Outbreak: A Cerebral Novel #1 (The Cerebral Series) Read online

  Outbreak

  A Cerebral Novel #1

  By

  Stuart Keane

  Copyright © Stuart Keane 2017

  Cover art copyright © Oak Anderson/MB Design

  Published: March 3, 2017

  Publisher: Stuart Keane

  The right of Stuart Keane to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Outbreak: A Cerebral Novel #1 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about the author, please visit www.stuartkeane.com

  For more information about the artist, please visit www.oakanderson.com

  For more information about the cover designer, please visit www.michaelbrayauthor.com

  Also by

  Stuart Keane

  Available on Amazon Kindle and Print

  Author

  The Customer is Always…

  Charlotte

  All or Nothing

  Whispers – Volume 1: A Collection

  Cine

  Grin

  Whispers – Volume 2: A Second Collection

  89

  Awakening

  8 Church Field

  Amy

  Whispers – Volume 3: A Third Collection

  Collaborations

  The House That Hell Built

  (With Matt Shaw and Michael Bray)

  Gemini

  (With Matt Hickman)

  Editor

  Undead Legacy

  Kids Volume 1

  A-Z Series (Dark Chapter Press)

  Acknowledgements

  As always, thanks to Julia and Neil for editing and proofing Outbreak. You did a stellar job and the final product looks superb. The turnaround for this was extremely tight, and you came through for me. Thank you!

  A special thank you goes out to my beta and ARC readers; Mandy, Matt, Scott, and Maxine. Your constant support and feedback has been invaluable during the writing process, and helped me complete the book within the deadline.

  A huge thank you to my multiple zombie 'buddies' around the world; whether it be in literature, movies or video games, your passion and inspiration for the genre was a huge catalyst in getting this book to page. On that note, Oak Anderson, you're an absolute star! Thank you for providing a fantastic original piece for the cover of Outbreak. I will be framing a print on my wall in due course.

  As usual, thank you to Stephen King, Richard Laymon, James Herbert, Lee Child, Shaun Hutson, and Clive Barker for putting me on the right path to horror/thriller fiction. Without them, I doubt I would be doing this.

  Finally, I wish to thank my readers. You're the reason I continue to write, so never forget that. Feel free to get in touch on Facebook, Twitter, or on my website www.stuartkeane.com.

  Enjoy!

  For George A. Romero

  The man who gave life to the undead, who inspired three generations of budding filmmakers, and the man whose ingenious work terrified me as a youngster.

  Without him, this novel wouldn’t exist.

  PROLOGUE

  Dr. Nichol's deceased daughter stared back at him.

  She'd been dead for several hours; a culmination of agonizingly tortuous seconds that turned into insufferable minutes that clocked into excruciating hours, which themselves seemed like days, decades, or even centuries.

  She was gone; there was no doubt about it. Her bloodshot eyes were stoic and milky, the tingling fingers of death long since departed. Her chest failed to rise and fall slowly with the rhythmic movement of life, her skin was clammy and cold and stiff, not warm and smooth and tender. Her brown locks waved on the cool breeze emanating from the air conditioning unit above, which provided the only sound in the silent, oppressing room.

  Dr. Nichol stared into nothingness, his very existence crumbling around him.

  Felicity Nichol—fifteen years old, a grade-A student with a bright future ahead of her, a never-to-be-realised legacy damaged and marred by the usual teenage distractions, years before it came to fruition. Boys, drugs, alcohol, sex.

  But mainly boys.

  Daughter to a single father, socialite friend to a number of immature, spoilt rich kids; Felicity was a 'popular' girl in her clique. Beautiful, intelligent, and entitled—although her father didn’t condone such qualities, he always wanted her to strive for something, to be her own person and not rely on his considerate wealth—she attracted trouble with little effort. In his experience, Nichol knew that many rich children grew up in an alternate bubble, developing without a precise knowledge of the real world outside; one that, in their eyes, is a mere irritation on the background of their wealthy upbringing. Money really was everything to them.

  He didn’t want this for his daughter, so the responsibility for Felicity fell squarely on his shoulders. He got lucky; working as a scientist from home meant he could perform the doting father role, making proper lunches and dinner as a routine, helping with homework, attending parent evenings and school plays. As a scientist, he even managed to have the 'mother-daughter' puberty talk that many parents dreaded. Their relationship was familiar and friendly and civil, not your usual teenager-father love-hate affair. According to Felicity's friends, he was a 'cool dad,' although he doubted the words were uttered sincerely in his absence.

  His wife abandoned them when Felicity was just two months old. Marianne just upped and left without an explanation or a note. At first, he thought it was a sick joke, or a symptom of postnatal depression, but it soon became apparent that she wasn’t coming home. After a month he stopped worrying, diving into his work and research. After two, he rarely missed her, and after three, he moved on. Life was too short, and Felicity required a stable upbringing.

