“Exactly!” Walt almost shouted. As he thought more about it, a serious look settled across his face.
“What’s wrong?” Cheryl asked. “I think we’re on the right line of thinking about these things.”
“So do I,” Walt said with less enthusiasm. “But if we’re right, then these things are getting smarter.”
Walt and Cheryl looked at each other as they put their spoons down.
“That’s not good, is it?” Cheryl asked.
Walt just looked at her.
5
The rest of the day, Walt’s head was filled with the conversation he had with Cheryl.
They can’t be getting smarter, can they? he asked himself. That doesn’t seem possible. They’re just mindless hosts carrying around some kind of virus, right?
Walt had no answers to those big questions. The outbreak had hit the world so hard and fast that there had been no time to contemplate what it might be. Survival had been the only thing on everyone’s mind.
Everyone had just assumed it was some kind of virus that was infecting people. It made sense, considering that if one of those things bit or scratched you, you became infected. It was basic virology. Right?
Walt knew he was out of his depth thinking about such things. He didn’t know the first thing about virology. He’d exclusively studied and taught himself about neurotransmitters and how they might play a role in addiction. He’d studied the various aspects of the brain and the numerous functions that occurred in each lobe. There was something that had bothered him since the initial outbreak and the first reports that the dead were reanimating. The ‘reanimated dead’ that ran around and bit humans were called “the infected,” but they were actually more than that. ‘Infected’ implied that those things were at one point healthy, got infected by some kind of pathogen, and then became the creatures they were now.
But that doesn’t make sense! screamed the voice in his head, and he agreed.
He had seen those things up close, and they were more than just infected humans. They were dead. Or had been dead… were still dead. He still had trouble wrapping his head around it.
But he’d seen first-hand what happened when someone became infected. They didn’t suddenly turn into those creatures. First they died, and then the body reanimated.
But that’s impossible, right?
If that were true, then that meant something was reactivating the central nervous system, and that just wasn’t possible.
Right?
Whenever Walt started this line of reasoning, he always came to the same conclusion. It was just not possible for human beings to get up and start killing after they’d died. Yet that was exactly what was happening.
Walt walked back to his room and picked up Stevie before he sat behind his desk. Thinking about dead bodies and the early days of the outbreak inevitably led him to thinking about Steven Spalatucci.
Will to Heal Center
Spicewood, TX
Two Years Ago
Walt sat behind his desk and felt like laughing. Twenty years ago he had been living on the streets as an addict with no hope or salvation in sight. Today he was the new director of the Will to Heal Rehab Center. It hadn’t been an easy journey by any means, but he now knew that he could do anything. He also knew he owed everything, including his life, to Steven Spalatucci.
The first few weeks as director were quite an adjustment. Walt wasn’t used to people coming to him for advice and how they should deal with various patients. He had made a name for himself in both his tenacity to stay sober and in his research. Walt wasn’t a scholar by any means, but the subject of addiction medicine meant a lot to him. Addiction had taken away half his life, and even though he’d been clean for over twenty years, he still didn’t know a damn thing about it.
He’d begun his journey into self-education by reading other researcher’s accounts of addiction and their theories. Addiction was classified as a disease, but there was nothing close to either a cure or anything preventative for it. Most researchers started with a theory, and all their research usually never got beyond that starting point. Walt figured if others had their theories, why shouldn’t he have his own?
He’d studied the brain and the various bodily functions that are controlled by the different areas of the brain. This had led him to studying neurotransmitters, especially dopamine and serotonin, and what they did and why they were important. Some researchers who saw beyond their own limited scope called Walt’s research ‘brilliant’ and conducted their own studies based on his. Others refused to acknowledge Walt’s research based solely on the fact he only had a GED and once lived on the streets.
That didn’t bother Walt. He’d been through worse.
Walt was exactly what the Will to Heal Center needed, and the owners had told him that repeatedly. Working with a medical doctor hired by the facility, Walt was able to test his theories on the addicts who could really benefit from it.
His first two years at the center were fulfilling, and made Walt feel like he was finally contributing not just to society, but to the world of knowledge. He was making a difference and changed people’s lives. By the end of his second year, the center expanded, and the sky was the limit.
Then everything seemed to come to a halt. During Walt’s third year as the director, reports started coming in about some kind of weird virus that had appeared in animals but had quickly mutated and jumped to infecting human beings. It was a fast-acting virus that left behind no survivors. Contracting it was a death sentence. Walt felt he and the others at the center were safe due to their remote location, and because of that, could wait it out until the virus ran its course.
