Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology)

by Chrissy Peebles

  When I turned the shower off, I felt a sense of loss. Who knew when I would have another shower? I started to hope that they would let us stay in this part of the factory. I didn’t know plants like this had a need for a nursing station, but I guessed that if one of the machines injured someone they would have to go there. As far as I could tell, the only people there were the ones that worked for the center. As I dried off, I noticed that my wound had spread since that morning. The tip of it was past my wrist now. How long was it going to get?

  When we got back into the room, we both sat up on the examination table in our new all- white garb. The two nurses came back into the room. They begin to ask us lots of questions. They wanted to know when we had been bitten, how old we were, the number of gray-skinned people we had been in contact with, and lots of things about us that I thought were none of their business. When they were finally done with the questioning, they left the room again. When they returned, they had an interesting kit of tools, along with some very big needles.

  Chapter 20

  We Have to Get Out of Here

  The nurses checked our blood pressure, took our blood very carefully, and checked our eyes with little lights. I felt like I was being given a regular physical.

  When they filled up a couple of needles, I thought it might be the cure. I looked at Cage, who also had hope in his eyes.

  “How did you discover the cure for the disease?” I wanted to know how they figured out how to reverse something that seemed so aggressive.

  The nurse turned to me as she walked my way with a needle.

  “We haven’t found the cure, yet. This is just going to help you relax a bit.”

  Something was wrong. I started to panic. I couldn’t tell if Cage could tell that this was weird or not. It was then that I really took in my surroundings. There was a jar on the countertop that appeared to have a heart in it. Beside this, there were various tools that looked like they should be in a torture chamber, not a nurses’ office in a factory. On the wall, there was a poster with a very detailed look at the inside of a zombie.

  They were not going to help us.

  As the nurse got closer, I planned my attack. The other nurse was still standing on the other side of the room. If I planned it just right, I could get to both of them.

  Without warning, I kicked the nurse approaching me in the stomach as hard as I could. The needle fell from her hand and I grabbed it. The other nurse looked alarmed and ready to flee.

  “Cage, get her.”

  He came out of whatever daydream he had been in and realized what was happening around us. He wasted no time getting to the other nurse and wrapping his arms around her from behind.

  She struggled against him and he opened his mouth over her neck. “Stop struggling or I will bite you.” The horror in her eyes told me that was the last thing she wanted him to do. I plunged the needle into the nurses’ neck and pushed the dose in. She crumbled to the ground almost instantly, her body making a thud as it struck. The other nurse took this brief distraction to kick her foot up behind her and directly into Cage’s manhood. He made a high-pitched noise as she ran out the door and sped off down the hall.

  “We have to go!”

  I pulled him with me as he hobbled behind, holding himself. I didn’t know how we were going to get out of there. I pulled him with me as I headed back the way we came in. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple, but I was hoping we could run out the front door. The sirens and red lights started going off all around me.

  The footfalls of several people were coming toward us. In a panic, seeing a door to our right, I slung it open and pulled Cage in with me. I, somehow, managed to slam the door shut and we nearly tumbled down a flight of stairs, but caught ourselves on the railing.

  It was dark. It was creepy. We stood up and attempted to feel our way along the wall. I was looking for a light switch or another door. I needed to shed some light on the situation. I kept feeling around in the dark until I got to a door handle. I opened it and pulled Cage inside. He had gained his ability to walk again.

  Oh, how I wish we wouldn’t have gone through that door.

  The light was on where we were, because we were in a freezer. The cold was a shock to me after running around in the hot air for three days. The cold air was the least of my shock, because I was looking at rows of bodies. They were zombie bodies because they had the telling gray skin. These bodies were strapped to gurneys all laid out in rows. There were dozens of them. Some had their mouths open; some had their eyes open, but they weren’t moving. Another thing they all had in common was that they were missing their hearts. They were missing a lot of parts. These zombies had had their organs surgically removed.

  I backed into Cage and looked over my shoulder. “They haven’t found the cure yet, but they think they can find it. This is what they want to do to us. We have to get out of here.”

  Why we couldn’t find a Good Samaritan, I didn’t know. The reality was that there was no one willing to help us out there. Trent had a good plan, but he had been wrong. There was no cure, and we would turn soon. The sad reality was hard to swallow, but I didn’t want to be taken out by these people. I wanted to go out on my own.

  The first thing we did was get the hell out of the freezer of death. We searched every inch of the room we were in for a way out. We were going to have to go back out the way we came in. The first thing to do was get back up the stairs. This was easy; it was what waited for us at the top of the stairs that was hard. When we first opened the door, it looked like we were safe. We edged out of the room, into the hallway again. I felt extremely vulnerable. We begin to creep along the wall towards the lobby.

  Out of nowhere, a net flew through the air and trapped Cage. He struggled against it as I looked around to see where it came from. It was just one guy and he had the edges of the net gathered to him. In his hand he was holding what looked like a small Walkman, and he had it pressed to Cage’s side.

  “I will shock him, unconscious, if you don’t calm down and do what we say.”

