The Unchanged (Book 2): Survivors, page 1
part #2 of The Unchanged Series
THE UNCHANGED
Survivors
T. M. Starnes
THE UNCHANGED
SURVIVORS
T. M. Starnes
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art by:
BetiBup33 Design Studio
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Book layout by: T. M. Starnes
Copyright © 2017 T. M. Starnes
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1976329841
ISBN-13: 978-1976329845
DEDICATION
For all those who are willing to help their fellow humans in their time of need.
Adversity brings either the hero or the villain out in all of us.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Katherine again.
She read the bile, guts, stench, and gore and still could have a snack after she finished.
I think she’s becoming jaded.
Or numb.
Chapter 1
Yes, some trees do explode when they’re on fire and it’s scary as hell.
On either side of the Jeep, a conflagration roared. The Rubicon’s A/C vents were stuffed with underwear and t-shirts to block out the smoke from the forest fire. We couldn’t turn on the A/C despite the month's long heatwave we’d been having reaching into the high nineties, low hundreds.
Janessa sat in back, praying as fast as she could form a sentence. Cheyenne rode shotgun, cursing the heat and the Changed mutations that were running along the road beside and around us. We couldn’t pick up enough speed but thankfully the fast mutations we called Runners were ignoring us as they ran by. This wasn’t a main road but occasionally we avoided a stray abandoned vehicle off the side.
We drove through the heavy winds shoving burning debris along the way. Flames licked at the sides of the vehicle and trees fell in our path. The smoke and fire limited my visibility and I accidentally bumped into a Changed Tank, one of the larger and more powerful mutations, loping along in front of us.
“Taylor!” Cheyenne screamed just as I hit the thing’s arm.
The Tank, splotched with purple spots, rippling with muscles, its body contorted from its previous human shape into a monstrous naked horror, bumped the Rubicon with its shoulder and nearly tipped us over. I’m sure we were two feet off the ground on our left side. I shoved my foot on the gas as we came back down and sped ahead. The Tank, a male, their type typically surly, roared and loped behind us but not in pursuit, in its own haste to flee from the inferno, ignoring us.
Cheyenne wanted to shoot the Runners sprinting past, they were the quickest and the most dangerous we’d encountered since yesterday when the Change occurred. They gave us predatory looks but their survival instinct propelled them on. Rolling down the windows to try to kill them was not an option right now.
“Look,” Janessa leaned forward and pointed.
Roamers, the most common of the Changed, never seemed to hurry, but they did appear to be able to jog. Jogging would not save the four or five we were passing.
They were on fire.
Hairless now from their mutation, they ran in circles, screeching with an insane noise as their skin boiled and melted their purplish spotted bodies. Other Roamers jogged past and avoided them.
Deer, foxes, a bobcat, two house cats, a cow and calf, and assorted other wildlife, ran haphazardly with us. Terror-filled by the fire and the mutations running around them, they fled or died in confusion.
Trees fell and I swerved to go around. A smaller-trunked pine tree fell along the length of the road. As Runners vaulted over the trunk, I quickly shifted into four-wheel drive.
“Hang on!”
Cheyenne and Janessa screamed as we bumped over the burning log, Janessa bounced around in the back and our supplies jumped and scattered around the rear of the Jeep.
Limbs struck the hard roof, bits of tinder scattered down the sides and danced on the engine hood.
Cheyenne, beautiful and badass, pushed back her sweaty, loosely braided hair while she stuffed my t-shirt deeper into one of the side vents. She seemed to have a limited vocabulary when she was afraid. The volume could really hurt your ears. She liked to order the Changed around and told them to get out of our way and what direction I should go. Colorfully that is.
Janessa, seat belt on now, her bald shaven head bowed in prayer, her dark skin glistening with fearful sweat, mumbled and prayed only rising in pitch when she mentioned Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit.
The road and the crackling inferno seemed to stretch on forever ahead of us.
The morning had been much less tense.
Chapter 2
It had been a rough night. Janessa and Cheyenne, traumatized like we all were from the first day of the Change, couldn’t sleep and I comforted them during the night as they startled awake then calmed and went back to sleep.
We shared my four-person dome tent. Janessa had slept on my left, Cheyenne on my right. During the night, even with the suffocating heat wave we were enduring, both had curled up against either side of me, arms across my chest. That seemed to calm me too and I slept less fitfully than I would otherwise.
When I finally woke, the first rays of the morning spilled into the tent through the vents.
Alone, with room, I stretched as soft, feminine laughter came from the direction of the Jeep.
Smelling food, I unzipped the tent and crawled out. Cheyenne and Janessa were eating from one of my dehydrated breakfast meals cooked from boiling water from my mini camp burner.
