Butsko shook his head as he looked around the foyer.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Butsko finally said. “We must assume that these yellow-eyed creatures are infected with the same bio-nanotechnology. This means they might be affected by the EMP blast as well.”
Mears and Wilder both nodded in agreement.
“Listen up, everyone!” Butsko shouted to the group. “Gather anything that might be of value to us. We’ll be heading out to Schoepke Springs in one hour.”
“Steele, Melvin, Megan!” Wilder yelled. “Consolidate all the equipment from this Growler and the second M939 truck into the lead transport.”
“I’ll siphon the fuel out of those two vehicles as well,” Steele said.
“Shit is pretty weird right now,” Wilder said, “but I think our best shot still lies at Schoepke Springs.”
2
Abandoned Gas Station
Spicewood, Texas
Present Day
“I think that’s a solid plan,” Darren said after Walt went over his idea to head to Schoepke Springs.
The others looked at each other and agreed.
“There’s an endless supply of fresh water,” Walt summarized, “and there’s a fence that surrounds the entire property. It’ll take some time to check and reinforce the fencing, but once we do, we’ll be safe.”
“We fix that fence,” Darren said, “and then sweep every square inch of the property and eliminate all the infected.”
“Nice thinking, Walt,” Joe said.
“You’re on a roll, buddy,” David said as he slapped Walt on the back. “The fucking military couldn’t even come up with a way to deal with the infected. No offense, Darren.”
“None taken,” Darren said as he smiled. “You must remember that this infection spread so fast that no one had any time to sit down and study it. What, and whoever, was left of the military after the first few weeks went into survival mode.”
“I appreciate that, David,” Walt said, “but remember that it’s not a cure.”
David and the others shook their heads to let Walt know they understood this.
“And besides,” continued Walt, “we don’t even have the means to develop a better delivery system for the drugs.”
After Walt explained how the drugs worked on the infected, they took all the antipsychotic drugs Walt had collected from the Will to Power Center’s pharmacy, and filled the syringes.
They each had five syringes for back up.
“I wish there was a way we could get this information back to the military or the government,” Joe said.
“Is there even a military or government left?” asked Darren.
“I think we should stick to the plan of making our way to the springs,” Cheryl said.
“I think we’re all forgetting one important detail,” David said. “How far away is Schoepke Springs?”
Everyone went silent.
“We have no supplies, no transportation, and no real weapons,” continued David.
The group looked at Walt.
“I’d say, from here, Schoepke Springs is about ten miles,” Walt said.
“Shit,” David said as he exhaled loudly. “That may as well be hundred miles.”
“What’s our option, David?” asked Cheryl angrily. “We’re pretty much out of options here.”
“What about going back to the Center?” David asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Walt answered. “When Cheryl and I left, the place was crawling with the infected. Besides, the supplies there are pretty much gone.”
“What about—” David began to say.
“No offense, David,” Darren said, “but we could suggest a hundred different scenarios, but every one of them would be a guess.”
Joe and Samantha nodded.
“We don’t know anything about what’s going on out here,” Darren continued. “I’m new to this area, and all of you have been holed up in the Center.”
“The one thing we do know,” Cheryl added, “is that the springs will provide us with fresh water, and there’s a chance of creating a safe perimeter with the fence.”
The others looked at David.
“You’re right,” David finally said.
“And who knows,” Walt said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a working vehicle. I think we’re all due a little good luck.”
Darren walked over to the rack of maps next to the cash register, grabbed a local area map, and spread it out on the counter.
“Looks like a pretty straight shot to the Springs right down Country Road 404,” said Darren as he traced the route with his finger. “We turn when we see the big iron gates.”
“Where are we now?” Cheryl asked Darren.
“I think around here,” Darren said as he pointed to an area on the map to the left of Schoepke Springs.
“That’s exactly where we are,” Walt confirmed as he walked over to the counter.
“If we stay on the main roads, it’ll be about eight miles to the springs,” Walt said. “But if we cut directly through the woods, we can shave two to three miles off the trip.”
“I think we should stick to the main roads,” Samantha said.
“I agree,” said Joe. “We might save some miles going through the woods, but we won’t save time. We’ll have to move slower just in case any of those fuckers are among the trees.”
“Good point you two,” Darren said.
“Our best bet is to try and find a working vehicle,” said Walt. “We find a car, and we can be at the gates of the spring in ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Okay,” said Darren. “Is everyone good with this plan?”
“Yeah, yeah,” David said as everyone turned their eyes on him. “It seems like the best idea we have that won’t get us killed.”
“Let’s ransack this place,” Darren said as he looked around the gas station. “Grab all the bottled water, batteries, and canned food you find.”
“I’m gonna head around to the back of the gas station,” Joe said as he walked toward the glass refrigerated cases. “I’m gonna see if there’s any fuel back there, or at least something to carry fuel in.”
“Remember everyone,” Walt said, “keep those syringes as a last ditch effort. You’ll need to be pretty close to the infected to jab them.”