  Not a Walkman. That is a Taser. Good to know.

  He was edging to the alarm button on the wall with Cage in tow. I didn’t think I had anything left to lose. Our only chance of getting out of this building with our hearts was overpowering this one guy. I went for it. I lunged at the guy, with my mouth open, and bit into his neck. The blood gushed into my mouth and I latched on. He screamed and let the edges of the net go. Cage tripped to the floor and I pushed the guy as hard as I could. I helped Cage out of the net so we could take off running again. I heard people screaming at us from behind, but I didn’t turn around. We were going to make it. As we reached the glass doors, I realized that they had been locked down tight. We tried to push them open, but even with both of us pushing, we were not strong enough.

  The group of white-covered maniacs was advancing on us now. They were waving needles and Tasers. We were trapped. Cage backed up as far as he could and took a running leap, going feet- first into the glass on the side of the doors. He broke through it with a triumphant yell. When he landed on the other side, he jumped up to help me through.

  I couldn’t help thinking that was the coolest thing I had ever seen, but I didn’t have time to marvel at how awesome he was. We ran like our lives depended on it, because they did. Someone in the center had found a gun so we were getting shot at again.

  I had never been so pleased to see the pickup truck in my life when we finally got back to it. Cage cranked it up and off we went. Rose let out a yell as he pulled off into the road, letting us know she was still in the back.

  Now we really had no direction. Cage decided we would drive to the ocean and await our transformation there. I couldn’t see anything wrong with this plan so I settled in for a long drive. I had noticed that the wound had spread all the way down his arm.

  I didn’t mention it because I thought it would be rude, but it looked awful.

  Surprisingly, as we drove, we didn’t see any more road
blocks.

  There were abandoned towns to drive through and you could see the destruction from looters. It was obvious that chaos had taken over once people started to get infected. It was sad to see the breakdown everywhere we went. I figured there was probably not one city where they were still carrying on as usual.

  We needed to stop for gas, but we had been to a few gas stations along the way and there wasn’t anything in the tanks. The last time we had filled up, Trent had still been alive. We stopped at a BP that looked promising and, finally, found some gas. They had left the pumps on and I wondered if there were people inside. I flashed back briefly to the first gas station that had been occupied and decided we should not try to find out.

  After he pumped the gas, Cage climbed back into the truck.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie.”

  I was taken aback. “Why are you sorry? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I just really thought Dad was right. I just really thought we would find the cure. It didn’t work out that way.” He hit the steering wheel. “It’s not fair!”

  “I know.” It really wasn’t fair, but there was nothing that we could do about it. “Let’s just go sit by the ocean.”

  The only thing that we could do was enjoy the last little bit of normal that we had before we turned into monsters.

  “Okay.” He smiled. “Let’s hit the sand.” He pulled out of the gas station and we drove forward to a very uncertain fate.

  Chapter 21

  So Much for That

  We had driven for about three hours when I heard Cage’s stomach start to rumble. “Hungry?” I grinned at him because I was hungry, too. We had left Atlanta and the horror of the CDC behind us. Our decision to go to the beach meant we would just drive from Georgia to North Carolina and not stop until we hit the shoreline.

  There weren’t many towns on the way back from Atlanta, but we were in the middle of one now. The stoplights were out; there didn’t appear to be anyone living or dead anywhere. Looks can be deceiving. As we drove through the little town, we passed a bank and a gas station. Finally, we saw a local grocery that looked promising.

  There weren’t any restaurants we could go to. Fast food was out of the question. The best we could hope for was to find a grocery store that hadn’t been completely wiped out. The food would be slim pickings, but at least we wouldn’t be hungry anymore. The town looked to have once had a lot of happy people. There was a little park, beside the grocery store, with a carousel and lots of swings. I could picture children playing, while their parents shopped.

  Cage pulled into the parking lot and hopped out. He poked at Rose, who growled at him from beneath her cinder block.

  “Would you like some cheese balls, Rose?” He smiled at me, knowing the only thing that she wanted to eat was not made of cheese.

  We made our way inside the grocery store. It was obvious it had been through the initial panic, with all the food and items strewn throughout the store. We made our way to the frozen section first, but the power was off. None of the food in the coolers would be fit to eat, so we had to move on.

  I went down the chip aisle, seeing if I could find a bag that hadn’t been ripped open or crunched to crumbs. Cage said that he was going to see if he could find some peanut butter and jelly. He was craving something, he said, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  I found a bag of Cool Ranch chips, on the bottom shelf, that hadn’t been touched. I was very happy with my victory and opened them immediately. They were the generic brand, but they were heavenly. I sat down right there in the middle of the aisle and started eating them. The little things in life were important to me now.

  I didn’t hear Cage, so I ate a few more chips before I stood up and went to find him. I rolled the chip bag down to take with me. Walking with it behind my back, my plan was to surprise him with them. I didn’t even know if he liked those types of chips or not. When I didn’t see him, I assumed he had moved from the peanut butter and jelly aisle.

