Origins of the Outbreak Read online

  Adam hated that darn bull, but the minor profit they made from their two alfalfa harvests and slaughter cattle paled in comparison to what they earned from it. So even though it did stupid things like tear out fences and lead the herd out onto the road, the truth was that Adam and Bettie needed that animal way more than it needed them.

  After he'd poured the feed and spread some hay in the troughs, Adam went about the business of loading up the supplies to mend the fence. Fence posts, bailing wire, spools of barbed wire, fence post pounder, pliers and finally the come-along, which would stretch the wire taut so he could wire it to the posts.

  When everything was loaded up, he opened the passenger side door and waited for Duke to get in. The old fool wasn't anywhere to be seen so Adam walked around to the driver's side and hopped in. He honked the horn a few times and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos. Within seconds, the dog bounded up from down by the creek. He was soaking wet and made sure to shake off when he got inside the cab of the truck.

  “Aww, dang it, Duke! You couldn't a done that outside?”

  Duke looked at him and panted. Bettie was right; it was gonna be a hot one today. He glared down into his coffee mug at the drops of creek water from the dog's coat that didn't quite blend in with the coffee. The farmer dumped the contents out of his window and poured another cup. “Boy, you're somethin' you know that?”

  Duke finally took the hint that maybe he'd done something that he wasn't supposed to and lay down on the truck's bench seat. He looked the other way and refused to meet his owner's eyes. Adam sighed and stepped out of the truck to go close the dog's door. By the time he got back around to the driver's side, he decided that he needed to take an ibuprofen to help ease the dull ache in his bum leg. The day was just starting and it was already acting up. He knew from experience that he needed to nip the pain in the bud before it became unbearable.

  After he swallowed two pills he started the truck and headed down around the barn and out the gate to the cattle path. When he'd bought the land all those years ago, he made the decision to put in a double fence, one completely encircling the property and another that closed in the areas that he planted with alfalfa for hay. That way the cattle could still move freely about the property from the barn to the lower field, the ‘back forty’ as he and Bettie called it, without disturbing the crops. He also used this cattle path as a road to drive his old pickup down when he needed to go back there with supplies.

  When he got to the lower field he saw right away that the white cloth marking tape that he'd stretched across the broken fence yesterday was torn down. He'd pulled out the old wire and used the thick two-inch material as an intermediate barrier, knowing that the cattle were docile enough to not go past it, but what the heck happened to it out here?

  Adam did a quick mental headcount of his herd and he didn't remember anything out of the ordinary. While he hadn't counted every one of them, he'd been doing this long enough to realize when some of the cattle were missing. He pulled the truck up to the side where the tape had come loose and climbed out to see what had happened.

  He picked up the frayed end of marking tape and held it up to the early morning light. It looked like it had been stretched and the knot had finally gave way. “Wonder what the heck did that?” he muttered while he held it down for Duke to see. The dog sniffed the frayed end and growled low in his throat.

  “Whoa, boy! What's the matter?”

  The dog circled Adam a few times smelling the air, but when he couldn't smell anything else he lay down in the trampled grass and began scratching his ear.

  Adam reached down and patted Duke's head. “You sure are gettin' strange in your old age, buddy.” He grinned when he began to scratch his ear and Duke's foot continued to half-scratch where his fingers dug into the dog's scalp. “Yup, you're a weirdo! Guess it's time to get to work.”

  The first thing he did was put on his beat up leather work gloves. He may have been an old cowboy, but he wasn't dumb. If a farmer let their hands get messed up, then they'd be useless for several days. Farmers can't afford to take a break, let alone be out of commission for an extended period of time.

  Next he went to the old fence line and began to pull out the ruined fence posts. His old bailing wire had held the barbed wire to the fence posts too good. When that ol' bull got tangled up in the fence, he'd bent and twisted the metal posts. It was hard work getting the posts out of the ground because they were designed to stay put and had a flared-out spade about a foot underground. The spade kept the post straight over the years, but only added to the difficulty when he was trying to pull them out.

  Over an hour later, he'd pulled all eight posts that needed to be removed and was able to salvage two by using all of his bodyweight to bend them back into place. Then he grabbed three posts and walked to the far end, dropping a post every seven feet. Normally he liked to go with around eight feet between posts, but he had to adjust the spacing because the old fence post holes wouldn't be able to support a new post.

  Once he'd laid out ten posts in place of the eight he'd taken out, he limped back to the truck and took a swig of water from the jug that he'd filled up from the barn spigot. Then he picked up the thirty pound fence post driver and made his way slowly down to the first post.

  In his younger days, the fence post driver that he had was simply a metal tube that fit over the top of a fence post and had a large hunk of lead welded on the end for weight. Now that he was older, he'd paid the extra cash for one with a spring inside it. The spring helped to propel the fence post driver back upwards and alleviated some of the effort required to pound in the posts. Even with the spring assist, the posts that he had to drive in today would probably take a good hour or more to get into the ground.

