LovewithaChanceofZombies

Love with a Chance of Zombies

Delphine Dryden

Lena Stanton’s a sharpshooting zombie hunter with a hot-pink
rifle and an attitude. Her latest assignment—guard bitten hero, Dr. Lucas Nye,
and be ready to shoot the moment he starts to turn zombie.

In the meantime, considering she’s the last female the man
will ever see, Lena’s happy to indulge the doc in hot, steamy sex until he
becomes symptomatic. What? She has to do her part to repopulate the planet,
right?

When last-minute research and a daring treatment could save
Lucas, Lena has to choose. She can follow her heart and give the man a chance
to live…or follow her commander’s orders and shoot to kill.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing

www.ellorascave.com

Love with a Chance of Zombies

ISBN 9781419939884

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Love with a Chance of Zombies Copyright © 2012 Delphine Dryden

Edited by Kelli Collins

Cover design by Syneca

Models: Elina & Christian

Photography: idiz, kwest/shutterstock.com

Electronic book publication March 2012

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Love with a Chance of Zombies

Delphine Dryden

Chapter One

It felt so good, so solid and familiar against the curve of
her cheek. Warmed by contact with her skin, smooth and hard. Lena knew just how
to hold it, just the right touch to make it respond; knew how it would fit her
body the same way every time. Comforting and exciting all at once. It never got
old.

The weapon was also hot pink, a feature that never ceased to
annoy her male colleagues. She had even painted little flowers on the stock.
Bonus annoyance. She was getting to be almost fond of pink, although she had
always hated the color when she was growing up.

Lena cuddled the AR-15 into her shoulder a little more
snugly when she heard the crackling noises again. There, just there at the
forest’s edge, she could see two of them stopping to sniff the wind. In the
infrared scope they looked less human, not that she cared anymore if they
looked human or not. You couldn’t care. You had to just aim and shoot, aim and
shoot, never hesitating because if you hesitated you lost, and that was
literally a fate worse than death unless you had the stones to finish yourself
before the virus activated.

Just aim and shoot…

Crack!

Aim and shoot…

Crack!

“Yes! You got both those motherfuckers!” The hiss of acclaim
came from a few yards to her left. Lena shot a disgusted glare into the gloom
of the underbrush where her newest trainee was crouched.

“Respect, Gilford. Those were people once. It could be you
out there. Never forget that, not for one second.”

The boy made a noise of dismissal. “Did you see that big
one’s head explode? Booosh! Awesome. When do I get a gun?”

She stared at the youth for about another second then shook
her head. “Jonesie?”

“Yeah, boss?” Jonesie materialized from the darkness—all six
foot four of him—with the stealth of a woodsman born and bred.

“Take Gilford back home. Tell Watson I said, ‘Hell no.’”
Turning to the boy, she nodded in the direction of the encroaching gray glow
that marked dawn’s arrival. “You’re out. Go now. No arguing. If you want to
talk about it, I’ll see you when the patrol gets back.”

“Just say, ‘Yes ma’am,’” Jonesie advised before the stunned
boy could respond.

The kid looked from the soft-spoken giant to the stony-faced
woman in front of him and made the wisest choice available.

“Yes ma’am.”

She didn’t wait around to watch them go. There were still
vital minutes before the last of the light-shy prey went to ground. Lena lifted
her binoculars and resumed her slow scan, looking for that one last kill with
the usual mix of anticipation and dread.

* * * * *

“We’re running out of recruits, Lena.”

“He was making sound effects, sir.”

Tom Watson winced, knowing how that particular behavior sat
with his finest scout. “I do warn them about that, you know.”

“This one must have been absent that day.”

“No. Just not paying attention. He doesn’t get it. None of
these new kids do.”

She nodded. “He’s what, sixteen, seventeen? He can’t have
been any older than five or six at Zero Hour.”

“And how old were you?” Watson asked with a shrug. “Not that
much older yourself.”

“Twelve. Old enough.” It was the set of her face, not
chronology, that told the story of her experience. The name “Zero Hour” might
have been assigned retroactively by the survivors who pieced together when and
where the plague had first struck, but any survivor past a certain age could
never forget the months following that fabled hour. A quick, clean disaster
would have been kinder than the slow, lingering, hideously painful death of
society they had witnessed.

The world had changed forever at that single point in time,
but they hadn’t realized it right away. Now they dated everything from Zero
Hour, but it was those nightmare times afterward that really counted. The times
that had slowly killed the last vestiges of hope.

“I’ll send him down. The farms can always use another hand,
or maybe we can find a use for him over at the mayor’s office. I might need to
rethink assigning new recruits to you for training, but that’s an issue for
another day. I have a new short-term assignment for you anyway. You need a
breather from the field.”

“Sir, he went ‘boosh’ when I took out a morning straggler
with a clean hit,” Lena protested, “and that was after I’d warned him to show
more respect. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same. I’ve been in
the field with you and—”

“Lena.”

“He had no sense of decency. He thought it was funny.”

“Stanton! Simmer down. The kid was a jackass. I agree with
you. I’m not putting you on a shit detail.” Watson looked more amused than
irked.

