Outbreak (Book 3): Endplay Read online

  “Well, isn’t this great,” Rickard said in a low voice. “Wilder, your little motivational speech seemed to work. All the troops are rallying behind you. Congratulations. But you know once you go up there, we’re going to seal that door behind you and you’ll be on your own.”

  “Enough of this bullshit,” Josef said as he stood and pounded on the desk with his fists. “This is getting us nowhere.” Josef turned to Wilder. “Wilder, I can assure you that those doors may close behind you, but they will reopen when you are finished up there.” Rickard stared at Josef in a combination of shock and anger.

  “I also assure you,” Josef continued, “that we are all at your disposal.” Josef looked around at the scientists. “We have been living down here expecting to ride this out. The only thing all of this equipment and technology was doing was giving us a front row seat to the end of the world.”

  Wilder watched Josef as he spoke. Josef seemed nervous and unsure of himself, but there seemed to be something inside him that had snapped and compelled him to do the right thing. Wilder also noticed that Josef’s eyes kept darting over at Rickard. Rickard was still hiding something, and Wilder would eventually find out what it was.

  “My scientists may have unleashed this virus on the world, but we aren’t the monsters who created it,” Josef said as he stared at the floor. “We never intended any of this to happen. We couldn’t crack the virus, so we thought we could send out samples to some of the more advanced labs in the world and see if they could get anywhere with it.”

  “I know you didn’t release this infection on purpose,” Wilder said. “But time is running out, and we need to all work together to find out how to stop it.”

  “But that’s just it,” Josef said. “It was waiting for us to spread it around the world. This infection, or whatever the hell it is, has always been ten steps ahead of us.”

  “What do you mean that it waited?” asked Cheryl.

  “I mean exactly what it sounds like,” Josef said. “That goddamn virus remained inactive until we distributed it around the world to the various labs. Once it arrived at the various destinations, all the samples activated and became volatile.” Josef looked at Wilder, Steele, and Cheryl. “Accounting for all the time changes and various time zones the samples were sent to,” he continued, “we know exactly when the samples activated.”

  “You mean the samples all over the world synced up and became active at the same time?” Cheryl asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Josef answered. “The virus, and whoever sent it here, played us for fools, and we did exactly what they wanted.”

  “So that should make you want to fight back even more,” Wilder said.

  “But what if our next move is what they wanted as well?” Josef asked.

  “We can’t play that game, Josef,” Wilder said. “We can’t play a strong offense if we’re constantly worried about what the defense might do. We need a plan, and we need to stick to it.”

  “You people are idiots!” Rickard shouted. “You’re playing with forces and beings that are so advanced they make humanity look like we just crawled out of caves six months ago.”

  “This isn’t worth it anymore!” Josef shot back. “We need to do something before it is too late.”

  “Too late,” Rickard repeated. “Take a look around you, Josef. We’re way past ‘too late.’”

  Wilder thought Josef’s use of the phrase this isn’t worth it anymore was an odd choice of words. He filed it away and would ask Josef what he meant by it later.

  “We’re wasting time,” Wilder said. “Any luck with the monitors, Stefan?”

  “No,” Stefan said in a defeated tone.

  “Just keep at it and let us know when you get visuals,” Wilder said. He turned to the others. “I think it is time to get our party dresses on and get some party favors.”

  “Right this way,” Josef said as he walked out of the large common room toward the weapons room.

  5

  Cities Around the World

  An eerie silence fell around the world. For the first time in over two years, the world was quiet and still. None of the infected were wandering around in search for food and other humans to infect. The yellow-eyed creatures had temporarily stopped their trek to Spicewood, Texas. In cities all across the world, the dead had fallen into a coma-like state and were covered in a thick, corn syrup-like fluid. The liquid produced a protective, opaque cocoon around them. But if one were able to see inside, they would see there were many changes happening.

  The creatures were changing during their slumber.

  Or, more accurately, they were being changed.

  If human beings wanted to get the upper hand in the battle against the undead, now would have been the time. If humanity rose and smashed the cocoons, the occupants inside would have perished.

  But what remained of the scattered human survivors across the world were far from an organized resistance. Most huddled in underground bunkers and what was left of military bases, unaware that the creatures that hunted them down had fallen into a vulnerable state.

  The creatures felt everything that happened to them inside their cocoons and were in excruciating pain. Their bones stretched and snapped. Their flesh melted and was reformed. Their minds were altered.

  But into what?

  *****

  Six-thousand miles above the Earth, alien crafts situated themselves around the world. They remained in the planet’s exosphere for the time being and observed what happened below.

  The occupants of the alien vessels knew that the creatures they’d engineered would be in the final stages of transformation. They knew that each creature secreted a fluid that wrapped their bodies in a protective shell as they went through the final stages in preparation for The Convergence.

