Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella

by Mary, Kate L.

  It wasn’t a question, and it made Vivian’s back stiffen. Did this woman have some kind of crush on Axl? Had she just let a stalker into her home?

  She shifted as she glanced at the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Megan was asleep and there was no way this woman could get to the baby without passing Vivian first, and she took comfort in the fact that she had a knife hidden under the cushion of the very chair she was sitting in. Old habits died hard, and even though the wall surrounding New Atlanta seemed secure, Vivian and Axl had taken measures to ensure that weapons would never be far from their grasp—something that would have to change once Megan started walking.

  “How do you know my husband?” Vivian asked instead of pulling the knife.

  “Oh, I don’t.” The woman turned her pale eyes on Vivian and in the dim light of the room her lashes were totally undetectable. “Let me explain. My name is Ruth Ann Gillespie. My daughter and I traveled here from Florida when we heard about the safe zone. She’s five. It took weeks, but I was determined to keep her safe. I did a good job, too, at least until we reached the wall. We couldn’t find the entrance—”

  Ruth Ann paused as if the memory was hard to talk about and Vivian recounted her own arrival. How they’d been met with the same reality: they’d reached the wall but were unable to find a way in. How they’d been so close, and yet so far at the same time. That’s when disaster had struck, when the zombies had surrounded them and Angus had put his own safety on the line to save everyone else. It was why he was no longer with them.

  Ruth Ann let out a deep breath before going on. “The city was full of zombies. I tried to climb the wall, but I couldn’t do it and before I knew it we were cornered.” The woman’s icy eyes shimmered, reminding Vivian of the sun reflecting on a frozen pond. “I tried to put myself between the dead and my daughter, but one of them got her and pulled her out from behind me. Before I could do anything she was bitten.”

  Vivian gasped, thinking about holding Megan close to her body when they’d reached the wall. She’d only been a few days old then and she might have been killed—along with the rest of them—if it hadn’t been for Angus, but this woman had had no one to help her.

  “I’m so sorry,” Vivian said, putting her hand on Ruth Ann’s arm in the hopes that it would comfort her. “I can’t even begin to imagine how you feel.”

  The woman smiled and the icy tint of her eyes seemed to sink into Vivian, chilling her to the bone.

  “I feel amazing and it’s all thanks to your husband’s brother. Angus James saved my daughter’s life.”

  Vivian’s hand slipped off the woman’s arm and she had the urge to shrink away form her.

  Angus was dead, so it took Vivian a moment to realize that Ruth Ann was talking about the vaccine. Joshua had told them that the very first person to receive it had been a young girl who’d been bitten on the way into the city.

  “Your daughter was the first person to receive the vaccine,” she said as understanding dawned on her. Maybe this woman wasn’t as crazy as she’d originally seemed.

  “Yes!” Ruth Ann’s exclamation echoed through the silent apartment and Vivian found herself holding her breath, waiting to find out if Megan would wake and start crying. She didn’t, but Ruth Ann wasn’t done either. “Angus’s blood saved my daughter and I was so grateful that I found myself thinking about him more and more, and this feeling just came over me. It was like he was there, watching over us. Smiling down on us. I could sense him in the halls of the CDC, and before long I found myself talking to him. At night before I went to bed, I would whisper my thanks, but it took me a few weeks to realize that I was praying to him.”

  “Praying?” Vivian whispered. “To Angus?”

  “Yes.” Ruth Ann stood and Vivian had to lean back so she could look into the woman’s eyes. “And he responded. Not out loud, but in my head. I could hear him talking, whispering the truth in my ear. He was chosen by God to save us. He was given the gift of immunity so that He could save the human race, and my daughter was chosen as the first person to receive the vaccine so I could spread the truth. That Angus will one day come back and save us again. He’ll deliver us from the zombies and bring about a new paradise on Earth.”

  Vivian’s mouth hung open. She couldn’t think of a response because it was all too insane. This woman was insane. Vivian had known Angus well, and even though he’d come around in the end and done some good, most of the time he’d been a racist hothead who had only cared about himself. If anyone was going to be chosen by God to save the world, it sure as hell wasn’t going to Angus James.

  She got to her feet. “I think you should leave.”

  Ruth Ann blinked when her eyes focused on Vivian. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not comfortable with this and I want you to leave.”

  “But I’m here to tell Axl that his brother will come back. Angus sent me. He wants Axl to be part of this and help lead everyone in the settlement to the truth.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” Vivian moved past the woman so she could open the door. “Leave. Now.”

  Ruth didn’t move at first and Vivian started to worry that there was going to be a confrontation. After a moment the woman finally headed for the door and when Ruth passed her, Vivian felt herself tense as if she was preparing for an attack—either verbally or physically, she wasn’t sure—but the other woman stepped out without another word.

  Once she was in the hall, Ruth turned and said, “I know you’ll come around.”

  Vivian shut the door in her face. “Not likely.”

  For a moment she just stood in the living room, dumbfounded by what had just happened. It was nuts to think that anyone would pray to Angus though, and after a few seconds she found herself laughing. She laughed so hard that her body shook from it and tears filled her eyes. They spilled over and ran down her cheeks. It was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard, and the more she thought about it, the crazier it seemed. She imagined people all over the settlement praying to Angus. Going to church on Sunday the way they used to so they could sit in pews and sing about the glory that had been Angus James.

