BITTEN Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3): The Resurrection Virus Saga

by Tristan Vick

  Her boot slammed down on the gas pedal like a hammer striking and anvil, and the tires of the Audi hastily found purchase. “This is for Mrs. Jensen,” she said as the SUV rushed forward.

  Alyssa braced herself as they plowed into Principal Sanders. There was a loud thump as his unresponsive body came smashing down onto the hood of the vehicle, but instead of becoming roadkill he somehow managed to grip the windshield wipers and held on to them ruthlessly. Looking up at the two women staring back at him from the thin veil of glass, he snapped his teeth at them and growled.

  Without warning, Principal Sanders puked blood all over Rachael’s windshield and then, slipping on his own vomit, went under. The vehicle rolled over him with a dull thud and then he was gone. Rachael hit the brakes and the SUV skidded to a halt. Turning in their seats, both Rachael and Alyssa looked out the back window and watched in dumb shock as the top half of Principal Sanders’s severed body dragged itself toward their position with determination, leaving its bottom half behind. Intestines dangled behind him, like the elongated tentacles of a jellyfish, as he clawed his way toward them.

  “You’ve gotta be goddamn frackin’ kidding me!” Rachael hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Okay, that’s officially disturbing,” Alyssa added.

  Shifting into reverse, with tires smoking, Rachael powered the vehicle backward. The rear bumper smashed into Principal Sanders’s head with brutal force and knocked him to the ground. The left rear tire rolled right over his skull. From within the car they heard the crunching noise of his skull turning to pulp beneath the weight of the bulky vehicle. Shifting back into drive again, Rachael floored it, and buried the remains of Principal Sanders in her dust.

  Wipers turned up to full, Rachael used the remainder of her wiper fluid to carve out a clear spot from the red sheet of blood that coated her windshield. Sitting in silence, she tried to hold onto any shred of sanity she had left. Alyssa, who was gazing out of the window in a near catatonic state, seemed to be struggling to do the same. As they tore down the main road, they barely said a single word to each other. They were still too much in shock.

  14

  Extraction

  Staff Sergeant Jared Barnes clapped shut the cover to the scope to his Remington M2010 sniper rifle and leaned back up against the ventilation unit that sat atop the roof of the high-rise building.

  “What’s up?”

  Barnes looked over at Sgt. Ulysses Noble and shrugged. “They’ve decided to crawl out onto the ledge, apparently.”

  “Always full of surprises, those two.” After a moment of silence, Noble turned to Jared and said, “Fuck it.”

  “What now?”

  “I don’t care what the top brass are calling them, I’m saying they’re motherfucking zombies. Zombies. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  “Calling a spade a spade, I see.”

  “Yeah, I guess I am. Got a problem with it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” Jared replied, chuckling to himself.

  Ulysses turned toward his mate. “Hey Jared, got one for you.”

  “Not another one of these morbid, sick questions of yours.”

  “Fuck, man, how else are we to while away the time?”

  “Okay, you’ve piqued my curiosity.”

  “If Tyra Banks was turned into…I mean, you know…would you still fuck her anyway? Taking all the necessary precautions, of course.”

  “Necessary precautions?”

  “You know, a rubber and a BDSM mouth gag.”

  Looking at Sergeant Noble with a slack jaw, Jared Barnes simply replied, “The morbid fucked-up shit that comes out of your fucking mouth. Truly goddamn fucking disturbing shit, man.”

  “Shiiiiat! I’m just saying,” continued Noble, doing a mock humping gesture in which he swatted the imaginary ass of hot zombie Tyra, “I would so give her the miracle fuck she deserves.”

  “Miracle fuck?” Barnes inquired.

  “I’d jump-start her and fuck the life back into her! You better believe it. Mmmm-hmmm.” Caught up in the moment, Noble continued to gyrate his hips to the thought of his imaginary zombie girlfriend. Before Jared Barnes could even protest, his radio crackled.

  “Skrrrkt. Sniper cell sixteen, come in, over.”

