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

by Tristan Vick

  Walking up to the gate, which ran around the entire perimeter of the south quadrant of Newcastle, Barnes and Noble waved at the tower guards. Suddenly a spotlight shined on their position. Behind the guard towers of the main entrance was a massive military compound. The installment was state of the art, and was made up of various interlocking pods, all of them a dark non-reflective carbon fiber gray—the latest in military equipment. They’d never thought they’d be using it on home soil though. It was FUBAR on the face of it.

  Next to the buildings were parked several military vehicles, including two tan armored Humvees, a Japanese Komatsu LAV, and an armored personnel carrier. The Komatsu LAV looked like the offspring of a DeLorean and an H2. The tank-like SUV was fitted with a roof-mounted Sumitomo M2 Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun. Good for turning one’s enemies into mincemeat.

  Jennifer Hurley and Jesse Zanato straggled close behind their centurion-like guardians. The whole time they had been walking, Jennifer had kept sharing seductive glances back and forth with the big black soldier called Ulysses Noble. Jesse couldn’t help but feel he was already old news, and the added competition wasn’t helping.

  Noble looked back and, without so much as an attempt to disguise his intentions, eyed Hurley up and down, shot her a pearly white smile, and gave her his tried and perfected trademark wink. Hurley blew him a kiss back, which only made Jesse feel like he would hurl.

  Jesse Zanato scoffed, turned, and sulked away, but not before he mumbled, “Whore.”

  On the other side of the eight-foot tall chain-link fence, 1SG Rebecca Valentine cautiously eyeballed the rag-tag crew suspiciously. Upon seeing a familiar face, she smiled as Jared Barnes approached the fence.

  “Sergeant, what a pleasant surprise.”

  “Careful, Sergeant, it’s hot.”

  “It’s not the only thing that’s hot,” Barnes replied flirtatiously.

  Valentine rolled her eyes, ignoring his attempt at what he considered to be charm, but to her simply looked like a case of trying too hard. If she didn’t have the hots for him too she’d bring him up on disciplinary charges.

  “I see you got the checkpoints up in record time,” Barnes began. Checking his watch, he continued, “In just under fifteen hours. Consider me impressed.”

  “It happened so fast that we couldn’t mobilize in time to prevent it from spreading. Now the contagion is in the wild and all we can do is simply try to keep things pinned down here,” Valentine said rather grimly. “The CDC has been working around the clock to get the quarantine tents set up, and our job now is to aid with the evacuation of all non-infected, which will continue all throughout the night and well into tomorrow.” Valentine waved her hand and signaled the guards to open the compound gates. “You know the drill, gentlemen. Have the survivors processed, and then report to General Greer ASAP.”

  “Yes, First Sergeant,” Barnes replied.

  Jennifer looked at Noble with a frightened look. “Processing? What does she mean by that?”

  “It’s nothing to worry about, I promise you. They just have to get your biometric data and check to see if you’ve sustained any serious injuries.”

  “That’s a hoot,” Zanato quipped, glaring at Noble.

  “How’s that?” Noble asked with a hint of intimidation in his voice.

  Zanato did his best to stare him down, but Noble merely matched his glowering with some of his own, and the two men stood and glared at each other, their blood boiling as their rivalry over who’d win Hurley’s heart heated up.

  “You full well know they’re not checking us for injuries. They’re checking to see if we’re infected.” Continuing on in annoying fashion, Zanato added, “I know my rights, man. I pay taxes…sometimes…and I pay your goddamn salary too, tough guy. So you and the whole goddamn military can go fuck yourselves for all I care.”

  Noble’s jaw clenched his as he took offense at Zanato’s impertinence. Getting in Zanato’s face, he said with a masked rage, “The military is going to be the only ones protecting your sorry ass when the shit hits the fan.”

  “Knock it off, you two. You can compare dick sizes later,” Barnes said. Turning his attention to Zanato, Barnes added, “Besides, it doesn’t seem like you have much choice in the matter. You can take your chances back there in the city with the undead cannibals, or submit yourself to a strip search, an anal probe, and a chemical spray-down courtesy of your Uncle Sam. Your choice.”

