Outbreak (Book 3): Endplay Read online

  “I hear it,” Greg said. “Keep moving.” He nodded to Stewart and Noonan. The men slowly made their way around the cocoons around them.

  “Fucking disgusting,” Braden yelled. “One of the sacs over here just spit out some kind of gooey crap.”

  Greg ran over to take a look. “Seriously, everyone, we need to move faster.”

  The office was just a few feet away. Noonan and Stewart broke away from the group to load the bus with the items from the dollies.

  “I don’t see the others,” Emily said as she looked into the warehouse from the office.

  “Over there!” Braden shouted as he pointed through the window. The others saw Riker and Hector as they ran toward the office. Greg met the men outside the office.

  “Take these and put them on the bus,” Riker said as he handed the Sig Sauer rifles to Hector. “I’m gonna fill them in on what just happened.” Riker told them about being ambushed by the creatures and what happened to Toxic. He then described what was going on with the cocoons.

  “We didn’t encounter any zombies,” Greg reported, “but as we were coming back to the office, we did see the cocoons begin to shake. This thick goo even seeped out of one of the cocoons.”

  “I think they’re all hatching, or whatever it is human cocoons do,” Riker said. “What about the others?”

  Before Greg could answer, they heard the gunshots and screams from the remaining group as they got closer to the office.

  “Let’s get on the bus,” Riker said.

  As Greg turned toward the office, three zombies ran through the darkness and slammed into the windows. The lead zombie hit with such force that it created a spider web design in the glass. Braden and Brian jumped and grabbed their weapons, ready to fire. Back in the trailer, Braden abandoned the bulky post digger for some of the kitchen knives he found. Brian still carried the edger, now bloodied from the battle at the trailer park.

  Two of the zombies entered the office and Greg and Riker didn’t have a clear shot. The zombies moved around too quickly to get an accurate shot.

  Brian swung the edger around, clipped the lead zombie in the shoulder, and spun his body around to keep the blade’s momentum going, and managed to bury the edger in his attacker’s belly.

  Braden jabbed the knives into the other zombie’s chest. He aimed for the eyes, but the creature moved too quickly. The zombie kept charging and slammed into Braden. Braden was next to a desk and the force of the zombie took them both, as well as the desk, to the floor. Braden used his forearm on the creature’s neck to hold it back, but the zombie was strong. He frantically looked around for anything he could use as a weapon.

  Brian kept his hands on the wooden handle of the edger and used it to keep the creature away from him. He felt the zombie push against the blade, and the blade sunk deeper into its stomach.

  Braden’s hand searched among the contents of the desk that fell over until his hand landed on something metallic. He grabbed it and held it up.

  It was a staple gun.

  With newfound strength, Braden kicked the creature in the stomach and pushed the thing away from him. As the zombie charged, he hopped to the left and let his attacker run right past him. The creature tripped over the desk and fell onto its knees. Braden jumped on it and pushed the staple gun against the back of the creature’s skull. He kept squeezing the staple gun until he sent six large metal staples into the base of the thing’s skull. He turned the zombie over and sent three more large staples into the creature’s forehead and then used the staple gun like a pair of brass knuckles and knocked out the creature’s teeth.

  Braden looked over at Brian and saw that the zombie had pushed against the edger with such force that the blade had gone completely through its back. The creature now slid down the length of the wooden handle toward Brian.

  Brian panicked. There was nothing he could grab to defend himself. If he tried to grab anything, he’d lose his grip on the handle of the edger and the creature would be on top of him.

  “Catch!” Braden said as he threw the staple gun to Brian.

  Brian took one hand off the handle of the edger to catch the staple gun, but that was all the creature needed. The thing grabbed the handle and pulled itself closer to the teenager. By the time Brian caught the staple gun and turned back toward the creature, he lost valuable time.

