Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) (3 page)

As if on cue, screams erupted from the floor above them. “They’re above us too?”

“Who? What’s happening?”

“Zombies, Sky.
The Walking Dead
is real now.” She grabbed her little sister’s elbow and guided her toward their room.

“We need to leave, Raven.”

“We can’t. They’re on the other floors and they’re using the stairwells. We have to hide until help comes.”

“The doors don’t even lock.”

“What?”

“Nothing works. The TV, elevator, door locks. It’s all broken.”

“Great.”

A groaning noise sounded from down the hallway. They looked up in time to see two zombies shuffle around the corner.

Sky screamed, announcing their presence.

“Shit.” Raven grabbed her sister and opened the first door she could reach.

“This isn’t our room.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Raven shoved her sister inside and looked around. The room was empty, vacant. “Get in the closet. Lock the door.”

“What about you?”

“I need to find a weapon.” Raven opened drawers and turned back sheets, checking to see if the room’s previous occupants had left anything useful behind. It appeared the room had been cleaned before the outbreak and no one had used it. “Dammit, I need something sharp.”

“Like your necklace?”

“I told you to get in the closet.” Raven looked down at her pendant, a large cross with the bottom sharpened into a dagger-like point. “This might just work.”

“There’s no lock on the closet door. We can’t stay here.”

“Where else are we supposed to go? They’re in the hallway.”

The door opened and the zombies entered, their groaning turning into garbled growls.

Sky screamed again, backing toward the balcony.

“It’s going to be alright, Sky.” Raven removed her necklace, held the cross in her hand, sharpened end pointed out. It was sharp, but not very long. She’d have to get dangerously close to one of the zombies to hurt it, and by the time she stabbed one, the other would be on her. She’d be dead and soon after, so would Sky.

They backed toward the sliding balcony doors, and Sky opened them, slipping outside.

“Jump,” Raven instructed her, realizing this room was on the same side of the hall as theirs. The balconies were interior and lined the swimming pool.

“What?”

“Jump, Sky. Dive into the pool. It’s our only way out.”

“No.” Sky’s voice quivered in fear as she began to cry. “I can’t.”

“Dammit, Sky.”

Raven turned as the zombies closed in, grabbed her sister under her arm, and jumped off the balcony, into the pool below.

They came out of the water sputtering.

“Why’d you do that? You know I can’t swim.”

“It was that or die,” Raven explained as she hoisted Sky onto the tiled floor and climbed out of the pool behind her.

She’d just cleared the water when the zombies fell from the balcony. One landed in the pool with a splash. The other missed, landing on the tiled floor. Raven heard its bones break, which made it all the more horrifying when it rose up on its elbows and started crawling toward them, dragging its broken lower body along.

Sky opened her mouth, but Raven clamped her hand over it, muffling the scream. “You can’t keep doing that,” she whispered. “They hear it and they come to it. I don’t think they can see well and they don’t move as fast as us. We’ll survive this if we’re quick and quiet, got it?”

Sky nodded, her bottom lip quivering as she fought to not cry.

“We’re gonna be fine, kid,” Raven assured her sister, hugging the little girl tight before surveying the area around them. “We have to find a safer place. This isn’t it.”

As if her statement needed any further clarification, the zombie that had splashed into the pool stood and started walking toward them through the water.

“Come on.” She grabbed Sky’s hand and pulled her toward the doorway to the first floor hallway. “Be very quiet. We don’t know how many are on this floor.”

Sky’s only response was a whimper.

Raven squeezed her hand and kept walking down the hall, toward the front of the hotel. The lights flickered on and off, intensifying the anxiety level. Raven wished they’d just go off. It was daytime. There was plenty of natural light, and maybe darkness would help them. It didn’t seem like the zombies could see very well to begin with.

“Do we have a plan?” Sky whispered.

“Yeah. Get the hell out of here,” Raven whispered back.

“Out on the street? I thought we were supposed to stay inside because it was safer.”

“It was until the undead cannibals got in with us. We definitely aren’t safe here, not when the doors don’t even lock and there are zombies creeping on multiple floors. We’ll find a safer building.”

“How are we supposed to get to a safer building? We need a gun.”

The matter-of-fact way Sky made the statement brought a smile to Raven’s mouth despite the circumstances. “You know how to shoot a gun now?”

“No.”

“Then we don’t need one. We’ve already got people-eating monsters chasing us. The last thing we need is for one of us to shoot the other in the ass.” 

“How do we stop them?”

“I don’t know that we can, but we can definitely outrun them.”

They reached the lobby and found it painted in blood. Raven barely managed to close her hand over Sky’s mouth before the girl erupted into a screaming fit.

“Shhh, Sky. Be quiet, Sis.” Raven whispered, desperately trying to silence the screams she could only muffle with her hand. She knew the girl was terrified. Hell, the sight in front of her had her nearly pissing her own pants.

The man at the counter, the same man who’d checked them in a week ago, was now draped over that counter with his intestines scattered around him. The upper half of him, anyway. Judging by the blood trail, the lower half had been dragged away.

Sky finally quit screaming, the shrill cries turning into choked sobs as she struggled to breathe.

“That’s better. It’ll be alright,” Raven soothed her. “We’ll find someplace safe.”

At that moment, the dead man growled, rising up on his elbows. The sisters both gasped, too stunned to expel their breath as the man reached out toward them, snarling. Determined to reach them, he pushed himself forward, falling off the counter with a splat as what remained of his mangled intestines fell out.