  “Thank God,” replied Barnes rolling his eyes as he reached for the radio. Clicking the button on the handheld transceiver, Barnes replied, “This is Sniper team sixteen, over.”

  “The General requests you report to Quarantine zone NC-4 for debriefing, over.”

  “Affirmative. Wilco,” Barnes replied. “Skrrrt.”

  Flicking off the radio, Barnes sighed and looked back out across the cityscape. He watched the small specks carefully scaling the ledge of the building off in the distance.

  “What’s up?” asked Noble.

  “The old man wants us to head back in. But before we pack up and go, I’m thinking we ought to save a couple of halfwits.”

  “Fuck,” Noble complained. “Always having to go out on a line and risk our necks to save some civilian numbskulls.”

  Barnes slung his rifle over his shoulder and punched Noble in the arm. “If not us, then who the fuck else?”

  “Alright, fine. Goddamn, calm down, Captain America. Have it your fucking way. But if we run into zombie Tyra, I call first dibs. But, since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll let you have sloppy seconds.”

  Barnes frowned, and mumbled, “You’re too generous.” The thought of sloppy seconds with zombie Tyra weirded him out too much. But the more he tried not to think about it the more he couldn’t help but keep replaying Ulysses’s messed up sex fantasy in his own head.

  Packing up their gear, the two soldiers headed over to the building’s edge and clamored down the emergency latter.

  Barnes and Noble slowly made their way toward the high-rise buildings in the corporate district. About a block ahead of their position, a small boy ran into view. Turning toward them with a crimson-stained chin, he snarled and bared his blood-soaked teeth. Barnes immediately raised his rifle and flipped on the scope. But before he could pull the trigger, the monster child lumbered off at a brisk pace and disappeared out of view.

  Ulysses Noble turned to his partner with a shocked look and said, “That always freaks me out.”

  “What? The eyes?”

  “No. The fact that the little ones are faster than the adults. It’s just creepy.”

  “Just avoid schools, playgrounds, and Chuck E. Cheese and you’ll do just fine,” Barnes said.

  Noble gulped hard. He hadn’t actually stopped to consider the sheer horror of it. Even the children weren’t safe. He gave Barnes a nod in the affirmative, and then slapped him on the shoulder to signal that he was ready to continue onward.

  Barnes looked at Noble with a somber look that expressed the full gravity of the situation. This wasn’t anything to joke about. Barnes flung his rifle back over his shoulder and continued onward.

  Out of the blue, there was a loud impact that caused Barnes and Noble to jump back.

  “Fuck me!” Ulysses yelled as they both stood staring at the small crater left by the suicide jumper. Barnes looked up at the building stretching upward into the sky. Suddenly, moaning came out from the newly fashioned pothole. Both men jumped in fright as their eyes whipped back toward the body lying in the street. They watched in dismay as it tried to get back up.

  “Holy fucking George A. Romero!” Noble shouted. “He’s getting up. This motherfucker here just took a nose dive off of the city’s tallest building and actually thinks he can fucking step up.”

  Barnes and Noble looked at each other, as they had done a thousand times before, and quickly played a round of “Rock, Scissors, Paper.” Noble got paper, which beat out Barnes’s rock. Noble sighed with relief.

  Barnes grumbled under his breath about being on the losing end, pulled out his handgun, and fired a round through the monster’s head, effectively putting the wretched creature
out of its misery.

  Jesse Zanato shook with fear as he whipped his head back and forth, looking at the zombies pushing their way out onto the ledge from behind them and the new bunch that had burst through the glass and unexpectedly cut him off from Jennifer.

  Pushing against one another with unremitting vigor, as if they were in a mosh pit, several more zombies fell out the window and plummeted to the ground. Even so, there were half a dozen more to take their place. Zanato looked back again, thinking he might try to risk going back in the way they’d come, only to see, to his dismay, one of the creatures manage to get its footing on the ledge outside of the same window they had escaped from. “Oh, you goddamn acrobatic mother fucker,” Zanato growled. Now he really was trapped.

