Read Tainted Reality (The Rememdium Series Book 2) Online

Authors: Ashley Fontainne

Tags: #thriller, #horror, #post apocalyptic, #zombies

Tainted Reality (The Rememdium Series Book 2) (25 page)

BOOK: Tainted Reality (The Rememdium Series Book 2)

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“Oh, my God! Get away!”

Forcing his sore body to move, Cooper stood, clinging to the bumper with one hand, using the cold metal as a safety measure. He gained steady footing and came around to Karla’s side of the SUV.

What he saw made his mind gridlock for a split second.

All three dead girls were on their feet, only steps away from his terrified wife. Karla clawed at the door handle, desperate to get away from the bloodied monsters heading her way.

“Open that fuckin’ door and get inside!” Cooper screamed.

The sound of his voice made the three women turn their attention on Cooper. They shifted direction and lumbered toward him, giving Karla a chance to open the door and slip into the passenger seat.

Cooper stopped, yanked his weapon from his back pocket, and blew the heads off of the already-dead three girls. After they each fell to the ground, he felt dizzy and sick at the same time.

This. Isn’t. Happening. No way. I’m dreaming.

“Cooper! Let’s go!” Karla yelled from inside the SUV.

The terrified plea from his wife brought Cooper back to reality. He spun around and slipped and slid across the pavement until he reached the driver’s door. Once inside, he shoved the gear into reverse, tromped on the gas, thankful for the snow tires and four-wheel drive, and left the bloody mess in the parking lot.

Karla cried softly in the passenger seat and muttered, “So much for our Christmas and anniversary.”

Cooper didn’t answer. He was too busy driving.

They made it out of the main part of town with only seconds to spare. When Cooper heard the roar of U.S. fighter jets in the crystal blue skies above, he looked up in time to see the wisps of smoke from missiles streak across the air. The impact from numerous bombs made the SUV shudder and shake as Steamboat Springs was obliterated.

By its own government. The thought made Cooper’s stomach churn again.

The snow had been thick and numerous times, Cooper nearly lost control of the vehicle after hitting patches of ice. By the time he and Karla arrived in the small town of Heeney almost twenty hours later, Cooper’s fingers were numb from his death grip on the steering wheel. Karla had been catatonic after attempting several times to use her cell phone with no luck then listening to the EBS blare over the radio. Thankfully, once they entered the mountain passes, the radio went silent.

What they heard before it went to static—and what they saw during their drive—terrified them both.

Now, Cooper stood in front of the SUV he’d rented four days ago, his mind on the brink of shutting down. The entire town of Heeney was dark except for the solitary streetlight at the edge of the gas station they’d stopped at to refuel and use the restrooms. Shifting his gaze, Cooper stared at the small storefront. “You should’ve waited for me to clear the place, Karla. You fuckin’ should’ve waited!”

Cooper took one final glance at his dead wife. The small bullet hole between her eyes and the explosion of red behind her head on the snow made tears run down his face. He didn’t know much about what sort of biological contagion the world was dealing with, but what he did know made his head spin.

During the drive, Karla seemed fine. Yet the minute they arrived at the gas station, all that changed. She got out and ran toward the building to pee. Cooper yelled at her to wait, but Karla was afraid she couldn’t hold it any longer. By the time he exited the SUV, Karla was at the front of the store. When she opened the glass doors, everything became blurred.

Four dead bodies lumbered out, groaning, moaning, lurching toward Karla. They moved fast and Karla didn’t have a chance to run far. One latched onto her leg and down she went.

Cooper had pulled his gun and fired. In the middle of the melee, he missed the head of the one on top of Karla, the bullet hitting the shoulder. Karla’s screams drove him to the brink of madness. The other three creatures closed the gap fast, so he popped them each in the head, dropping them in less than two seconds.

When he took aim at the one on Karla, he was successful the second time.

Unfortunately, he was too late. The creature had bitten a large chunk of flesh from Karla’s calf muscle.

He’d ran to her side, yanking off his jacket to use as a tourniquet. Cooper wrapped her leg and tried to calm Karla down. She’d been in a complete state of panic. He finally convinced Karla to stop screaming and picked her up off the ground. He made it to the passenger door, opened it, set his wife on the seat, and then she screamed again. “Cooper! Look out!”

He’d spun around and noticed another corpse rounding the back of the store. Cooper grabbed his weapon and fired, but nothing happened.

He was out of bullets.

“Shit!”