Sky bent at the waist and vomited the Twinkies she’d had for breakfast.

A shuffling sound from around the corner spurred Raven into action before she could follow suit. She grabbed Sky’s arm and pulled her into the closest room.

“What are we doing?”

“Something’s moving out there,” Raven explained, shutting the door behind them. They were in a small room with cooking appliances and refrigerators. Pots and pans hung by hooks suspended from the ceiling. “This must be where they prepare the breakfast foods. There should be knives or something useful. Start searching, but do it quietly.”

They quickly rummaged through cabinets and drawers. Although she found food and drinks, Raven couldn’t find a single knife that wasn’t plastic.

“Dammit. What kind of kitchen doesn’t have a knife?”

“The kind that only cooks scrambled eggs and sausage patties,” Sky answered.    

The knob on the door leading out to the breakfast area of the lobby started jangling.

“Raven!”

Sky ran to her side and she quickly tucked her under her arm. With her necklace the only weapon she had, she pulled her sister toward the door they’d entered through.

“That other one’s out there. He was crawling toward us.”

“He was dragging himself,” Raven corrected her. “He doesn’t have any legs. I’d rather go against him than one who can walk, and for all we know there’s more than one outside that breakfast area door.”

Sky whimpered.

“I love you, Sky.” Raven kissed her younger sister’s head. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She grasped the doorknob and paused. “As soon as I open this door we’re going to run to the front exit. We’re right at the lobby entrance so we just go into the lobby and cut a right, then out through those doors. If the man at the counter has managed to drag himself this far we can probably jump right over him. Got it?”

Sky nodded. “Just don’t leave me.”

“You know I never would.”

“Not on purpose, but like Mom and Dad did.”

“Not even like that,” Raven managed to get out past the ball of anguish that had formed in her throat. “We’re going now, before anything gets in that other door. You ready?”

Sky nodded.

“Let’s go. Move fast.”

Raven twisted the knob, pulled the door open, and led her sister out. They successfully jumped over the desk attendant’s moving torso, rounded the corner, and came face to face with three zombies blocking the exit.

“Shit!” Raven grabbed Sky and whirled around, but the two zombies that had been trying to get through the kitchen door were approaching from that direction.

“Raven, what do we do?”

Raven barely made her sister’s words out, the little girl’s voice trembled so badly. She looked around and found a door to their right.

“We hide,” she answered as she pulled the door open, revealing a small closet. She shoved Sky in with the sweepers and mops, and jumped in behind her. She pulled the door to close them inside, but a zombie hand grabbed the edge and pulled it back.

“Shit!”

She pulled with all her strength but now three of them had grabbed the edge of the door and their combined strength outweighed hers. She had her sharpened cross and an assortment of mops and sweepers to work with.

“I can’t hold the door any longer, Sky. I need you to grab a mop and try to ram the wooden part through these things’ faces.”

“I can’t!” Tears streamed down Sky’s chubby cheeks. “It’s too scary. They’re too big.”

“I can’t fight five of them alone and I can’t hold this door. They’re going to get in.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it!”

Raven inhaled deeply. She couldn’t get mad at Sky. She was just a little girl and understandably scared out of her mind.

“OK, but I have to let this door go. I’ll fight them. You just run.”

“What? I can’t leave you.”

“You can and you will!” Raven regretted snapping, but now was not the time for babying her sister. They were both going to die if she didn’t act fast. She knew she couldn’t fight off all five zombies, but she could buy her sister time to escape. If one of them was to survive, she planned on it being Sky.

“Sorry I yelled, Sky, but I need you now. Grab that short sweeper right there, just in case you need it, and then you run. Stay low and you can run right past them. They’re slow so you keep on running.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll catch up.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.” She choked, barely managing to keep the sob from forming. “No matter what, Sky, I will always be with you.”

Sky hugged her waist quickly and Raven savored the moment before her little sister let go and grabbed the shortest sweeper, gripping the handle in both hands.

“You just run, Sky. Run as fast as you can out those doors and use that if you have to.”

“Where do I go once outside?”

“Just keep running.”

Sky chewed her bottom lip, then finally nodded. “I’m ready.”

“I love you, Sky. You can do this. Just run fast.”

Raven let go of the door and grabbed a mop, figuring it would deal more damage than her cross. Sky ran out just as she’d been instructed and the zombies, intent on Raven, let her pass. She impaled the closest one with the mop, gagging at the wet, crunching sound it made as it sank through the man’s forehead. Blood splattered onto her, but she didn’t have time to retch. She had to buy Sky time to escape.

A shrill scream cut through the noise of the zombies’ growls and Raven’s heart sank.

“Sky?”

No answer. Just screaming.

Raven kicked and punched, dodged and stabbed, trying to clear a path to her sister, but the zombies had seemed to multiply since they’d attempted to hide in the closet, and everything happened too fast.

Maura Seton sat outside the house, her car turned off so she didn’t attract the wildlife. That’s what she thought of them. The zombies. They were like wild carnivores on the prowl.

That’s what she’d find inside the house, if he was still there. Maybe he’d gotten out, or had been somewhere entirely else when the disease took him over and turned him into one of them. Maybe the military had gotten to him and ended him before he had a chance to turn.

She shouldn’t care about him at all, should have stopped long before she’d heard of the Z1219 outbreak, but how could she stop loving the man she’d envisioned her future with? The man who’d once made her feel like the most beautiful, most perfect woman in the world?