Origins of the Outbreak (17 page)

Thankfully, the wire stayed taut and he wrapped the extra around the anchor post and secured it along the rest of the wire like he'd done on the other end.
Then he picked up the spool and the metal bar and carried them back to the first post to repeat the process.

He set both items on the ground and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve.
The darned dog was nowhere to be found, so he whistled again. Adam was starting to get worried that the dog had gotten bit by one of the many rattlesnakes that lived in the rocky soil of his small farm.

“Duke
!
Duke, come here boy!” He'd never known the lab to not come when he whistled as often as he had and he sure as heck usually came when Adam called.

“Aww, heck,” he muttered and went to the cab of his truck where he had a pump action 20–gauge shotgun.
A lot of folks called the 20–gauge a lady's gun, but Adam thought it was the perfect weapon for use against snakes. Not too much kick and it still had plenty of destructive power to obliterate a snake.

“Duke!” he called as he headed down the hill
in the direction that he'd seen the dog head off in a couple of hours ago.

He topped a small rise and what he saw made him stop and stare.
Not even twenty feet away, a topless lady stood staring at a dead cow. The woman looked like she'd taken a bath in the animal's blood, even her face and hair was covered in the stuff. He couldn't help but notice how large and firm the woman's breasts were while the rest of her seemed to be melting away.

That was the best way he could describe it.
The woman's skin seemed to just hang from her bones like the gobbler on a tom turkey. Aside from those amazing breasts, it was one of the most disgusting things that he'd ever seen, even compared to the pictures of his leg when they had to open it up the second time to clean out the infection.

Adam mumbled a prayer to the Lord Jesus and the woman's head snapped up.
Milky white eyes stared at him like she could see him through her blindness. “Oh my goodness!  Are you okay, ma'am?”

Her mouth opened and instead of words, a dry crackling sound emerged as the air in her lungs expelled outwards and rattled her vocal chords.
Adam's blood chilled and his testicles shrank into his abdomen.  He knew that the woman before him wasn’t some lost traveler that found her way onto his farm.

“What are you?”

She moved awkwardly around the cow and stumbled up the hill towards him. Adam turned and jogged as fast as his bad leg would allow him to move. Duke shot past him and he turned to see the dog launch itself into the air. His teeth tore a ragged line across the naked lady's cheek and she changed course, headed after his best friend.

Duke's courage had played itself out with that one attack and he cowered on the ground, whimpering at the abomination that bore down on him.
  “Hey! Hey, over here! Leave him alone!” Adam called to the woman. She stopped and turned back towards Adam and began to lurch in his direction once more.

He raised the shotgun and said, “I
ain't afraid to use this lady. You need to get off my property.”

She stumbled to within five feet of him and he fired into the ground at her feet.
Several of the pellets went wide and shredded the toes of the black knee-high boots that she wore, but it didn't affect her at all.

Adam stepped back up the hill and his bad leg gave out on him completely.
He fell backwards and accidentally squeezed off a round. The buckshot hit the woman in the leg right below her knee from less than three feet away. The “lady's gun” took the woman's entire lower leg off at that distance.

She tottered unstably on one leg for a moment and then fell sideways.
Adam pushed his way backwards away from her as she pulled herself along the ground to get to him. His heart pounded in his chest and it sounded like thunder in his ears.

This must be what it's like to have a heart attack
, he thought as the pounding got louder.

Then, from the direction of the barn, the bull appeared.
The thunder of its hooves echoed across the ‘back forty’. It ran at full speed towards Adam and veered at the last moment, droppin
g
it
s
head to gore the woman. She flailed against the massive head and her fingernails dug into the side o
f
it
s
face until it finally pierced her head with one of its massive horns.

The beast continued to stomp on her body and slas
h
it
s
horns from side to side until the pile of putrid flesh could no longer be recognized as something that was once human.

Adam stared in fear and awe at the giant bull as it towered above him.
Its nostrils flared and black ichor dripped from both horns. Then it snorted, turned and walked slowly back in the direction of the farmhouse.

He sat on the ground watching the massive creature go until it passed below a small rise in the field.
When he was certain that it was gone, he stood up and hobbled over to where Duke lay. The poor dog had peed all over himself and shook uncontrollably, but the old farmer picked him up gently and carried him back to the truck. He set Duke down on the bench seat and scratched the back of his ear with a shaky hand.