  She never came back or got in touch.

  Not once.

  And now? She'd missed her abandoned daughter's premature death.

  Nichol stifled a new wave of warm tears at the thought, and tucked a loose strand of brown hair behind Felicity's cold, bluish ear. His eyes roamed the corpse, her pale, lithe frame hidden beneath a clean white sheet.

  Why?

  Why her?

  Of all the people on the planet—why my Felicity?

  The cool touch of her flesh sent a shiver up his wobbling spine, and Nichol spun away, his head in his hand, the fresh bout of tears now streaming down his splotchy face. He sobbed loudly, a gurgling howl of despair rising from the pit of his empty stomach.

  Nichol glanced to the ceiling, his eyes moist and his cheeks soggy, waiting in vain for the sound of her gentle footsteps to pound the upstairs hallway. He waited for the familiar whirring and chugging of their water heater, one that emitted a comfortable groaning noise whenever she stepped into the shower, twice a day, every day. The normalcy for a teenage girl. He waited for the patient footsteps as she returned to her bedroom and got dressed. His eyes roamed to the staircase—normally a bright, exciting m
oment of his morning, one harmonious with family joy and existence—and realised that only shadows resided there now, deep, menacing shapes of darkness that threatened to push the doctor into a staggering mental breakdown.

  Felicity didn’t bound down the steps, didn’t skip over and kiss him on the cheek, and didn’t steal a bite from his peanut buttered toast with a wry smile on her young face. She didn’t say, "Good morning, Daddy," and she didn’t prance through the door, youthful abandon directing her every whim.

  And she never would, ever again.

  That's when he finally realised, and slowly came to terms with the circumstances. He began to accept that God had dealt him a wicked hand.

  God. What does he know?

  "Fuck that," he said, wiping the snot from his nose.

  Dr. Nichol was an atheist, he didn’t hope for God's intervention, and he didn’t use the imaginary entity as a feeble excuse for his failings. He was a man of science, a man of pure fact—something he believed put him above the average person in society, a trait that provided him with the ability to accept that God, for all his fanfare, had fuck all to do with this. Not one jot.

  She was gone.

  Dead. Deceased. Shuffled off the mortal coil.

  Dr. Nichol preferred the word deceased. However, the word had a hefty finality; it was like closing an excellent book for the final time. When it came to his little girl, Nichol refused to close that book, to accept the inevitable, and accept her demise.

  She was gone, but this wasn’t over.

  No, not by a long shot, he thought.

  He turned around, the tears ceasing as his brow narrowed. He stroked his chin.

  Dr. James Nichol knew about his daughter's private life; he was aware of her boisterous social itinerary. A single father for many years, his top priority had always been her welfare. He caught glimpses of her somewhat dubious activities on a number of social media profiles, her books and her tweets and a number of bland, carbon-copy sites. Kids didn’t socialise, not any more, they communicated and existed through their mobile devices and tablets, they had a 'digital presence'. They had to; it was the 'in' thing nowadays.

  Felicity was very attractive, the spitting image of her departed mother, so she had the complete attention of the male populace at her school. When he dropped her at the school gates in the morning, he observed several boys leering, watching, and undressing her with their eyes. He liked to think his daughter was an angel and took her studies seriously, made them a priority. He also knew she was a teenage girl and biology was a simple thing, which tended to interfere with everything else.

  After all, Nichol was a doctor. He'd been there once. He knew these things.

  He wiped his face with a soft towel, and stood over her cold corpse. Running his eyes along her flesh, checking for any small wounds or damage, he stroked a trembling finger along her slim forearm, the chilled skin gripping his fingertips. He'd touched a thousand dead bodies in the past, but for the first time he shuddered.

  Felicity was gone.

  Closing his eyes, he walked over to the window and gazed out over his town. He sighed deeply. A fresh tear dropped onto his lapel, resonating with a dull thud, which seemed to fill the empty room with a hollow echo. Nichol knew it was a trick of the imagination, his grief amplifying his senses, but it made him feel surreal. The noise shifted his primal being back to reality.

  Reality and consequences.

  His eyes settled on the town of Barrington.

  The shitty, soul-sucking town he called home, and had done for seventeen years. His furious eyes moved from redbrick building to local shop to defining landmark to anonymous person, his loathing and hatred growing by the second. He felt a rage boiling and bubbling inside of him, and when his eyes found the high school, Barrington Secondary, he bit his chapped lip hard, piercing the skin. Blood squirted from the wound and rolled down his chin.

  Nichol didn’t care.

  Barrington. You're the cause of this, he thought.

  He almost pointed at the school, a dominant rectangular building made of grey brick positioned on a hill at the rear of the town, nestled behind a wrought iron fence nibbled by age, rust and graffiti. Ancient trees flanked the bold structure, and he observed as the bare branches scratched silently at the sky like claws. His muscles strained and tightened beneath his white coat. His hand remained on the windowsill, fingernails digging into the polished oak. He heard a fingernail creak and snap under his grip. Pain surged through him, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t flinch.