  An hour and forty-five minutes later Adam was exhausted. He surveyed the ragged line of fence posts and cursed under his breath. Ten years ago, he would have pulled them out, but he was okay with a few posts out of plumb, even if he didn't like it. As he walked over to the truck, his limp was much more pronounced. His back ached, which caused his stride to become shorter and translated into a more painful step for him. Added to that was the burning feeling in his shoulders from constantly lifting the weighted driver above his head and then slamming it back down onto the fence post.

  He whistled for Duke so he could share a slice of apple with his buddy, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't odd for him to wander off, but he usually had a pretty good sense for when Adam was gonna take a break and he'd show up ready to eat.

  Adam placed a hunk of apple on the seat and whistled louder for the dog to come back. He scanned across the field and wondered where the dog had gotten off to. “Oh well, your loss, Duke,” he said and picked up the piece of apple. He blew it off before popping it into his mouth and then poured another cup of coffee.

  He looked at his watch. He'd been out at the fence for almost four hours and that apple wasn't gonna hold him over for long. Times like this, he wished that he had a cellular telephone. He could call Bettie up and have her bring down a snack. But that was one of those things that he couldn't justify, so they did without and most of the time didn't miss out on anything.

  He slid out of the truck and hobbled around to the open tailgate. “Oh man, I'm gettin' too old for this stuff,” he groaned. “Gonna need to hire one of them Murphy boys to come help out next time somethin' like this needs done.”

  The Murphy boys were the typical prodigal children. Both had grown up on the farm next door and hated the small town Texas life. One joined the Marines and the other joined the Air Force. Each had been gone exactly four years when they returned to Florence, Texas and bought acreage from their father to build homes on. The brothers and their parents all lived within a quarter of a mile from one another and they were always offering to help Adam out. Maybe next time I'll take 'em up on it, he thought as he hefted the first large spool of barbed wire from the truck.

  He carried it down to the wooden corner post and unwrappe
d a good three feet of wire from the spool and re-wrapped it around the large post twice. From his tool belt, he pulled out a few large horseshoe nails and pounded them into place, securing the wire to the post. Next, he carefully wrapped the remaining piece around the running end of the wire to keep it in place. Then he slid an old metal rod into the center of the spool.

  Adam straightened his back painfully while he held on to either side of the rod and then walked backwards, letting the wire feed out behind him. When he reached the next large wooden anchor post he set the spool down and went to the truck to retrieve the come-along. He hitched the come-along's hook onto the back of the truck and then fed the cable through the machine's pulley. When he got to the spot where the spool of wire sat, he placed the come-along on the ground and measured out an extra ten feet of barbed wire before cutting it with the multi-purpose pliers from his belt.

  He took the free end and bent that around the anchor post and then pulled it tight over to the come-along. He wrapped the end of the barbed wire through the come-along's eyelet and then began to ratchet the lever on the come-along. The machine pulled the slack out of the wire and within seconds it was as tight as it could be. He limped over and pounded in a few horseshoe nails to secure the wire before making his way back to the come-along and releasing the tension.

  Thankfully, the wire stayed taut and he wrapped the extra around the anchor post and secured it along the rest of the wire like he'd done on the other end. Then he picked up the spool and the metal bar and carried them back to the first post to repeat the process.

  He set both items on the ground and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. The darned dog was nowhere to be found, so he whistled again. Adam was starting to get worried that the dog had gotten bit by one of the many rattlesnakes that lived in the rocky soil of his small farm.

  “Duke! Duke, come here boy!” He'd never known the lab to not come when he whistled as often as he had and he sure as heck usually came when Adam called.

  “Aww, heck,” he muttered and went to the cab of his truck where he had a pump action 20–gauge shotgun. A lot of folks called the 20–gauge a lady's gun, but Adam thought it was the perfect weapon for use against snakes. Not too much kick and it still had plenty of destructive power to obliterate a snake.

  “Duke!” he called as he headed down the hill in the direction that he'd seen the dog head off in a couple of hours ago.

  He topped a small rise and what he saw made him stop and stare. Not even twenty feet away, a topless lady stood staring at a dead cow. The woman looked like she'd taken a bath in the animal's blood, even her face and hair was covered in the stuff. He couldn't help but notice how large and firm the woman's breasts were while the rest of her seemed to be melting away.

  That was the best way he could describe it. The woman's skin seemed to just hang from her bones like the gobbler on a tom turkey. Aside from those amazing breasts, it was one of the most disgusting things that he'd ever seen, even compared to the pictures of his leg when they had to open it up the second time to clean out the infection.

  Adam mumbled a prayer to the Lord Jesus and the woman's head snapped up. Milky white eyes stared at him like she could see him through her blindness. “Oh my goodness! Are you okay, ma'am?”

  Her mouth opened and instead of words, a dry crackling sound emerged as the air in her lungs expelled outwards and rattled her vocal chords. Adam's blood chilled and his testicles shrank into his abdomen. He knew that the woman before him wasn’t some lost traveler that found her way onto his farm.

  “What are you?”

  She moved awkwardly around the cow and stumbled up the hill towards him. Adam turned and jogged as fast as his bad leg would allow him to move. Duke shot past him and he turned to see the dog launch itself into the air. His teeth tore a ragged line across the naked lady's cheek and she changed course, headed after his best friend.