  That would be the day.

  Dr. Helton

  “We found her,” Star said when Dr. Helton stepped into his office, stopping her in her tracks.

  “Who?” she asked.

  As usual, he was behind his desk. He rarely got up from it and Dr. Helton suspected it had something to do with his stature. A habit leftover from long ago, perhaps, because these days it didn’t matter how vertically challenged he was, Garrett Star was a giant among men.

  “The girl we’ve been looking for. The one in Key West.” Star huffed and shook his head. “She’s alluded us for nearly a year. It’s about time they found her.”

  The girl was a seventeen-year-old kid who had turned up only a few weeks before they’d learned of Angus James’s existence, and the first person they’d discovered who was immune to a zombie bite. Right away they’d assembled a team in hopes of extracting her, but before they’d even had a chance to leave she’d been killed, or so the group down there had claimed. Rumors that the teen was on the run had persisted, though, so Star had sent a special team down to Florida in hopes of finding her. They’d been gone for nearly ten months.

  “They’re bringing her back?” Dr. Helton asked.

  Already she was thinking about which cells were open in the observation wing and where they would put the girl, as well as which strain to start her on after their initial tests. The girl was the only other person they’d been able to get their hands on since finding Angus James, and it would be nice to have more than one subject. It would also expand their research and help them gain a better understanding of what they needed to do to attain the results they were looking for.

  “Should be here this evening. Phillips radioed when they reached Charleston.” Star let out a deep breath and something that almost resembled a smile followed. “We’re getting closer, Jane. I can feel it.”

 
Charleston was only three hundred miles away.

  “I should get things ready for her arrival,” Dr. Helton said.

  Star waved her off. “Yes. Do that.”

  She was in the observation wing when the new test subject arrived. The girl was much smaller than Dr. Helton expected and she didn’t put up much of a fight when Phillips and the two other members of the team dragged her through the door. Perhaps the teen had had most of the fight beaten out of her on the way here, though. She did look worse for wear, like she hadn’t showered in months and had missed more than a few meals. She also had a gash on the side of her head and a black eye. The doctor had no qualms about getting rough with a prisoner if need be, but she wasn’t happy by how undernourished the girl looked.

  “Where do you want her?” Phillips asked.

  The woman was several inches shorter than Dr. Helton and rail thin, but she had a chip on her shoulder that made her seem twice as big. Like the prisoner, Phillips looked as if she’d been dragged through the ringer. Her clothes were torn and dirty and she had a cut on her cheek as well as cuts on the knuckles of her right hand, no doubt they went hand in hand with the bruise coloring the test subject’s eye.

  “Last cell,” the doctor said, waving for them to follow her.

  The girl’s eyes widened as they moved down the hall. They passed Angus, who was watching through his window, and then other prisoners who were all in various forms of decay. The dead banged their hands and heads against the windows as the group passed, leaving streaks of black blood behind. Some of the windows were so smeared with the stuff that it was hard to get a look at the creature inside the room. At the moment, every cell on the hall was full but one. The results of the last round of tests would be disposed of soon, though, and replaced with new, healthy subjects. When that happened, their rooms would have to be scrubbed down with bleach to remove the blood, urine, and feces left behind. Most of the subjects relieved their bowels when they died.

  Dr. Helton stopped in front of the keypad and the girl began to cry. Phillips shook the teen roughly and growled at her to shut her damn mouth, but the doctor didn’t even blink. Neither emotional outburst bugged her.

  When the door was pulled open, Phillips dragged the girl inside and Dr. Helton followed. The woman who’d been tasked with bringing the teen to the CDC shoved her onto the bed and glared as if daring the girl to get up.

  “Now then,” Dr. Helton said as she looked down at her clipboard. “I need you to answer a few questions for me.”

  The girl blinked, which the doctor took as consent and went on.

  “Age?”

  “Seventeen—” She swallowed. “Maybe eighteen. I’m not sure what the date is.”

  “Either way.” The doctor scribbled the information down. “Are you ill in any way? Any pre-existing illnesses?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Last period?”

  “I’m not pregnant,” she muttered, and then looked down at her hands. “I haven’t had sex since Vince died.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. Having a regular menstrual cycle is an indication that you aren’t undernourished. When was your last period?”

  The girl shrugged. “A couple weeks, I guess. It’s hard to keep track.”

  The fact that she was still having them said something. She looked thin, but it was entirely possible that she’d been a slender person to begin with.

  “Good,” Dr. Helton said as she jotted the information down. “We’ll need to draw some blood and get you cleaned up, but in the meantime I want to see the bite locations.”

  The girl’s eyes shimmered as she looked back and forth between the doctor and Phillips. Dr. Helton waited patiently, unbothered by the hesitation—it wasn’t like she didn’t expect it—but Phillips was having none of it.

  “Shit,” she muttered and shoved the girl down, who struggled against the woman’s grip to no avail.

