Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology)

by Chrissy Peebles

  “You are fighting the urge,” I said, “I am, too. My name is Cassie.”

  There was no point in denying it; I had caught her about to make a meal out of someone she had purposely knocked out with a shovel. A quick once-over of the girl on the floor told me she was not even a little infected.

  “Rose,” she held her hand out to me, and I shook it with my uninjured hand. She walked away from the girl and we both headed to the door. I suppose if there was a kindred spirit out there to find, Rose was it. She was fighting the infection, and the desire to eat people, much like I was.

  “They got you, too, did they?” She pointed to my finger and then pulled up her jeans to reveal a pretty nasty bite on her calf.

  “Yeah, my teacher attacked me in the bathroom,” I explained. I had tried to forget about it. “She was missing her legs, but I still let her get me.” I was shaking my head at how pathetic that sounded.

  “Would you like to walk with me? Maybe we can help each other until we fight off the disease or it wins and takes over our bodies.”

  I decided having some company wouldn’t be a bad thing. Rose was pleasant enough, besides hitting people over the head with shovels. I was no better than her; I had bit Brett and caused permanent damage to that beautiful face of his. I hoped he wouldn’t turn into one of us; it would be such a waste of perfect cheekbones. Great, I was already lumping myself in with the dead, and I was still warm and breathing.

  I wondered if we would come across others like us. I didn’t know what to call us since we weren’t yet zombified, but we had cannibalistic tendencies. I decided the “not dead yet undead” was a little long so I pondered it as we walked out into the street again and on our way. Wherever the road took us is where we were going, and we were just trying not to eat anyone along the way.

  My new BFF and I were walking past hoards of gray-skinned people, snacking away on the living, and they didn’t pay us any attention. I noticed, after a while, she had started to limp and wondered if her bite was getting worse.

  “It is just getting numb,” she reassured me, having seen the concern on my face. ”I don’t think it is getting worse; it hurts the same as it did.”

  “Do you need to stop and rest?” It wasn’t like we had some agenda to follow; I had no clue where we were even going. Part of me thought they wouldn’t let us in any of the safe houses, but maybe they had a cure we didn’t know about.

  I realized I hadn’t really been paying attention to where we were going, and we were on the highway now. I leaned against the guardrail and squinted towards the signs. We were getting close to the edge of Panic, yet another town. Who named the towns around here? I could see a few people dragging themselves down the road up ahead and some behind us. The only way I had found to judge what stage of disease someone was in was by the pace of their walking.

  If they were moving along like Rose and me, then they were probably only minimally infected. I had not yet seen anyone else moving as fast as us, but I was holding out hope that there were others. The ones, who moved a little slower, like they were really sore from an intense workout, were starting to transform into a groaning mess with no control of their body, but they weren’t quite there yet.

  Then there were those that moved at a snail’s pace, but would move in packs so they could slowly walk their prey into the center of a circle. Those were the ones that were gone completely. I hoped we weren’t heading that way.

  Chapter 9

  Kelmart

  Rose and I exchanged a glance as a familiar sign came into view; we had made it to the next town over, Panic. I looked at my watch and saw it was almost six o’clock. It had been around noon when I found Rose. I couldn’t believe we had been walking for five hours. The Kelmart sign was the first thing you saw when you drove into town. Of course, it was the first thing we saw when we walked into town. I found myself thinking that I was stupid for not driving my car; why did I just take off walking? It must be the infection messing with my brain. I had noticed that it had spread a little. It stretched down from my finger to the palm of my hand. I was also thinking that we might need to get some supplies from Kelmart, if we could. We really didn’t know where we were going, but neither one of us had eaten or had anything to drink since we started.

  I recognized a stiffening of my muscles, but hoped it was just from walking so much. I stretched and hopped around, trying to see if I was still agile. I felt okay, just a little nauseous and hungry. I blamed the nausea on the stress of not knowing where to go or what to do.

  As we walked up to the parking lot, it looked a little spooky. I watched a bag blow slowly through the white lines and catch on one of the light posts. I couldn’t help but think of all the scary movies that started with this exact scenario. Walking into the Kelmart was a shock because of the complete destruction that lay in front of us. The gray people hadn’t done this; looters had.

  There were carts turned over everywhere, with open bags of chips and cookies strewn throughout the store. I felt something under my shoe and raised my foot to stare in the lifeless eyes of a teddy bear. It had been left there to be trampled. My mind flashed back to the child I had seen at the school with his sallow skin and his muddy teddy bear. I shuddered to think what had happened to the child that might have bought this teddy bear.

  “Crazy people in this town,” Rose was walking up ahead of me, and I noticed that the flowing sleeve of her blouse was sticking to her arm and blood was slowly creeping through the blue embroidered pattern there. I believed Rose had been bitten more than once, but I wouldn’t dare say anything. It wasn’t like she would turn on me if she did start to turn into a slow walker. I had a sick feeling I was already doomed.

  I tried to push this thought from my mind as I entered the candy aisle. I was looking for something to take with us on our walk to find others like us. I assumed that was what we were doing; we hadn’t discussed our plan much. I walked, aimlessly, through the food aisles thinking that nothing appealed to me. I had lost track of Rose and decided to find her before I selected our road-walking munchies.

