Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation

by Shoyer, Scott

  “Shouldn’t we try and contact them before we head out in that direction?” Cheryl asked.

  “You guys wiped out our communications for about an eighty-mile radius when you set off that EMP blast,” Rickard said.

  They ran down the hallway through various labs, living areas, and workspaces as they closed and locked the hatches behind them. Even with a lot of distance between them and the first hatch, they all felt the presence of the yellow-eyed creatures.

  Josef took them into a huge storage room filled with pistols, rifles, machine guns, ammunition, grenades, combat knives, machetes, and body armor.

  “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Steele said.

  “What the hell were you all planning for down here?” Wilder asked.

  “The end of the world,” Josef said. “I just didn’t think my family would’ve been the ones that caused it.”

  Rickard shot Josef a dirty look, and Josef said nothing more.

  “Howard, Cheryl, Stacey,” Wilder said as he turned. “Stock us up on food. Joseph,” Wilder said as he turned to the man, “I assume you have military trucks tucked away in your garage?”

  “We do,” said Josef.

  “Load up one of the trucks,” Wilder said. “We’ll get all the guns and ammo together and meet you in the garage in thirty minutes. It looks like we’re headed to southeast Texas.”

  Epilogue

  Section C

  Schoepke Springs

  Fi hid in the shadows. Part of her wanted to attack the humans who examined The Discovery, but something in her mind told her to hide. The task The Discovery wanted her to complete was done.

  She had bitten the human.

  Fi listened to The Discovery. It didn’t so much talk to her as it hummed in her head. Fi had a distant memory where she could remember listening to a radio station that had drifted. That was the sound The Discovery put in her head, but somehow she was able to make sense out of the noise.

  It wanted the one the other humans called ‘Butsko.’ It didn’t tell her what they wanted him for, but she knew it had big plans for him.

  Just as it had big plans for her.

  She watched as the humans jumped down the hatch to the lower level. The other yellow-eyed creatures will follow them, but she and Butsko would stay with The Discovery. She felt something when the blast occurred above ground a while ago. Fi was too far underground and knew she didn’t feel the actual energy released from the bomb. There was something else the blast released.

  Something else the bomb triggered.

  The burst of energy above activated something in The Discovery. The previously lifeless object was now buzzing and alive. Lights flashed and hummed, and after a few seconds, The Discovery transmitted its own burst of energy up towards some unseen target.

  With the awakening of The Discovery, Fi felt a sense of relief that her long journey had meant something. It hadn’t simply been an aimless search to infect more humans.

  Fi had been the first of the yellow-eyed creatures, and once The Discovery’s transmission was received, she would know what the plan was for her and her brethren.

  Fi hid in the shadows and waited for the war that was coming.

  *****

  Butsko held his arm after the zombie bit him. He was surprised that it didn’t hurt. In fact, it was just the opposite. The bite was soothing, and he felt a warmness slowly engulf his arm as it spread throughout his body.

  As the infection spread, he wondered why he’d been fighting the infected for all these years. They were just a new breed on Earth; a new species that wanted to survive.

  Butsko fell to his knees as the infection spread to his head. It felt like someone had put a million tiny electrodes in his brain. He swore he could feel the nanites as they invaded his mind, but he was surprisingly calm.

  He lay himself on the floor and let the infection spread to every fiber, muscle, and cell in his body. In an instant he was rewarded with the knowledge and experience of millions of other infected beings. He was now privy to the hub of knowledge that all the infected shared.

  Butsko knew what various ‘cures’ other survivors around the world had attempted. Some were flawed from the outset, but other cures had worked. He felt the pain of the first zombie as it was injected with a syringe full of antipsychotic drugs. Before the creature had died, it had transferred the information of its experience to the Hub, which in turn sent the information to all the infected as well as analyzed what was in the syringe. Within hours, The Hub had mutated the virus and made the antipsychotic drugs useless.

  The Discovery, though, wanted Butsko for another reason.

  It needed a leader.

  There was a war coming, and The Discovery needed warriors infected with the virus to lead them.

  Butsko screamed as the infection rooted deeper into his brain. He could feel his memories and knowledge being sucked out of his head.

  No, not ‘sucked away.’

  Uploaded.

  Everything Butsko had experienced and knew was now part of the Hub, and now, Butsko was fully integrated.

  Butsko felt the eyes of a fellow creature on him. He looked up and saw the little girl who’d infected him. She’d hid in the shadows away from the humans.

  As the pain ebbed from Butsko, he looked at the little girl and smiled.

  He looked at her with his yellow eyes.

  Dormant Alien Spacecraft

  Deep Space

  The ship floated silently in space. The football-length craft had been waiting to hear back from the scouting ship when it had lost all communication with it. Its orders were to maintain its current position and wait for further instructions. After five years, the craft had gone into stasis and began its decades-long hibernation.