  You're all going to fucking pay.

  He closed his eyes as he remembered the phone call.

  The police called him—it wasn’t a personal visit—to tell him his only daughter, the pride of his life, was dead. Nichol had told the caller to stop pranking him, thinking it was someone playing a sick, demented joke. They'd asked him to come to the station.

  It hadn't been a sick joke.

  An hour later, he was staring at his daughter, her violated body discarded like an unwanted steak on a dirty silver tray in the police morgue.

  He wept like a baby.

  How dare they?

  "Can I take her home?" he'd asked.

  "No, we need to determine the cause of death," one of the anonymous officers had said. "We need to perform the autopsy."

  "I can do it. I'm a doctor."

  "With all due respect, sir, I think that would be unethical."

  "Why?"

  "We have a procedure."

  Procedure.

  Take your procedure and shove it up your fucking arse.

  You call me on the phone and expect me to be okay with this?

  "Can I have a moment alone with her?"

  The naïve officers duly nodded and left the room.

  Which is when Nichol sprang into action. Rummaging through a box to the side, he found two straps and three white sheets. Wrapping his daughter in one sheet, and then using the straps to tie her to the gurney, he'd covered her with the remaining sheets and wheeled her out of the morgue, down the short hallway to the exit, and rolled her into the back of his van.

  Twenty minutes later, she was in his laboratory.

  Dr. Nichol had insisted on performing the autopsy, and they'd turned him down. It was against protocol, they'd said. Fuck protocol. I'm a respected doctor in this town and you can’t even send a fucking squad car to tell me. I heard it through the electronic grapevine.

  What a lack of respect. They didn’t even apologise for their incompetence.

  I got the last laugh though, so fuck you.

  Felicity was finally home.

  She needs to be home. She belongs here.

  Nichol checked his watch, reluctantly. He estimated he had a few more minutes.

  A few more minutes until the police came for him. The lack of sirens confirmed it.

  Plenty of time.

  Let them come.

  He ran the grisly autopsy results through his brain once more, for the hundredth time within an hour, one final senseless time for utter clarity. The findings were conclusive and shocking. Nichol gazed at his little girl, a scar of regret and sadness permanently etched into his vision. Her cold skin glared beneath the lights, a bright insipid white. Her brown hair was bereft of any life or character, the colour muted and aged. He stroked the hair gently and sniffed, remembering the debris he'd found. A fingernail, some dust, dirt and dried blood.

  Nichol's jaw knotted as he remembered his other findings. The torn labia, her damaged hymen. The scratches and purples welts around her thighs and breasts, the dark bruises across her buttocks. The black eye and split lip. The broken neck.

  Raped and murdered. By one of the animalistic boys in her school.

  His fifteen-year-old girl.

  His baby.

  The saliva in the savage bite-marks on her neck would remain unidentified—he didn't have time to gather the DNA result—but he guessed a white male, from a wealthy background, fifteen years old or more. Probably hopped up on steroids, high-
quality cocaine and energy drink. He probably had six lawyers on Daddy's dime sitting before him like a law-defying bulletproof wall, just waiting for the police to arrive.

  Her murderer would get away with it, he was certain of that. The boy was probably laughing right now, sincere in his implied innocence.

  Well, that's what he thinks.

  Nichol cracked his neck and laughed vehemently.

  He isn't getting away with shit.

  Nichol didn’t have a name, and he didn’t need one. The boy, whoever he was, would pay.

  They would all pay.

  Five minutes.

  Nichol punched the metal table, the impact making Felicity's head bounce slightly.

  This town, Barrington, had been his home for seventeen years. He was a scientist, so doubt, anger, and even disrespect came with the territory. It was an occupational hazard. Does he experiment on people? Does he keep dead bodies in his closet?

  Pish-posh.

  All true of course. He couldn’t reveal that to his neighbours, though.

  People had the right to opinions and thoughts and queries, and all had to be heard, no matter how dumb or naïve or, in some cases, sensible they were. Science divided the masses and religions, and everyone in between, but science was fact. There was no disputing evolution when you have millions of years of scientific fact backing you up. Nichol lived for reality, strove for the truth of life, it was the only border and sense in a world filled with hatred and misunderstanding and deceit.

  The truth. It's all he wanted for his daughter.

  Yet, they refused to give it to him. Therefore, he took it for himself.

  On this day, they'd disrespected him for the final time.

  The lying, deceitful, backstabbing bastards of Barrington.

  People who never took him seriously—as much as he admitted to hate it, it was the truth; he realised that now. People with nothing better to do than judge the private scientist who resided up on the hill, the single father in his secluded, expensive home with a daughter who probably underwent severe abuse, or was an unwilling volunteer in his experiments.