  I yelled for her as I headed towards the sound of a television. When I rounded the corner into electronics, I saw her standing there transfixed on the wall of televisions. Her blood was steadily dripping on the floor, and her mouth was slightly open. The televisions were showing aerial views of towns all over; there were lots of slow walkers moving beneath the helicopters and some of them were stopping to enjoy a snack.

  The newscaster was talking over the flashes of video as the words “horrific” and “end of days” flashed along the bottom of the screen.

  “The soulless agenda of the zombified seems to be, simply, kill as many of the uninfected as they can. If the uninfected are lucky, then they stay dead and are at peace. As you can see, a few of the uninfected become infected and don’t die right away. They, instead, feast on others. They appear to not even be human anymore.”

  The newscaster’s voice went up at the end of “anymore” because the camera had zoomed in on a few gray-skinned children making a meal out of an older man. I looked away from the screen, wondering when everything had gotten so crazy.

  “Rose, we have got to wrap that up.” I motioned to her arm, as it bled on the floor, and started toward where I thought first aid might be located.

  “Heavens, I didn’t even notice.” Rose followed me and let me wrap a sweater, as tightly as I could, around her arm. It would have to do for now.

  I touched Rose’s good arm. “Come on, let’s get some food.”

  We walked back over to the food aisle and I grabbed a bag of salt and vinegar chips, while Rose had a hankering for cashews. I grabbed a couple of cool drinks from the cooler and handed one to her. We pulled out some chairs in the camping section and sat enjoying our snacks. I was wondering if we could live here; they certainly had a lot of things we could use. There were bathrooms; although, I wasn’t sure if there was running water.

  “I think we should stay here until we figure out our ne
xt move.” Rose looked thoughtful, as she nibbled on her cashews.

  “I think that’s a good idea, but eventually we will have to move along. You can’t trust that people will not want to take us out if they know we are infected. “

  Rose had a good point. I hadn’t even thought of that scenario, but now it made sense that they would want to take us out. I shivered a bit, and made a note to stop by the clothing section for a sweater. The salt and vinegar chips didn’t taste as good as they used to. I wondered if that had something to do with the Ms. Hamrick venom working its way through my system. They had been my favorite type of chip.

  In the sweater section, I found a cardigan I thought would keep me warm, and it kept my wrist covered where the wound was spreading from my palm. It was long so I could pull the sleeves down over my hands. Not being able to see the bite spreading could allow me to pretend it wasn’t really there. Rose put on a blue sweater with giant flowers on it, and we walked back over to the television section. We decided to hook up a DVD player and make use of having power for as long as we could.

  We watched a couple of movies to keep us occupied. During ’27 Dresses’, we took turns, in the bathroom, cleaning up the best we could. The skin around the outside of my bite mark was turning a little black, and it stung. I debated on washing it, but chickened out. Using some gauze and antibiotic cream I had taken from an open first aid kit someone had thrown on the ground, I dressed it the best I could.

  I wanted to get some flashlights together before the power went out. Seeing as how the lights I could see in the distance had been disappearing, I only assumed that Kelmart would be dark soon. It took a while to find some flashlights buried among the piles of things that were knocked off the shelves. I found three and then set about finding batteries for them.

  The lights didn’t go off so we laid out blankets and pillows for ourselves and settled in to sleep for the night. We were both exhausted and hoped we would be safe sleeping next to each other. We didn’t really have any defenses. Any guns or things we could use for a weapon were gone so we would just have to rely on each other if someone came to harm us.

  We left the news on so we could hear about the rest of the world, while we became sleepy enough to pass out. The news anchor had a brand new important update every few minutes. Breaking news was happening all over. One small tidbit that caught my attention was about the origin of the disease. I leaned forward to listen to her a little closer.

  “This is Chelsea with an exclusive BTD news update. We have reports that the mysterious illness was, in fact, accidentally released from a Centera experimental laboratory. Scientists were studying the effects of a new longevity drug by infecting rats with, what we now know to be, a man-made virus. While we cannot be sure exactly how it happened due to the death and disappearance of most of the staff, it is speculated that the virus made the leap from animal to human when a handler was bitten, then lost control of the situation.”

  Centera had caused this; I briefly wondered if they would have the cure. Surely, they were smart enough to create an antidote for whatever this virus or infection was.

  Rose had fallen asleep fairly quickly after we lay down. She was worse off than I was because her bite was bigger. I was beginning to understand the difference, as she was more tired and stiff than I was. The bigger the bite, the quicker the transition, or so it seemed. I, finally, drifted off after a while of listening to a mix of the news and Rose snoring.

  I awoke to a feeling that something wasn’t right. I looked over and saw Rose was sleeping with the pillow over her face. Instantly, I relaxed a little, but panic took over when I felt a hand cover my mouth, and something sharp and cold pressed to my throat.

  I struggled but the man on top of me wasn’t letting me move. Rose was still snoring beside me, and the lights were still on in the store. My eyes darted around behind him, looking to see if there was someone else around.