  Brian stood face-to-face with the creature. With the staple gun firmly in hand, Brian swung his arm around, but the creature was quicker. The zombie knocked the instrument out of his hands and grabbed Brian by the shirt and pulled him closer. The creature tore out Brian’s throat with one bite. Blood shot out of his throat and sprayed all over the zombie. The creature chewed on the hunk of Brian’s throat and then spit it to the ground. His next bite removed Brian’s left cheek and most of the flesh on his chin.

  The zombie threw Brian to the floor and jumped on him, the handle of the edger still stuck out of its back.

  Braden screamed as he saw the zombie kill Brian. He raced toward it, but didn’t get two steps before he watched its head explode. Stewart stood behind the creature with one of the new shotguns. The barrel still smoked. Tears filled Stewart’s eyes.

  Stewart chambered another cartridge and then blew off the head of the zombie that had Braden put down.

  “Come on,” Stewart said as he wiped the tears from his eyes.

  *

  Murphy, Teagan, and Kimberly heard the blast from the shotgun just as they got to the office. They looked through the windows and saw Stewart as he wiped the tears from his eyes. On the ground was the mangled body of Brian.

  Over by the office’s door, they saw Greg and Riker standing over the body of another zombie.

  “Come on, everyone!” Riker shouted. “Get on the bus!” Riker looked around. “Where the hell’s Paula?”

  “She didn’t make it,” Murphy told him. “We got attacked back there too.”

  “Those things are also starting to hatch,” Teagan added. “We saw what looked like arms sticking out of a few of them.”

  “We know,” Riker said. “Whatever’s inside them started coming out when we were grabbing the weapons. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but it is time to go.”

  “Where’s Toxic?” Teagan asked. Riker just shook his head.

  “Okay, everyone!” Riker shouted. “Everyone needs to get on the bus right now!”

  Murphy started the engine, and within seconds, everybody was on the bus. Murphy pulled the bus away from the distribution center as he looked in the rearview mirror.

  “Where to, boss?” Murphy asked Riker as he caught his breath.

  Riker sat in one of the seats close to Murphy.

  “Anywhere but here,” he said as he slumped back in the cushioned seat.

  6

  All across the world, from the largest cities to the smallest villages, hundreds of millions of cocoons started to come alive.

  The creatures inside the cocoons had been changed--not just physically, but mentally. No longer did the creatures have a human side that they clung to; no longer did they have to battle with that part of the brain that still grasped onto the remaining threads of their humanity.

  The aliens that’d created the bio-nano virus had known that the biggest hurdle in conquering any planet with life would be to break its dominant life form of their allegiance to their species. The virus had been engineered to do just that. The aliens, though, hadn’t come across another planet with such advanced life. The dominant life form on Earth may have had a more advanced brain than the other forms of life, but they were still animals, and the aliens knew they could be defeated.

  The first generation of the virus had successfully eliminated the animals and lower creatures on the planet. After it’d mutated in order to leap to human beings, the virus had met its first hurdle.

  The human beings had fought back.

  After the initial infection had taken down a large percentage of Earth’s higher life forms, it’d mutated again. The new yellow-e
yed creatures may have been stronger, faster, and fiercer, but there was another important upgrade.

  The mutation had removed the yellow-eyed creatures further from their humanity.

  But there were still memories that lingered in the dark corners of the human mind--memories that invaded the creature’s dreams and made them wonder about their nightly visions during the waking hours. This was unacceptable. The engineers of the infection had foreseen this possibility, but hadn’t been worried by it. They’d known that the concluding stage of the infection, the final mutation, would eliminate the final echoes and shadows of humanity.

  The creatures that now ripped and tore and writhed and squirmed their way out of the cocoons were no longer human. They’d made the final ascension and were now completely alien. Their bodies had been reshaped in the image of their creators. The infected human beings hadn’t only physically reshaped, but their minds had been altered to eliminate the weaknesses of their old host bodies.

