’m in Austin, Texas in the Driskill Hotel. A small smile formed across his lips as he felt victorious over his discovery.
The smile faded, though, when he looked at the city from the balcony. The once-beautiful city before him lay in ruins. Austin was now nothing more than the aftermath of some huge battle, and it looked like Austin had lost.
The man gripped the balcony railing tight as he felt the ground shift underneath him. For a second, he felt like he was on a rocking ship in the ocean.
He reached into his pocket with the hopes of finding something, anything, that might help him piece this mystery together. He found his cell phone and a receipt from Austin Car Rental.
He pressed the button on the side of his phone and looked at the screen. The battery was almost dead, but he saw the date. As he grabbed and read the receipt, his legs almost buckled underneath him.
There was a two-year difference between his cell phone and the receipt. His mind reeled as he tried to remember.
Two years ago? he thought. Have I been in Austin for two years?
He saw movement in the city below, and when his eyes focused, he saw hundreds of people in the streets. He was about to yell out to them, but stopped himself. When he looked closer, he noticed that all the people below had yellow eyes, and some even had bloodied clothes and partially maimed bodies.
He gripped the railing tighter as his memories flooded back.
He stood in his hotel room as he watched the reports about some kind of virus that swept across the country. He was packing his suitcase so he could get home to his wife and kids. When he came out of the bathroom, he stood face-to-face with a stranger in his room. He tried to fight off the stranger, but he was so strong.
Kind of like how strong I feel now, he thought.
The stranger bit him on the forearm. He recalled the pain of the bite and unconsciously grabbed his arm, but there wasn’t so much as a scar. He let go of the railing and searched both his arms as he looked for a bite mark.
He found nothing.
The noise from the things below was deafening, and as the man turned away from the balcony, he caught a reflection of himself in the balcony’s sliding glass doors.
He was startled to see that his eyes were a dark blue. It wasn’t just the center of the eye that was blue, but the entire eyeball.
He turned back toward the city and saw a flash of light from high above. Something inside his head screamed for him to run away from the light. He tried to move, but the light fell upon him and instantly bathed his entire body in its glow.
The man felt a change as the light surrounded him. He felt his newfound strength fade away and replace with something different. Instead of physical strength, the man now felt a purpose consume his body.
Before the man knew what was happening, the source of the light sent a pulse that knocked him back through the sliding glass doors. Glass shattered everywhere as the man was thrown onto the bed from which he’d awoken not long ago.
The man lay unconscious on the bed and entered a deep sleep as his body slowly absorbed the light.
Chapter Two
1
Sub-Level Facility, Schoepke Springs
Spicewood, Texas
Wilder stared in awe at the vehicles in front of him. Josef had shown he, Cheryl, and Steele around the bunker and stressed to Wilder repeatedly that there were only two ways into or out of the compound. The first entrance Wilder already knew about. It was the foot-thick steel door they’d come through that had at least a hundred of the yellow-eyed creatures on the other side. Wilder knew that door was secure, but his gut told him that, given enough time, those bastards would find a way in.
Wilder always trusted his gut. It was the only reason he was still alive today.
As Josef guided Wilder to the other entrance/exit, he detailed the bunker’s security features. There were closed circuit cameras that covered every inch outside and nearly everywhere inside the facility. Since the initial outbreak, Josef and the other scientists had kept detailed records on how many of the infected had come to Schoepke Springs. It hadn’t been until the last few months that their numbers had started to rapidly increase and give cause for alarm.
When Josef, Wilder, and the others reached their destination, Wilder’s eyes went wide at the sight in front of him. He’d expected to be shown another foot-thick blast door. Instead, they stood in a basketball-sized garage that contained transport vehicles, jeeps, and more than a few sports cars. There were three-foot-thick steel doors on the far side of the garage that were about thirty feet wide. Wilder was more than a little impressed with the doors and the attention to detail Josef had given to the entire bunker.
Wilder, though, was more impressed with the vehicles. The sports cars were useless, and the military jeeps were limited with the amount of supplies they could carry. What Wilder and Steele drooled over were the three Wisent 8x8 armored transport vehicles. Wilder had read about them, but hadn’t thought any had ever been produced. The Wisent 8x8 transport had a payload capacity of six tons and consisted of three major sections: a cab, a central engine compartment, and a rear removable mission module. The idea was that, depending on any particular mission, the rear cab could be fitted with a customized module. The module might be a troop transport, an ambulance module, a weapons carrier, or a mission control module. As a troop transport, the module could seat up to ten soldiers in full combat gear comfortably. The driving cab could also hold up to three men.
Wilder and Steele stared at t
he three vehicles.
“Jesus Christ,” Steele whistled. “I’ve never seen anything like ‘em.”
“I’ve read about them,” Wilder said, “but I’ve never seen one. The military decided they were too expensive to manufacture. Apparently, Josef has deeper pockets than the military.”
“The military doesn’t think long term,” Josef said. “The Wisent transport vehicles were next-generation technology when they were built.”
“That thing looks like it could take a direct hit from a rocket launcher,” said Steele. The cab stood almost ten feet tall and was over twenty-five feet long.
“Oh, I think a rocket launcher might be a bit much for it to handle,” said Josef, “though it will provide protection against many kinds of threats. It can withstand standard M16, 7.62-mm armor-piercing rounds, and an eight-kilogram mine explosion anywhere underneath the hull. And the cab is fitted with an NBC protective system.”
“What’s that?” Steele asked.
“That cab will provide us protection against nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks,” answered Wilder.
“Why does that module look so different?” Wilder asked as he pointed to the third vehicle.
“Ahh, you have a good eye,” Josef said. “That module is permanently fitted with a remotely-controlled weapons system. Do you see those window slits? There are two fifty-caliber machine guns on each side of the module. The government gave us a good deal on them,” Josef said as he smiled. It was obvious Josef liked to talk about his toys, but Wilder couldn’t help but think of a snake whenever he saw the man smile.
“But the important thing,” Josef said as he walked around the garage, “is that those garage doors are the only other way in or out of this facility. And as you can see, nothing is getting through those doors unless we want it to.”
“I have to admit that those doors are impressive,” Wilder said. “You’ve amassed quite a fortress down here, Josef. I’m not just talking about these vehicles. You’re completely stocked up down here with food and ammo as well. Almost like you expected the end of the world.” Wilder’s eyes narrowed as he finished his thought.
