Outbreak (Book 2): The Mutation (5 page)

“If you’re asking me if it’s holding up, then it is great,
”
Walt responded. “I don’t think the Hulk himself could bust those boards down.”

“But,
”
Cheryl said.

“But I feel like a caged animal in there without my window,
”
Walt said, trying to smile.

“I’ve got news for ya, chief,
”
Dennis said as he walked up to Walt. “We
are
caged animals. We’re in the cages now, and those things out there run the world.”

“Damn, Dennis,
”
Walt said with a smile on his face. “You make it sound like we’re in a zoo, and
we’re
the ones in the cages.”

“Do I?
”
Dennis asked. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re no longer at the top of the food chain, are we? We’re all just walking hot meals to those fuckers out there.
”
Walt could hear Dennis
’
voice take on a dark tone.

Everyone in the dining room stopped talking and eating as they listened to Dennis and Walt. Walt knew he had to lighten up the mood.

“Well, then,
”
Walt continued, “I guess we better make ourselves as unappetizing as possible.”

Walt smiled, and Dennis took a deep breath and smiled back.

“I’m sorry, Walt,
”
Dennis said. Then, to the rest of the people in the dining room, added: “I’m sorry, everyone. Some days it gets to me more than others.”

The people around Dennis patted him on the back and reassured him.

“No need to apologize, Dennis,
”
Walt said. “We all know exactly how you feel.”

The Will to Heal center was down to just twelve people—four staff members and eight residents still receiving in-patient treatment. At capacity, the center held fifty patients and had a staff of around forty, twenty of which would’ve been on duty at any given time. The shit hit the fan during the weekend when there was only a skeleton crew working. Back then, the Center had experienced a turnover where thirty-two residents completed the program and went back to the real world.

Walt often wondered about those who’d re-entered the real world to find it all going to shit. Had they remained sober and stayed alive, or had they decided to go out with a final bang? He wasn’t sure what he would do if he were in the same situation.

Walt had taken over as director of the Will to Heal center three years before the outbreak. The owners of the property had been looking for a new direction. They’d wanted to offer addicts something besides the standard Twelve-Step program; something that directly dealt with the source of the addiction. That’s where Walt had come in. Walt had never attained a degree higher than his GED and afterward had become a certified counselor. But Walt’s curiosity never died.

After going through so many Twelve-Step programs only to relapse time and again, his voice of reason, Steven Spalatucci, told him to find his own way that worked for him.

If the steps they’re giving you aren’t taking you where you need to go
, he remembers Spalatucci telling him,
then build or find your own damn staircase
.

That’s exactly what Walt did, and he found his staircase in biology and science. He spent endless hours educating himself on how the brain behaves and how different neurotransmitters may or may not play a role in addiction. He never officially became an addictionologist, but he was respected in various addiction research circles for the contributions he made.

That’s how the owners of Will to Heal found Walt. They heard about his research into the roles that the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin play in addiction, and were impressed. His theories were mocked by some, but from others they were believed to be the future of finding an actual cure for addiction.

*****

Walt grabbed some food and sat down next to Cheryl. She was a pretty, twenty-five-year-old woman who had an inner strength that radiated out. Cheryl always wore her light brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She said she always wanted to be ready for anything at any time, and Walt knew she wasn’t joking.

Over the last two years, Cheryl became a warrior—the fiercest fighter the center had. She’d helped Walt organize the ground patrols at night and had developed a training program for those who wanted to learn to fight.

Cheryl had been one of the last patients to arrive at the center before the outbreak. She’d admitted herself due to a prescription pill addiction. Cheryl had aspired to be a champion in the world of MMA fighting, and had pushed her body to the breaking point almost every day. She’d trained to the point of wearing down her body and then turned to painkillers to help her start training the next morning.

As with everyone else in the hallways of the Will to Heal center, what started off as a crutch quickly became a daily coping mechanism.

Walt remembered the day Cheryl admitted herself into the thirty-day in-patient program. He’d asked her why she was there, and Cheryl had told him that she was stronger than her addiction, and that by admitting herself into the program, she was taking the first step to proving to herself that she was indeed stronger.

“How did the rest of the night go?
”
Walt asked Cheryl as he sat down.

“You know I always love ending the night with a bonfire,
”
Cheryl said as she smiled.

Walt laughed. “Find any more of those things wandering around?
”
he asked.

“No,
”
Cheryl said, “and that worries me.”

“That worries me, too,
”
Walt agreed. “They’ve always been so predictable. They always hunt in groups of six to eight, so why the lone wolf last night?”

“Hell if I know,
”
Cheryl said, shaking her head. “At least it was easy to kill.”

Walt stared at his oatmeal as his mind drifted away. It just didn’t make any sense that suddenly the infected were changing their behaviors. Walt laughed because he was still in the habit of attributing human intelligence and behaviors to the infected.

I may not know exactly what they are
, he thought,
but I know they aren’t human
.