  Duke's courage had played itself out with that one attack and he cowered on the ground, whimpering at the abomination that bore down on him. “Hey! Hey, over here! Leave him alone!” Adam called to the woman. She stopped and turned back towards Adam and began to lurch in his direction once more.

  He raised the shotgun and said, “I ain't afraid to use this lady. You need to get off my property.”

  She stumbled to within five feet of him and he fired into the ground at her feet. Several of the pellets went wide and shredded the toes of the black knee-high boots that she wore, but it didn't affect her at all.

  Adam stepped back up the hill and his bad leg gave out on him completely. He fell backwards and accidentally squeezed off a round. The buckshot hit the woman in the leg right below her knee from less than three feet away. The “lady's gun” took the woman's entire lower leg off at that distance.

  She tottered unstably on one leg for a moment and then fell sideways. Adam pushed his way backwards away from her as she pulled herself along the ground to get to him. His heart pounded in his chest and it sounded like thunder in his ears.

  This must be what it's like to have a heart attack, he thought as the pounding got louder.

  Then, from the direction of the barn, the bull appeared. The thunder of its hooves echoed across the ‘back forty’. It ran at full speed towards Adam and veered at the last moment, dropping its head to gore the woman. She flailed against the massive head and her fingernails dug into the side of its face until it finally pierced her head with one of its massive horns.

  The beast continued to stomp on her body and slash its horns from side to side until the pile of putrid flesh could no longer be recognized as something that was once human.

  Adam stared in fear and awe at the giant bull as it towered above him. Its nostrils flared and black ichor dripped from both horns. Then it snorted, turned and walked slowly back in the direction of the farmhouse.

  He sat on the ground watching the massive creature go until it passed below a small rise in the field. When he was certain that it was gone, he stood up and hobbled over to where Duke lay. The poor dog had peed all over himself and shook uncontrollably, but the old farmer picked him up gently and carried him back to the truck. He set Duke down on the bench seat and scratched the back of his ear with a shaky hand.

  Adam hadn't heard the news that the undead plagued the Army base more than twenty miles from his farm. The only thing that he knew was that the bull had just saved him from one of Satan's spawn. Amidst the shock of what had happened, one thought kept resurfacing….

  We ain't ever gettin' rid of that bull!

  The Barista, 6:02 a.m.

  Oh man, I don't wannabe here! Amy thought as she stared numbly out of the floor-to-ceiling windows into the empty parking lot. Everyone in town knew to stay home except the employees of Starbucks. Well, one employee at least.

  She'd gotten the call from corporate this morning to report to work when Michael failed to turn off the store alarm at 4:30. They'd called him repeatedly, but the store manager never answered so they went down the employee list until they got to her name – and she'd stupidly answered the phone. Nothing good can come from answering the phone at five a.m. That should be a bumper sticker, I'd make millions.

  After getting ready, she'd driven past wrecked cars left on the sides of the road through what appeared to be an abandoned town. Nothing moved in the neighborhoods and it was downright eerie. If she hadn't needed the money so badly, she would have told that corporate schmuck to shove it. She couldn't do that though, because she needed this job. If she was late with rent again, her landlord was going to evict her.

  So, here she was, standing at the counter of an empty coffee shop. Trays of raw pastries were strewn everywhere in the back as she tried to do the work of three people, starting hours later than they normally did. Where was everyone? She didn't normally work the morning shift, but surely there were customers that came in at 6 a.m. Why else would they be open this early if people didn't buy coffee? It had to be something to do with the whole “zombie” scare.

>   Amy knew better than to believe all that crap about zombies. What probably happened was some college kid played a prank and mass hysteria had taken over. She blamed it on the uneducated masses who took everything the television or internet told them as gospel. Those people fell for hoaxes all the time.

  A smile crossed her face when she remembered the story of all the online animal rights crusaders who publicly lambasted Steven Spielberg for killing a dinosaur when a picture of him with a model from one of his movies was posted online. People said horrible things about him for “killing” such a magnificent creature. Yeah, the public was collectively dumber than dog shit.

  The same thing was likely true now. Some prankster got everyone riled up and was probably laughing his ass off at the mayhem that he'd caused because it was either that or bath salts. Amy hoped that no one was seriously injured in those accidents and had faith that the FBI was likely already triangulating the location of the offender.

  Zombies! The guy could have at least picked something believable like a flu-like symptom that caused every person who caught it to go blind or something. But apparently, the hoax was working and here she was, staring at an empty store way earlier than she'd been awake in a long, long time.

  “Gawd! Mornings are so boring,” she moaned. What had she done to earn this penance? The entire reason that she worked at the coffee shop was to meet and interact with interesting people. Take that gay dude, Levantre from last night. The two of them may not always get along, but they at least had witty banter that kept things entertaining.

  She went about the morning duties, checking off items from the standardized prep list as they were completed. Everything was done and still no customers. To top it off, the internet was abuzz with all these morons and their zombies. Her cell phone’s battery light started to blink indicating that she had less than ten percent strength remaining.