  Getting right down in my ear, he whispered to me. “Imagine my good luck when I come looking for food and find something to satisfy both my appetites.” I had no doubt what he was talking about, as his hand slowly moved away from my mouth.

  “One sound and I will stab you through the neck.” Terrified, I lay still, trying to think of what to do next. He moved my arms above my head and held them there as he licked the side of my face. I felt sick at the thought of what he planned to do to me. Couldn’t Rose hear him moving around? I closed my eyes and weighed my options.

  I could lie there and get taken against my will, or I could fight. Just then, his hand moved down my arm and over the open wound, sending pain shooting all the way up and down to the tips of my fingers. Of course, I swallowed and found my voice.

  “I’m infected.” I hoped he wasn’t infected also, or someone who had nothing left to live for. He didn’t smell infected to me, but I could doubt myself in a situation like this. He laughed at me, not making any effort to move off of me.

  “Yeah right, I am sure you are infected.” Pushing the knife into me a little harder so I felt it prick the tender skin of my neck, he glared at me. “Take off your shirt.”

  I slowly removed the cardigan from my arms, praying that he would be disgusted. As the gauze came into view, I made a point to unwrap it so he could see the grey and black open wound that was spreading, over my wrist, from my finger. His eyes widened, in horror, as I gave him a satisfied look.

  “Told you,” he did jump off me then and pointed down at me. I felt nothing but relief, as the weight of his body was absent from mine.

  “You are infected, get away from ,” he didn’t get to finish his sentence, as I heard a loud crack and watched him fall to the floor bleeding from the side of his head. Rose had hit him with a baseball bat and she stood behind him, crouched like she would hit him again.”

  “Was he trying to rape you, Cassie?” The weight of what could have just happened hit me and I sank onto my knees in tears as she came up and wrapped her arms around me.

  “I think so,” I was whispering to her through sobs. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Go find some hungry flesh eating people to deal with him.” She winked at me and went to grab both his hands. She gestured toward me, “Help me lift him onto the blanket; then we will drag him out of here.”

  I helped her lift him and lay him on the blanket she had been covered with. We drug him through the store and out the front door, looking around outside. At first, I didn’t see or hear anything; it was really quiet outside and the parking lot was still an abandoned area.

  I heard moaning before I saw them coming. There were five of them; the one closest to us was shuffling a little faster than the others. From the purple scrap of tattered cloth hanging from the body, I assumed it was a woman. That was the only telling sign, as her face was covered with gashes and bites. The hair was short and a large chunk of it had been torn from the side of her head. I knew they wouldn’t mess with me, but I still didn’t want to be around them. The man behind her had on a cop uniform and he had a deep gash in his neck that was trickling blood down the front of him. His skin was the same gray and black we had been seeing and I could see the bone in his arm. This made me sick to my stomach and I turned to run back into the Kelmart with Rose close behind me.

  The man who had attacked me lay unconscious as the small hoard of hungry shufflers advanced on him. He must have woken up while they were feeding, because, as we made it back to our beds, we heard his screams pierce the night’s silence. The lights went out, at that very moment, scaring me to death. The timing could not have been creepier. I climbed underneath my blanket with Rose and we tried to go back to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep without her beside me, in case another predator came calling.

  That morning, we had junk food for breakfast and talked about how nice it would have been to have running water for one more day.

  With nothing to do, we busied ourselves gathering up anything useful we could find in the Kelmart. I got us each a backpack and we started filling it wi
th necessities. It took us all day to sort out just one aisle of the mess in the store. People came in and out, mostly running around, picking things up and leaving again. We noticed that we could smell them, and knew if they were infected or not. We still didn’t have a nagging desire to eat them, but that could have been because of the constant snacking we were forcing on ourselves. Both of us were becoming more ravenous. Rose kept her baseball bat handy. After the night before, we weren’t taking any chances.

  Going to sleep that night was easier than it had been the past couple of nights. I felt like my body was wearing down, and I was getting tired quickly. I almost felt like I had a mild case of the flu. Rose confirmed she felt the same way.

  The third day we were in the Kelmart, we realized that we didn’t want to stay there. Sure there was plenty of food and we could probably live comfortably, but if we any hope of finding a doctor that could help us, leaving would be necessary. After the news said the CDC might have been the cause, I thought perhaps they had the cure. We would need to find a vehicle. I didn’t think either one of us could stand to walk any more. Our muscles were becoming stiff, and the wounds were spreading from our bites. Driving would be our best bet. We would need to go towards Georgia, and being on the Northern tip of North Carolina, it would be around a ten hour drive to Atlanta, without stops.

  We walked quietly to the back of the store. I thought there might be some type of vehicle we could get and drive around. I was thinking they might have a golf cart or something similar, but we were met with a deserted storeroom. There were no vehicles in sight, so we headed out the back door.

  When we got outside, the sun was high in the sky and my eyes fell upon an old, beat-up, white pickup truck. It was empty and I found myself wondering if there were keys in it. We walked over to examine it more closely, when a loud noise came from behind us. I clutched my ears as they started to ring and Rose screeched. I turned to see a large man coming at me and a smaller man behind him in the Dumpster.