Outbreak
The Mutation
Scott Shoyer
Dedicated to my kids, Braeden and Fia.
The world can be a scary and dark place, but as long as you stay strong and never stop fighting, you’ll overcome anything the world throws at you.
Even zombies.
Here’s what the critics are saying about Outbreak: The Hunger:
“[Outbreak: The Hunger] delivers non-stop fear and excitement… It takes off right away and never lets up until the very end when the final shock is an unbelievable sucker punch to the gut. It's a zombie novel with a great new twist and amazing scenes. You'll never visit a zoo or ride a train again the same way. But the real secret of the book is the way the writer gets you to care about the characters, especially John and his daughter Fi, which makes the story even more powerful and intense. This book is an absolute must read for any horror-action fan.”
-Sheldon Woodbury, author of The World on Fire
“Shoyer's writing is intense and violent, the way books of this genre should be. The intensity and graphic descriptions of the deaths are harsh, but add to the desolate "what the fuck” atmosphere of the story… I would advise not eating while you're reading it, or ever again. This is a must read for a zombie fan with a cast iron stomach.”
-HorrorTalk.com
“Newcomer Scott Shoyer has a real gift for storytelling and it becomes clear within the first couple of chapters that fast-paced action scenes and satisfyingly grisly kill scenes are his forte. He doesn’t shy away from getting really bloody with his kills either… (think of the way Stephen King or Quentin Tarantino would do things)… [T]he action sequences [grabbed] my attention here and kept me turning the pages. In fact, saying this book really sucked me in would be an understatement. I actually finished it over the course of a single weekend and found myself instantly looking forward to the promised sequels in the same series.”
-MoreHorror.com
“It is pretty rare that I enjoy zombie stories due to the flooding of the market but this book… supports enough great ideas, violence and emotional heft to give it new life.”
-HorrorUnderground.com
“The author Scott Shoyer has a… flare for gore and blood. He must have great terrifying dreams.”
-GeeksWithWives.com
“Outbreak: The Hunger by Scott Shoyer is a parent's nightmare: trying to protect your child when you can't even protect yourself. Shoyer lures readers down the rabbit hole with an intense setup, only to have the rabbit tear our guts out as the characters fight for survival, page after page… The action scenes are quick and brutal, but the "calm" parts are anything but soothing. Shoyer dangles false hope in front of readers, then unleashes a flurry of death and dismemberment, slaughtering his characters, piece by piece.”
-Ursula K. Raphael; AstraDaemon’s Lair
Early praise for Outbreak: The Mutation:
“Shoyer is a powerhouse when it comes to zombies and end of the world fiction.”
-Eric S Brown, author of the Kaiju Apocalypse series
“Shoyer raises the stakes with his second book in the Outbreak series, giving us an even smarter, deadlier and harder to kill enemy. Loaded with brutal violence and military action and an ending that took me by total surprise, Outbreak: The Mutation is a must read!”
--David Bernstein, author of Toxic Behemoth
“Scott Shoyer steps into the ring swinging as he continues with the next harrowing volume in the Outbreakseries. As I've come to expect from him, he handles his action with a sure hand, both violent and furious, and his characters with unrelenting viciousness. And yet there is a genuine sense of understanding of what makes people tick in his writing that brings his series above the moaning masses of zombie literature. This is great stuff, and I strongly recommend Shoyer and the Outbreak series any time I’m asked for a recommendation on what to read. You can’t go wrong here!”
-Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Dead City and The Dead Won’t Die
Chapter One
1
Arboretum Area, Austin, TX
Two Years Ago
Her lifeless corpse lay splayed on the bed. The coppery smell of dried blood filled the air, and the buzz of flies on and around the corpse was deafening. Her intestines cascaded down the side of the bed like some macabre waterfall. There were bite marks and deep gashes littered all over her tiny body, but these weren’t the marks of scavenger animals. Her body was ravaged by human teeth that had been altered as a result of the virus—a virus which affected, and altered, many aspects of whomever it infected. The virus was alive, and wanted only one thing: to survive. It created an insatiable need in its host to infect other people. It may have started in lesser life forms like animals and insects, but it now craved to occupy the top of the food chain.
That was what compelled John to do this to his little girl. The virus didn’t care about age, didn’t recognize family, and didn’t discriminate. Survival was its only goal.
John was now in the kitchen huddled over the corpse of his wife, Sarah. When Sarah had seen John attack their little girl, she’d been at first frozen in fear, but the screams coming from their daughter Fi had slapped her back to reality. Sarah had tried jumping on John, hitting him on the back and head, anything to get him to stop clawing and biting their daughter. Her strength, though, had been no match for his, and he’d effortlessly thrown her across the room with one arm.
The blood from Sarah’s head wound had flowed into her eyes, and she’d only heard the wet sounds coming from John’s mouth as he’d chewed on their young daughter. As dizzy as she’d been, Sarah cursed John as he’d pulled out Fi’s intestines and tore off bits in his mouth. She’d been glad that Fi no longer screamed. Her nightmare was over.
