Outbreak (The Outbreak Series Book 1)

by Victor Deckard

  It was much less in the way of answers than I’d hoped for. Frank’s explanation actually did not clear up the mystery about my past but yielded even more questions.

  “Who are ‘they’? What did they learn about me? And why did they bring me here, in Vegas?”

  “Take it easy, bro,” Frank said, darting a glance at me. “Like I said, you’ll know everything on your own before long. But I can guess at their reasons for bringing you here.”

  “And what is it?”

  “Because of Mother. They hide her here, in this city, as well. They probably thought it would be convenient for them to keep you so close to Mother. But they made a huge fucking mistake of bringing you to the same city where Mother’s being held. She sensed you once you were here. She lost it completely when she realized you were held hostage. Of course, Mother wasn’t able to break out of the place they’d been holding her in, but she was so pissed and enraged that her dark energy erupted from her and spread out across the whole city. Almost every single one of the citizens got affected by Mother’s dark energy. People went insane, totally flipped out, completely lost control of themselves. They were no longer normal humans. They become downright crazies. On top of that, some of them acquired supernatural powers. And then all hell broke loose. It was complete chaos. Crazies would kill everyone including one another. Many of those who remained sane got slain during the first few days of that rampage. Some others were fortunate enough to flee from the city.”

  Frank fell silent for a little while. Then he continued, “It all happened a few months ago. After that, military forces were able to somewhat straighten things out. Now they keep crazies at bay. More or less, I mean.”

  The flood of the new information had me more confused than I’d been before. It took a while for the obtained knowledge to sink in. Finally, I inquired, “Who is this Mother you’re talking about? Is she our Mother?”

  He quickly looked over at me and I noticed his eyes flash with some expression, but I couldn’t discern what it was.

  “You bet she is,” Frank said and once again switched his full attention back out the windshield to the road ahead of our truck. “But no more questions, bro. We got no time for that.”

  He beckoned back at the backseat of the car with a nod of his head. “See that?”

  I looked back over my shoulder. On the backseat lay a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and sneakers. Only then did I realize I was still wearing some kind of a hospital gown, with nothing underneath. I pulled it off and started getting dressed. The new clothes fit me well and were quite comfortable. After changing, I looked back again. There was still something else on the backseat. A duffel bag.

  “This is for you too,” Frank said.

  I reached out into the backseat for the duffel bag, grabbed it, and put it into my lap. On unzipping it, I looked inside.

  “Holy shit,” I said out loud as I took out a fully automatic M4A1 carbine. Inside the duffel bag were also three high-capacity magazines, a tactical vest with three attached round fragmentation grenades, and a Beretta M9 in a holster with a Velcro strap that held the handgun in place. There were a few spare mags for the Beretta inside the duffel bag as well.

  “We’re going to war?” I wanted to know.

  “Yep,” Frank replied matter-of-factly. “We’re going to war, indeed. Gear up, bro. You’re gonna need this stuff.”

  I donned the tactical vest, zipped it up, slid one mag into the M4A1, then put two extra mags in the vest’s pockets. This done, I took the holster from the bag. I already had the Px4 Storm Frank had given me back in the prison hospital. But I’d rather keep the M9.

  Frank glanced at me and saw me holding the holster.

  “You can take it instead of the Px4 Storm if you like,” he said. “I know you prefer 9mm over .45 caliber.”

  A Berretta was my weapon of choice. I was a crack shot nearly with any kind of pistols, but a Beretta was one of my favorites.

  I undone the Velcro strap, slid the Berretta out, and checked it out. The mag was full of nine-millimeter cartridges. I rammed the magazine back in place and racked the slide, shoving one round into the chamber. I then thumbed the safety lever on, slid the pistol back into the holster, and fastened it to my right hip. Once I had all extra mags for the M9 stowed away in the rest of the pockets of my vest, I tossed the now empty duffel bag back onto the backseat. Then I looked over at Frank.

  “Okay, what do we do next?”

  The corners of his thin lips curved forming a sinister lopsided smile. “Now we’re gonna free Mother.”

  Chapter Three

  I didn’t think it was such a good idea. I wasn’t willing to take any steps to free so-called Mother. I concluded from what Frank had just told me that Mother possessed superpowers, which was why she was an extremely dangerous person. Moreover, Frank’s coming to my rescue notwithstanding, I still had no memories of being related to both Frank and Mother. Family or not, I didn’t want to do something rash and ill-considered over which I might have a painful sense of nagging self-reproach afterward. I had to wait until my memories came back to me so I could learn of the whole situation around here and make the right decision.

  However, before I could share this train of thought with Frank, I saw something a few hundred yards ahead of our truck. There were people in ragged clothes farther down the street. They were doing nothing. Some of them leisurely wandered around without any evident purpose and the others just stood on the sidewalks on either side of the road, looking at something only they could see. Something didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t until our truck drew closer to people that I figured out what bothered me. Their eyes were glazed over like junkies’, their faces absent.

  More people began turning their heads in our direction as they got within earshot of the rumble of our truck’s engine. Some of the people shouted something at us. It was impossible to discern what exactly people tried to express, for their speech was by and large incomprehensible.

