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

by Mary, Kate L.

  “I’m also drafting a new law that will remove guns from inside the walls.”

  She arched her brows at that. “How? Don’t you think people will resist?”

  “Perhaps a little, and some will probably leave, but most will just grumble and go about their day. It’s for the greater good.” The smile that curled up Star’s lips was evil. “At least that’s how we’ll make it look.”

  “How?” she asked again.

  He waved his hand as if brushing the question off, but answered her anyway. “An altercation in the settlement and the death of a few innocent people. The usual stuff.”

  She had to admit, Star knew how to manipulate people.

  Axl

  The shooting happened on a Monday, right around the time that most people were getting off work, which also just so happened to be the day that most people showed up to get their food rations.

  Axl heard the commotion when he and Jim stepped out of the building they’d been working on, and his first thought was that there had been a breech. It had never happened before, but a part of him had been waiting for it, and when he heard the shouting the first thing he did was pull his gun.

  “Where’s it comin’ from?” he asked Jim.

  The other man didn’t bother pulling his own weapon, but instead took a long drag on his cigarette as he nodded down the street. “That way,” he said, smoke coming out with the words. “Toward downtown.”

  “Shit.” Axl wasn’t sure if he wanted to head that way or ignore it and head home. He’d been up at the crack of dawn and was bone tired, but a part of him knew he needed to find out what was happening.

  “Check it out?” Jim asked.

  “Yeah.”

  They headed that way in silence, Jim smoking while Axl gripped his gun tighter with each step he took. A heavy feeling had started in his gut that increased the closer they got. Whatever was happening, there was a lot of yelling going on.

  When they turned the corner they found a group of people gathered outside the food center, yelling and shoving one another. The first thing he thought of was Lila, wondering if she was working and if she was safe, but then he remembered that it was Monday and his concern was suddenly transferred to his wife and daughter. Vivian had saved enough credits to buy a stroller only the week before and since then she hadn’t stopped talking about how nice the basket would be when she went to pick up their rations.

  He was moving toward the group only a second later, and as if reading his mind, Jim was right there with him. The crowd got increasingly more violent as the minutes ticked by, and Axl knew it wouldn’t be long before the altercation got out of control.

  He’d just reached the crowd when the first punch was thrown. A man whose face was bright red and dotted with sweat went down, but the guy who’d hit him wasn’t satisfied and was on the man a second later.

  Fists flew after that, mixed with grunts and curses as the atmosphere grew more and more intense. Axl pushed his way through the crowd as best as he could, searching the faces he passed for anyone he recognized. Thankfully, though, they were all strangers.

  The crack of a gunshot cut through the violence and he ducked on instinct. Behind him Jim swore and Axl looked back to see the other man covering his head with his arms as if he had some magical power and could shield himself from a bullet.

  “Go, go!” Jim yelled, keeping his head low.

  Axl moved, shoving people out of the way so he could get to the building. Jim was right behind him, both men keeping as low as possible. Another shot rang out and someone screamed. Ice moved through Axl’s veins that felt out of place amidst the fiery anger surrounding him.

  They reached the edge of the crowd and he gave one final push, bursting through the throng and stumbling toward the front door of the food center. It was shut and when he grabbed the knob he found the door locked. He couldn’t see a single person through the window, and just as he was wondering if everyone inside had taken cover behind the counter, he spotted the stroller Vivian had worked so hard to save for.

  Two more gunshots, one right after the other, cut through the yelling at his back and he spun around. Jim had his gun out now, reminding Axl that he was armed. He raised his, but had no idea who was doing the shooting or who they were shooting at. People had begun to run and the chaos surrounding them was so wild that it took him a minute to see the blood splattered across the pavement.

  “Somebody’s been shot,” he called to Jim.

  Almost out of nowhere a group of guards showed up, Parvarti among them. Her expression was as calm as ever and she had her gun out and ready. Like Axl, she seemed to be looking for zombies. Only there weren’t any. Just men and women who had let their emotions get out of control.

  The door opened behind them. “Axl.”

  He spun around to find Vivian standing in the open doorway. Like him she was holding a gun in one hand, but clutched tightly in her other arm was Megan. The toddler was crying as his wife tried to bounce her up and down in an attempt to keep her calm. Behind her the men and women who worked in the food center peeked up from behind the counter, Lila included.

  Axl threw his arms around Vivian, more relieved than he ever thought possible that she was okay.

  “Thank God you’re alright,” he said against her neck.

  “What the hell happened?” Jim asked.

  Vivian pulled back so she could put her gun away. She shifted Megan into a tighter embrace and the toddler settled down a little.

  “There’s a flour shortage. People were upset.” She shrugged like it made no sense, which it didn’t.

  Axl swore under his breath, aware that he needed to learn to control his language in front of their daughter. “People got shot over flour?”

  “They just lost it,” Vivian said. “I was at the front of the line and I could hear people yelling. It got out of hand really fast.”

  “Shit,” Jim muttered. He pulled a cigarette out and stuck it between his lips as he turned to survey the damage.