Sarah lay broken against the wall and had gently wept. Once John was through with their daughter, he’d turned his rabid, feral gaze toward Sarah.
No, John! Sarah had uselessly pleaded. What the hell are you doing? she’d screamed. Look what you did to your daughter… our little girl.
John had stopped and turned to look at the lifeless, desecrated body of his daughter. Something inside had recognized the tiny body on the bed. His tongue had danced across his bloody lips as he’d tried to remember. Images of animals and a zoo and a pretty girl with a knife sticking out of her belly had flashed through his mind, but they’d drifted away like steam from a boiling kettle.
My baby! Sarah cried out. Look what you did to my baby!
This had brought John back, and he’d turned violently toward the person on the floor. He’d been so hungry that it hurt. There’d been a searing pain in his stomach that had emanated out to the rest of his body. He’d felt he was on fire, and it had all been because of the hunger. He’d known the only thing that would satiate the pain was to feed.
His eyes had narrowed as he’d leapt onto the screaming woman. Sarah had no longer been his wife, no longer the woman he loved. The virus had no need for love. Sarah had been nothing but a pile of meat on the ground, and with an animalistic scream, he’d jumped on top of her and heard her thighbone snap at the force of his landing. He’d grabbed her hair and pulled backward. The last thing Sarah had felt or saw was his bloodstained teeth closing around her throat. John had thrashed his head and tore her throat out.
He’d spit the bloody mass out and started ripping into her chest. He’d snapped her sternum in half as he went for her heart. The blood had made it impossible to tell where his body ended and hers began.
Sarah’s body had slid to the ground. John had then straddled her corpse and began to feed the hunger inside. It’d felt good to eat, and the pain went away for a while, but in the back of his mind he’d known
the hunger would return. It always returned, and he always obeyed it.
2
Fi’s eyes opened, and she was confused. She looked around and vaguely recognized where she was, but wasn’t concerned about that so much as what she felt. She felt nothing. It was as though there was nothing below her neck. She tried to lean forward, but her arms wouldn’t obey her.
From across the room she heard strange, wet noises with the occasional grunt. Her curiosity got the best of her and she willed her arms to move. Her left arm flopped onto her chest and she felt the large hole in her abdomen. Her hand followed the trail out of the hole and realized what she felt were her own insides. Fi thought it was weird that she wasn’t panicking, but a warm sense of serenity washed over her body.
Finding her balance, she tried to focus on the noise across the room. She could see someone huddled down on the floor doing something, but details escaped her unfocused eyes. She gently grabbed the longest piece of her intestines hanging out of her and tucked it back in the hole. After it popped out twice, she tucked it under one of the bones she felt inside the hole.
She again focused her attention to the thing on the floor. Her feet shuffled as she made her way across the room, as she didn’t trust her balance to pick her feet off the floor and walk. As she got closer, she could see a man covered in blood eating something. In the back of her mind she thought she recognized him, but couldn’t form a concrete enough memory to finish the thought.
A dull pain started to grow in what was left of her belly. Fi could feel the pain as it urged her on to fulfill some kind of task. Instinct took over, and she began to walk normally as she got closer to the person on the ground. The man was focused on his meal and didn’t hear or even notice the person standing behind him.
Then she remembered. “Daddy?” the question hissed out of her mouth. “What are you doing, Daddy?”
The thing in front of her didn’t acknowledge her, and anger began to rise from where the pain in her belly was. She didn’t know why she was angry, but she clenched her fists and asked once more: “Daddy?”
The anger welled up in her and her arm shot out and landed on her father’s head, pulling it back in a deadly angle. She heard the snap as the head went limp in her hand. When she looked past the dad-thing on the floor, she could see that he’d been eating her mom.
Fi’s head tilted to the side and she tried to understand what was going on. Before she realized what she was doing, she bent down and tore into her father. She loved the sensation of the flesh ripping underneath her fingers as blood poured from the wounds she created. She brought a crimson finger up to her lips and sucked on it. It was tepid and salty, but she didn’t really like the flavor. Fi wiped the bloody finger on her already-blood-splattered shirt and returned to tearing up the body. To an onlooker, Fi would’ve looked like a child who just discovered the fun of playing with Legos or Play-Doh. There was innocence in her play as she shredded her father to pieces.
As she sifted through the remains of her father’s body, she played with the organs and bones. She drew patterns in the blood as it pooled on the ground beside her. Tearing the body apart lessened her anger. It felt like water slowly running down a drain. Fi couldn’t even remember what had made her so angry just a few moments ago as she played in the gore.
Nothing seemed to matter as she played. Fi didn’t like that feeling of anger. She didn’t like the pain it caused her. One thing was for sure: she’d do anything to alleviate the pain.
