Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) (10 page)

“Get in the house and lock the door,” Hank yelled at her, now aiming a rifle Otis had brought out to him at the zombies behind her. The immediate threat had changed his plans. She knew the beating would still happen, but at the moment, she feared the zombies more.

She reached the back door and ducked inside the kitchen, closing the door behind her. She thought about locking it as Otis and Hank stood outside shooting at the zombies, leaving them out there to die, but she couldn’t do it. For one, now that she’d seen the zombies she knew what she was up against. She had a better chance of survival with the men, and for two, if Hank retreated to the house and found the door locked he would only kick it down and hurt her worse than he already intended. So she kept the door unlocked as she stood there watching Hank and Otis shoot at the white-eyed men and women closing in on them.

Otis ran out of bullets first and reached into the bib pocket of his overalls for more, but he couldn’t get the gun loaded before two zombies were on him. Janjai cringed as she saw the monsters open their mouths wide, intent on eating him. She’d never liked Otis, especially disliking the way he’d stare at her body when Hank wasn’t looking, but this was not a death she wished on anyone and she regretted her earlier thought about leaving them out there. Living with a beast of a man had affected her, she realized, in a shameful way.

Otis swung the rifle, bashing one of the zombies in the head, effectively knocking it away, but he turned his body with the swing, putting himself in a more vulnerable position. The other zombie took advantage and Janjai cried out as she saw its mouth close down on Otis’s neck.

Hank checked on his friend, saw what was happening, and shot the zombie in the head, but it was too late. Otis tumbled to the ground, holding his neck. In the moonlight, Janjai saw blood pour through his fingers.

Hank reloaded and shot down as many more zombies as he could, not seeming to make a dent as more and more of them kept trickling in from the woods. He shot his last bullet and ran for the house, slamming the door behind him and quickly sliding the lock home.

Without words, he opened the door to the basement, grabbed Janjai roughly by her arm and shoved her down the stairs. She almost fell, but grabbed the rail just in time. Understanding what he wanted, she went to the room on her own and sat on the cot, pulling her knees up. She sat there, rocking, as the horrible images of what had just happened played through her mind.

He joined her there shortly after, carrying a loaded backpack and his rifle. As the sound of the kitchen window breaking reached them, he did something he’d never done before. He closed the door while standing in the room with her, locking both of them in.

He turned around and she saw his pajamas were covered in sweat and blood spray. His face was so red it looked like it would explode, like a water balloon filled with blood.

“They can’t get us in here, but we can still get out. I have the key. At least, I’ll get out. As for you, my wife …” He bent down and opened the backpack, extracting his leather belt.

Janjai’s heart stopped as she looked at the belt. To most people, it was an accessory. To her, it was a deadly weapon. The welts on her back tingled as she recalled her last session with it.

“You might not understand my words, but just like a bitch, you’ll understand this,” he said, comparing her to a dog. “I’m your master. You don’t run off and you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Otis got bit because of you. I had to leave him out there to be eaten on. If he’s lucky, he’ll die instead of becoming one of them. Now you’ll pay for that, and if you live through this, you’ll know better than to run again.”

As he wrenched her off the cot, Janjai took a deep breath and pictured herself in Colorado with Pimjai, happy and free. The scorching hot fire that came with each slap of the leather across her skin threatened to steal her daydream away but she held on tight to the image as Hank unleashed his rage. Soon, her body’s protective defenses took over and she couldn’t even feel the lashes, only the sting the first twenty had left behind.

He finally stopped, allowing her body to fall to the concrete floor where she lay in her own blood, closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep, thinking how wonderful it would be if she didn’t wake back up.

Hal peeked through the crack in the boards they’d nailed over the windows, checking the street. All clear, or so it seemed. The TV and internet might not work, but Paul was a survivalist, like Hal. He had a radio for situations like this, and every now and then, Hal was able to make contact with someone. He knew what was going on out there. It was hell and damnation.
The end of days.

The military was doing the best it could to control the situation but killing people who were already dead wasn’t the easiest task. By the time they’d figured out the zombies’ brains had to be destroyed, many of them had been killed or worse. Turned into them.

Russia had been injecting poor, unsuspecting women with the virus for five years. Thousands of those women entered America every year and immediately spread the disease to their husbands. If they had children, those children were born with the disease in their system. If either the Russian woman or the man she married committed adultery, more people were infected and the virus spread through all of those people and anyone they slept with. Then there were the Russian-American marriages that ended in divorce, leaving the women and now infected men to find new spouses. Whoever they slept with along the way got the disease. And of course, the scariest part of all, was the obvious. How many of those people, ignorant to this disease which according to reports, wouldn’t have been picked up on any tests, had donated blood during those five years?

It would be impossible to calculate how many people had been infected, and according to the information Hal had found on news sites before the internet ceased to exist, some of the infected were still walking around clueless.

Death triggered the disease. The original virus injected directly into the women worked like a bomb. When it was detonated, they died on impact, immediately reanimating as modern day real life zombies.  The people they had infected, either through blood donations or sexual contact, would continue to carry the disease until they died. Some had developed a fever and died shortly after their hosts had turned, but not all. For some reason, some still carried the disease. The military had rounded up infected children who showed no signs but would turn after they died. The only other way, the only other way that was known, for someone to turn into a zombie was to be bitten. Their saliva was deadly venom which put the bitten in a flu-like state which they eventually died from, triggering the activation of the virus.

It was chaos.

