Immune

Chapter 4: Mutations

The small group returned to the small town, retrieved the cat and it's food, and left. The supplies were loaded into the bus.

Paul and Jenny sat in the bus, looking at a GPS. "So if we're right here, next to Jupiter Campgrounds, the next place to fill up would be about 10 miles away, at Stratford.", Paul mumbled, his fingers running up and down the roads on the GPS to show the locations of the Campgrounds and Stratford.

"Hey, George, how's the fuel looking?", Jenny called up to the driver.

"Halfway, but Harvey just called in saying he's low.", George replied

"The campground might have some gas cans. Tell him that we can stop for some fuel or he wants."

George dialed up Harvey on his phone.

Harvey nervously looked at the fuel gauge. "Come on, damn it.", Harvey mumbled when the sedan occasionally whined.

Suddenly his phone rang. He quickly answered it.

"What's wrong?", he asked.

"Nothing, just that there is a campground right up the road. You could look for some fuel cans."

"Ok.", he replied.

Danielle crawled up from the back seat. "What is it? Another horde?"

"No, just a campground. I'm gonna turn there and try to get some fuel."

"Don't we have some filled up cans in the bus?", Danielle questioned.

"Only one of them is filled, and it's only halfway anyways."

So they turned into the camp. It was eerily quiet. The group slowly wandered through the trail. They had abandoned the car. It was night, no stars were out, and the only light was a small lantern that they found still on.

George kept whispering stuff like, "It's quiet... Too quiet... No zombies around? Too good to believe."

They trekked on across the dirt track. Occasionally there was a camper and the only signs of humanity were corpses, usually of those infected.

They came across a campervan. It's lights were on and some windows were boarded up. A corpse was laying against it, a look of extreme fear on his face, and a large pool of blood slowly growing even bigger beside him. And when they looked at his arm...

Harvey gagged, and Jenny rushed over to a nearby dumpster to throw up. His arm was mutilated. His hand was missing, a bloody bone sticking out of the stub, and his skin had been ripped off and the flesh had been slashed many times.

Paul walked over to the corpse cautiously. "O-Oh god, what did that?!?", he said in a shaky voice.

The corpse shifted. He was still alive!
"D-dude! Can you hear me? Are you alright?", Paul stammered.

The mutilated man looked up in fear.
Behind the group, they heard a horrible earsplitting screech.

Harvey slowly turned around, taking out the lead pipe.

A horrifying beast stood before him. It's gray skin was covered in warts, it's head was brutally misshapen, and it's arms were extremely beefy, and one of them had strange bone-like claws.

George began stammering stuff like, "Oh, crud, oh jeez, oh shoot" until the weird special zombie charged at an incredible speed towards the group.

It rammed everyone except Danielle so that they went flying and landed several yards away. The monster had grabbed Danielle and flung itself straight into the campervan, creating a small dent. After that it dropped her and began repeatedly punching her.

"HELP! PLEASE! IT'S KILLING ME! I CANT BREATHE! I CAN'T MOVE!", Danielle screamed.

Harvey was trying to recover from falling on a rock. He couldn't stand up at all on his right leg. A huge gash had opened right on the leg, and blood was madly oozing out of the wound. His vision kept getting foggier and foggier, and eventually he couldn't make out some colors. He thought it was over, he was gonna bleed out, but at the last moment he saw a figure rush towards him.

"God damn it Harvey, how bad is it?", came George's voice. Harvey replied with a weak "I'll survive for a little."

George helped him up, patched up the wound and, seeing as he could walk, limped off to go help Danielle.

Harvey limped after him and picked up his hunting rifle, which had been given to him by George since he had run out of ammunition for his revolver.

He saw the creature pummeling Danielle. He saw Paul trying to take its attention away from Danielle, and George firing a pistol at it's head.

Harvey quickly joined in with George, and it still didn't die.

Finally Paul hit it with the pipe that Harvey dropped. That seemed to get it's attention. It screeched again and charged into him. At that moment, the monster crossed through Harvey's sights. One final bullet finally killed the killer. They heard a small moan. They all turned around to see Danielle. She wasn't breathing.

The group rushed to Danielle's side. She was very badly bruised, badly cut, and she seemed to be losing a lot of blood from the many wounds on her body. "This is going downhill very quickly...", Paul mumbled. Jenny had begun sobbing. George had begun to repeatedly check her pulse and attempt to revive her, even using their defibrillator. She was gone.

Paul limped over to the creative's corpse. "Definitely some type of infected. This must be a mutation. That means a whole new strain of the virus. We might be seeing more of these things too, and since it's mutated so much and so quickly, we're gonna be seeing some pretty strange things.", he said examining the corpse.

(Fun Fact 1: Paul is a scientist. This is why he knows so much about the infection, as he was one of the scientists studying it, until a lab break happened and Paul was the only one to escape alive.
Fun Fact 2: The infection cannot raise the dead, although a near-death survivor will turn quickly.)