Fi stood up and brushed the unrecognizable remains of her father aside with her toes and smiled gruesomely at the squeaky noise her foot made in the blood. From the corner of her eye, she saw her mother’s body begin to stir.
I must keep the anger away, Fi thought. Anger brings the pain.
Just before her mother rose, Fi jumped on her and began tearing at the newly reanimated body.
Her giggles became laughs as she played with her mommy.
3
Outside Killeen, TX
Present Day
Dan Wilder never enjoyed running. He didn’t mind short distances where he could sprint, but those long distances always made his legs and lungs burn. Wilder was an intimidating man. He stood six-foot-two, with a muscular frame, a buzz cut, and icy blue eyes that could bore through a steel wall. He also had more battle scars on his body than most people had eaten hot meals.
Not too long now, he thought as he pushed the pain from his mind. The infected had gotten smarter, stronger, and faster over the last two years. One used to be able to outrun them in a mile or two, but they’d adapted and could now run longer distances.
Leave it to me, thought Wilder, to attract the fucking varsity long distance team. He could see the barn up ahead, and that gave him a renewed determination. Behind him ran somewhere between fifty to seventy-five of the infected. The early recon had suggested there might be upward of a hundred fifty, but the infected had learned to hide. Those bastards learned to adapt whatever means necessary to ensure their survival, and they had learned quickly.
Crafty little bastards, Wilder thought. Part of him, a very small part, admired and respected their ability to adapt and survive. In just two years the infected had overrun all the big cities. Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio had all fallen quickly, and no one in their right mind would enter those dead cities. For a while the infected stayed concentrated there. They had all the food they needed... for a while, at least. Reports indicated there were still pockets of survivors in the cities, but local law enforcement no longer existed and the military was spread thin.
The major cities would’ve been bombed by now if not for the fact there wasn’t enough of a military left to carry out such a campaign. It was also difficult to call in for a bombing when most of the communication channels had been destroyed. What little military was left had resorted to using walkie-talkies.
Yup, Wilder repeated, they’re crafty little fuckers.
“Wilder, come in,” a grizzled voice said into his earpiece.
“Wilder,” he panted into the microphone clipped to his uniform. “I’m about a click away from the barn. Is everything set and everyone clear?” he asked.
“What’s wrong, soldier?” asked the voice in his ear. “You sound tired.”
Wilder knew Col. George Butsko was trying to get his mind off the pain. Butsko was Wilder’s immediate C.O., but considering how decimated the military was, Butsko might just be the highest-ranking officer left. Butsko had led Wilder on hundreds of missions before all hell broke loose. They’d both lost count of how many dangerous raids and rescues they’d done together in the last two years. Butsko was the man you wanted in your ear when you were out in the field. He possessed an almost supernatural second sense when it came to danger, and he’d let you know well before you were in it up to your neck.
“I was never one for this running shit, Sir,” Wilder stoically responded.
“You’re almost there, Wilder,” Butsko encouraged. “Besides, didn’t you used to say that the only time you’d ever run is when there’s a pack of zombies on your heels?”
“Roger that, Sir,” Wilder said as a brief smile crossed his face. “I just never thought that was actually a possibility.”
It had started off as such a noble undertaking. A group of cutting-edge military scientists wanted to explore ways to increase the survival rate of severely injured soldiers on the battlefield. The field medics did a good job of saving injured soldiers, but many still died in the hospitals. They needed the kind of care that could only be found back home in military hospitals. The field hospitals were increasingly becoming waiting rooms of death.
As a result, military scientists developed a process whereby gravely injured soldiers on the battlefield were immediately placed into a state of hibernation. The induced state slowed all the metabolic processes, but the soldiers were still waking up severely injured. One scientist had suggested engineering a virus that could be injected into the soldiers once in stasis, the idea being that the
virus could start repairing the soldier’s internal injuries while in transit. Researchers, though, were met with failure after failure, until the scientists at the Hudson Research Laboratory came up with the idea of using the virus as a delivery system. Initial testing exceeded all expectations, and the animal testing phase had been a complete success.
Tucked away inside the virus was cutting edge bio-nanotechnology. The ‘nanites,’ as they’d come to be known, weren’t just repairing the sick and injured animals, but were making them stronger than before. The nanites were programmed to repair various internal injuries, and the hope was that by the time the hibernated soldiers returned to America, their injuries would be fixed. This was a new technology, and the nanites did the unexpected: they’d mutated, or evolved depending on who you talked to, and had been the catalyst of what some called the end of the world.
The military bases were the first to be overrun and destroyed. There was no chance at a first strike because the outbreak took out every military base within hours. All that was left was the skeleton of the former military; pockets of soldiers scattered so thin across America that they wouldn’t be able to contain a kitten outbreak let alone bio-nano engineered zombies. This was the mess they had sent Butsko to clean up.
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.
Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation Page 1