  The ship was one of the larger crafts in the fleets designed for interstellar travel. The main part of the spacecraft was a huge oval-shaped compartment with a large ring around it. It looked like a tiny version of Saturn floating in space. Once the engines were reactivated, the energy inside the outer ring would spin, thereby giving the ship the necessary energy to move.

  The alien ship could move at the speed of light and could generate its own wormhole when distance was an issue.

  The only movement inside the craft were the few blinking lights that signaled the hibernation equipment was functioning. The long cylindrical tubes housed the ship’s occupants who had been in stasis for as long as their craft had been.

  In the middle of the ship was a large, blank-looking console. The only markings on the console were the foreign symbols written in an alien alphabet. The lights on the console suddenly flickered on.

  A burst of energy from the planet where the craft had lost contact with the scout ship, started to wake the ship and its crew. Information from the last thirty-six years was processed by the ship’s computers in seconds.

  The lights on the hibernation tubes shut down and were replaced by a loud hissing noise. Soon the spacecraft would be alive with movement as the aliens read and processed the information the scout ship had sent and they readied the ship for deployment.

  The ship’s engine would soon be operational, and the craft would begin its journey to the planet called Earth and complete its mission. The endplay was in motion, and the ship and its occupants would oversee the complete destruction of Earth.

  Read on for a free sample of Zombie Inc.

  About the Author:

  A New Master of Horror

  Scott Shoyer has had a love affair with the horror genre since childhood and has a creative imagination that knows no bounds. Scott has exhibited his creativity in several different arenas.

  Earning his Ph.D. in German philosophy, he enjoyed writing and teaching in academia. He has also exhibited his creativity as an Executive Chef dazzling foodies at some of the most upscale dining rooms in Austin, Texas.

  Presently, while writing his novels, he runs the very popular website, www.anythinghorror.com where he writes about various facets of the world of horr
or.

  Outbreak: The Mutation is the second in the Outbreak trilogy that brings something new to zombie fiction (the first being Outbreak: The Hunger). With the third book in the trilogy already written, Scott next plans on taking on some Lovecraftian terrors as well as further explore the zombie world he created in his Outbreak trilogy in a series of novellas.

  Look for several new horror projects coming from him along with his four short stories published in four different horror anthologies.

  Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his two children, who still refuse to go to the zoo.

  Prologue

  “Look at it! Look! At! IT!”

  Carl looked to where the angry homeowner–clad only in an open bathrobe and loose boxers–pointed. Not that Carl needed the direction. The problem was plenty obvious.

  Two legs waved sluggishly from a sewer grate in the curb.

  “Yessir, I see it,” Carl said, and propped his hands on his hips. He hadn’t brought the trainee with him from the car. Not yet. He wanted to get a good rapport with the homeowner and an audience or any show of bureaucracy about to swing into action would only infuriate the man further. “Did the collar not pop him at all or don’t you know?” Carl smiled a puzzled half-smile. An ‘I’m just doing my job here, buddy’ smile.

  “I don’t know,” the homeowner said on an outrushing sigh as his shoulders relaxed. “I came out this morning to get the paper and saw him kicking around in there.”

  Carl and the homeowner turned their gazes back to the legs. A low moan issued from the grate, echoing and lost. It still had its head. That much was obvious. They couldn’t groan like that without their heads.

  “Well, you were lucky. I can tell you that,” Carl said. He scratched his ribs and nodded thoughtfully. He made some notes on the clipboard. This was a nice neighborhood, at least one in every five or six houses still standing. This guy was either government or he worked at one of the power companies.

  “Don’t I know it! Sucker coulda come right after me if it hadn’t tumbled into the sewer there. I was hardly awake!” This time, the homeowner’s squawk was excited, a ‘can you believe it? I can’t believe it!’ exclamation.

  “Huh. You were lucky for sure. No question about it,” Carl said. Big house, landscaped nice. Plenty of money here. Good grid system, expensive. The houses on either side and across the street were burned to the ground. Anything unoccupied after the plague had been demolished to control infestation and looting.

  Three more zombies stood in the front yard, spaced out like checker pieces. They moaned and swayed, their attention fixed on the two men. One quarter of the yard was conspicuously empty.

  “Well, let me get this written up and taken care of for you,” Carl said. “How’s the rest of the system been? You’ve had it–what? Six months or so? Any problems?” He liked to ask this to remind customers that there were, in fact, very few occurrences of this nature.

  The homeowner shrugged. “Nope, no problems. Wife hates it, but…” He shrugged again. His belly, a pugnacious basketball, rose and fell. “The ladies are a little soft sometimes. You know. They don’t understand security as well. That’s why I made sure we got all menzies.” A small, unconscious moue of disgust crossed the guy’s face, and Carl understood it. He and the homeowner were probably about the same age, early fifties. Same generation, at least. Some of the terms nowadays: menzies, womzies, kidzies…there was something decidedly wrong with a term almost of endearment associated with those shuffling monstrosities. “She didn’t even want us to have guns in the house much less these here yard zombies.”

