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

by Mary, Kate L.

  Parvarti.

  He remembered the day they’d picked her up on the side of the road, back before they’d learned that zombies weren’t just a thing of nightmares but a part of their new reality. She’d been quiet and timid back then, and had seemed younger than her nineteen years. Traveling with Trey, she had clung to the big guy for support. His death had changed her, made her seem hard and closed-off, but after two years of living together, Joshua knew there was much more to her than she let on.

  They’d started living together out of necessity, but it had never been awkward or uncomfortable the way people might have thought. She was easy to talk to, quick to listen, and understanding, and it hadn’t taken long for him to realize that he actually looked forward to seeing her at the end of the night, to sitting in the living room with her and just talking about his day. To just being near her.

  It had taken him longer, however, to realize that he was in love with her.

  She felt it too, of that Joshua was certain, but for some reason he’d been hesitant to broach the subject. Maybe because he was unsure of how it would change things, or maybe because there was a part of him that was still that insecure kid who felt certain love wasn’t in the cards for him. Or maybe it was because he was afraid that it would be Anne all over again.

  He had begged Anne to leave Colorado with him even though by that point he’d known that she didn’t love him the way he loved her. She had started to pull away, started to complain that he was too clingy. He had tried his best to give her space, but nothing he did had made her happy. Still, when he’d decided to head to Atlanta with Axl and Vivian, he’d held onto the hope that Anne would go with him. That if they just left Colorado they could start over and forget the heartbreak and pain of all those weeks on the road.

  She had refused, though, and the heartbreak had followed him to Atlanta.

  But after two years of being unhappy, Joshua was tired of play-acting. Tired of going home every night to a woman he loved and pretending he didn’t. Tired of playing it safe and being afraid that she would turn him down just like Anne had, especially when he knew with almost certainty that she wouldn’t. He could see it in her eyes. Could tell when she looked at him that she saw something other than an awkward man who towered over everyone. Knew that she was thinking the same thing, wanting love but fearing it would rip her in two once again.

  That night when she got home, Joshua was standing in the middle of the living room while his heart pounded erratically and fanged butterflies gnawed on his stomach. She walked in and took off her weapon belt, just like she did every day, then pulled the bandana off her head. Her hair, long and dark and silky, fell around her shoulders just as she turned to face him, and the smile she threw his way lit up her brown eyes. That was how he knew. That look, that smile, was reserved only for him.

  “What are—” she began, but he cut her off by saying the words he’d been holding in for weeks, “I love you.”

  Parv’s eyes grew wide and her lips formed an O that should have terrified him, but instead made his heart swell and ache in an uncomfortably pleasant way. He waited, holding his breath as the silence dragged on and on until he thought he would go mad, but not once did he doubt that she felt the same way. Not once did he think that she was going to reject him.

  “I know,” she said, mimicking the words Princess Leia had said to Han Solo, probably without even realizing it.

  Then she smiled and crossed the room to him and all the heartbreak and pain of the past three years melted away. She was so short compared to him that she had to stand on the very tips of her toes, and even then he had to lean down when he took her face in his hands. They just stared at each other for a moment, locked in the other’s gaze as if each of them wanted to capture this moment so they could hold onto the feeling for the rest of their lives, and when their lips finally touched, Joshua knew he was home.

  They made love. The saying had always felt cheesy and awkward to him before, but when he kissed and touched the woman who had stolen his heart, the term was the only thing that could do the moment justice. Every inch of her was perfection, from her skin, so dark and flawless compared to his, to the softness of her lips. Her gasps flooded his senses and the feel of her nails digging into his back was perfectly painful. To him Parvarti was like a dream come true after all the horror he had witnessed, and having her there, in his arms, was a reality he was more than happy to wake up to every day for the rest of his life.

  The next day they walked hand in hand down the street of new Atlanta to a little shop that sold jewelry liberated from the dead. There they bought matching rings, silver bands that were thin and etched with vines. Joshua would have bought her the biggest diamond in the world, but he’d known even before he asked that she wouldn’t want it, and he understood. Before the virus, showy things like diamonds had been important, but not anymore. Now time was the biggest commodity around, because it was so short, so special and fleeting and unpredictable.

  “You have a ring,” Dr. Helton said the next day, pausing halfway to the microscope when she noticed the ring on Joshua’s finger.

  “I got married,” he said simply.

  It had only been two days since he’d confessed his feelings to Parv, and the newness of it hadn’t worn off. He couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t believe his luck that he had finally found someone who could fill all the cracks in his life so perfectly.

  The doctor stared at the ring, still hunched over like she was frozen in place. Joshua squirmed uncomfortably, unsure of what she was thinking or what to say. She’d been different over the last few months, still quiet but less hard, but he’d attributed that to the baby she’d lost. It had seemed unreal that one of the doctors who had been responsible for creating the miracle antibiotic in the first place hadn’t been able to save her own child, but it had happened. One day she’d been pregnant, waddling through the labs the way only an expectant mother could, and then she wasn’t.