  “Stop being such a giant dick-bag,” Jennifer added, and slapped Zanato in the back of his stupid head as she walked by. Swiveling her hips in a seductive swagger, she went on through the open gates. Barnes winked at Zanato and followed after her.

  “Yeah, stand aside, micro-dick,” Noble taunted as brushed past Zanato.

  Realizing he was the only one left standing on the wrong side of the fence, Zanato quickly trotted after them. “Hey, wait for me!”

  With everyone securely inside, the gates close behind them with a rattling clunk, followed by the buzz of electricity surging through the fence, causing a din that sounded a lot like a swarm of angry bees.

  A lurid moan filled the base as Jennifer Hurley slammed down onto Noble’s throbbing member. Hurley squeezed her breasts together and moaned, and her blonde hair glowed like white gold as the strands danced across the rolling contours of Noble’s rugged dark skin. Rising up, she kissed his mouth with hers and electricity danced between their lips.

  Clasping her tightly in his arms, Ulysses Noble rolled over on top and slammed her down face first into the bed. Grabbing Jennifer’s hips, he pulled her into him, hard. Their throbbing, aching bodies surged and pulsed with pleasure as they conjoined.

  The wet warmth of her body sent waves of pleasure up Noble’s spine as he slowly pushed his hips into hers and tapped her from behind. Falling into a rhythm, they didn’t hold back. They fucked as if it was their last night on earth.

  “Yes. Yes. YESSS!” Jennifer screamed out, her voice thick with lust. She did her best to sound like a professional porn star. Noble smiled, admiring the blue monarch butterfly tattoo above her ass, which writhed in pleasure as he kept up his epic pace.

  “Do you think he can hear us?” Jennifer asked mischievously.

  Noble shouted out and enthusiastic, “Oorah!” and rammed Jennifer’s backside even harder—soliciting even louder moans from her. As he went to town on her, she bit down on her finger and gave into the moment.

  In the next room, Jesse Zanato covered his ears in protest. Jared Barnes, who sat on a stool, kicked his feet up onto the end of the bed and leaned back nonchalant while he brushed his teeth.

  “How can you stand to listen to that racket?” Zanato pouted.

  “Look, when you’re in the field every day, and you get some down time, and a pretty girl throws herself at you and tells you to take her, there’s only one answer she’s looking for: ‘Yes, ma’am.’ As Marines, we’re honor bound to serve.”

  Zanato fell back on the bed and pressed his hands over his ears even harder to try and muffle out the noise. “Yeah, well, it still makes me want to puke my fucking guts out.”

  “Yeah, well, please don’t,” Barnes replied as he walked over to the sink, spit, and rinsed out his mouth.

  Opening the mirror cabinet, Barnes pulled out an elegant blue bottle of cologne and threw on a dash.

  “Going somewhere?” asked Zanato.

  “I have a date.”

  Zanato raised his arms in protest, and grumbled, “What? You mean you’re just gonna leave me here with this disgusting fuck-fest going on next door? Whatever happened to bros before hoes?”

  “Let’s get a couple of things straight here,” Barnes began. “First off, I’m not your bro. Secondly, you’d best do yourself a favor and give up the macho-boy cock-fight routine.” Nodding his head toward the other room, Barnes added, “The saying ‘once you go black you never go back’ was invented because of that guy in there. Save yourself the heartache and just let her go. There are other fish in the sea.”<
br />
  Pulling a pair of socks from a drawer, he flung them at Zanato. The socks pelted Zanato in the head, and he fumbled to catch them. Looking down at the socks, Zanato asked, “What’re these?”

  “It’s happy time,” replied Barnes sarcastically as he opened the barrack’s door. Looking back, he added, “Knock yourself out.”

  Before Zanato had a chance to come back with something witty the door slammed in his face. Hastily he grabbed the pillow off the bed and wrapped it around his head, then groaned in revulsion at the sounds of the Jennifer and Noble grunting and sighing, gasping and groaning, as they went at it like a couple of wild animals.