  Carl nodded in sympathy, but of course, his thoughts went to Annie, his wife. He’d lost her twenty-six years ago now, in the first wave. She’d been so young. They’d all been so young.

  Carl shook off the thought and put his hand out. “I’ll be in touch, but take my card. My scan code is right there. Call if they haven’t set you back up in a few hours.”

  “Well, thank you. Thanks. I’ll do that.” The homeowner pulled his bathrobe together and bent to retrieve the paper. He went up the driveway, whistling. The remaining zombies–one on one side and two on the other–tracked his progress with their hungry, empty eyes.

  Newspaper, Carl thought. Guy must have the big bucks. Probably a government worker, then. Four yard zombies just in the front? Most likely eight out back. Totally unnecessary, but that’s overzealous sales for you. Maybe Candy. She’d be just this guy’s type. He probably hadn’t been able to get his nose from the woman’s cleavage long enough to say no. Course, he wasn’t one of the millionaires, the really high-ups. Those people all had Ze Sheds. Much more attractive than having corpses standing around your yard twenty-four seven. At least with Ze Shed, you could put the damn things away once in a while.

  Not that anyone was having garden parties.

  Not anymore.

  Carl grinned and went to retrieve the trainee and the clipboard. Hopefully, the kid had brains enough to do some of the prelim paperwork. Most likely not, though.

  Trainees weren’t known for their overabundance of brains.

  ONE

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  Your zombie(s) come completely trained. A tone accompanied by a charge alert your zombie(s) to the presence of the laser boundary–factory conditioning keeps them in!* Zones can be cleared for homeowner access with the in-home control pad or Ze Panic!® mobile remote.

  You’ll sleep in comfort when you have the Zombie, Inc., Ze Popper!® system securing your worldly goods!

  *A permanent collar of small charges instantly decapitates any collared zombie that wanders over the laser line, rendering the zombie harmless** to you and your family. Simply contact your Zombie, Inc., representative via their customer care scan code and the team of Zombie, Inc., Recovery Specialists will take over.

  **A beheaded zombie could potentially pose a threat if you come in close contact with its mouth. Keep children and pets away from a decapitated zombie, and DO NOT attempt containment yourself. The ZI team of Recovery Specialists is here for YOU!

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  _ _ _

  The SUV was a Mazda Zecon with black-tinted windows and a complete black wrap with the Zombie, Inc., logo on each side in white, an Assessment Team scan code on each door panel, and a photo-realistic, life-sized horde of zombies plastered across the entire back. Classy, Carl thought and popped the passenger door open. The trainee sat in the driver’s seat, wide eyed and shaking. She had a small Ze Cross!® gas canister crossbow and bolt trained unsteadily on Carl’s head.

  Carl raised his eyebrows. “Don’t get out much, Dillalia?”

  She lowered the bow and breathed out a long, shaky whistle of air. She smiled, but even the smile was tentative. Carl had come to believe that people of Dillalia’s generation were hardened, insensitive. Not this one, though. She was smallish, not more than five four. Thin but strong looking and neatly turned out in the ZI Assessment Team uniform of white button-down Oxford, and tan khakis. It was an old-fashioned outfit, a throwback to the ’20s and before, when service-people in many fields wore such things. Of course, Carl remembered when men (mostly) had worn them in ear
nest. It hadn’t been a uniform back then, it had just been business casual.

  “It’s ze-cedure, though,” Dillalia said. Her tone was questioning. She was looking for confirmation, instruction. “It’s right in the handbook to be on the defensive when you’re in the wild.”

  Carl snorted and slid heavily into the passenger seat. “The wild, huh? That what you kids are calling it these days, Dill?” He shook his head. “That meant something entirely different when I was your age.”

  “Right, I know. Jungles and stuff.”

  Carl snorted again. “Well, kind of. Not really, though.” He shot her a look. “And please don’t call it ‘ze-cedure’ again. Just call it ‘procedure’–call it what it is. Believe me, all the ‘ze’ this and ‘ze’ that is not going to catch on if it hasn’t yet.”

  “But the handbook–”

  “The handbook is ninety-nine percent crap once you’re in the field,” Carl said. “File it away for the information regarding health care and whatever, but I’ll tell you one thing right now that will help us get along–don’t contradict me with handbook bullshit. Okay?”

  Dill nodded, her face untroubled but intent, and Carl wondered what his reputation at ZI had become. Of course, everyone in Field Assessment was considered a little bit of a loose cannon. Assessment was the front line, the ones who left the safety of the ZI compound to do the dirty work. Assessment decided next steps, further measures and compensation. It took a lot of training, a lot of practice. There had been two trainees before Dill that hadn’t made it. One dead, one quit, and they both went against Carl’s record. It wasn’t bad over the course of a career to lose one or two, even four or five depending on how long you were training and the adversity of your territory, but to lose two in a row had been bad luck.

  There was every possibility that Dill, herself, was Assessment, too–Employee Assessment–the most hated and feared group in ZI.