Adam hadn't heard the news that the undead plagued the Army base more than twenty miles from his farm.
The only thing that he knew was that the bull had just saved him from one of Satan's spawn. Amidst the shock of what had happened, one thought kept resurfacing
…
.

We
ain't ever gettin' rid of that bull!

The Barista
, 6:02 a.m.

Oh man, I don't wannabe here
!
Amy thought as she stared numbly out of the floor-to-ceiling windows into the empty parking lot. Everyone in town knew to stay home except the employees of Starbucks
.
Well
,
on
e
employee at least.

She'd gotten the call from corporate this morning to report to work when Michael failed to turn off the store alarm at 4:30.
They'd called him repeatedly, but the store manager never answered so they went down the employee list until they got to her name – and she'd stupidly answered the phone. Nothing good can come from answering the phone at five a.m
.
That should be a bumper sticker, I'd make millions
.

After getting ready, she'd driven past wrecked cars left on the sides of the road through what appeared to be an abandoned town.
Nothing moved in the neighborhoods and it was downright eerie. If she hadn't needed the money so badly, she would have told that corporate schmuck to shove it. She couldn't do that though, because sh
e
neede
d
this job. If she was late with rent again, her landlord was going to evict her.

So
, here she was, standing at the counter of an empty coffee shop. Trays of raw pastries were strewn everywhere in the back as she tried to do the work of three people, starting hours later than they normally did. Where was everyone? She didn't normally work the morning shift, but surely there were customers that came in at 6 a.m. Why else would they be open this early if people didn't buy coffee? It had to be something to do with the whole “zombie” scare.

Amy knew better than to believe all that crap about zombies.
What probably happened was some college kid played a prank and mass hysteria had taken over. She blamed it on the uneducated masses who took everything the television or internet told them as gospel. Those people fell for hoaxes all the time.

A smile crossed her face when she remembered the story of all the online animal rights crusaders who publicly lambasted Steven Spielberg for killing a dinosaur when a picture of him with a model from one of his movies was posted online.
People said horrible things about him for “killing” such a magnificent creature. Yeah, the public was collectively dumber than dog shit.

The same thing was likely true now.
Some prankster got everyone riled up and was probably laughing his ass off at the mayhem that he'd caused because it was either that or bath salts. Amy hoped that no one was seriously injured in those accidents and had faith that the FBI was likely already triangulating the location of the offender.

Zombies!
The guy could have at least picked something believable like a flu-like symptom that caused every person who caught it to go blind or something. But apparently, the hoax was working and here she was, staring at an empty store way earlier than she'd been awake in a long, long time.

“
Gawd
!
Mornings are so boring,” she moaned. What had she done to earn this penance? The entire reason that she worked at the coffee shop was to meet and interact with interesting people. Take that gay dude, Levantre from last night. The two of them may not always get along, but they at least had witty banter that kept things entertaining.

She went about the morning duties, checking off items from the standardized prep list as they were completed.
Everything was done and still no customers. To top it off, the internet was abuzz with all these morons and their zombies. Her cell phone’s battery light started to blink indicating that she had less than ten percent strength remaining.

“Dammit!” she shouted in frustration.
She didn't have a wall charger, but she did have a car charger sitting twenty feet away.

Not
gonna hurt anything. No one's around anyways
, she told herself and walked around the counter. It wouldn't do her any good to have a totally dead cell phone battery, so she'd charge it for an hour or so and then go back out to get it if the shop was still slow.

The wind blew hard against the doors and when she opened them a gust of air filled the seating area.
It smelled like rain and
…
somethin
g
else. It wasn't a pleasant smell, but she was sure that she'd smelled it before, even if she couldn't quite place what it was. The morning sky was dark and clouds rolled rapidly past. The weatherman had called for rapid, violent thunderstorms that would be in and out in a matter of minutes.

“Great!” she muttered.
History taught her that people usually didn't brave the heavy rainstorms for coffee, so she was sure that the place would remain totally empty now.