  Two men were dead on the ground, both of them with bullets in their heads, while a third person, a woman, stared up at the blue sky with blank, lifeless eyes. Her shirt was painted red and the giant hole on the left side of her chest told them everything they needed to know. The fourth person was a kid who didn’t look older than ten. His head was in his mother’s lap as she sobbed over him. Just like the dead woman, his chest was covered in blood.

  A handful of people were lying facedown on the ground, their hands secured behind their backs with zip ties. The guards didn’t seem to know what to do and Axl got it. They weren’t supposed to be police. They were supposed to be security. They were supposed to be keeping the zombies out, not keeping the people inside the settlement from killing each other.

  He turned his back on the scene and eased Megan from Vivian’s arms, suddenly anxious to hold his daughter. She rested her little head on his shoulder and gripped his arms. Her heart was beating twice as fast as usual. This tragedy could have stolen the two people he loved most in the world and he hated that. Hated that most of the population dying hadn’t made the survivors any better than they’d been before. Hated that the zombies hadn’t sucked up all the evil for themselves.

  “Let’s go home,” he said to his wife.

  The announcement came only a day later in the form of a flyer on their front door. The Regulator, a self-important little prick whose smile was too wide for Axl’s taste, had put a new law up for a vote and the council had passed it with a unanimous decision. All citizens who wanted to stay in the settlement were required to turn in their guns. If a person had a permit to go outside the walls they could check the weapons out, but while inside it was knives only. Of course, Axl couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before the Regulator relieved them of those.

  He stared at the flyer in disbelief. He’d been on the way to work when he’d found it and it had frozen him in place. Since they’d registered their weapons when they first arrived, the note specifically mention
ed the four guns he and Vivian had in their possession. There were zombies right on the other side of the wall and this joke of a government wanted them to turn their guns over like it was nothing. He couldn’t imagine doing it.

  A door down the hall opened and Jim stepped out.

  “You see this?” Axl asked, waving the flyer.

  Jim was shaking his head when he ripped a flyer off his own door. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah.”

  Axl wanted to crumple it into a ball and throw it away, but he folded the flyer in half instead and shoved it in his pocket. Vivian was still asleep and he didn’t want to wake her just to tell her about this bullshit, but he knew she’d find out from someone else while he was at work. Lila probably.

  He and Jim headed out, each of them so lost in their own thoughts that they didn’t talk until they’d reached the little section of shacks that had sprung up in the absence of suitable housing.

  “We can leave,” Jim said. He took a long drag off his cigarette, watching Axl out of the corner of his eye.

  “We do that and we can’t come back.”

  The new rules about leaving the city were strict. Too many people had gotten themselves bitten recently and the government wanted to reduce the risk of an infected person getting through the gates. Although after this new law, Axl found himself wondering if it was less about protecting the citizens and more about grabbing power.

  “Maybe that’s better,” Jim said. “We can always go back to Colorado. Start over there.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “maybe.”

  But he knew that wouldn’t happen. They’d lost too many people on the way here and Vivian would never want to make that trip. She wouldn’t put Megan in danger and neither would he.

  They passed a statue that had popped up out of nowhere only last week, but Axl barely noticed it. He was too busy thinking about what to do. The idea of giving up his gun made him sick, but he couldn’t see a way around it.

  A whole mess of people chose their guns over the safety of the walls and the population dropped after that, but just like he’d thought, Axl and the group hung on. Not that he was totally happy about it. Not having a gun in the house made him itch. He had to find a way to get his hands on a gun.

  The answer to his problem came accidentally only a few days after they’d handed their guns over to the government. Mike popped up out of nowhere, going first to Joshua’s in search of a connection inside the CDC. The black market in New Atlanta was thriving, and he just so happened to be the number one guy to go to when you needed something you couldn’t get your hands on. Which gave Axl an idea.

  The need for a black market had started with people wanting to get things from the outside without having to risk their necks, but as the rules in the settlement had tightened, it had grown into something more. When they’d come in through the front gate two years earlier, it hadn’t been a one-way trip. Back then the gate had been both an entrance and an exit to the city. But all that changed with Star’s declaration that people were no longer allowed to leave the city whenever they wanted. People now had to have permits to scavenge, and they weren’t always easy to obtain either. So men and women like Mike had become the in between, the ones who made connections with runners and stocked up on items that weren’t easy to come by. Which was why he needed Joshua’s help, so he could get his hands on the vaccines and antibiotics the CDC had locked away inside its walls.

  When Joshua went to the Mike’s apartment to hammer out the details, he took Axl with him. The other man eyed him suspiciously when he walked through the door Joshua’s side.

  “Who’s this?” Mike asked.

  He was probably around thirty and had an edge about him that for some reason made Axl think he was ex-military, and he didn’t look happy that Joshua had let someone tag along.

  “No worries. He’s good.” The doc waved at him dismissively.

  Axl studied the apartment as Mike gave them his spiel. The place was lined with boxes that were stuffed full of random items ranging from booze to batteries to bags of chips. He wasn’t sure if Joshua could get his hands on the stuff this guy needed, but he knew that if he was going to get a gun, this was the guy who would be able to do it for him.

  “Can you get it?” Axl asked Joshua.

