Origins of the Outbreak (10 page)

The Quitter
, 2:16 p.m.

What's the point?  We're all dead anyways; I'm just choosing to do it my way
, Cooper thought as he looked along the slide of his 9mm towards the hammer, which was cocked back putting the pistol in a single action mode.  Five simple pounds of pressure on the trigger and all of his troubles would be over.

Cooper had always had fleeting thoughts about suicide.  Never serious, but he'd often thought about how easy it would be to end it.  He didn't have a particularly hard life, it was just one of those things that he'd always been obsessed with.  Over the last several years he'd fantasized about every conceivable way to end your life.  Recently, he'd even begun to imagine pulling out his gun in the most random public places and blowing his brains all over everything.  The Statue of Liberty, a crowded bus, in a board meeting at his crappy job
– things that made no sense, but would make a spectacular internet story.

Two things had always kept him from doing it though.  First off
– and probably most important to him before the events of the last two days had shattered his belief in God – was that he was born and raised a Catholic.  He'd always been taught that it didn't matter what type of person that you'd been in life, if you committed suicide, then God would send you to Hell.

The second reason he hadn't killed himself was more of a personal reason.  He'd known a man who'd done it a few years ago and the only thing that anyone talked about was how selfish it was of him.  His friend had a wife and kids, mountains of debt; but nobody discussed his pain or what he must have been going through in his life, everyone just said that he was a quitter and a coward who wouldn't face his problems.  Even though he was single, that's certainly not how Cooper wanted to leave his legacy on this earth.

But now, there wer
e
zombies
, real life undead creatures wandering the streets of his hometown and beyond.  The social stigma with suicide would be gone because his friends and family wouldn't ever know if he was alive; hell, they lived in Arizona now, but they'd probably be dead in a couple of days anyways.  Plus, the fact that there wer
e
zombie
s
clearly indicated that there wasn't a god.  The caring, loving “God” figure that he'd grown up with would never allow something this horrendous to occur.  He did believe in Hell though.  Its inhabitants had broken free of the underworld and roamed the streets of Texas.

So now, here he was.  He'd made up his mind to just blow his brains out all over the back window of his truck.  He'd seen a lot of zombie movies, no way was he
gonna go out like that; eaten alive until he finally succumbed to his injuries and then came back from the dead to go around killing people
.
Fuck that.

The rounded metal of the pistol sat heavily on his lower teeth and the square of the slide made funny noises as he bit down hard on it.  His eyes followed the length of the barrel and crossed as they settled on the hammer only eight inches away.  It wouldn't take much; just a simple squeeze and he'd never know what happened.  He squeezed his eyes shut and started to depress the trigger.

Then Cooper Hicks jerked the gun out of his mouth.  “What the fuck are you doing?” he muttered aloud.  “This isn't the way, man.”

Well, fuck.  Where does that leave me?

He couldn't stay here; he had to get away from this town – away from Texas altogether.  He brought up a mental map of Belton and thought he could still make a run for it down Sparta Road to the north of town.  He could take that until he hit Killeen and then hop back onto the highway and just drive.  Drive west where there weren't a lot of people who would turn.  He could even find a ranch house with a wide field of view and convince the owners to let him stay with them until the worst of this passed.

“That's what I'll do,” he told his reflection in the rearview mirror and started his truck.  He didn't have anything but the clothes on his back and his pistol, but it would have to do.  He'd wasted precious time debating whether he should kill himself.  Now he'd have to rush to get away.

He backed out of his drive and peeled out in his haste to leave the town
.
Maybe I'm a coward too – in a different way.  I'm afraid to die.

As he sped down Main Street towards the north end of town he decided that it was okay to be afraid.  Death was one of the great unknowns to human beings and he'd have to face it one day. 
But not today
.
This day was for survival.

Right as he though
t about surviving, a little girl ran out into the road and he swerved his truck to miss her.  He hit the zombie that had been chasing her before momentum took over and the truck flipped.  It rolled several times and finally came to rest upside down.

Cooper looked around, but the windshield was smashed and the safety glass held, effectively blocking his view of everything out the front of his truck.  Off to the side, the little girl continued to run away in terror, but at least she survived
– for now.

“Ugh,” he moaned.  “I feel like shit.”  The seatbelt held him firmly in place against the seat, upside down.  The pressure across his lap as all 240 pounds of his body
was suspended, held in place by that little strap, was unbearable.  His hand drifted upwards until he found where the seatbelt connected to the latch and he pushed it.

Cooper had done okay in high school, but the Texas State Education that he received didn't require Physics as a class.  The moment that the belt was released, h
e
wa
s
victim to gravity and fell hard onto his head against the roof of the truck.  “Ow, fuck!  Goddammit!  Mother fucker!  Oh, why am I so stupid?”

