Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) (2 page)

Paul laughed. “I’ll do far more sinful things if I don’t. Can’t pray this away, buddy. You have to do what I can’t do.”

“Paul. What are you asking me to do?”

“Do what I can’t. I need you to come right away.”

This time Hal laughed. “I’m a wanted man and you expect me to come to you? I’ll never make it.”

“The police aren’t worrying about escaped prisoners anymore. Hell, there might not even be any police left. You’ll make it. Please. I need you.”

Hal inhaled deep, thinking. If he was seen, he was dead. But Paul was his best friend, and he’d believed in him, believed in his cause.

“I’m on my way, buddy. I’ll get there as quick as I can. Just hang in there, alright?”

“I’m sorry, Hal, but please finish it. Please? Do what I can’t.”

“Paul?”

No answer.

“Paul?”

Dial tone.

“Dammit.” Hal thumbed the End button and pocketed the phone. He didn’t have much to take with him. He’d escaped the prison a few weeks ago, with Paul’s help. Paul had left him a change of clothes, the cell, a gun in case of trouble, and some money. He’d found the cabin on his own, not too far from the Tennessee state line.  Good thing too, since he was now headed there.

He grabbed up all the non-perishable food he’d accumulated and shoved it into a backpack along with a change of clothes, grabbed his gun, and left the safety of the cabin.

Cursing his stupidity, he traveled downhill toward the winding road he’d done everything to avoid while searching for a safehouse. He tucked the gun inside the pocket of his hoodie. It was a little warm for a hoodie, but the front pocket allowed him a place to keep the gun out of view, important if he planned on traveling the road.

It took about an hour, but he made it to the road. The woods were eerily quiet as he started following the road toward the main streets. It unnerved him, but he figured anything would unnerve him after the call he’d just received. Zombies? No way, but that’s what Paul had said. Then again, if Paul were sick it was very likely the man had been hallucinating. He might not be aware of what was really going on. Hal could be walking out in the open for nothing, but he had to do it. Paul was his friend, his best friend. The guy was like family.

Hal stilled as a car came into view up ahead. It was stopped in the middle of the road, the driver side door open. Dark stains covered the ground around it.

His hand closing over the gun in his pocket, Hal crept forward to investigate. His nose twitched as it was assaulted by the offensive smell. As he drew closer, he realized the metallic smelling mess was blood.

No one remained in the car. The seats were ripped and the windshield cracked. The keys remained in the ignition, the driver not even bothering to remove them. Hal could see why as he studied the blood. It had to belong to the driver as it started on the back of the driver’s seat and spilled onto the interior of the door and the ground. It led into the woods.

The driver had been attacked and taken into the woods. No, Hal realized as he looked at it again. The driver had run into the woods to escape. His passenger? His passenger who had scratched up the seats before attacking? What in the world?

A gurgling, growling sound caught Hal’s attention and he looked in the direction the driver had fled to see a person approaching. It was a woman. She walked slow, seeming to drag her feet. Her head hung forward so he couldn’t see her face but the blood covering her long blonde hair and white dress indicated she’d been injured.

“Ma’am? Are you alright?” He removed the gun from his hoodie and aimed it past her. “Is the person who did this to you up there? Are you being followed?”

The woman neared as he scanned the woods behind her, searching for a threat.

“Miss? Can you speak? It’s gonna be alright. I’ll get you out of here.”

She raised her head, blood dripping from her chin as she made the growling noise he’d heard earlier.

“Sweet Jesus,” Hal whispered in shock as he looked into the woman’s cloudy white eyes.

He didn’t think she could see, but she could definitely hear. She’d been headed straight for him since he’d spoken to her.

“Stop!” he ordered.

She kept shuffling toward him, dragging her feet.

“Stop, dammit, or I’ll shoot!”

She growled again, the sound a combination of a gurgle, growl and moan. Her arms raised, hands reaching out to him.

He shot her in the center of her forehead, remembering Paul’s instruction.

As she fell to the ground, the top half of her head splattered on the road behind her, another figure emerged. A man.

“Help me!” he cried. “She bit me. She tried to eat me.”

The man stumbled forward, holding out the wadded flannel shirt he’d been holding to his neck. Blood pumped out of the bitten area as he fell to his knees.

“I need a hospital.”

“She’s Russian?”

“Yes. She was my wife. I saw the news. I didn’t trust the military. I tried to get her away, to a cabin I have up here. I thought we’d wait for a cure, but she became too violent. She attacked me in the car.”

“You’re infected.” Hal aimed the gun.

“I haven’t turned! I can still be saved.”

“Yes you can,” Hal said as he pulled the trigger.

“When can we go outside? I’m bored.”

Raven Bleu looked at her younger sister and sighed. “I know, Sky. I’m sorry. We have to wait until we’re given the all-clear.”

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know.”

They’d been holed up inside the hotel room for a week, ever since the announcement was made. Russian mail-order brides were on the loose, or something crazy like that. The local businesses had shut down and the hotels weren’t allowing their guests to leave.

It wasn’t the fun trip to Hollywood they’d planned.

“Have they said anything else about the meet and greet?” Sky looked away from the Disney movie she’d been watching. They’d ordered
Frozen
through the hotel’s Pay-Per-View service. The regular TV was non-stop news and Sky didn’t want to watch it. The reports frightened her.

Raven checked Emma Whitman’s website on her laptop once more. “Sorry, sweetie. It still just says it’s canceled. No news of a rescheduling.”

Sky’s disappointed pout broke her heart. Sky loved the tween star and had been so excited when she’d told her she’d won the contest to meet her on set.