  The other man shrugged and nodded at the same time. “Sure. There’s no reason I can’t. If I want to, that is.”

  “I can make it worth your while,” Mike said, which was exactly what Axl wanted to hear.

  “How’s that?” Axl asked.

  The other man frowned. “Are you a doctor too?” The expression on his face said he thought the idea was ridiculous.

  “No.” Axl was focused on Joshua when he answered. He had no doubt that this guy thought he was too dumb sounding to be a doctor, but he didn’t give a shit. What he cared about was having a way to protect his wife and daughter.

  Joshua, who seemed to be reading his mind, stared the guy down. “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “A trade, man,” Mike said, acting as if it should be obvious. “Whatever you need.”

  “Anything?” Joshua asked.

  “Guns?” Axl elaborated.

  Mike’s mouth twitched but his expression didn’t give anything away, so Axl was unprepared for how casually the answer sounded when it came out of his mouth. “Sure.”

  Axl smiled, and in that moment a relationship was born.

  Dr. Helton

  Test Subject 02 was fading faster than Dr. Helton thought she would. She could barely get out of bed anymore and she couldn’t keep anything down, food or water. The girl had been hooked up to an IV for over a week, but she was wasting away right before the doctor’s eyes. The virus hadn’t turned her, but it seemed to be slowly decaying her body anyway, making her look more like a living corpse than some of the zombies they had in the other cells.

  She smelled like death, too. That was the first thing Dr. Helton noticed when she entered the girl’s room. The second thing was that her eyes had taken on a milky shade that was eerily similar to the zombies.

  The girl looked up and blinked like she was trying to clear her vision. “Please,” she said in a raspy voice. “Let me die.”

  Dr. Helton nodded. “We will.”

  The girl shut her eyes like keeping them open was too much work, and the doctor let out a sigh. Part of her wanted to inject the girl one final time just to see if she would eventually turn, but she knew it wouldn’t work and she didn’t want to waste the virus on a lost cause.

  Instead, she nodded to the nurse who had followed her into the room. It wasn’t Helen anymore, although the doctor still had plans for her, but a younger much more eager woman. One who had been on the road for months, who had escaped from a casino in Vegas where she’d endured atrocities that made her want to never leave the safety of the CDC ever again.

  The nurse knelt at the girl’s side just as Dr. Helton whispered, “Rest in peace, Test Subject 02.”

  The girl opened her eyes when the needle slipped into her vein. “Anna. My name is Anna.”

  It was the first time Dr. Helton realized that she had never bothered to ask the girl’s name.

  “Sleep, Anna,” the doctor said, her voice taking on a softer tone.

  When the nurse pushed down on the plunger, the lethal dose of morphine flooded Anna’s veins. The girl let out a deep breath and allowed her eyes to close one final time.

  Dr. Helton left the cell and headed down the hall, stopping outside Test Subject 01’s cell. James had just come back from an MRI and was still out. He’d been nothing but cooperative over the last year, mostly due to the threat Dr. Helton herself had delivered, but he’d been so violent in those early days that they took extra precautions when he needed to be taken out of his cell for tests. Like they had today.

  She and Star hadn’t discussed her idea of breeding James since that day in his office, but Dr. Helton had been unable to think of a better solution. The odds that they’d find someone with this lev
el of immunity were slim, and the disappointment that Test Subject 02 had turned out to be was something Dr. Helton didn’t want to repeat. She knew that Star was still considering bringing the brother in, but Dr. Helton was afraid it would set off a chain of events that they wouldn’t be able to control. The Church was growing faster than they’d expected it to, and they held the James family in high esteem. Plus, if they brought the brother in, James might become much more difficult to control. He’d been cooperative thus far because she had assured him that his family was safe, but all of that would change if they went back on their deal. Dr. Helton was certain of it.

  In her opinion, breeding James was the best option available to them. It would help them accomplish multiple goals, such as giving them a test subject who would stand a better chance of carrying the same immunities, as well as keep Axl safely where he was until they needed him for sure. It also had the potential for never-ending subjects if it was successful. They could breed James over and over again if need be, using multiple women to carry his offspring. The potential was endless.

  But Star hadn’t warmed to the idea, and despite Dr. Helton’s request that he bring in a woman for them to inseminate, nothing had happened. She didn’t understand why he was dragging his feet on this. Yes, it would take a few years for the child to grow strong enough for them to use it for their experiments, but the sooner they impregnated a woman the closer they would be to their ultimate goal. Now was their chance, and in Dr. Helton’s opinion, waiting was foolish.

  She watched James through the glass as she thought it all through, an idea forming in her head that was a bit out there, even for her, but plausible.

  She could do it herself.

  When she’d first had the idea of breeding Test Subject 01 it had never occurred to her that she could offer up her own body, but now it seemed like the obvious solution. Dr. Helton was healthy and young enough still, having just turned thirty-four last month, and there was no reason why she couldn’t be the one to do this. It was for science, after all, and she’d be following in the footsteps of great scientists like Jonas Salk and Elizabeth Fleischman Ascheim. Dr. Helton could do this. This was nothing compared to injecting yourself with experimental drugs. This was just sex.