A second moan drifted through the broken passenger window.  This one definitely did not come from him.  “Oh fuck!” he shouted and scrambled towards the driver's door.  He tried the handle, but the door had been wedged into place by the multiple flips that the vehicle had done.  He wiggled his way downward and pulled himself through the shattered driver's door window until he rested on the pavement of Main Street.

The moans of the dead filled the air and he dove back into the truck to find his pistol.  “There you are!” he rejoiced and snatched the weapon from the roof of the ruined vehicle.  He had to scoot backwards on hands and knees to get back out and by the time he was free, two of the creatures had already begun to turn the corner of his pickup truck.  Cooper took aim and fired directly into the forehead of the nearest one and then adrenaline made him jerk the gun, causing the round to impact ineffectually against the second zombie's chest.

He aimed carefully and fired once more.  This time a fine red mist filled the early afternoon air.  “Yes!”

Another zombie came around the corner and he aimed to fire at this one as well.  “Freeze
!
Drop the gun!”

“Huh?” he mumbled as he turned around with the pistol still firmly in his grasp and now pointing at the Army squad that had snuck up behind him.

“Hostile!” someone shouted and then Cooper went flying backwards.  The back of his head impacted against the bottom lip of his door.  He slid slowly down onto his ass and his chin dropped to his chest.

Huh, I'm bleeding.  Fuck, I'm bleedin
g
bad
,
he observed with detached curiosity as gunfire erupted all around him.  A sharp pain in his lower back made him turn to see what caused it.  The damned zombie that he'd hit when he swerved to miss the little girl had crawled through the inside of the passenger compartment taken a bite of his back.

“Well, isn't that fucking hilarious?” he mumbled and brought his pistol up to kill himself before he changed.

He didn't stand a chance as the National Guard squad members filled him full of lead.  They'd finally arrived.  Cooper Hicks was killed instantly, a misunderstanding between stressed-out and scared members of the state's disaster response force.

Shooting an emotionally unstable man who was actually helping their cause wasn't the worst of their ills.  Not a single round found its way into Cooper's head and he wasn’t able to finish the job himself.  Within minutes the zombie bite spread the infection and he lurched to his feet and began hunting down the National Guard, who now had their backs to him and couldn't hear anything over the sound of their own gunfire.

The Bible Thumper, 3:19 p.m.

Luanne Marie closed her worn leather bible and knelt beside her couch.  She'd watched the news broadcast from just down the street in horror.  What was happening in her small, God-fearing Christian community?  The way the news described it, the dead were walking.  That was just like in the Book of Revelation chapter twenty, verse thirteen when it said the dead would rise!

Was it finall
y
time?  After all these years – more than two thousand years – that the faithful had waited and prayed for, was the Rapture at hand?  As a little girl, Luanne had been frightened of the prospect that one day every Christian would simply disappear and the heathens would be left to their own devices until the Good Lord destroyed the universe forever.  But then when she was twelve, she'd heard that small voice tickling the back of her mind and she'd went forward to the preacher in front of everyone and confessed that Jesus Christ was her Lord and Savior.

Since then, she hadn't been afraid of the end times.  She knew that she'd be one of the ones taken to Heaven and then all those bad things that the Prophet John said would happen to the sinners would come to pass.  She'd spent the morning rereading Revelation and when she got to chapter twenty, her blood chilled.

Clearly, the dead were walking, but that was supposed to happe
n
afte
r
the Christians were called home to the New Jerusalem.  She'd cried and prayed and cried again when she thought that Jesus had left her here until she called her pastor.  The man had obviously been busy on the phone with more important members of the congregation, but he took the time to answer her questions and assure her that everything would be alright.

According to Pastor Allan, the Book of Revelation was meant as an illustrative essay to the members of the Church.  John had been shown many things by God and a lot of the visions that he'd seen had come to pass over the course of history since the book was written two
millennia ago.  The Lord worked in mysterious ways and human beings – even those who are chosen and are as pious as John was – will never be able to fully interpret God's will.  John tried to interpret what he'd been shown, but obviously he'd gotten some things out of order.

The pastor also made a side reference to the fact that the King James Bible, the version that all good, God-fearing Christians should use, was translated and compiled by an earthly king in the 1600s.  The Church at the time was losing followers because no one understood Latin so King James directed that the Bible be translated into English
for all the people to use.  Pastor Allan said that it might have been a case of the king wanting the story to flow better by having the final, climactic scene at the end.

We'd never fully know the truth, but it was highly likely that the Lord intended the rise of the dead as a final test of his follower's faith.  Look at poor Job and all the things that the Lord allowed Satan to do to him, maybe this was a more widespread version of those trials and tribulations.  In fact, the pastor told her, that's where the term “tribulation” comes from; the faithful will have to endure terrible suffering to prove that they are worthy of passing through those Pearly Gates and seeing the face of the Almighty and his Son seated at his right hand.