  I smelled them before I heard them. There were people in the store. They smelled mouth-watering. This was a very bad sign. An even worse sign, I had no idea where Cage was.

  I called his name around the store, as I got closer to the smell of people. I heard them in the back. They must have been hiding in the storage area. I walked through the little plastic doorway. I had never understood the point of those in stores. This was the thought I had as I rounded the corner. The next thought I had was a panicked one. There were people there, and Cage had them cornered. They were scared. I knew from experience that this could end very badly.

  “Cage, what are you doing?” I was approaching him, slowly, not wanting to make any sudden movements.

  He had a strange look in his eyes. I didn’t know what to do with him. I looked between Cage and the people he had trapped in the storage room. There was an older woman with a long sundress on that was torn on the side. An older gentleman was shielding her with his body and holding onto a baseball bat. His clothes were torn as well, which led me to believe they had already had to fight for their lives.

  There was a younger guy standing beside them with anger in his eyes. I had a feeling if he would have been the one holding onto the baseball bat, he would have already swung at Cage.

  The air was heavy with tension. I knew he was barely hanging on to what little control he had left. The man wasn’t trying to talk to him, he was just preparing for battle. His grip on the baseball bat showed me that.

  He attacked swiftly. Cage pulled the baseball bat from the man the second he swung. He was on top of him in the next second.

  His teeth were ripping pieces from the man’s face and the growl that was coming from him was unlike anything I had ever heard. The woman was screaming at me, and the guy’s son had taken up the bat and was beating Cage. He wasn’t stopping.

  “Do something.” The lady was frantic; I didn’t know what she wanted me to do about him. He was like a rabid dog. This was the most violent takedown I had seen. He stopped eating long enough to turn around and look at me.

  “Cassie, go!” His voice was much deeper and his eyes were glazed over. The fact that he could even think to tell me to run was beyond me.

  I said silent apologies to the family as I ran out of the storage area. I clutched the chips to me and grabbed a bottle of water on my way out. I ran out of the store and didn’t stop until I was in the truck. I could still hear the poor girl’s desperate screams as I pulled out and drove away.

  I yelled back at Rose, “So much for that beach plan, buddy.” She didn’t respond, and I didn’t expect her to.

  Chapter 22

  The End of the Normal Cassie

  How did I end up like this? I was the only survivor, driving around with a grown woman chained in the back of my pickup truck. I didn’t know where the hell I was going; I just knew I would drive until the truck ran out of gas. This was not even close to how I thought I would be spending my senior year.

  I drove for a long time with no destination. It was kind of peaceful and gave me a lot of time to think. I was thinking about Cage, and how I missed him. I was thinking about Trent and how brave he was. I laughed when I remembered him pulling the wasp spray can out on Rose and I. I remembered Brett and how he had taken me to his secret lair. I felt sad and the weight of the losses I had suffered in a few short days was monumental. I had lost my family, too. I would never see my mother again or anyone. I was all alone, except for a one-armed zombie that would eat me if she could catch me. I guess it could have been worse. Rose could have had both her arms.

  I laughed at myself still having a sense of humor. I briefly wondered if I was really just crazy. Perhaps, I was living in a fantasy world. The harsh reality of living with the fact that you will soon be one of the undead was enough to drive anyone crazy.

  When the gas tank finally ran dry, we got out. I gave Rose a very long talk about how I was her friend. I told her I would kill her if she tried to eat me. I don’t think she understoo
d, but I was faster than her, so she just went with it.

  We walked for hours and both of our stomachs were growling. I had the end of my bag of Cool Ranch chips, but Rose moaned at me she didn’t want any. I assumed she was craving something more alive. I watched her chase squirrels for a little while when she got really hungry.

  She wasn’t close to fast enough to catch them, so she would lumber to them slowly and they would move long before she could get to them. She would still try and chase them, which lasted for a while. I found it funnier than I should, because it was actually really sad.

  Finally, she gave up and we moved on.

  “I’m sorry, Rose; you gave it a good shot.” We walked away from the park. The squirrels were not as plentiful in town so I thought maybe I might coerce her into some chips. She was not having it.

  We happened upon a guy hiding underneath a cardboard box. I assumed he was homeless because who would think that was a good idea?

  Rose flipped the box off of him and he froze in terror. I waited for her to do her thing but she didn’t. She looked at me and cocked her head sideways. She let out a strand of moans that sounded very direct.

  I couldn’t understand the moaning, but I felt like she was asking my permission to dine on this dude. I nodded, because I didn’t think I could stop her if I wanted to.

  She looked so happy; like that guy’s body was the only thing in the whole world that she wanted. I envied that happy feeling, but that was all I envied. I watched the blood run down from her mouth as she dug in. I heard the sounds of skin ripping and a man crying and had to walk away.

  That was the last night that I watched Rose enjoy the zombie life without joining in. It was too much for me to take.

  I felt the change when it came. I suddenly didn’t want to eat anything except for human flesh. The only thought that consumed me was where my next meal would come from. I had kept some of my vanity. I noticed, every time I caught my reflection, I was taking in how I looked.