  The rip of fabric was loud, but the girl’s clothes were so tattered that the doctor doubted it had taken much effort to tear the shirt off.

  Phillips tossed it aside and snapped, “The sooner we get this over with the sooner I can get a hot shower.”

  The girl wasn’t wearing a bra and she tried to cross her arms as Phillips pulled at her pants, ripping them away in much the same way as she had the shirt. The girl’s face was crimson, but it didn’t matter. No one was interested in her breasts. It was the crescent shaped scars on her body that had Dr. Helton moving closer.

  “So many,” she whispered, enthralled as she looked them over.

  She counted five in all, three on the girl’s right arm and two on her left. Angus James had endured more, but it was still fascinating to see the deep scars the zombies’ teeth had left behind, especially knowing that most people would have died from just a tiny scratch.

  Dr. Helton slipped her pen into the pocket on her lab coat and nodded. “Wonderful.” She focused on the girl. “You have a bathroom stocked with clean clothes and a shower with an unlimited supply of hot water. I suggest you use the next hour to get yourself cleaned up.” She eyed the girl’s hair and made a mental note to have someone shave her head. She was probably crawling with bugs. “Dinner will be delivered shortly and when I come back we’ll begin our tests.”

  The girl blinked up at her. “That’s it?”

  “Yes.” Dr. Helton nodded. “Don’t worry. We’re going to take good care of you.”

  The girl let out a deep sigh of relief and Dr. Helton smiled. This child had no idea what was in store for her.

  Over the next few weeks the teen learned exactly what was expected of her. Dr. Helton wanted to be able to compare her body’s reaction to James’s, so after the initial blood draw, the girl was injected with an older strain of the virus. It was a particularly nasty one that had her screaming in agony within ten minutes, but the effects didn’t wear off as fast as they had with James. He’d been back to his normal, sullen self within two hours, but the teenager screamed for nearly five.

  Her body didn’t recover as quickly either, much to Dr. Helton’s dismay, and it only took two weeks to realize that the immunities in her blood were nowhere near as powerful as the ones James’s blood carried. Within a month her overall health had begun to deteriorate. Her hair, which had barely begun to grow back after being shaved, fell out and she had a difficult time even getting out of bed. Her skin took on a yellow tint that told them her liver was failing, and her lips were dry and cracked despite the fluids they pumped into her body through IVs.

  “She isn’t going to make it,” the doctor told Star during their weekly strategy meeting. “I give her another week, perhaps less.”

  Star exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Finding her felt so promising.”

  “I know, but she isn’t strong enough. All her initial tests came back clean, so there doesn’t seem to be any underlying medical issue. I just don’t think she has the same level of immunity James has.”

  “What about his brother’s blood?” Star asked. “How has the sample we took compared?”

  “The same.” Dr. Helton sighed. “Axl James seems to carry the same antibodies as his brother.”

  “What about bringing him in?”

  She had known before she came into the room that Star would suggest bringing Axl in, and she was ready with her response. “I’ve given it a lot of thought and I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Star sat back and crossed his arms, waiting for her to explain herself. “For one, I think we need to keep him where he is just in case Test Subject 01 does begin to deteriorate. If we bring the brother in and lose them both we have nothing, but if Test Subject 01 dies and Axl is still free, we have a backup.”

  Star nodded. “What else?”

  “The family is too invested and I think it would draw suspicion. If it wasn’t for The Church—” She curled her upper lip in disgust. “—we might be okay, but they’re gaining footing in the settlement and they hold the James family in high esteem.”

  “Th
ey’re a bunch of fools, but you’re right. They have influence that I never expected.”

  Dr. Helton cleared her throat, preparing to bring up a plan that had come to her suddenly a couple nights ago. It was a bit out there, but it could work, and if it did it would put them way ahead of the game.

  “I have another idea.”

  Star arched his brows at her. “Go on.”

  “We should breed James.” The startled look that crossed his face almost made her take it back, but she rushed ahead before she could talk herself out of the idea. “I know it sounds extreme, but this way we have a much greater chance of getting a test subject as resilient as he is. One who would have the same immunities and survive longer.”

  “How would we go about doing this?” Star asked.

  “We find a healthy host and inseminate her. It gives us all the control.”

  Star inhaled slowly, never once taking his eyes off her, and when he exhaled she almost cringed. “I’ll give it some thought, but I’m not convinced it’s a good idea. There are too many things that could go wrong.”

  There were too many things that could go wrong with everything they had done and planned to do, but that had never stopped them before. Not that Dr. Helton said this out loud.

  Star uncrossed his arms and sat forward, indicating that the discussion was finished. “In the meantime, I’m moving forward with the prison settlement.”

  “In DC?” she asked, knowing that it was useless to argue with Star.

  “Yes. I want to have people ready when we finally do find the answer we’re looking for, and this is the perfect solution. It gives the illusion of law and order while preserving a group of people that will soon be useful to us.”

  “Makes sense.” Dr. Helton honestly couldn’t have cared less about DC or anything else outside the walls of the CDC, but she gave Star the credit he was looking for. She rarely left the building she was now sitting in, and if he hadn’t kept her informed on what was happening in the settlement, she would be totally in the dark.