Theirs wasn’t quite a military operation, although it
certainly bore similarities to that kind of organization. Still, most of the
scouts treated Tom Watson like their commander-in-chief, and given his background
before Zero Hour it was really no surprise. He had been a retired admiral, and
now he was the closest thing this little pocket of humanity had to a general.
He was also the closest thing most of his scouts had to a father. Nick Cochrane
was the duly elected “mayor” of their colony, but Watson was seen by most as
the man in charge.

“I’m sorry, sir.” Lena looked down at her toe, scuffing it
along a deep crack in the green linoleum.

“You’re still wired up from patrol,” he scolded, but not
very harshly. He had been there. He understood. Lena knew that. “I’ll cut you
some slack. Are you ready to listen to me about this now?”

She nodded, chagrined. She could tell he was right—she felt
the lingering tension clinging to her body. The hyper-vigilance that meant survival
out in the field usually just meant acting like a jerk once inside the safety
fence. You had to learn to shift gears. It was part of the job. Rolling her
shoulders looser, she raised her eyes again as Watson continued.

“Okay. Ironically, given the tone of this conversation, I
picked you for this because I trust you to have a little finesse and judgment.
As well as a little compassion. I was right to think that, I hope?”

“Yes sir.”

“You know Lucas Nye?”

“The doctor? Of course. Everybody knows him.”

It was a community of fewer than a thousand people, living
in close quarters. There weren’t many doctors, and even fewer who actually
seemed to hold the title legitimately. Nye had been near the end of his
residency when Zero Hour came. That was close enough for most people.

More importantly, Nye was a genius. He had been a superstar
even before the plague, starting college at fourteen and going on to publish
all sorts of papers, winning grants and conducting complex studies in
epidemiology and virus research. He had even done some consulting for the CDC.
He’d been courted by the finest research facilities in the world. If anybody
could figure out a cure for this thing, the rumors went, it was surely Lucas
Nye.

“Well, they don’t know what I’m about to tell you, you got
that? Classified, nobody hears this unless I tell them. Still sure you’re
ready?” At her nod, Watson continued. “Nye was at the poultry farm last week,
taking some blood samples. They think the chickens may have bird flu or
something. Because we needed something else to worry about. Anyway, his truck
got a flat on the way back, about a mile from the gate. They radioed for help
but it was already close to sunset, and you know all the activity the farms
have been getting lately.”

“Crap. They got hit?”

“Just a small group, luckily. But fresh and alert, really
dangerous. The driver and Nye took out all of them, but one got too close and
landed a bite before he died. Lucky for Nye it was on his ankle, not anywhere
near his brain. That might buy him a little more time. Few more weeks. Maybe.”

“Fuck.”

Watson nodded agreement with Lena’s crude but undeniable
sentiment. They both knew what a bite meant. The good doctor was fucked indeed.
He had three, four, maybe six weeks at the most before the first symptoms began
to crop up. And at that point, for the good of all the uninfected, he would
face a choice. He could commit suicide or ask to be shot, or he could be turned
out of the compound and mourned as dead. They had learned early on that the
hard way was the only way when it came to bite victims. Very few people chose
option number two.

Nye had a short reprieve before his death sentence would be
carried out. But even with his near-legendary abilities, there was no way short
of a miracle he could manage a cure in such a short time. Not when it had
eluded all the remaining scientists and medical minds in the world for nearly a
decade.

“We’ve agreed to give him access to his lab until he’s
symptomatic,” Watson said grimly. “And it’s going to remain classified until
that time. No reason to rob so many people of what they think is their last
hope, at least not until there’s no other way. So he can’t go into the regular
quarantine.”

“Which means he’ll need a personal guard,” Lena deduced.

“And conveniently, my very best girl just pulled a bit of a
blunder in the field, summarily dismissing a bright young recruit like Gilford.
She’s burned out. Needs a cooling-off period, obviously. Little change of
scene. Doing some community service in the lab, maybe.”

Lena’s laugh was short and harsh. “Then after we shove Nye
out the gate, everybody realizes I was a hero on a hush-hush mercy assignment.
I get it.”

“You can say no.”

“No, I can’t.”

Watson smiled. “Of course you can’t.”

“When do I start?”

“As soon as you get there. I recommend a shower first. No
need to make the poor doctor suffer any more than necessary.”

With a sigh, Lena shouldered her shocking-pink weapon and
her duffel full of equipment, already heading for the door. Tom Watson’s
chuckle followed her.

“Guard him well, Lena.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

Of course she would guard him well. She would never say so
out loud, but she needed heroes just like everybody else. Like so many others,
she thought Lucas Nye might well be the last, best hope for humankind’s
survival. Not to mention the number of lives he had saved just by being one of
the few trained doctors left in the world. He wasn’t just a hero to most of the
people in their compound, he was more like a minor deity.

So if anybody was going to have to shoot Nye if he turned
into a zombie ahead of schedule, it was sure as hell going to be her and not
some disrespectful little asshat like Gilford.