  “Give me your hand,” shouted Jennifer, sticking out her arm, careful not to let it get tangled up in the pale throng of groping hands and arms that protruded out of the gaping window between them.

  “What?!” Zanato screamed, unable to take his eyes off the new threat.

  Reaching out toward Zanato, Jennifer leaned forward with even greater urgency, stretching her fingers as far as she could, and shouted, “Give me your hand and I’ll swing you across to my side.”

  Looking at the tangle of arms reaching out of the window grasping for anything that they could cling to, like the flailing tentacles of a menacing giant squid, and then looking back down toward the dizzying plummet that awaited his slightest misstep, Zanato considered his odds of her being able to support him and making it across alive. “No, thanks Spider Woman, I think I’ll pass.”

  “You wanna die up here?”

  Zanato pulled his hair and screamed. “Fuck this shit!”

  Leaning back up against the glass, Zanato looked down again and tried to build up enough nerve to jump. It was either that or let those things eat him alive, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. At least this way he had some control over his fate.

  Just then several gun shots rang out, and several more zombies flew out of the window and fell to their gut splattering deaths.

  “Who the hell is shooting at us?” Zanato screamed pathetically.

  “They’re not shooting at us, genius. They’re shooting at the zombies,” Jennifer said.

  Searching the skyline, Jennifer noticed a sniper perched on the rooftop directly across from them.

  “Over there!” she exclaimed, pointing in the gunman’s direction. Zanato looked out across the divide and spotted the soldier.

  “Oh, thank God!” Zanato said, letting out a huge sigh. Suddenly there was a growl, and Zanato spun around to see the snapping teeth of zombie that had stepped out on the ledge with him. It was mere inches away from his nose. Without thinking, Zanato reacted and shoved the creature back as hard as he could. The pushback almost caused him to lose his footing and, slamming back up against the glass, Zanato started scaling the wall, making his way toward Jennifer. But the mass of outreached arms foiled his attempt.

  Resigning himself to failure, Zanato sat down on the ledge and began crying. “Why me?” he bawled. “Why me?”

  Suddenly another shot rang out, taking out the zombie that stalked Zanato. The creature's head exploded, splattering a red mess like strawberry jam all over the glass. Some of it got on Zanato too, but he didn’t care.

  More shots rang out from inside the building and then, to their great reprieve, the zombies that were grasping at them from the window suddenly fell limp. Jennifer looked at the dead heap of slumped over bodies hanging halfway out of the window and thought that they looked like ragdolls hanging out of a child’s toy box. A lot less menacing when they had no fight left in them.

  Just then a tall, dark, and handsome U.S. Marine appeared in the window and put his hand out for Jennifer to take. “I’m Sergeant Ulysses Noble.”

  Taking his hand, Jennifer smiled graciously, and said, “My hero.” As their eyes met Jennifer felt some definite sparks fly. She loved black men, especially ones as well built as him. “I’m Jennifer, and…” she began to say as he scooped her into his arms.

  “You were saying, ma’am?”

  Blushing, Jennifer answered, “I’m all yours.”

  As they walked toward the stairwell, a voice called out from behind, “Hey, what about me?”

  Noble stopped and looked back at the window with the man clamoring over the pile of dead zombies, desperate to get inside.

  “Well, hurry it up, son,” Noble said with the urgency of a combat veteran. “This ain’t fucking recess.”

  Jennifer couldn’t help but snicker at that last part. It was all too accurate of a description of Jesse Zanato—the boy wonder. A wonder why she had put up with him for this long. But Zanato was yesterday’s news. She suddenly had cravings for something new—something like some dark chocolate topped with a bit of cream. And by cream she meant her white-ass self.

  Jennifer licked her lips hungrily and gave Noble her most alluring look. Raising his left eyebrow, he smiled back at her, letting her know that he caught her message loud and clear.

  15

  Bad Omens

  General Thompson Greer leaned back in his office chair and checked his watch. He didn’t like it when he lost contact with a team.

  “Dammit! Where are those boys?”