  Then one of the people threw an empty bottle at us. It arced through the air and clonked against the hood of our truck, breaking apart into hundreds of sparkling glass shards. Once the person did that, others followed suit. They grabbed whatever was close at hand and lobbed it in our truck’s direction. Bottles, pebbles, and any other street litter bumped against our truck. One of the bottles being hurled wasn’t completely empty. On banging against the windshield, the bottle shattered into a million glittering pieces and yellowish liquid splattered across the windshield.

  When wipers removed it from the windshield, I saw a man who all of a sudden leaped onto the road right in front of our truck. There was no way Frank could avoid the collision. He just didn’t have enough time for that. Our truck’s front bumper slammed into the man, sending him over the hood, his body rolling up onto the windshield and then onto the roof. I heard him roll across it and glanced back over my shoulder. The man tumbled down, spinning to the blacktop, limbs flailing.

  Another man stood too close to our barreling powerful vehicle. We sideswiped him, whipping him around and spinning him to the asphalt. He collapsed onto the ground in a crumpled pile, as if he was not a human being but a rag doll.

  Those people possessed no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I wanted to know.

  “Like I said, people went totally insane,” Frank replied.

  Passers-by kept angrily shouting and hurling bottles and rocks at our truck as we roared past them.

  Yet another man dashed across the road and stopped within our lane. He stood in the neighborhood of a hundred yards ahead of our truck. This time, Frank had enough time to get clear of the man and avoid the collision. This opportunity notwithstanding, Frank kept coming right toward the man.

  “You ain’t gonna run him over, are you?” I inquired.

  He didn’t bother to reply. The man standing in our line was defiantly looking at our truck coming directly at him and apparently was goi
ng to dive out of the huge vehicle’s path. When the big man was within mere several yards of our approaching car, he raised his hands up, balled them into fists, and shouted something. The truck’s engine was roaring above any other noises, making the man’s words hard to distinguish. Given his features distorted in a fit of pure rage, the man was either threatening or insulting us.

  The next moment we struck him hard, smack-bang into the middle of his large frame. The impact sent him onto the blacktop. Before he could get up our truck was already driving over him. There was a jolt as the wheels ran over the body of the man. I thought I even could discern the sickening crunch of crushing bones over the roar of the engine.

  “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” I said to Frank.

  “Don’t freak out over it, bro,” he responded. “They ain’t no humans anymore, you know.”

  I saw his eyes glowing with joy. He took great pleasure in causing harm to other people. He ran that big man over just for the hell of it. That rang a bell, stirred some memories. I remembered that he had always been a mean, spiteful person. There were very few things that Frank liked more than abusing people and causing both physical and mental suffering to them. That was the reason why it had always been impossible for me to get along with him.

  I gave no response to Frank’s last remark. I set about racking my brains, hoping I could remember something else from my past life about either Frank or myself.

  After a short while, Frank cussed under his breath over something. I darted a glance at him and saw him looking in the rearview mirror. I looked back over my shoulder.

  We were being pursued by two big black-colored vehicles. They bore some resemblance to military Humvees, but the streamlined shape of those vehicles imparted a futuristic look to them. I thought I’d never seen such vehicles. That said, I may have gotten that conclusion all wrong due to my partial memory loss.

  Each truck had a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on its roof. Those big deadly fifties were manned by two soldiers clad in all-black-colored combat fatigues and full-face helmets. Again, I didn’t recognize it and was positive I’d never seen such a uniform.

  The soldier in the lead vehicle positioned half of his body out the roof hatch, pointed at our vehicle, and shouted something to those inside the big black vehicle.

  “Why are they after us?” I asked Frank.

  “Like I said earlier, we’re deemed to be terrorists.”

  “But who are those people? They don’t look like the ordinary military to me.”

  “‘Cause they ain’t–”

  He was cut off by a roar of accelerating trucks behind us followed by the clatter of heavy fifty-caliber machine guns being discharging in our direction. The back window blew apart in a downpour of glistering fragments when .50-caliber rounds punched through it. A hail of bullets saturated the cab. One of them whizzed past my head so close I could feel its shockwave on my left cheek. Another round burst apart the headrest of the driver’s seat, missing Frank’s head by mere inches, shredded leather and stuffing going flying in every direction.

  Some of the rounds shattered the dashboard, showering us with shards of plastic and glass; the others clinked through the windshield. Amazingly, it didn’t burst apart in a shower of safety glass pieces; instead, weblike cracks ran across the windshield. It just hung there swaying with the motion of our vehicle. Frank couldn’t see clearly through all those spiderwebbed cracks, so he punched out a good quite big fragment with the butt of his pistol. Cold night air rushed in through the newly created hole.

  Frank floored it, trying to tear away from two trucks chasing us. No dice.

  The air was filled with the cacophony of the machine gun clatter, the roar of our truck’s engine, and the screams of the crazy people outside in the street.

  “Alright, Jack!” Frank yelled above all this racket. “It’s been a long time since you engaged in intense shootouts. About time you made up for it now. Otherwise, them shitheads are gonna riddle us! Grab that carbine and show them dipshits how good you’re at shooting!”