The only problem was that it didn’t burn itself out. It got worse. Big cities were hit the hardest and fell the fastest. It seemed the more people there were in an area, the more deadly the infection.
From the cities the infection spread to the surrounding suburbs. Cedar Park, Round Rock, Georgetown, San Marcos, and others quickly fell to the infected. Eventually, the infection spread to Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, and after the cities were decimated, it continued on to the smaller communities. It wasn’t long before the infection crossed the Texas border and spread across the U.S. and to the world.
No one knew what the virus was, and the news only speculated but offered no facts. Some said it was a Super Bug from Africa, while others said it was a man-made virus meant to be used in bio-warfare. One researcher said he knew for a fact that it was man-made, and that it wasn’t a virus at all, but a mutated form of bio-nanotechnology. Another “expert” said it was an alien pathogen from outer space meant to weaken human beings for the impending invasion.
All the nuts came out of the woodwork.
The only thing Walt cared about was its slow but steady advancement to the Will to Heal Center. They were in a remote location in Spicewood, Texas, but the infection was relentless and would eventually wind up on their doorsteps.
Spicewood was located nine miles southeast of Marble Falls and twenty-two miles from Austin. The center itself was tucked far off of route 71 south. The isolated location was chosen as the best means for treating patients. Take them out of their daily setting, detox them, give them the tools to cope, and then re-introduce them into the society they were once forced to leave.
Even if one were to accidentally stumble upon the center, there was a large iron gate which opened up to another long, winding dirt road that extended for another two miles.
When it became clear that the virus, or whatever it was, wasn’t going away, Walt closed the gates to the Will to Heal Center, and no longer accepted new patients. In those early days of the infection, they had thirty-two patients and ten staff members, and Walt felt secure that they were in a remote enough location and had enough supplies to weather the storm.
A newer resident, Cheryl, was the one who woke Walt up to their predicament and urged him and the other residents and staffers to go on the offensive while they still could. There was still a
lot of lumber, nails, pipes, and other building supplies the construction crew had left behind from when the center was expanded. Walt was glad that the crew had been too lazy to gather up their belongings.
Cheryl and Walt worked closely and organized a plan to strengthen the center and eventually turn it into a fort. Windows were boarded up and unnecessary doors were removed while walls were built in their places. There was a considerable amount of talented people from all walks of life getting treatment at the center, and everyone contributed. Addiction didn’t discriminate, and as a result, there were cops, firemen, doctors, lawyers, and architects amongst the patients in the center. After much hard word, they created a stronghold that the military itself would’ve been proud of.
Walt declared a nine o’clock curfew and that no one was to walk around outside alone. The main drawback to being a rehab facility was that, besides what could be found in the kitchen and groundskeeper’s shed, they had no weapons. Cheryl and Joe, a policeman from San Antonio, stepped up and trained those who wanted to learn about hand-to-hand combat.
And, of course, Walt had his nail-studded Louisville Slugger, Stevie.
Everyone kept busy during the day as they looked over every square inch of the grounds and made sure they didn’t miss anything. Everyone also spent time cooking meals together, holding support meetings, and therapy sessions with the remaining staff.
*****
One morning Walt bolted awake to the sound of a dull pounding noise. He grabbed his bat and ran to the common area. Others also heard the noise and gathered around, clutching whatever they could find for protection.
“What the hell was that noise?” Walt yelled as he entered the common room.
“Someone, or thing,” Joe responded, “is banging on the front door.”
Everyone looked at Walt for the next move. Walt never felt so weighed down by the burden of responsibility.
“Everyone just stay quiet,” Walt finally said. “They’ll go away if they don’t hear anything.”
“I don’t think so, Walt,” Cheryl said. “If whatever is outside that door walked around the center before making its way to the door, then they’ve seen all the boarded up windows.”
Walt knew she was right.
“Open this goddamn door!” yelled a man’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.
Everyone in the common room held their breath as they looked at each other.
“For fuck’s sake!” the voice outside continued. “I can hear y’all talking. Open this fucking door already!”
Walt’s eyes opened wide as he recognized the voice.
“Steven?” Walt asked as he yelled through the door. “Is that you, Spalatucci?”
Walt ran to the door as he heard Steven still yelling, “Of course it’s me! Open this goddamn door!”
Walt quickly unbolted the heavy iron door and almost cried when he saw Steven standing there. Walt went to hug him but was stopped by the center’s doctor.
“Hold on, Walt,” Jonas said, stopping the hug. “Don’t you think we better make sure he’s not infected?”
Walt knew Jonas was right. They’d survived this long by being careful, and he couldn’t risk the center’s safety for anyone. Not even Spalatucci.