“I’d much rather use this,” said Cheryl as she held up a crowbar she’d found behind the register.
“Hey look,” Samantha said as she pointed out the window. “There’s a few fast food restaurants across the street with a lot of abandoned cars in the parking lots.”
“Looks like we have a plan, everyone,” Walt said enthusiastically. “Let’s all meet by the cash register in fifteen minutes.”
The group scattered and took different areas of the gas station to search.
Walt went through the food aisle and grabbed all the various cans of food that were left behind. As he placed a can of creamed corn in the duffle bag, he had a moment of exuberant enthusiasm. For the first time in a while, he and the group were being proactive and deciding their own fate. For far too long they had hid away at the Center hoping the infection would just go away. It was now clear to them all that this infection wasn’t going to ‘run its course.’ If they intended to survive then they needed a plan. Walt realized how close they’d all come to dying back at the Center, but now they were in control of their destinies. Whether this was a good plan or not, only time would tell, but it was at least their plan.
Walt grabbed two cans of green beans and continued to walk down the aisle.
4
Lago Vista Gold Club
Lago Vista, Texas
Everyone pushed aside their exhaustion and worked quickly as they gathered up the gear. The goal was to get the hell away from the clubhouse. It felt like they were in the eye of the storm, and at any second a new wave of the infected would attack from the surrounding woods.
And then there were the yellow-eyed creatures.
No one had any idea what those things were. As fast and deadly as the infected were, the yellow-eyed creatures were faster and even deadlier. Wilder didn’t like dealing with the unknown and wanted to get as far away from Lago Vista as he could.
Steele, Melvin, and Megan put all the equipment from the soon-to-be-abandoned trucks into the lead M939 and the Growler that Melvin hadn’t wrecked.
Wilder and Butsko knew that everyone had used a lot of ammo during the attack, and hoped there was enough left to not just get them to Schoepke Springs, but to fight their way through the infected.
After the equipment was consolidated and moved onto the truck, Wilder had everyone take a personal inventory on ammunition.
“Not much,” Butsko said after he heard everyone’s tallies. “Not much at all.”
Wilder redistributed the ammo and gave everyone four magazines for the M4s and two magazines for the Beretta pistols, totaling one-hundred-and-fifty rounds each. There were also two-thousand rounds left for the fifty-calibre machine gun mounted on the Growler.
Not much at all, Wilder thought.
After the gear was packed and the gas was siphoned from the vehicles being left behind, Butsko and Wilder gathered the group together.
“We sustained some heavy losses,” said Butsko in a somber tone. “They were our friends, and they were our family, but we cannot let these losses defeat us. We’re still in the battlefield and are still in harm’s way. Myself, Wilder, and many other soldiers tried to teach the civilians as much as we could about combat. We taught you how to shoot and clean guns, the basics of hand-to-hand combat, and fighting with weapons. The one thing we couldn’t teach you was how to handle losing friends in the field of battle. As a soldier, when you lose a fellow soldier, there’s no other choice but to carry on. If you stop to mourn, even for a second, then you die.”
“We know it’s not easy,” Wilder added, “but we’re asking you all to push the pain down. There will be time to properly mourn, but if you become distracted by that pain now, you endanger yourselves and the others around you.”
“Push down the pain and focus on the mission,” Butsko said. “We’re leaving this place and heading to Spicewood. There, we will find Schoepke Springs, fight whatever is waiting for us, and successfully detonate one of the experimental EMP bombs. We’re not out here to escape from what’s behind us. We’re headed towards something big that could potentially change the tide of this war.”
“What about those new fuckers?” Megan asked.
“What about them?” Butsko answered with his own question.
“You saw them,” Megan said. “You know what they can do. They’re faster and deadlier than the other infected.”
“These new yellow-eyed players don’t change our mission at all,” Butsko said. “It is safe to assume they are similar to the other infected humans and will be affected by the EMP blast the same way.”
“Besides,” Wilder said. “In war, you never change your strategy over the unknown.”
“I think they’re mutated zombies,” Melvin suddenly blurted out.
All eyes turned to Melvin.
“Why do you say that, Melvin?” Butsko asked.
“I agree with you that these new creatures are infected with the same bio-nanotechnology,” Melvin said, “and we’ve seen the infected getting stronger and faster, and they’ve even learned our patterns. But what if the nanites themselves mutated and evolved into those things we saw?”
Silence swept across the foyer.
“That still doesn’t change our situation,” Butsko finally answered. “If they did evolve or mutate, then we’ll adapt and find a new way to kill them. The mission hasn’t changed.”
“What bothers me,” Melvin continued, “is that the yellow-eyed creatures didn’t seem interested in infecting, just killing.”
“That’s a great point,” Mears said. “Those three bastards walked right up to us, sniffed us, and ran off. They could have infected the three of us as effortlessly as one of us swatting a fly.”