  The aliens didn’t usually conquer worlds with so much diversity of life. But when the scout ship sent the signal to the others in deep space about this planet, Earth had become their top priority. For years, they’d studied the atmosphere, the geography, and all the various life forms. For years, they’d developed the perfect virus that would prepare the planet for what was to come.

  The alien race’s technology was advanced light years beyond anything that was found on Earth. The inferior human beings had barely gotten off their planet. They were more concerned with fighting each other than exploring the universe. The aliens knew this would be an easy world to take.

  The alien’s home world had been destroyed hundreds of years ago. High technology came with a high price. The alien race had discovered a wormhole not far from their home world that they’d been able to stabilize and study for years. They’d learned everything they could about the wormhole until their technology couldn’t keep it stable any longer. The wormhole had collapsed upon itself, but not before the aliens had gathered all the information they’d needed to create their own portal through space.

  That was what had begun their exploration of the universe.

  It was also what had destroyed their home world.

  Wormholes, they’d discovered too late, were gravitationally dense and emitted extremely high doses of radiation. The effects had slowly ruined their planet by destroying their atmosphere, and gradually pulled it out of its orbit.

  This alien race had known that their world would soon be dead and had pooled all their resources into constructing massive ships that could sustain life for long periods of time.

  Enough time until they could find a replacement world.

  The aliens had scattered across the universe as they attempted to colonize new worlds. Most worlds were theirs for the taking and offered nothing but the way of resistance.

  Then they’d discovered Earth and its inhabitants.

  Earth was the perfect planet. It was full of natural resources, but was also inhabited by a species they’d observed to be violent and territorial. After cataloguing all the various species on the planet, the virus was engineered. Earth would have been theirs by now if t
he ship that carried the virus hadn’t crashed into the ocean.

  But the aliens had been patient. They’d known it would only be a matter of time before the craft was discovered and salvaged. Then the virus would be found and studied.

  Then, soon after, the planet would be theirs. Those who’d previously occupied the top of the food chain would find themselves just another link in it. The survivors would be rounded up and harvested for food.

  First, though, they’d needed to awaken the inhabitants on the scout ship that’d been salvaged from the ocean. The engineered virus had been a success after it’d been released, but on that ship was something else. Something that was more valuable than the virus itself.

  The aliens aboard the mothership knew there were uninfected humans in the same area as the scout ship. All current evidence showed that the humans had no idea what else was on that ship. That was why the aliens had activated the scout ship and sent out the signal that had attracted all the yellow-eyed creatures to that area in Texas.

  The humans were a tenacious species, though, and they weren’t going out without a fight. The drug concoction that one human had developed and the bomb the other humans had set off had hurt the aliens, but they’d adapted.

  They always adapted. That was why they still existed. No matter how harsh the environment or how rough the terrain, the aliens always adapted and took whatever planet they wanted.

  They were determined to take Earth, and the final pieces had been set into play.

  It wouldn’t be long now, but they first needed to get the contents of the scout ship.

  Chapter Five

  1

  Town of Rocksville

  Rocksville, Texas

  About halfway between Huntsville and Spicewood, Texas is the little town of Rocksville--named after a rock so large the founders had been forced to build the town around it. It’s a forgettable small Texas town with a long history behind it. The town was founded at this location due to nearby Lake Monroe. Whenever a fresh body of water was discovered, a town was usually founded nearby. This was Texas after all, and before the state became obsessed with oil, water was the hottest commodity.

  The history of Rocksville predated the Civil War when around two hundred people settled in the area in 1855. They were simple people who raised cattle and had skilled carpenters who used their skills and built the town’s center. Rocksville stayed neutral during the Civil War and was known as a safe haven for both Confederate and Union soldiers alike.

  Today, the town boasted a population of a little over four thousand people and there were no plans on increasing those numbers. It’s a town where everyone knew each other and where neighbors always helped each other.

  The distinguishing mark that separated Rocksville from all the other small towns in Texas was the fact that in the center of the town wasn’t a church, but a Masonic Temple. The exact date the Temple was constructed was unknown. There was no corner stone with a date on it. Some town’s folk believed it was the first building constructed after those initial two hundred people settled in the area. Others believed the building pre-dated even the first settlers. Whichever story was true, the Masonic Temple was built using an advanced knowledge of construction and engineering for the time. The Temple was a solid structure that over the decades withstood tornadoes and other bad Central Texas weather.

  Behind the Masonic Temple was a cemetery that used to attract many tourists. Currently, the town boasted a population of a little over four thousand citizens, but the cemetery had a population of over forty-five hundred residents. Some of the gravestones were marked with years that pre-dated the Civil War. Some had no dates at all.

  One such dateless gravestone stood out from the others. This particular gravestone was free of any kind of marking except one. In the upper left part of the gravestone was the carving of a ladder situated vertically. There was nothing particularly engrossing about the ladder other than the fact that it seemed out of place on the gravestone. But for those who knew what to look for, this ladder held more significance than most people imagined.