  General Greer’s hair had gone white long ago due to the stress of the job. Although he was pushing fifty-eight, he still had the physique of a rugged soldier who had seen his fair share of combat. Not only did he look like a hard-edged Cary Grant, he looked good in army green to boot.

  A small scar above his right eyebrow marked where some shrapnel had grazed him the time he nearly gotten taken out by a fanatic suicide bomber who set himself off in the middle of a Baghdad marketplace. Thirty casualties that god-forsaken day. A lot of bloody nightmares of women and children with missing limbs roaming the streets like ghosts for months afterward too. It wasn’t his best day, that's for goddamn sure.

  First Sergeant Valentine strode over to the general’s desk and saluted. General Greer responded in kind. She could tell he had a lot on his mind. Staring at him with her light green eyes, which complemented her military uniform, she waited for him to say something.

  “Sniper team sixteen sighted survivors and decided to take a detour before proceeding to base, sir.” As Valentine updated the General, Corporal Anderson brought over some coffee.

  “Well they’d better goddamn hurry it up. It’s already getting dark, and we’re going to have to activate the quarantine barrier in T-minus fifteen. As of twenty-one hundred hours, Newcastle City will be officially sealed off.”

  Corporal Anderson placed the general’s mug down on the table and began pouring. As he did, his eyes drifted to the Valentine’s ample chest. Undressing her with his eyes, Anderson became distracted and spilled the coffee all over the general’s desk.

  Gritting his teeth and flexing his jaw, General Greer turned toward Anderson and snarled, “Goddammit Anderson!”

  Valentine almost smiled as the General chewed the corporal a new one, but kept herself in check. She knew the general didn’t tolerate slip-ups. For him they were a sign of poor discipline and carelessness. Two things which could get you or your unit killed on the battlefield.

  “Sorry, sir,” Corporal Anderson stammered. “I was…it was…er…I mean…I’ll have this cleaned up in no time.”

  Glaring at the corporal, Greer huffed angrily and then sat back down in his seat and turned to First Sergeant Valentine. “Get me a progress update on the evacuation of the remaining officials of Newcastle City.”

  Valentine promptly saluted and then turned on her heels and left the control room.

  Greer leaned back in his chair, pulled out a cigar from the inside of one of his desk drawers, and lit it up. Puffing on it, he watched as the smoke formed rings, which wafted away and dissipate almost as quickly as they were fashioned.

  The damned contagion had decimated the city population in less than two days. There wasn’t any way to prepare for such a thing. You
could only deal with it once it arrived. Whoever survived the initial outbreak was being evacuated from the city ASAP. Of course screening continued as usual, and hopefully he’d make sure the survivors had a chance to get out before he went in to sterilize the whole goddamn city. Deep down in his gut, however, he felt the worst was yet to come.

  16

  Debriefing

  Rebecca Valentine brushed down her khaki camouflage uniform, doing away with any unnecessary wrinkles, and then made her way out of the barracks and headed toward the main gate that overlooked the city. The base was set up as a semi-permanent cantonment. Inside the perimeter the base was lit up with halogen lights. At the main entrance there were two guard towers with spotlights that scanned the fence and looked for both stragglers and possible survivors.

  Funneling the survivors through the checkpoint entrances ensured that anybody coming through would be properly inspected for signs of infection. If they cleared the initial inspection, they would be guided to a special room for a chemical shower and sterilization. If they didn’t pass inspection they were given a choice: either take a souped-up rabies antiviral cocktail that had a rather high chance of ending in agonizing death due to their brain melting inside their skull and oozing out their ears, or be sent back out into the big hungry city only to count down the ticks of the clock until they turned into one of the living dead.

  The truth was, there wasn’t any cure yet. So why administer an antiviral that didn’t work? It was a way to keep the public from panicking. If people knew the truth—that this virus was unlike anything they’d ever seen before and that even with the best scientists working around the clock it would still be months, perhaps longer, before a viable cure could be produced—well, it would devolve into sheer pandemonium.