Something was wrong with Janessa though.
She was bald.
Cheyenne grinned as I noticed, “Don’t look at me, I told her not to do it but she was determined.”
Janessa had encountered a crazy trapped woman in a wrecked car yesterday and the woman had coiled Janessa’s long beautiful braids around both hands and demanded us to free her. The woman’s screams had brought the Changed, resulting in the old woman’s death. Janessa, to free herself from the old woman, took my hunting knife and slashed most of her braids free. Her braids had once cascaded down her back to her waist.
She self-consciously rubbed at her bald head, “What do you think?”
Both women were beautiful. Cheyenne glanced up waiting for my response.
Cheyenne Stegall, tanned, slim, athletic, dressed in short hiking boots, cut-off jean shorts and a t-shirt tied at the waist, her thick brown hair twisted into a loose knot with a constant smirk, nineteen, a college student, but a badass with a rifle, pistol, or shotgun. She had been raised on a farm just outside Berndale, GA and watched her entire family either change or die by the family who transformed. My timely arrival saved her from the same fate.
Janessa Simpson, also from Berndale, went to the same high school as Cheyenne but was only sixteen. She had been on the Berndale track team and daughter of a local Nurse Practitioner and her father died in Afghanistan when she was six. She, thankfully, had learned first aid from her mother, who died in mid-transformation alone at their home, and Janessa, using what she knew from her mom, had bandaged Cheyenne up after an attack by a Runner. She was African-American, dark-skinned, short, shapely, with a wonderful bright smile, wearing blue running shorts, running shoes, and a t-shirt. We saved her from one of the Runners just outside Berndale yesterday.
“Well?” Janessa asked again, looking down and away from me, “What do you think?”
I grinned, “With hair, without hair, you’re lovely. You’ve got a beautifully shaped head.” She grinned at me, “But why cut it all off?”
Janessa perked up at that, “I figured it would just be in the way, and I didn’t want a crazy person or one of the monsters to be able to grab it again. And it takes a lot of work to keep my hair in good shape. I asked Cheyenne to help me shave it off.”
Cheyenne shrugged, “She wanted to do it.”
I smiled, “You did a good job, she looks great. You look great.” I told Janessa.
Janessa grinned, “Thank you.”
Cheyenne poured hot water from my small camp gas cooker water kettle into a packet and hande d it to me.
“Eat. It’s eggs and bacon.” She shook her head as I took it from her, “For a writer, you sure were ready for an apocalypse. We owe you three breakfasts. We can get replacements in the outdoor outfitter store I told you about in Patterson.”
I grinned. I had made a killing on a self-published thriller and was traveling through the back roads in Georgia while vacationing from my home in Bruxton, N.C. on the coast. I’d been trying to imagine a killer on a killing spree kidnapping people in and around the Georgia area, for my follow-up novel before the world changed. My supplies were reflective of what my killer would have traveled with to avoid suspicion. It helped with realism.
“Writer’s gotta eat,” I popped open the packet after a few minutes and we ate and discussed yesterday’s events.
We’d lost the only human survivors we had found in Berndale. Three veterans, two of them Vietnam-era, and one disabled younger soldier, along with two Subarus filled with youngsters, toddlers and two adults. The vets were killed by a Tank and the others disappeared on their way to Patterson, both Subaru’s were abandoned with a dead toddler in the back of the first we found. We assumed them all dead, killed by mutations.
We didn’t know what caused the mutations. At first, we thought it was a biological attack, but the transformation timing of the afflicted led us to believe it was more. The change happened all at once everywhere, or as far as we could tell. Most of the population were affected, far more changed than the number of the unchanged.
The first symptoms were the afflicted breaking out in pink and purple spots with murderous intent toward anyone who didn’t succumb to the change. They chased down and killed strangers, loved ones, friends, even their own children.
The next result was individual transformations into different types. The most common were the Roamers. They shambled around like movie zombies, attracted to noise and motion, but they weren’t undead, they just had the instinct and desire to overwhelm and kill those not like them.
Another type, the Volcanoes, swelled up and vomited internal liquids around them and on to human targets. Most of the time the vomit was corrosive, but sometimes, according to Janessa who had witnessed the change in Berndale, their targets either changed into more Volcanoes or became Roamers, but not always. So, the unchanged could be infected.
Another type was the Booby Traps. They lay in wait, appearing to be dead victims until someone was close enough to them then they would leap up and attack and kill.
Runners were dangerous. Typically, the healthiest of people, some wearing athletic clothes, became Runners, and, they ran after and killed their victims in a frenzy.
Tanks were the most dangerous. Hulking, aggressive, misshapen, able to take a shotgun or rifle blast with ease and even then, the blasts transformed them more. They were big, angry, deadly, superhumanly strong. Even the other Changed avoided them when they were on a rampage.