The first few heavy raindrops began to fall and she jogged to her car.
The barista sat down inside and plugged her phone into the charging line that ran from her cigarette lighter. Luckily she didn't smoke, so she had no need of the lighter and was able to leave the charger plugged in so she wouldn't lose it.

The rain began to
really pound against the top of her carand she thought she saw a potential customer walking across the parking lot towards the store
.
Guy sure doesn't care about gettin
g
wet
,
she thought and opened her car door, running back inside. The cool air conditioning made her wet clothes feel cold against her skin so she ducked into the back and pulled on the Starbucks jacket that they had for the people who worked the drive thru on cold days.

She emerged from the back to see the man standing by the front door, staring inside.
She waved at him to let him know that the coffee shop was open and he threw himself into the glass.

“Holy shit!” she screamed.
The guy pulled back and launched himself once more. The echo of his body hitting the glass drowned out the easy-listening selection that the shop played over the intercom system.

He was really freaking her out and she suddenly remembered that the door was unlocked.
She rushed around the counter again and sprinted to the door as fast as her chubby legs would carry her.

The guy kicked it into high gear and started banging the glass with both hands when he saw her running.
Then he shifted to his right, following her path and she fell forward into the glass door. He pushed hard against it and only her weight kept the thing closed
.
Why did the builder have to make the door open inward
?
sh
e
cried to herself.

Amy reached up and with considerable effort was able to twist the lock.
She collapsed against the door until she became aware of a scraping noise coming from right beside her head. She looked up into the gaping mouth of the man as he bit against the glass, right where the back of her head would have been sitting.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she yelled.
Amy knew that he could hear her through the glass, the same way that she was able to hear his teeth scraping against it.

Another loud thud against the opposite window made her twist her head around.
A woman pawed desperately on the glass in an attempt to get inside. The woman was covered in blood, huge gashes across her neck and arms exposed corded muscle beneath the skin. A black crusty substance on her skin mingled with the rain and the mixture oozed from her body like a bad sci-fi movie prop.

Another thud and then another announced the arrival of several more of th
e
zombies
. Amy didn't want to believe, but the evidence stared at her and threatened to break the coffee shop's glass. The stories online had been true! There was a fucking zombie outbreak in Killeen!

How could this be happening?
It was scientifically impossible for something that was dead to reanimate and begin moving around, intent on attacking others. She was pre-med; she knew this for a fact. Almost immediately upon death, degeneration begins on the cellular level and then rapidly expands. Everything shut
s
down.  There was no way that this was feasible… Yet, here she was, trapped at work by these things.

She staggered her way behind the counter and ducked down to hide from sight, but it was too late.
Within minutes the few creatures had grown to a massive crowd. They drew one another by sight and sound, hoping to get a tasty morsel before the flesh died and became unbearable. The coffee shop's lights, shining brightly in the darkness of the thunderstorm, also brought more creatures from far and wide.

Eventually, the pressure of all those bodies pressed up against the glass was too great, even for the impact-resistant material.
It splintered and then shattered completely, sending ragged shards of glass in all directions. Creatures fell inward on top of one another and then began to claw their way to where they'd seen her disappear.

Amy screamed and opened the drive thru window to escape.
The top half of her body made it out, but her hips became lodged in the narrow opening. While most of the creatures pressed themselves stupidly against the counter, two of them figured out how to go through the employee opening and shuffled around to where the juicy treat struggled to get through the window.

She heard the zombies moving around the employee area behind her and pulled back out of the window.  She glanced around and realized that she’d allowed herself to get trapped behind the counter.  With all the creatures in the lobby, the only way out was through th
e tiny window to the drive thru.  She picked up a large push broom and shoved hard against the two that made it around the counter and hey fell backwards. 

Amy knew that she had one shot to get away, so
she dived through the window.  The added momentum ensured that her hips became lodged.  She wiggled and tried to worm her way through, but she was completely stuck and couldn’t move forward or backward.  She yelled for help into the empty parking lot with no response.

The barista screamed in earnest as long strips of muscle from her hamstrings were pulled away by dull teeth.
The pain was worse than anything she'd ever imagined. Thankfully, a few dozen creatures stumbled around the side of the building and her suffering came to an abrupt end as they ripped her head from her body in their efforts to get a tasty morsel before it soured.