  When she hadn’t come to the lab that day, Joshua had assumed she was in labor, and the idea of this cold woman being a mother had bugged him more than it should have. It just hadn’t seemed right. Had felt unnatural. The following day when he’d learned that the child had died shortly after birth, he’d felt horrible for even having those thoughts. No one, not even a stoic woman like Dr. Helton, deserved to lose their baby.

  Since then she’d been more reserved, but also softer at the same time. It was a hard thing to explain and probably something very few people noticed, but something Joshua was very aware of. Like now, how she was able to maintain her cold exterior while looking so intently at his ring. How her eyes studied it as if envious of its existence while she remained emotionless and detached. Joshua assumed it went deeper than the baby, though. Perhaps she was in love with the father, whoever that was, but couldn’t be with him for some reason. Maybe he was married. Maybe it was Star. Although the idea that anyone could love that man was unnerving.

  Dr. Helton exhaled and tore her gaze away from Joshua’s ring, returning her focus to the microscope. “Congratulations,” she said in a cool tone.

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  For the past two years Joshua had worked in the CDC and he’d never seen a single thing to indicate that Angus—or anyone else for that matter—was being held against their will, but he was glad he’d made the switch. The work was challenging, and studying the virus and how it had mutated was interesting. It was complex, clearly manmade, yet so simple in its ability to kill. He knew he wasn’t aware of all the inner workings of the CDC, but he wasn’t sure if it mattered. Places like this always had secrets, but that didn’t mean they were necessarily bad. It didn’t mean that Star, although creepy, was evil or out to destroy the world.

  “How well did you know Angus James?” Dr. Helton asked out of nowhere, startling Joshua from his thoughts.

  He watched her for a few seconds, trying to figure out where the question had come from, but she was still peering into the microscope as if sh
e hadn’t said a thing.

  “About as well as anyone could know him, I guess,” Joshua finally said.

  She looked up then and the surprise written on her face shocked him. For two years they’d worked side by side and he’d gotten so used to the total lack of emotion she showed at every turn that he had begun to think of her as incapable of feeling. Even after her baby died she seemed like a rock, albeit a slightly softer stone than she’d been before.

  “Why is that?” she said after a moment.

  “I’m not really sure Angus knew himself, not really, which made it pretty impossible to get to know him. He was a hothead, but he had his moments. When the virus first hit we went to California to get Vivian’s daughter, Emily, who had only been four. Angus liked her. That was the first time I saw a softer side of him, but not the last.”

  Something that might have resembled pain crossed the doctor’s face and Joshua found himself wondering if she hadn’t been more affected by the death of her baby than she’d let on. “So he liked children.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. “He did.”

  “What else? What else brought that side out in him?”

  The questions had begun to get uncomfortable, but mainly because it brought to mind the reason Joshua had started working in the CDC to begin with: to get more information about what had happened to Angus and if he could still be alive. He’d dismissed the idea more than a year ago, thinking that it would be impossible for them to keep something so big a secret. Someone surely would have slipped up by now and spilled the beans if Angus was being held against his will. Or at least that’s what he’d thought. Now though, with Dr. Helton asking so many questions about what Angus had been like, Joshua found himself wondering if he shouldn’t start digging around just a little bit more. Not physically, because if they were hiding Angus that could get him killed, but maybe probing the doctor while she was in such a talkative mood would get him somewhere. Anything was possible.

  “That side of Angus came out at strange times, but it was there. The only person he consistently cared about was Axl, but even that came across as violent at times. I just don’t think he knew how to love another person.”

  She nodded a few times, almost as if she were thinking it through, and then she said, “So he loved his brother more than anyone else.”

  “More than he loved himself.”

  She looked away before saying, “How is his brother doing?”

  Joshua kept his gaze on the doctor, taking in every inch of her to be sure he didn’t miss a thing. “Good. He and Vivian are expecting their first child.”

  He saw it when she flinched, but the expression on her face told him it wasn’t a surprise, which didn’t make any sense. No one outside the family had been told about Vivian’s pregnancy yet. Working as a midwife, she had seen more than her fair share of the heartache associated with pregnancy and childbirth, and it didn’t always come after the baby was born. Sometimes women miscarried, more frequently these days than ever before, and she’d wanted to keep the pregnancy quiet until she was further along. But somehow, against all odds, Dr. Helton had known.

  Even more confusing was the fact that it seemed to hurt her to think about the child being born. The expression on her face was so raw that it couldn’t be anything but pain she was feeling. Was it pain for the baby and if so, why? Why would she think that the birth of an innocent baby would be painful unless there was something else going on? Something that had to do with the CDC. Something that meant Dr. Helton knew about a pregnancy before it had even been announced to the general population.

  What could it be? Joshua wracked his brain as he and Dr. Helton went back to studying slides. She was quiet, even more so than usual, and he could tell that she was thinking. About what he had told her concerning Angus or about the baby, he didn’t know, but he had the sense that the two were somehow connected.