  Rebecca Valentine undressed herself as she got ready for a hot shower and some much needed shut eye. She heard a noise in the hallway, her nerves jumped to amber alert, and she put her sidearm on the bed stand just to be safe. Valentine let her clothes slide off her solid form and then stepped into the steamy shower. Hearing the door of her private quarters squeak open, she smiled.

  Tip-toeing toward the shower, Barnes spotted the gun on the nightstand. This provoked a smile. Typical power play, he thought. Then he slowly grabbed the door handle to the shower and flung it wide open. Steam rushed out, filling the room, but to his surprise it was empty. Suddenly he felt two sharp fingers being pressed against the back of his head.

  “Bang,” said the sultry voice.

  Barnes slowly raised his hands and turned around to face his attacker. Glancing at the nude glistening female form in front of him, he smiled. “It seems you caught me with my pants down,” Barnes said playfully, dropping his trousers and shorts.

  Valentine looked down and licked her lips as she spied Jared Barnes’s throbbing member standing at full mast. “Seems so,” she said, grinning.

  Barnes grabbed Valentine, pulled her naked body into his, and kissed her lips. As they kissed, Valentine peeled off his shirt and pulled him into the shower with her. Hopping into his arms, she pressed her chest into his and raised her leg, fixing it on the edge of the bathtub and bracing it against the shower tiles of the wall. She fished for his dick with her hand. Hitting the jackpot, she guided him inside of her, sliding effortlessly down onto the bulbous head of his throbbing member. As he penetrated her deeply, she gasped, “Oh, God!”

  “You like that, eh?” he asked, pounding her harder.

  Gasping some more as he fucked her like a champion, she added, “This is exactly what I needed. You better make me cum, Marine. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, ma’am” Barnes replied with a smile, and then he went back to lathering her neck with wet kisses. As the shower water ran off their glistening bodies, steam as hot as their lust engulfed them.

  Back in his room, Zanato heard a new, but somewhat familiar sound. It was the same sound as before. The sound of rough-and-tumble sex. But it was coming from the other side of his room. Just then, both walls erupted in a chorus of lovemaking noises.

  “What is this place, the motherfucking animal kingdom?” Zanato gripped his hair, as if to pull it out, and winced at the realization that he was the only one not getting any.

  Holding the limp sock in his hand, Zanato contemplated the exact amount of desperation it would take to override the overwhelming sense of shame he would inevitably feel after making love to a well-worn sock. He managed to talk himself out of it, but not before getting mad about his rotten turn of luck. Frustrated, he pitched the sock at the wall and yelled, “This is bullshit!”

  17

  Collision Course

  Flicking on the high beams, Rachael sped down the long dark road. There wasn’t any other traffic so she was able to drive over the speed limit. She didn’t know why she felt in such a hurry, just that, for whatever reason, things felt urgent.

  It wasn’t long before they saw the string of lights demarcating the perimeter of the quarantine zone. A large electric fence spanned the horizon in either direction and surrounded what appeared to be the entire city. She wondered how the military had pulled that off so fast. The highway itself went straight up to the gate, so any person going in or out of the city would have to go through there first.

  Spotlights prowled the area in front of the main gate. Suddenly one of the beams locked onto them. The hot flash of white light blinded Rachael’s eyes.

  Reflexively, she put her hand up in front of her face and tried to squint past the light. Just as her eyes started to readjust, Rachael saw the flash of muzzle shots go off as a warning for them to slow down. But it was too late for that. Rachael hadn’t caught it in time.

  The Audi sped over the spike strip, and with a deafening pop, all four of the car’s tires blew out and sent the car into a sideways skid. Rachael overcorrected and the SUV fishtailed and then lurched back in the other direction, their momentum working violently against them.

  Without warning the Audi flipped up and car caught air. For a moment it seemed to hang in the air before it came crashing down onto its hood. The windshield instantaneously shattered upon impact and glass flew everywhere, scratching up both Alyssa’s and Rachael’s faces and getting intertwined with their hair.

  With a bang, the airbags deployed, and both women slammed into them as the vehicle smashed down on its engine block. The weight of the vehicle’s sharp downward momentum pushed against the resistance of the roll beam and sent the vehicle into a freewheeling spin.