He’d secured Karla in the seat then shut the door. His hands shook while he fumbled around for the extra clip on the jacket pocket. The frigid air numbed his exposed fingers to the point they were nearly useless.

Cooper moved away from the SUV, hoping to draw the corpse away from Karla. It worked. Fresh clip inserted, Cooper fired and the body collapsed in a heap less than ten feet away.

He’d run back to check on Karla, and that’s when Cooper’s life changed.

His once beautiful wife was gone. Black, dead eyes stared back at him, the lovely, sweet lips that used to kiss him with passion, were pulled back into a snarl. She’d jumped out of the SUV and landed on top of him, growling, hissing, clawing at his face.

In the midst of overwhelming sorrow and shock, Cooper had no choice. His sobs were drowned out by the sound of gunfire as he blew a hole in his beloved wife’s head.

“Can’t do this now! Fall apart later!”

Cooper refused to dwell any longer on the carnage he’d created seconds before. To bring his focus back, he slammed his head into the metal doorjamb several times. The impacts weren’t hard enough to knock him out, yet enough to ring his bell and clear his thoughts. With each smack, he repeated, “Charlie and Charlene. Charlie and Charlene. Got to get home and make sure they’re safe.”

The idea to smack some survival sense back to the forefront of his thoughts, worked. He couldn’t stand outside, weeping and puking like a child, any longer. Though no longer young children, the twins were only twenty-two, and they needed their remaining parent to keep them safe.

“Yeah, like I did such a good job of keepin’ Karla alive,” Cooper muttered. With one last smack of his head, he dislodged the thoughts of his incompetency of being protector of his wife. “No, get it together and think, fool! Stand out here any longer and I’ll just attract more of those things. I’m the Chief of Malvern Police Department for God’s sakes! Act like a man and move your ass!”

Cooper needed more gas. He assumed a generator kept the pumps and lights on since every other place previously passed didn’t have any power. A click from the gas pump, signaling the tank was full, brought Cooper out of his funk. After putting the nozzle back, he paused.

“Think. Calm down and think. Stop lookin’ at what I just did and plan ahead!”

Knowing he had more than a thousand miles to go before making it back home to Arkansas—alone because he’d just shot and killed what used to be his lovely wife—Cooper trudged through the snow toward the door to the station. He reasoned if the power grid was down way up here in the mountains, it was probably down everywhere. Finding working gas stations along the way would probably be impossible, so Cooper decided to look for anything inside the store he could use to fill up with gas.

He welcomed the distraction—any distraction—to keep from going insane.

Cooper found four, empty gas containers inside on the shelves. After taking them outside, he returned to the store and grabbed several plastic bags from the counter. He filled them up with water bottles, protein bars, cans of soup, and some cereal boxes. He stowed them in the backseat then went about the task of filling the containers with gasoline.

Once the gas was put away, Cooper struggled to leave. The thought of leaving Karla’s body behind made him woozy. He couldn’t get past the feeling it was wrong to just leave her corpse in the snow, alone, without a proper burial. Charlie and Charlene would never forgive him.

He went back into the store and looked for anything he could use to dig a grave with, but came up with nothing. The only thing of use was a snow shovel, and it certainly wasn’t strong enough to tear up frozen ground with. He took it anyway.

Cooper stopped in front of Karla’s body, tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t grasp the fact he’d killed his wife.

“No, that wasn’t Karla. It was just her shell. Her soul’s gone to Heaven.”

Looking around once to ensure he was still alone, Cooper began scooping shovelfuls of snow on top of Karla’s stiff corpse. He was glad the tears flowed, blurring the image.

After he finished hiding the monstrosity that was once his wife, Cooper looked over at the others he’d shot. Though they weren’t human any longer, they once had been. Before they got sick from whatever the hell was in the air, they’d been loved by someone. Sons, fathers, uncles. It wasn’t right to leave them out in the open, either.

It took him almost twenty minutes to cover the bodies with fresh snow. Satisfied he’d done all he could, Cooper set the shovel down and said a silent prayer for all of them.

For the world.

For his children.

For himself.

Cooper climbed behind the wheel and cranked the engine over. Without looking back, he eased out onto the main road, numbed by the events of the last twenty-four plus hours. While driving, he wondered what fresh hell he’d run into in Denver, and all the other major cities he’d need to drive through to get home. On the drive from Steamboat, they hadn’t passed a single, live person.

“No matter. I’m goin’ to get my kids. Ain’t no one gonna stop me, either. No one and no thing. Don’t matter if I’m the last survivor. I’m goin’ home.”

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