  What emerged from the cocoons was no longer human. The heads were elongated, coming to a point at the base of the skull while the forehead became more pronounced. The bones in the skull were also harder. The human skull was a flaw the aliens recognized early on. They’d always wondered how a species with such fragile heads managed to exist for so long.

  The bodies of the new creatures were built to be fast. Long, tight muscles wrapped around thick bones. The legs were muscular and designed to be able to jump high heights and run long distances. The arms were also thin and muscular and were every bit as deadly as they looked. The arms ended in clawed hands, upon which were two fingers and an opposable thumb. The finger in the middle was larger than the others and was the one that inflicted the most amount of injury.

  One of the most shocking new features was the mouth--outlined with thin lips and had protruding jaws filled with razor-sharp teeth. The teeth looked unnatural and the creatures couldn’t even completely close their mouths.

  The other striking feature was their eyes. Not only were they sunken back and wider, to give the creatures better peripheral vision, but they were no long yellow.

  The previously yellow eyes of the creatures were now completely black.

  The body of this new species was that of a killing machine. Ninety percent of the human form’s weaknesses had been eliminated. The nanites had done their jobs, and over the last two-and-a-half years, had prepared their human hosts for this final transformation. The new, sinewy bodies that emerged from the viscous fluid were the last preparations before The Convergence.

  The aliens that occupied the crafts just outside Earth’s atmosphere were ready. They were ready to begin the final sequence of events that would clear the chessboard. The final mutations were emerging from the cocoons, and they were ready.

  The black-eyed creatures were ready for The Convergence.

  Chapter Seven

  1

  Underground Facility, Schoepke Springs

  Spicewood, Texas

  There was an eerie stillness in the room. After Wilder sealed the hatch and again cut them off from the outside world, he, Steele, Cheryl, Stefan, and Stacey looked around as they stood perfectly still. Wilder’s grenades had done a good job of blasting the creatures and cocoons under the hatch, but the room was big and there were other cocoons that still shook with life.

  “That doesn’t look human,” Stefan said as he studied one of the appendages that’d blown away from a cocoon. “Look at the skin and the muscles. Hell, look at the clawed hand.” Stefan looked over at the others. “What the fuck is this thing?”

  The stillness of the room was shattered when Steele brought his sledgehammer down on one of the sacs. The thick fluid shot everywhere and the others heard a loud crunch as the weapon pulverized newly formed bones.

  The others looked at Steele. “What?” he asked with a shrug. “They seem pretty damn easy to kill while they’re still in their cocoons.”

  They all jumped when they heard something bang against the closed hatch above them.

  “What the hell was that?” Stacey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cheryl answered, “but it sounds pissed off.”

  They all stared at the hatch door. Only the sound of Steele’s sledgehammer as it splattered another cocoon brought them back to reality.

  The noise that came from the other side of the hatch didn’t sound human. They heard the thing as it raked its claws against the steel door and even heard its unnatural shrieks.

  They looked around and saw that all the cocoons in the room shook violently as the things inside tried to free themselves from the sacs. A few arms had already punched through some of the cocoons, and they all looked around the room. For a second, it seemed like they were in Hell. Everywhere they looked, non-human arms stuck out of alien pods and waved back and forth as the creatures inside tried to free themselves.

  If reality was a ball of yarn, they were all hanging on by a thread.

  The sound of Wilder’s AK-47 roared to life as he shot into the cocoons nearby. The others jumped as the machine gun sprayed bullets. They all knew they needed to move.

  “Come on, everyone,” Wilder said. “Head to the other door!” he shouted as he nodded to the far end of the room. “These things are gonna hatch soon.”

  Cheryl ran across the room, careful not to step in any goo. She stopped when she saw that one of the creatures was almost completely out of its cocoon. She looked as the thing as it struggled to free its lower half from the pod. There was nothing human about the thing in front of her. Its skull and entire body had been reshaped and no longer resembled anything remotely human.