  The Audi rolled three times, tossing its occupants around like rag dolls, and skidded upside down on its crumpled roof. Sparks flying, the SUV scraped along the pavement until it finally came to a screeching halt meters away from the entrance of the main gate.

  Dangling upside down in the turned-over vehicle, Alyssa tried to focus on Rachael, but her vision blurred in and out as she fought to stay conscious. A large piece of metal wreckage had torn off in the violent somersault and pierced Rachael’s abdomen. The scrap metal went in one side and out the other. Rachael was bleeding out.

  Alyssa reached over to try and touch Rachael’s neck, wanting urgently to check for a pulse. But she was stopped short by the horrible throbbing pain in her own head. She tried to fight it back, but the pain only intensified until she couldn’t take it any longer and then, suddenly, everything went black.

  PART TWO

  Newcastle City

  QUARANTINE ZONE

  18

  Overrun

  Smoke curled from the ashtray as General Greer put out his cigar. Brushing away the wispy trails of smoke that lingered in front of his face, Greer glanced around the room at the skeleton crew that manned the command room. He watched as his people diligently monitored the screens that showed live feeds of the entire perimeter. Now that the President of the United States had declared quarantine of Newcastle City and all infected zones in or around the city, nobody came in or out without the general’s explicit consent.

  Anyone who approached the perimeter with the slightest signs of infection, such as bite marks, pale skin, or a fever, was serendipitously ordered to turn around immediately and go back the way they’d come.

  Greer checked the monitors and grumbled to himself. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. Moments earlier, some lunatic made a mad beeline straight toward the perimeter and wrecked their car. Yet due to the sensitive nature of having to maintain a stable perimeter, Greer decided to put out the goddamn fire before it could escalate into a catastrophe. The SUV had crashed close enough to the main gate that if the fuel tank exploded it could blow a hole in his whole operation, and the general was not about to let himself go down in history as the guy who botched the most important quarantine in the history of the human race.

  Besides, he’d just set this quarantine facility up no more than 48 hours ago. Once the POTUS declared the news of the viral outbreak impacting Newcastle City and surrounding areas a national emergency, the general had gotten the greenlight to go in and set up a quarantine zone around the city. Considering everything had been implemented so quickly, surprisingly enough, it all seemed to be in working order. That is, until some i
diot crashed through his front gate.

  Greer flipped a button on his desk. The entire glass surface was, in fact, a touch panel computer. He slid a blue eagle icon to the front of his desk, and it flew off-panel and instantly appeared on the larger command monitor at the front of the room, which was practically the size of a cinema movie screen. The larger panel brought up a live video feed of the flaming wreckage outside the front gate while a series of smaller video panes got bumped to the side. The numerous boxes made the entire thing look like a living graphic novel playing out in real time.

  Each video stream broadcast various security feeds from around the base. Greer could see everything, from the internal corridors of the base, to the lab technicians working on blood samples, to the guards doing their patrols on along the fence line. Greer had eyes on it all. Nothing went on under his nose without his express knowledge. Information was power, and he had it all funneled to his command station.

  Greer pressed a green flashing icon on the glass surface of his desk’s touch panel screen, which brought up the sound to the main monitor. The button chirped and Greer spoke up. “Sergeant, give me your status report.”

  Standing next to the battered remains of the Audi Q7, Sgt. Noble touched the intercom on his ear, which looked like a headset for a wireless cell phone, and answered, “We pulled out two female survivors from the wreckage.” Behind him, a contingent of U.S. Marines attended to the wreckage, and a medic was busy checking one of the women from the car.

  “What are their conditions, Sergeant?”

  “Both are badly wounded, sir.”

  “Do they appear to be infected?” asked the general gruffly.

  “One appears to have suffered a series of extreme bites. The other one has bandages around her right leg around what appears to be a stab wound.”

  Leaning back in his chair, the general put his chin on his interlocked fingers and thought for a moment. Greer asked, “How fresh are those bite marks, Sergeant?”