Mutation Z:
The Ebola Zombies
By
Marilyn Peake
https://www.marilynpeake.com
Mutation Z: The Ebola Zombies
© Copyright, 2014, Marilyn Peake
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Book Cover Art by Mike Tabor: https://miketabor.deviantart.com/
About the Author
Marilyn Peake is the author of both novels and short stories. Her publications have received excellent reviews. Marilyn’s one of the contributing authors in Book: The Sequel, published by The Perseus Books Group, with one of her entries included in serialization at The Daily Beast. In addition, Marilyn has served as Editor of a number of anthologies. Her short stories have been published in seven anthologies and on the literary blog, Glass Cases.
AWARDS: Silver Award, two Honorable Mentions and eight Finalist placements in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, two Winner and two Finalist placements in the EPPIE Awards, Winner of the Dream Realm Awards, and a Finalist placement in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards.
Marilyn Peake’s website: https://www.marilynpeake.com
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Amazon Author Page:
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Follow Marilyn Peake on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marilynpeake
Mutation Z: Closing the Borders, Book #2 in the Mutation Z series, can be found here:
https://www.amazon.com/Mutation-Closing-Borders-Marilyn-Peake-ebook/dp/B01547OY00/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1443581590&sr=1-2&keywords=mutation+z
Mutation Z: The Ebola Zombies
My name is Emma Johnson. I’m a prisoner in Liberia, inside West Africa.
I came here as a volunteer nurse, young, naïve and idealistic, back when Ebola had just started spreading across the borders of countries inside Africa—from Guinea into Sierra Leone and Liberia, and then into Nigeria. At twenty-four years of age, I felt invincible. (I’m now only twenty-five years old; but I feel ancient, close to death.) I had graduated nursing school the previous year. I didn’t have a job yet and had moved back in with my parents. Truth be told, I had only been an average student, but the economy was tough and I was resourceful. I knew I just had to challenge myself. Having grown up in the United States, blond, blue-eyed, privileged, I was sick and tired of my perpetual state of ennui. I had grown bored with putting on makeup, filling out job applications, reading romance novels and playing video games, and yearned for something better. I decided to volunteer in Africa and make a difference in the world. I had also hoped to meet a doctor. Nothing prepared me for what I would find on the African continent.
Now I just want to get information out. There’s more here than an Ebola crisis. That CDC serum that cured a couple of American volunteers? That’s only one type of serum being tested. Other serums are raising victims from what looks like near-death, but is actually death, and many of those side-effect victims are roaming around West Africa as zombies. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have put us on lockdown and are keeping things quiet. Serums continue to arrive from several different countries.
This is my story, from the beginning…
March 2014
A group of us, volunteers through a program that had been recruiting medical personnel in the United States to help with the Ebola crisis in Africa, landed at the Roberts International Airport in Liberia. I had been nothing but jitters and panic the entire trip. Thank God for the availability of liquor on airplanes. I drank a fair amount of it that flight. Had I not fallen asleep after knocking back a few strong drinks, I’m sure I would have stumbled off the plane into the airport, another American behaving badly.
My mind was clear enough upon landing to realize that Africa was not what I had expected. The airport was decent. Somehow, I had expected to land on a dirt strip, but we landed on a normal runway. Liberia isn’t as modernized as some of the other places in Africa that I’ve heard about, places like Lagos, Nigeria; but the airport was OK.
In the terminal, we shuffled through the Immigration Department with our Passport Cards and hastily filled-in Landing Cards. I was so nervous, it took all my self-control to keep my hands from shaking. I had convinced myself that if my hands shook or I showed any other sign of nervousness, the security officers would suspect me of being a terrorist, clamp my wrists in handcuffs and haul me off to some remote prison where no one would ever hear from me again. Of course that was ridiculous. The worst that happened to me in the Immigration Department was being asked direct questions by a surly, overweight female officer with hair on her upper lip: Where was I intending to go inside Liberia? What was the purpose of my trip? When I explained that I was a volunteer coming to help with the Ebola crisis, the officer’s own hands shook. After that, she seemed happy to get rid of me. In the baggage claim area, we were greeted by drivers holding signs with the name of our organization on them. The drivers smiled courteously, but seemed anxious to get us out of the airport. After our suitcases arrived, they whisked us away to waiting vans, four vans in total. And so began our journey into the African continent.
The effects of my drinking hadn’t worn off completely. I nodded off in the van, despite my determination to stay awake and take in the sights and sounds of Liberia as we drove through it. I awoke intermittently to such different scenery and road conditions, my mind had difficulty patching it all together as one country. At times, our van jostled over dirt roads. Later, we passed through a small city: paved roads with congested traffic, honking cars and spinning bikes, crowds of people walking around outside, a gas station, a bank; but low, mismatched buildings, a few painted bright turquoise, most plain white or tan, reminding me of beach houses back home in the states.
When we got stuck in traffic and only inched ahead like snails on molten tar, I fell asleep for what felt like hours. I jolted awake when the driver lurched to a stop and yanked on the parking brake. Once again, I found myself in a new environment.
The driver, a short African man with a clipped moustache and even more tightly clipped speech, announced: “We are here: Liberia Treatment and Research Camp. Grab your belongings. Line up over there.” Waving a clipboard in the direction of a dirt strip in front of three enormous trees with leafy branches twisting and turning to form a canopy, he added, “Don’t wander off by yourselves. Wait for your guide.” Up in the trees, monkeys screamed and shook the branches. After we unloaded our suitcases, our driver sped off, clouds of dust obscuring his exit.
The other volunteers and I surveyed our new home and then each other. Off in the distance, long, squat turquoise buildings appeared littered throughout the forest, thrown there like Lego blocks from the hand of a careless God. Other buildings—some turquoise, others white, orange, yellow—were lined up along a dirt road that curled like a snake past their front doors.
Behind us, a gray cement wall with thick iron gates provided security. Our driver stopped in front of the gates and waited until security personnel let him through to the outside world. The gates opened and closed, like the eyelids of a sleepy me
tallic jungle beast.
We heard a couple of people shouting somewhere on the camp grounds. More unnerving was the sound of deep, rumbling moaning and a few screams more piercing than those of the monkeys.
Few of us had dressed appropriately. I wore khakis and a black T-shirt, also thick socks and sneakers. I thought I would die in the sweltering heat. Also, I had curled my long, blond hair before leaving the U. S. Frizzy tendrils had become plastered to my forehead and trapped heat against the back of my neck.
A young Asian-American woman standing next to me laughed and introduced herself. She had come even less prepared for the climate. Tan suit, silk flowered shirt, stockings and low heels. Even a pearl necklace and matching earrings. She extended her hand. “Hey. I’m Zoe Kinoshita. I can’t believe this weather. Ugh! I’m going to faint if we don’t get air conditioning and a place to change into shorts in the next few seconds.”
A black guy pacing nearby, wearing shorts, a white T-shirt and hiking boots, leaned over and added, “I don’t believe there’s air conditioning. We’re in Liberia. In the middle of an Ebola epidemic.” He paused. “I’m Sebastian Stone, Ph.D., Infectious Diseases and Microbiology.” He shook our hands.
At that moment, we saw a man in a white coat walking down the path that ribboned past the brightly colored