Lastly, was what we called “Dog Boy”. Non-aggressive, seemingly intelligent, they moved similarly to how canines moved when you spoke to them. The one we’d seen had elongated fingers and toes, ran like gazelles leaping and dodging, and tended to avoid us, the unchanged.
The change and what caused it happened yesterday but we still had no contact with the military or any officials. Planes, the internet, our mobile phones, radio, TV, GPS, were all down. Whatever caused it, it happened quickly. Cars were stuck everywhere. The Changed didn’t appear to understand how to get out of their cars once transformed or how to leave their homes or buildings. They could kill, but couldn’t open a door. Strong bodies, weak minds.
The last part of their transformation we witnessed before we went off-road and camped was when the Changed began stripping off their clothes, their hair falling out, and their skin finally turning a bright purple splotched pattern. The oppressive heat didn’t seem to bother them. They walked barefoot on hot asphalt, one hundred-degree hot asphalt.
While I finished my breakfast, Janessa used wet naps to bathe, and Cheyenne cleaned our rifles and shotguns. We all stank, but we planned on getting a camp shower with some soap and shampoo when we reached the outfitter store.
I sniffed my armpit.
Ew.
I won’t do that again until after I wet nap myself.
Glancing into the sky, I smiled, “Hey, we finally have a storm coming. Could be a big one.”
The clouds to our east and west were dark ominous formations stretching along the road we’d left yesterday to avoid a crashed plane and the Changed.
Cheyenne frowned, “Those don’t look like clouds.”
Janessa stood, “Yeah if they are, it’s going to rain buckets.”
The wind suddenly shifted and brought the smell of burning ash to us.
We realized in horror that we were surrounded by knee-high dry grass, and brittle, heat-parched leaves scorched by the months-long heat.
“Pack everything up! It’s a fire!” I yelled, dropping the remains of my breakfast and scrambling for the air mattress inside the tent, “I’ve got the tent! Cheyenne, finish the guns and pack ‘em up! Janessa get everything else and the tarp canopy! Don’t worry about being neat, just shove it in the back.”
The wind gusted toward us again and smoke crept like deadly shadows through the trees toward us.
Within minutes we were shutting the back of the Rubicon as cattle, starved and thirsty, started coming out of the woods. We couldn’t go toward the road nearest to us because US80 was packed with abandoned vehicles, pile-ups and a plane crash with various dangerous Changed wandering around. No Changed were coming out of the woods but we were beginning to see thicker clouds and flames reaching into the sky.
“Who knows this area better?” I pointed into the winds north of US80, “Is there another road that way?”
Janessa shook her head but Cheyenne checked a map we’d found when we took the Jeep from the dealer lot yesterday, “Yes! Yes! Can you cut through the woods? Just go straight through? There’s a state road just past the woods! Go!”
The Jeep weaved through the pitiful cattle trying to find a break in the tree line. Thankfully the cows had already made a trail into the woods. It was just wide enough for the Jeep to pass through.
At my reduced speed, the smoke crept along with us, the wind blowing it against our rear. We eventually came upon a barbed wire fence and a neglected back road.
Cheyenne jumped out and ran to the fence checking both ways. She looked surprised toward the left but more relaxed toward the right and ran back to the Jeep.
“The fire’s covering the road that way,” she pointed toward the left, “But that way is clear. It leads to Patterson. There’s a gate a little further up. We have to hurry, I think I saw Runners at the front of the fire.”
Cattle mooed behind us as I turned toward the right, ash beginning to fall. Quickly we came to a wooden gate. Cheyenne jumped out to open it and let us out. She suddenly drew her pistol from her waistband and fired off three quick shots to the rear of us, jumping in as I drove through.
“Move it! They're thirty or forty runners coming this way!”
We turned onto the bumpy road and took off, the flames beginning on our right and transferring across the road ahead of us.
The flames were a solid amorphous mass of living heat devouring everything they touched and we were driving right into them.
Chapter 3
The wind shifted and blew right toward us.
We outdistanced the Changed and were coming into clear skies, with fields of short, dry grass on either side of us.
“The monsters are still coming, but they’re slowing down,” Janessa said, watching the exhausted mutations to our rear. The Runners were losing steam and the obstinate Tanks slowed to a haphazard jog. The already slow-moving Roamers were still within the fire line.
The little-used road ahead was free of vehicles. “We’ll get away from them. Unplug the vents, we need air.”
We rolled down the windows, the smell of burned ash was strong and Cheyenne pumped up the A/C. Debris fell off the back of the Rubicon’s hard top behind us and something rattled along the roof.