“I’m sure it will be rescheduled once this is all over. It was a contest, after all. You can’t have a contest with no prize, right?”

“I guess. I’m still bored.”

“Watch the movie. You love it.”

“I loved it the first billion times I watched it.”

“Billion? Really?” Raven raised an eyebrow. “Overdramatic, much?”

“I wanna do something else.”

“Like what?” Raven set aside the laptop, finding it hard to concentrate on the news stories about the Z1219 virus with her 9-year old sister’s constant interruption.

“Can we dye my hair?”

“I already told you no.”

“Your hair is dyed. Why can’t I dye mine?” Sky crossed her arms defiantly.

“Because I’m nineteen and you’re only nine.”

“So what. It’s not like I’m gonna dye it crazy like yours. I just want to try blonde.”

Raven laughed at this. “I thought you liked my hair.”

“Well, yeah. My favorite color is blue and it’s kind of like our last name. But it’s still crazy. I don’t know anyone else with blue in their hair.”

“That’s what makes me so awesome,” Raven informed her. “I don’t try to look like other people, like how you’re trying to look like Emma Whitman.”

She leaned over and tugged one of Sky’s dark brown curls. “You’re beautiful like this. When you meet Emma, do you want her weirded out because you copycatted her look or do you want her impressed by your own look? It’s totally cool, by the way.”

This made Sky smile. “I am pretty cool.”

“Yes you are. You have my blood after all.”

Sky rolled her eyes. “I’m hungry.”

“Me too.” Raven’s belly grumbled on cue. “We’re out of food. You inhaled the last of the Twinkies this morning and there aren’t any more leftovers in the fridge.”

“I thought this hotel offered breakfast.”

“They did before this virus happened. Now they want everyone to stay in their rooms.”

“And starve? They want us to die of hunger?”

“So dramatic,” Raven muttered as she reached for the phone on the nightstand. “I’ll call the front desk and see what our options are for food.”

She dialed the front desk and waited. The phone just kept ringing. She tried again and the same thing happened.

“They aren’t answering,” she said as she hung up the phone.

“I’m starving.”

“Alright, alright. There were vending machines on the second floor. I’ll see if anything’s left.”

“I wanna come!” Sky jumped off the bed.

“No way. You aren’t leaving this room.” Raven pointed at her as she stood from the bed, snapped her fingers and pointed back to the bed. “Park your butt right there and do not move from that spot until I come back.”

“I’m tired of being in this room. We haven’t even been able to see Hollywood yet.”

“I’m only going to the vending machines, Sky. You’re not missing anything. Stay here where it’s safe.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Sky Marie.”

“Fine.” Sky plopped back down on the bed, a sour expression on her face as Idina Menzel’s voice filled the room.  “I’m sick of this song.”

Raven grabbed the keycard and slipped out the door. “So am I.”

The vending machines had been hit pretty hard, only a few bags of Nutter Butters left inside one. The other held an assortment of baked chips, because honestly, who liked baked chips?

“Starving little girls can’t be choosy,” Raven muttered to herself as she fished inside her front jeans pocket for coins.

Someone screamed.

Raven jerked in response, coins spilling onto the carpeted floor. She turned, trying to discern where the sound had come from. It was female, but not young enough to be Sky.

Thank God.

The woman screamed again, the sound more panicked than before, but more than that. It was the sound of real horror. It turned Raven’s blood cold.

The scream came again, followed by another, this one belonging to a man. Then gunshots. Then the man screaming in pain. The woman didn’t quit screaming after that. It all came from down the hall, around the corner.

Raven could turn around, go up the stairs she’d come down to get to the vending machine, or she could go down the hall and help. The virus was all over the news. The infected were killing people, eating people. She had no weapon. She had a little sister upstairs to protect.

The woman screamed again.

“Stay in the room, Sky,” she whispered as she traveled down the hallway, praying the little girl obeyed her.

She heard garbled, growling sounds as she neared the end of the hallway and she nearly turned around. The woman cried out and she couldn’t leave her. She had to do something.

She turned the corner and gasped.

A young, brunette woman struggled on the floor as a crazy looking man attacked her like a rabid dog. The woman saw her and quit pushing on the man currently chewing on her shoulder. She rolled over.

“Help me!” the woman called out as the man fell on her back and sank his teeth into her. Her eyes bulged in pain as the growling man feasted.

Across from her, another man lay lifeless on the floor, a zombie eating his stomach. A gun lay beside him, having fallen from his hand.

“Help,” the woman pleaded again.

Raven shook her head, tears falling. She couldn’t. She didn’t have a weapon. If she could even get to the fallen man’s gun she might not be able to shoot it. She’d never even seen a real gun before. And the woman …

“You’re infected now,” she said.

The zombies heard that, looked up, focusing their cloudy white eyes on her, or the general vicinity of her. She wasn’t sure if they could see or not.

Raven stepped back slowly, careful to not make a lot of noise, but it was too late. They knew she was there. They stood, shuffled forward, and another emerged from the stairwell down the hall.

They were in the stairwell. Sky!

Raven turned and ran toward the other end of the hall, to the stairwell she’d used by the vending machines. The elevator hadn’t opened earlier so she didn’t waste time trying it now. She reached the stairwell and made her way up to her floor, praying to find Sky safe and sound.

She reached their floor and burst through the door into the hallway. And came face to face with Sky.

“What the hell? I told you to stay in the room!”

Tears dampened Sky’s cheeks and she shook as she squeezed her blue teddy bear tight against her chest. “The TV quit working and I heard screaming.”