  The ladder on that gravestone wasn’t a random etching someone carved into a grave marker. This was the Masonic symbol of Jacob’s Ladder which, in Freemasonry, symbolized the path between heaven and earth and the knowledge that Freemasons acquired as they moved through the ranks of the organization. This particular carving of Jacob’s Ladder, though, held a more important meaning.

  The symbol of Jacob’s Ladder here marked the entrance to an underground facility, not unlike the one at Schoepke Springs. This underground facility, though, didn’t lead to a top-secret research laboratory. This facility was a meeting place and an emergency bunker for The Council of 36.

  The Council of 36 met underneath the cemetery in Rocksville for almost a century. The thirty-six members of The Council were made up of important people from the U.S. These members, though, were unknown to the public. Even the most knowledgeable of conspiracy theorists had no idea who the members of The Council were. Truth was, not even the most knowledgeable conspiracy theorists even knew about the existence of The Council of 36.

  The Council of 36 used other organizations like the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Bilderbergers to hide in plain sight. When one member found this old Masonic Temple in the middle of nowhere in a small, insignificant Texas town, The Council decided it was the perfect place to set up their headquarters. For almost a century, The Council met and shaped the country to their collective wills, but over the last century, The Council had only one issue on their agenda:

  The extinction of the human race by a hostile alien species.

  Recent events had proven that The Council’s concerns over the last century were real indeed. The Council’s founding fathers knew the human race was marked for elimination and poured their many resources into various research projects to develop advanced weapons that would stave off an attack.

  Schoepke Springs was one such research facility that The Council of 36 funded. When members became aware that the government was going to decommission the facility, one of The Council members approached Heinrich Schoepke. The weapons developed at Schoepke Springs were invaluable to The Council and made Schoepke Springs the most important facility The Council funded.

  There was, though, another important facility The Council funded, and this was the one in Rocksville, Texas. Underneath the Masonic Temple and cemetery was a facility that housed the remaining Council of 36 members. Even with the world in shambles and overrun with zombies infected with an alien-based infection, what was left of The Council of 36 still met. There was still much to discuss before The Convergence occurred. There was still a chance humanity could survive.

  Also located at Schoepke Springs was another underground facility that not even the Schoepke family was aware of. This underground base was built the same time Heinrich Schoepke secretly built onto his facility. Heinrich was unaware that The Council of 36 was his ‘foreign investor’ in the new facility and secretly built a hanger-sized bunker of their own on his property. Within the thick granite and steel-reinforced walls under the largest of the natural springs was the alien craft that brought the virus to Earth. Two objects had been salvaged from a deep crevasse in the ocean. One object was a smaller piece that had broken off the larger alien craft. The smaller object was given to Heinrich Schoepke to study, while the intact craft was hidden away in the secret underground hanger.

  One of The Council members who was close to Heinrich and his grandson Josef, knew about the alien craft at the Springs. This man was good at keeping secrets and knew the arranged agreement relied on keeping the alien craft a secret from anyone who wasn’t a Council member.

  Even in humanity’s darkest hours, there were those who would endanger others in order to keep secrets.

  John Rickard was one such man.

  The Council knew they could rely on Rickard to keep watch on the craft and not divulge its secret to anyone. He had a vested interest in this secret as well. He was, after all,
a member of The Council of 36. Rickard would guard the object and protect the secret that could potentially save humanity.

  Rickard knew it wouldn’t be long until the owners of the craft arrived. Once they arrived, The Convergence would begin and the planet and its inhabitants would be theirs.

  2

  AC/DC Tour Bus

  West I-79

  The bus rolled down the interstate and avoided populated areas. Murphy was behind the wheel and was used to dodging obstacles on the road. This stretch of the trip had a surprisingly small amount of abandoned vehicles on it. Murphy was able to maintain a steady-fifty-mile-per hour speed.

  Not long ago, they’d passed through the town of Holden. There were no other routes, and everyone on the bus braced themselves for what they might encounter.

  As they drove through the small center of town, the bus had to slow to a crawl. They traveled at thirty-five miles an hour as everyone on the bus stared out the windows. Store windows were smashed, cars were abandoned with their doors still wide open, dried blood stained the pavement. But there were no signs of movement from either humans or the infected.

  The town of Holden was dead.

  At the end of the main street was a gas station. Murphy had decided that now was as good a time as any to search for more gasoline. Brian, Stewart, and Braden grabbed the metal gas containers from the back of the bus. Murphy tried the pumps at the station. Riker and Teagan kept watch and Greg climbed on the top of the bus to get a bird’s eye view.

  “Holy shit!” Murphy shouted. “We struck gold!”

  Riker, who was close, by walked over to Murphy at the gas pump. “What did you find?”

  “This pump is almost full,” Murphy said. He was almost giggling at his find. “Tell Stewart, Brian, and Braden to stop looking and bring those gas tanks over here.”

  “Whatever happened here must have happened fast,” Teagan said as she joined Riker.