Then Walt said: “Let’s make sure we double down on the patrols tonight. I’ve got an uneasy feeling, and I don’t know why.”

“I’m with you,
”
Cheryl said. “I was actually going to ask you if you were okay with me sending out extra bodies.”

It always made Walt uneasy when the people in the center referred to him or looked to him as the leader. He’d never served so much as a day in the military. Hell, he’d never even watched any of those survivalist shows that had been popular at the time of the outbreak.

“Survival,
”
Walt said out loud.

“What?
”
Cheryl asked around a bite of oatmeal.

“Dennis said these things are occupying the top of the food chain, right?
”
he asked. “What if they adapted a new strategy in order to survive?”

“I’m not following,
”
Cheryl said, putting down her spoon.

“We’ve really tightened up around here over the last two years,
”
Walt said. “We haven’t lost anyone to the infected in over eight months.”

“Okay,
”
Cheryl said as she sipped her bitter coffee.

“So what if they’ve changed their strategy?
”
Walt asked. “I know, I know,
”
he continued before Cheryl could interrupt. “I know these things don’t have a ‘strategy,
’
per se
, but what if they somehow adapted to their surroundings?”

“I’m still not following,
”
Cheryl said.

“When this shit-storm first occurred, the infected picked us off left and right,
”
Walt explained. “They were getting plenty of meals before we established out current system of patrols and other safety measures.”

“Aahhh,
”
Cheryl said, her eyes lighting up. “I see what you’re getting at. They know there’s a food source in here, but since it dried up by us being more cautious, you think they might have adapted to ensure their own survival. Right?”

“Exactly!
”
Walt almost shouted. As he thought more about it, a serious look settled across his face.

“What’s wrong?
”
Cheryl asked. “I think we’re on the right line of thinking about these things.”

“So do I,
”
Walt said with less enthusiasm. “But if we’re right, then these things are getting smarter.”

Walt and Cheryl looked at each other as they put their spoons down.

“That’s not good, is it?
”
Cheryl asked.

Walt just looked at her.

5

The rest of the day, Walt’s head was filled with the conversation he had with Cheryl.

They can’t be getting smarter, can they
? he asked himself.
That doesn’t seem possible. They’re just mindless hosts carrying around some kind of virus, right
?

Walt had no answers to those big questions. The outbreak had hit the world so hard and fast that there had been no time to contemplate what it might be. Survival had been the only thing on everyone’s mind.

Everyone had just assumed it was some kind of virus that was infecting people. It made sense, considering that if one of those things bit or scratched you, you became infected. It was basic virology. Right?

Walt knew he was out of his depth thinking about such things. He didn’t know the first thing about virology. He’d exclusively studied and taught himself about neurotransmitters and how they might play a role in addiction. He’d studied the various aspects of the brain and the numerous functions that occurred in each lobe. There was something that had bothered him since the initial outbreak and the first reports that the dead were reanimating. The ‘reanimated dead
’
that ran around and bit humans were called “the infected,
”
but they were actually more than that. ‘Infected
’
implied that those things were at one point healthy, got infected by some kind of pathogen, and then became the creatures they were now.

But that doesn’t make sense!
screamed the voice in his head, and he agreed.

He had seen those things up close, and they were more than just infected humans. They were dead. Or had been dead
…
were still dead. He still had trouble wrapping his head around it.

But he’d seen first-hand what happened when someone became infected. They didn’t suddenly turn into those creatures. First they died, and then the body reanimated.

But that’s impossible, right
? 

If that were true, then that meant something was reactivating the central nervous system, and that just wasn’t possible.

Right?

Whenever Walt started this line of reasoning, he always came to the same conclusion. It was just not possible for human beings to get up and start killing after they’d died. Yet that was exactly what was happening.

Walt walked back to his room and picked up Stevie before he sat behind his desk. Thinking about dead bodies and the early days of the outbreak inevitably led him to thinking about Steven Spalatucci.

Will to Heal Center

Spicewood, TX

Two Years Ago

Walt sat behind his desk and felt like laughing. Twenty years ago he had been living on the streets as an addict with no hope or salvation in sight. Today he was the new director of the Will to Heal Rehab Center. It hadn’t been an easy journey by any means, but he now knew that he could do anything. He also knew he owed everything, including his life, to Steven Spalatucci.

The first few weeks as director were quite an adjustment. Walt wasn’t used to people coming to him for advice and how they should deal with various patients. He had made a name for himself in both his tenacity to stay sober and in his research. Walt wasn’t a scholar by any means, but the subject of addiction medicine meant a lot to him. Addiction had taken away half his life, and even though he’d been clean for over twenty years, he still didn’t know a damn thing about it.

He’d begun his journey into self-education by reading other researcher’s accounts of addiction and their theories. Addiction was classified as a disease, but there was nothing close to either a cure or anything preventative for it. Most researchers started with a theory, and all their research usually never got beyond that starting point. Walt figured if others had their theories, why shouldn’t he have his own?