  Then it hit him. They were connected by blood. The baby Vivian was carrying was biologically related to Angus James, who had been immune and had come here to be studied by the CDC. But that didn’t mean anything, did it? Axl was also related to Angus, but he wasn’t immune. They’d all been tested when they first arrived and he hadn’t been. But what if he was? What if the CDC had lied and let him go about his life unaware of the fact that he carried the same immunities that his brother did? What if they were keeping tabs on him to make sure he didn’t go anywhere or endanger his life? It seemed crazy, but it would explain how Dr. Helton knew that Vivian was pregnant.

  There was only one way to know for sure. He needed to test Axl’s blood.

  Axl

  Axl had just stepped out of his apartment when he heard someone whisper his name. He stopped in the middle of the hall and looked around, trying to figure out where it had come from. The third floor was quiet and dark, just like it usually was at six o’clock in the morning. Not many people found themselves up this time of day.

  Something shifted in the darkness and Axl moved his hand to his hip only to realize there was nothing there. He hadn’t had a gun in over a year and he knew there were no zombies lurking in the shadows anymore, but old habits died hard. Especially when those habits were what kept a person alive.

  He dropped his hand to his side and tried to relax as he took a step forward, but his heart was already beating faster. The shadows moved again and the long figure that appeared left no doubt in Axl’s mind who it was. In his whole life he’d never met anyone as tall as Joshua.

  “Shit, doc,” Axl said, “you nearly scared the piss outta me.”

  “Sorry, I just wanted to catch you alone.” Joshua looked around like he thought someone might be listening. “So we could talk.”

  The nervous way he held himself piqued Axl’s interest, but he was running late, so he nodded down the hall. “Walk with me. I gotta get to work.”

  Joshua didn’t say a damn word the whole way down the stairs, but Axl let him be, figuring he was busy thinking something through and he’d get to the point when he was ready. But even when they’d made it outside the doc still didn’t talk, not until they’d reached the rapidly growing group of shacks just down the street from their apartment building.

  “What do you think about that?” Joshua asked, nodding at the statue that some wacko had put up. It was supposed to be Angus, but it didn’t look a damn thing like him.

  “Try not to.” Axl spit when they passed it. The thing always made him feel sick to his stomach.

  “Yeah.”

  Joshua went back to being silent, and even though the doc had never been much of a talker, there was something about the way he was acting now that just didn’t seem right.

  Axl stopped walking and turned to face him. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

  Joshua shoved his hand through his hair. “A lot of things, actually.” He looked around and once he was sure they were alone, went one. “Like why we’re bothering to stick around when none of us trusts this government.”

  “Rumors are just rumors,” Axl said even though he had to admit that Joshua had a point.

  The doc had been working at the CDC for two years now and hadn’t learned a damn thing, but to Axl that didn’t mean there weren’t secrets. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that Angus was alive, not after all this time, but that didn’t mean he thought everything happening in this city was on the up and up. He’d been around enough to see that the CDC was grasping for power every chance they got.

  “It isn’t just the rumors anymore,” Joshua said. ”It’s how everyone acts. It’s the fact that I’m pretty sure Dr. Helton or someone in there is keeping tabs on us. At least on you.”

  “Why would anybody watch me?” Axl asked.

  He didn’t know why, but he suddenly had a very bad feeling about where this conversation was going, and when Joshua took a deep breath, it seemed to confirm to Axl that he was about to get some very shitty news.

  “I think you might be immune.”

  “Shit,” Axl m
uttered, trying to wrap his brain around the whole thing.

  From anyone else he might have dismissed the claim as crazy, but he knew Joshua well enough by this point to know that he didn’t jump to conclusions. Even when it came to the top secret areas in the CDC he’d been hesitant to think they were anything other than normal. All facilities had areas that were blocked off to everyone but authorized personnel, he’d said. The CDC was just being cautious.

  “I can’t be.” But even as Axl muttered the words, he knew it wasn’t true. He and Angus had only been half brothers, but they were blood, and it was totally possible he’d inherited the same immunities his brother had.

  “There’s only one way to know for sure,” Joshua said.

  Axl looked up so he could meet the doctor’s gaze. “You wanna test my blood?”

  “I do.”

  “Why? What’s it matter? So what if I’m immune, what does that do for us?”

  “Nothing other than tell us that the CDC is hiding things. They tested all of us when we came in, just like they do with everyone else who comes through that gate, and we were all told we weren’t immune. If you are, that means they’ve been lying to us for two years.”

  Axl pressed his lips together and thought it through. Joshua was right, but that didn’t mean he was excited about the whole thing. For one, it sure as hell would stir things up. Vivian was pregnant and they were happy, and the last thing he wanted to do was drag her through the mud when there was nothing they could do to change things. Then there was Angus. If this was true and Axl was immune, that’d force him to rethink what had happened to his brother.

  “Axl?”

  He looked up to find the doctor watching him, waiting for an answer.

  “I ain’t sure I wanna do it.”