“And don’t forget about what those things did to Cain and Mane’s bodies,” added Fisher. “They certainly didn’t intend for Cain to come back, and I’m guessing if that other one had just a little more time, Mane’s body would’ve looked exactly the same.”
“I agree,” Butsko said, “and I understand your concerns, but the bottom line is that our best chance of fighting these bastards, all these bastards, is waiting for us at Schoepke Springs. Wilder, Fisher, Mears, you’re in the Growler. Wilder, you drive. Mears, you’re on the fifty-calibre. Fisher, you’re their eyes. The rest of us are in the truck.”
Everyone grabbed their gear and headed to their assigned vehicles.
“And be sure to not waste ammo,” Butsko warned. “What you’re carrying is all we got. We need to make every shot count. If we pass any of those fuckers on the way, leave them be. Save every round for Schoepke Springs. That’s where the real battle is.”
5
Hollingsworth Corner
Spicewood, Texas
Fi walked along Hollingsworth Corner and looked in the various stores. She wandered among the general store, a place that sold boats, another that sold used cars, and Ritchie’s Bar-B-Que restaurant.
Fi had faint memories of similar places in a different location, but those kinds of things no longer meant anything to her.
Fi walked among friends. Not friends in a human sense, but ‘friends’ in the sense that the others were like her. As she looked at the others, she noticed that no one had any visible scars or wounds from when they were first infected. As with Fi, whatever they all carried inside had healed them.
And, of course, there were the yellow eyes.
Everyone who walked around Hollingsworth Corner had those feral, yellow eyes. All the creatures looked at each other and they all wondered the same thing.
How did I get here? What am I doing here?
The first question was easy enough. The nano-biotechnology that coursed through all the creatures evolved a hive intelligence. What was known by one creature was known by all the creatures. This is how the zombies in Florida knew about the running missions before they experienced it.
None of the creatures understood how they knew the things they knew. It was like whispers that echoed in the backs of their heads urging them to do or not do certain things and go to certain places. If Fi concentrated hard enough, she could hear the thoughts of the other creatures. Most of the voices were meaningless babbling, but every so often an important piece of information would stream through the hive consciousness and stand out like a beacon against the usual white noise.
The same beacon in the hive intelligence that drew Fi to this place drew the others as well.
The streets were full of the yellow-eyed creatures. Fi guessed their numbers swelled in the thousands. Fi also noticed that no regular infected creatures walked around. She wasn’t surprised. The infected were afraid of her and ran off when they sensed her around. She guessed there weren’t any of them around for miles.
In other places she’d been to, Fi would panic if she didn’t sense or see any of the infected around. Now, though, the anger had all but disappeared. The closer she got to her destination, the less anger she felt in her body. But she knew that it wasn’t the town itself that drew her. There was a particular place that had drawn her and the other yellow-eyed creatures.
Fi had taken a long journey to get to this place, and she knew she was close to her journey’s end. If she resisted the pull, the anger would overwhelm her.
But Fi didn’t want to resist the pull. She and all the others knew they were different from the infected. They didn’t act on base instincts. They all knew they had a higher purpose, and that when they got to the source of what guided them, they would discover why they were different.
They would discover their purpose.
Fi, and the thousands of other yellow-eyed creatures, headed north.
It wouldn’t be long before they reached their destination
.
6
Abandoned Gas Station
Spicewood, Texas
Walt continued to fill the duffle bag with cans of food, beef jerky, and anything else that had a long shelf life. He looked over at Cheryl as she leaned on the counter by the cash register.
“Find anything good?” Walt asked.
Cheryl looked up from where she was wrapping duct tape around the bottom part of the crowbar she’d found.
“Just upgrading my weapon again,” said Cheryl as she flashed Walt a wicked smile. “The duct tape will give me a better grip.”
“Anything else useful back there?” Walt asked.
“Found a box of wooden matches,” Cheryl answered. “There’s about thirty matches in there, and a few lighters.”
“I found some lighter fluid!” Samantha yelled from across the store. “There’s also a ton of charcoal over here, but I’m not carrying that!”
Darren walked in through the front door holding up two red metal cans of gasoline.
“Found these cans right out front,” Darren said. “I went around and siphoned the gas from all the cars around the gas station.”
“Be careful out there, Darren,” said Walt.
“I didn’t hear or see anything out there,” Darren said. “It was so still and calm that it was downright creepy.”
“Just because you can’t see them,” Walt started to say, “doesn’t mean they aren’t out there,” Darren finished. “I got ya. How are you all doing in here?” The others told them about their finds, and they all relaxed a bit and dug into bags of junk food for breakfast.
Just as Walt opened up a bag of nacho cheese chips, David walked back into the main part of the store.
“Whatever happened around here must have happened fast,” David said as he approached the others. “There’s a ton of bottled water in the coolers and in the storage room back there.”
“Good,” Walt said. “We’ll all load our bags full of water as well.”
“How’s Joe doing?” Cheryl asked.
“He’s out back looking for fuel,” David answered.
Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation Page 22