Luanne had felt much better after talking to Pastor Allan.  Everything he told her made perfect sense.  She'd been brought up in the Church and lived her entire adult life as a Christian, so when the preacher told her that this is what the Lord told him, then by goodness, she would believe!  He told her to stay in her home out of sight and pray for a few days until the heathens had been wiped off the face of the earth by the military and then meet at the church on Wednesday at noon.  From there, the congregation would develop a plan to survive the coming apocalypse, if the Lord didn't call them home before then.

It all sounded very prudent to Sister Luanne.  So
, she'd done as he'd directed and saved as much water as she could from the tap and took stock of her food situation.  She was in very good shape; she had a garden in the back yard and canned her own vegetables.  In fact, she had four boxes of the big mason jars of food sitting in the laundry room that she'd planned to deliver to the shelter after church on Sunday that added to her supply.  When she went to the church next week, she'd be sure to load up all of her food in the trunk so others could share her good fortune.

She knew for a fact that the Wilson's probably only had enough food to last a couple of days.  Hillary was her best friend in the world, but that woman would not listen to common sense.  The family made a point that they always went to the organic food market so all their food was fresh and Luanne thought that there was no way that they could have a stockpile of groceries.  She harrumphed at the silliness.  The only preservatives that she used in her canning were salt and water – that was as natural as you could get.

After she was done with the little things like closing the blinds and making sure her doors were locked, she sat on the couch with her bible and turned on the news.  It was terrible, but mesmerizing at the same time.  All those people were being killed in the most horrifying way.  She couldn't even imagine being eaten alive.  How disgusting. She wondered if any of the people who were killed were Christians but then she went back to Pastor Allan's comments that this was the final test for humanity.  Maybe every person who was now one of those creatures had taken God's test and failed.  What if all the Christians who'd not back-slid into Satan's grasp were at home or work, safe and only the sinners were attacked?

It made sense to Sister Luanne.  She'd done everything that the Lord had asked her throughout her life, including remaining abstinent until God delivered the right man for her to marry and possibly have children with.  She felt a pang of sorrow at that thought.  With the way the world was and the Rapture surely to be close behind it, she'd never experience the joy of having a child.  But it was God's will that it happen this way, so she'd accept the role she'd been given.

She was the church's Sunday school instructor for all the children under five and loved every minute of her work for the Lord.  She was still young enough that the kids didn't view her as an old lady; they saw her as more of a mature older sister who taught them about God through games and songs. Luanne had another thought and wondered if any of her kids were in trouble.  Surely the Lord wouldn't allow the innocent children, who hadn't yet reached the Age of Accountability, to suffer.  Would he?

The woman slapped herself mentally and panicked for a moment.  Those were the thoughts that the Silver-Tongued Beast had placed in her head.  “Get thee behind me, Satan!” she shouted into her living room.  The Devil was trying to corrupt her thoughts and introduce doubt, just like he did to Job.

“You're going to have to try harder than that.  I love the Lord and would never question his will.  I know that he called those kids home to Heaven before the bad things happened to them.  Thos
e
thing
s
on the television are just their earthly shells, left here to torture the wicked.  Now, get thee behind me, Satan!”  She practically screamed the last sentence and then glanced at her screen door.

Had
itbee
n
a mistake to leave it open
?
She hadn't anticipated this attack from the Devil or that she would have such a violent reaction to his tampering.  What if someone heard her shouts?  She had an eight-foot wooden fence completely around her yard, but that didn't stop the sound from carrying.  Then
,
a cal
m
settled over her and she knew that Jesus was there with her.

“If it'
s
You
r
will, Lord, then let them come.  I have lived my life for you.  You are my Savior, the Lord, my God.  I love you.”

She bowed her head in prayer and asked fervently for forgiveness of all of her sins, both physically and mentally.  Sister Luanne prayed for hours until great drops of sweat poured from her forehead.  Logically, she knew that it was because the Texas day
was heating up and from the physical exertion of kneeling for so long, but she also attributed it to the fervent offering of herself to the Lord.

The sound of splintering wood in her back yard made her look up towards the door
in apprehension.  She stood painfully and hobbled over to close the back door.  The Sunda
y
schoo
l
teacher was only three feet away when a bloody woman appeared in the doorframe.

Sister Luanne recoiled in shock at the absolute immodesty and disgusting thing before her.  The woman wore a leather mini skirt, tall boots and nothing else.  Her bare breasts stood out firm, like nothing the smaller chested woman had ever seen.  Men must have lusted after her greatly.  Then it hit her, Satan was attacking her with the pure embodiment of lust!  She'd never even seen another woman's bosom before and this was his evil plan, to throw it in her face that she'd never gotten married and had a husband to lust after her the way that men did for the woman before her.  The Evil Beast was trying to make her doubt her faith.

“I cast you out, Satan!  You're not welcome here!” she shouted at the nude hell-spawn in front of her.

Trisha turned her head slightly to regard the meal in front of her and then lunged forward to ease the never-ending hunger.