And he was stuck in the middle of it, in charge of the safety of a twelve-year old girl.

Hal saw movement. There in the bushes alongside the house across the street, were three of the monsters. He had time to go downstairs, open the front door, and pick them off one by one, but he knew from experience that if any more were lurking out there, the gunshots would draw them. Three of them weren’t that big of a deal, but get a group and you were in trouble. He’d heard the term
herd
being used to describe the way they grouped together over the radio and he thought it sounded about right. They probably communicated with each other like animals too, their moaning, growling sounds some sort of language. He shivered at the thought of those things being organized.

No, he couldn’t pick them off. He couldn’t bring them right to their door.

Hal gripped his gun and quickly made his way out of Paul’s office and down the hall to the living room where Angela reclined on the couch reading a book.

“Three of them, across the street,” he said as he peered through the peephole in the front door.

Angela grabbed her gun off the coffee table and watched them through the front window, watching from a sliver of space between boards as Hal had done in the office.

“You sure they can’t see us?”

“They might be able to up close, shapes at least, but not from there. If we’re quiet they probably won’t even know there are people inside.”

“And if they’re smarter than you think?”

“We have guns.” He looked down at the Beretta in her small hand. “You’re sure you can handle that?”

“Dad trained me every weekend. Handguns, rifles, if it has bullets I can shoot it. I’m probably a better shot than you.”

“Well, let’s put off knowing that as long as we can. Shooting them is a last resort. We don’t want to draw any more.”

Hal returned his gaze to the street, moving over to the window when the zombies shuffled out of the peephole’s range. He was glad Paul had trained his daughter to shoot, to protect herself, but the thought of her having to made him nervous. If she had reason to use the gun, he wasn’t doing a good job of protecting her. His mission had always been to protect the world from evil, but that was when evil lived inside living, breathing men and women. Those monsters were plentiful, yes, but not like these. They didn’t strike together, all at once.

“Do you think they can smell?” Angela whispered as the zombies drew closer, crossing the street.

“I don’t know. I hope not. The less ability they have to locate us, the safer we are.”

“Why do they scare you? They’re just animals shuffling around looking for food. You’ve taken out faster, smarter people.”

Hal swallowed hard, gulping past the ball that had just formed in his throat, before turning his attention to the young, innocent looking girl.

She looked back at him with a sly grin. “I know all about you, Hallelujah Brown. What exactly do you think my dad was training me for?”

“Self defense?”

“That went along with it. He was training me to help you, to become the first female member of CROSS.”

Hal’s mouth dropped open. He’d had no idea Paul had told her about the secret organization they belonged to, Christian Righteous Order of Sacred Soldiers. “No. I don’t know what Paul was thinking or what he told you about me—”

“That you hold the record for most smites, and that he helped you from the beginning, becoming a cop after the military to help cover your tracks, enabling you to do your work. The two of you planned for your capture so you could get into that prison and destroy Lester Higgins, a man convicted of over fifty cases of child molestation and sodomy, and for your escape so you could continue your mission on the outside. Neither of you planned for the zombie apocalypse though.”

The sly grin dissolved as her bottom lip trembled. She sniffed and let out a breath, gathering herself. Too strong to cry while under threat of immediate danger, just as her father had trained her. Hal shook his head. He was glad she knew how to handle a gun, she would need to if she was ever attacked by one of those zombies but his work was bloody work, even if righteous. For every godless enemy he destroyed, some of their darkness tried to creep inside him. It took a strong-willed soldier to stay true to the cause, and Angela was just a girl. A little girl grieving the loss of her family to monsters. It wouldn’t be hard for vengeance to take over the true goal of the mission and taint her heart and soul.

Then again, she was Paul’s child. That had to count for something.

“What do you feel when you see them?” he asked as a test as he nodded toward the zombies strolling aimlessly through the front yard.

“Pity.”

His eyebrow raised. Interesting. “Even though they killed your family?”

“They didn’t kill my family. The Russian government did. Russia injected the virus into Elena. She didn’t ask for that. None of these people asked for this to happen. Their bodies were taken over, used as weapons to kill off their own country. I just pray you’re right about them being dead already. At least then, their souls are free.”

“What would you do if you were face to face with the people who did this to them?”

“I’d kill them. As a soldier of The Order, it would be my duty to destroy such evil before it could harm more innocents. I wouldn’t enjoy it, but it would be the right thing to do so I would do it quickly, that way they went with as little pain as possible. It would be more mercy than they deserve but my inner light would remain unblemished.”

Hal smiled as the zombies left the yard, traveling down the street, away from them. “Congratulations,” he said.

“For what?” Angela looked up at him, her brow crinkled in confusion.

“On becoming the first female member of CROSS.”

Hal woke to the sound of screaming. He jackknifed up off the bed, hand immediately reaching for the gun he’d left on the bedside table. He’d been sleeping fully dressed for the two weeks he’d been at the house, and had instructed Angela to do so as well, just in case something happened and they had to act quickly.

When he reached the living room Angela was already there, gun in hand, knife sheathed at her hip, peering out the window.

“What is it?”

“Not sure,” she answered, keeping her eye on the street, what she could see of it through the narrow space left board-free, as another blood-curdling scream rent the air. “That sounds like it’s coming from the next street over.”

“The woman’s in excruciating pain,” Hal surmised as he joined her at the window. “She’s probably been hiding in her home and some of those things got in. I doubt she was stupid enough to go outside.”