“What are you, thick in the head?” Steven asked Jonas. “I’m not trying to rip your throat out, am I?”
Jonas just stood there, stunned.
“Well, am I?” Steven asked again as he raised his voice.
“Come on, Steven,” Walt said. “We need to be sure you haven’t been bitten.”
“Ya’ll have been locked away in here for a while, haven’t ya?” Steven said as he calmed down.
“Yeah, we have,” Joe said. “Why?”
“You have no idea what’s going out there,” Steven said as he looked at people gathering around him. “It is Hell on Earth out there. People are killing each other, and then the dead are getting up to kill others.”
The group heard had such reports, but assumed they were exaggerations due to stress and trauma.
“Got your attention now, don’t I?” Steven said in an even voice.
After Jonas checked out Steven’s eyes for signs of infection, and his arms and legs for bite marks, he gave Walt the okay that Steven wasn’t infected.
“Of course I’m not infected,” Steven growled at the doctor. “The infection kills you minutes after you’re bitten or exposed.” No one said a word as they listened to Steven.
“Then five, six minutes after you die, you wake up as one of those things, and you wake up hungry and pissed off. You’ll eat anything and anyone in your path,” Steven said. “Don’t go getting all quiet now,” he said to the group. “We’ve got bigger problems.”
“What’s going on, Steven?” Walt managed to ask.
“The infected are all over the place around here,” Steven continued. “Driving up the dirt road, I rammed my truck into three of them about four miles down the road. The impact ruined my truck.”
“Wait,” Walt interrupted. “You ran four miles to get here?”
Steven scrunched up his face. “How long have you known me, Walt?” asked Steven. “I don’t fucking run anywhere. These old bones won’t allow it,” Steven said as he patted his knees.
Walt pulled up a chair for Steven and asked one of the staffers to get Steven some water.
“We don’t have time for this bullshit,” Steven said.
“What’s going on?” asked Joe as he stepped forward.
“Do you think I jumped over the big iron fence at the end of this dirt road?” Steven asked rhetorically.
No one said anything and just stared at him.
“The gate is open?” Cheryl asked as she broke the silence.
“Wide open,” Steven said. “I’ll give you a guess who opened it.”
Various expletives were heard among the group as panic set in. Walt knew he had to calm everyone down.
“Okay, okay, everyone!” Walt said over the growing noise. “We know we couldn’t escape from the outside world forever.”
The room focused on Walt.
“We have a strong home here,” Walt continued, “and the only way to get in is through that door,” he said as he pointed to the heavy iron door.
“Yeah!” one voice in the crowd yelled back. “And that’s the only way out, too!”
Before Walt could respond to the panicked man, there was a loud crash in the other room. The group quieted. Walt, Joe, Steven, Cheryl, and a few others started to run to the other room. The majority of the residents and staffers ran to barricade themselves in their rooms.
As he ran into the next room, Walt stopped and held his hands out behind him, signaling for the others to stop. Inside, two of the infected had broken through the boarded up window and were wandering around the room.
The taller of the two infected walked with a limp, and when Walt looked down, saw that its pelvis and hip were shattered. The blood all over its body was still wet.
“Walt,” Steven whispered right outside the doorway. “That’s one of the bastards I hit with my truck.”
The other infected looked undamaged. Its only visible wound was a baseball-sized bite out of the back of its neck. The dried blood on its clothes told them that this was not a recently infected man.
Elsewhere in the main house, Walt, Steven, Joe, and Cheryl could hear boards splintering and various residents screaming as the infected broke into the house. The four looked at each other, and before a word was spoken, Cheryl charged through the doorway and ran straight at the zombies. When she was only a few feet away from the limping zombie, she dropped onto her back, slid the rest of the way to the zombie, and took out the creature’s knee. There was an audible crunch as the zombie’s knee was crushed, and it fell to the floor. The creature, not missing a beat, immediately tried to claw her.
“Don’t let it so much as scratch you,” Steven said as he ran into the room, holding the fire poker in his hand.
Cheryl rammed her elbow as h
ard as she could into the zombie’s temple. Steven followed her hit by bringing down the poker right through the zombie’s head. It twitched a few times on the ground and then lay still.
The other zombie lunged toward Cheryl as she stood up. She saw the creature’s bloodied fingers reaching for her when the small, bronze fireplace shovel slammed down onto its hands. Four of the creature’s fingers fell to the ground. Joe tackled the zombie and they slammed into the wall next to the fireplace. Joe grabbed a bunch of the zombie’s hair in his fist and rammed its head repeatedly against the hard wall. The others heard the crunch as bone and cartilage gave way.
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.
Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation Page 5