  I gingerly looked back to see both gunners manning .50-caliber machine guns keep laying down suppressive fire straight ahead. Hundreds of shell casings were ejecting and collapsing to the ground.

  The gunners tried to take us out, but I observed that they also accidentally mowed down a few passers-by. Yet it seemed as though the gunners didn’t give a damn about collateral damage. They did nothing to minimize it. Passers-by, or more accurately, crazies not only went at us now but also head-on at the two black trucks, paying no attention to the clattering big guns spitting out .50-caliber bullets. They were downright crazies, all right. The heavy-caliber rounds bore through them, ripping big chunks out of their bodies, tearing off limbs, and spraying the gore-mush over the blacktop. Their bodies were peppered with so many rounds the crazies burst apart.

  I raised the M4A1 at shoulder level, brought it to bear on one of the black trucks behind us, and opened up with the rifle. In spite of all the chaos, I kept my cool and fired with controlled three-round bursts at the lead truck, the slugs flying through the broken rear windshield of our car, the spent cartridges ejecting in a smoking arc over my shoulder and falling down to the floor. The report was nearly deafening in the narrow, confined space of the cab. Still, it didn’t seem to bother Frank in the slightest. Neither did it bother me.

  All my shots were precisely accurate. The first rounds were to penetrate the tire to handicap the vehicle, but it was no good. As things turned out, the trucks happened to have run-flat tires. I took aim at the driver to take him out and fired a burst. I then aimed at the hood of the truck to destroy the engine. No dice. The vehicle had bulletproof windows and armor plating to boot.

  Then I had the gunner himself lined up in my rifle’s iron sights and put pressure on the trigger. The M4A1 spat out another short volley of bullets and clicked dry on the last shot. Keeping my head, I dropped the spent mag, drew a fresh one from the pocket on my vest, and slammed it into the well, my eyes never leaving the lead truck.

  I had barely sighted the gunner once more when he raked our truck with heavy machine gun fire, rounds plinking through the metal roof and raining down at us. It was just a wonder that none of them hit us yet.

  “Holy crap!” Frank cried out. “Jack, them bastards ain’t joking! Just in case you haven’t realized it yet, they’re badly wanting us dead!” Frank was being a smartass, but I let it go. “So why don’t you try and employ your powers?”

  I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. What powers was he talking about? Whether Frank implied that I possessed some kind of superpower, weirdness be damned or he suggested I quit dicking around and take great pains to employ my, like he said, outstanding shooting skills. My educated guess was that he meant the latter, so I flipped the selector switch to full-auto and dumped twenty slugs into the gunner.

  And that was when our car swerved but did not go out of control. Frank just commenced wildly spinning the steering wheel back and forth, throwing our car from side to side to impede enemies’ aiming. It did the trick. Much fewer rounds were penetrating out truck now that it began a snaking motion. But that also had our speed dropped abruptly. Moreover, my sighting the gunner got hindered now as well due to Frank’s zigzagging driving. All my shots went wide.

  My rifle went dry, and the gunner was still alive. Cursing, I hastily swapped mags and resumed blasting away at the gunner, laying down a heavy volume of gunfire and hoping as hell that I would eventually get him.

  At long last, one of my rounds broke through the gunner’s faceplate and smashed into his face, blood shooting out of the hole. The gunfire ceased, the body of now dead gunner went limp and slid inside the truck through the open hatch.

  It wasn’t long before another soldier clad in black body armor clambered out and manned the heavy machine gun. I emptied the rest of my bullets in one long burst without much effect. On realizing I had no more mags for the M4A1, I dropped the useless
now rifle to the floor. Hands as steady as ever, I pulled my M9 out of its holster, zeroed in on the gunner, began easing the trigger backward––

  And then something happened.

  A thunderous sound rumbled down the street closely followed by the shock of a mighty earthquake that jolted our entire vehicle and lifted it a few feet up into the air. I bumped my head on the ceiling of the car, then I was hurled hard against the seat as our car slammed back down against the unforgiving concrete of the road. Our truck swerved back and forth in a hazardous manner as Frank desperately spun the steering wheel, trying not to lose control of our skidding car. After he managed to do so, I asked aloud, “What the hell was that?”

  Before Frank could reply, the ground quaked again, a hideous roar came battering across the street. Buildings on either side of the road shook violently, all windows exploding in a shower of sparkling shreds.

  I felt the car come sliding sideways again. Frank was fighting with the steering wheel, struggling to bring our vehicle into a straight line before it rammed into one of the buildings or plowed into a stray streetlight. Eventually, he regained his traction and had the car racing straight again.

  I glanced in the side mirror at the two pursuers so that I could learn how they’d handled the earthquakes. Unfortunately, it didn’t shake them off the road as I had hopefully expected. They were still heading along the road after us.

  “It’s been Mother,” Frank suddenly said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning the earthquakes. It’s Mother’s job.”

  “No shit?”

  “She’s sensed we’ve finally united,” he said laying stress on the word “finally” and dismissing my displaying lack of belief in Mother’s magical ability to manipulate the earth element. “She’s trying to help us out.”