  The creature’s skin was the color of metallic gray, and for a second, Cheryl thought the skin might not even be organic.

  Only one way to find out, she thought.

  With all her strength, Cheryl brought the nail-studded baseball bat, Stevie, down onto the creature’s back. The wet splat sound was music to her ears, and she knew the creatures didn’t have metal skin.

  As she pulled Stevie out of the creature’s back, the thing on the ground turned toward her and emitted a high-pitched shriek. She held her ears as the thing cried out and Cheryl got a good look at its face. Besides the black hole-looking eyes, Cheryl was horrified as she looked at the creature’s mouth. The mouth was filled with rows and rows and protruding, needle-sharp teeth.

  These things no longer want to infect us, Cheryl thought. They want to kill us.

  Stefan and Wilder ran past Cheryl as she shook the gore and goo off Stevie.

  “That’s what they look like?” Stefan asked, horrified.

  “You haven’t seen anything,” Cheryl said as she used Stevie to turn the thing’s head.

  “Oh my God,” Stefan said. “That thing doesn’t even look human anymore.”

  “I don’t think they are,” Wilder said. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” he yelled.

  They ran to the far side of the room and Wilder punched in the code to open the large, steel door.

  A red light flashed on the keypad.

  Wilder tried the code again.

  Another red light.

  “Howard, come in,” Wilder said into the radio. “Where the hell are you, Howard? Are you there?”

  *

  “Don’t even think about responding to him,” Rickard said as he aimed a gun at Howard, Jennie, and Josef.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Josef snapped.

  “I’m doing what needs to be done,” Rickard answered. “Or have you forgotten about what’s really important here?”

  Josef knew it was a rhetorical question.

  “It is over, Rickard,” Josef said to the man as he calmed down. “It’s been over for a long time.”

  “What are you talking about? ‘It’s over?’” Rickard fired back. “Did you see what’s going on up there? It’s just beginning.”

  “So you’re going to let the five of them die up there?” Josef asked as he looked Rickard in the eyes. “You can really
stand there are let those people die up there?”

  “Get off your high horse, Josef!” Rickard shot back at the man. “We’ve been down here for over two years letting everyone die up there. Then one lucky, optimistic soldier finds his way to the Springs and suddenly you’re Dudley fucking Do-Right? We have an agreement, Josef.” Rickard stopped talking when he looked over at Howard and Jennie.

  “I won’t let you fuck this up for me and the others,” Rickard said as he turned, put the gun on the table he stood next to, and walked away.

  Jennie and Howard stared at Josef.

  “Well,” Josef finally said. “Let’s get that door open for them.”

  *

  “Come in, goddamnit!” Wilder yelled through the headset. “Open this fucking door!”

  Wilder looked up at the camera that was by the security door. He knew the camera was well outside the blast radius and still worked.

  “Sorry,” Howard’s voice finally responded. “We had a slight malfunction up here, but we’re back online.”

  Cheryl, Steele, and the two scientists looked into the room behind them. The movements in the cocoons had gotten more violent, and more of the creatures had slithered out from their prisons.

  “We need that door open now!” shouted Steele. “More and more of those things are breaking free from the sacs!”

  Stefan and Stacey both watched one cocoon as it shook, followed by a clawed hand bursting through the membrane. The thing inside tore away at the membrane until it was shredded.

  The scientists watched as the creature slowly stood up.

  The thick fluid ran down the length of the sexless body in front of them. Stacey and Stefan stared at the sinewy physique of the creature. Tight muscles wrapped around thick bones in an impressive display of form.

  “These… these things aren’t human,” Stacey said as she grabbed Stefan’s hand.

  “I know it looks… alien,” Stefan said, “but we saw that it was the infected humans that went into those cocoons.”

  “A human may have gone in,” Steele said as he walked up to the scientists, “but something non-human came out.” Steele placed his hands on each of the scientist’s shoulders. “Let’s move towards the security door behind us.”