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

by Tristan Vick

  It was an annoying digital tone that sounded like red alert on the Starship Enterprise. Aside from the alarm, Alyssa heard spurts of fully automatic gunfire coming from outside the compound. This was followed by pockets of silence, followed by more sporadic spurts of firing.

  She stood up and walked over to the glass walls, then paced back to the cot. She didn’t know what was worse, the waiting around or the not knowing what the hell was going on outside.

  Pacing her cell, Alyssa began to understand what a caged animal must feel like. Poor things. Her mind wandered back to all the good animals she had lost at the kennel. Many of them, especially the strays, had become like adopted pets to her. She couldn’t bear the thought of their last few hours filled with nothing but horrible suffering. Before she made herself cry, Alyssa shook the thought out of her mind and paced the room some more.

  More chaotic gunfire erupted outside and then, suddenly, it was inside too. Automatic gunfire echoed up and down the halls. Every now and again she heard a soldier scream in gut-wrenching agony, followed more gunfire, then more screaming. Finally, the gunfire died out, but the screaming continued. Terrible screams. Still, all she could do was listen to the death rattles of men and women and pray that somebody would get to her before those creatures did.

  Unexpectedly, the main door flew open with a loud clank as it slammed against the wall and an older gentleman limped into the room. He had a large cigar dangling out of his mouth and wore standard-issue khaki camo. He was pushing sixty but looked quite handsome for his age. A hard-boiled George Clooney, she thought.

  Hobbling up to the biometric lock, he leaned in for the eye scan and placed his thumb on the biometrics pad. The door opened.

  Alyssa stood barefoot in her cell. “Who are you?”

  “I’m General—”

  “GRrahhh!”

  Suddenly an animal-like growl interrupted their self-introductions. General Greer pulled out his side arm and spun back toward the door to see the walking corpse of Corporal Anderson enter. A large slab of skin was hanging off his face, revealing patches of white tendon and skull bone that showed through from underneath the thin strands of facial muscle. Clenching his jaw, Greer cursed under his breath, “Goddammit, Anderson.”

  Corporal Anderson reached out with bloody appendages and lunged forward. Without hesitating, the general planted a bullet right into Corporal Anderson’s brain. The corporal slammed to the floor with a thud.

  “As I was saying,” the general continued, turning back toward Alyssa, “I’m General Thompson Greer.”

  “Are you responsible for this?” Alyssa said angrily, pointing at her cell.

  The general gave a somewhat embarrassed look and holstered his weapon. “I apologize for keeping you here for so long. Things got kind of…” he searched for the right words, “out of hand.”

  “You think?!”

  Reaching out his hand, he said, “Come along, we have to go.”

  Alyssa just gave him the evil eye, letting him know she wasn’t at all pleased with her treatment. Still pissed off, Alyssa stood steadfast in her cell out of protest. “I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”

  “We don’t have time for a goddamn sit-in,” implored the general, enticing her to hurry it along.

  “Time? I’ve been trapped in here like a caged animal for what seems like ages. What is a few more minutes going to hurt?”

  Moaning broke out in the hall, and the general turned to check the door, then looked straight into Alyssa’s eyes. “I promise you I’ll bring you up to speed, but we have to go and we have to go now.”

  “Let me put my shoes on first.”

  Alyssa turned around to pick up her sneakers, which she barely snatched up before the general clutched her wrist and towed her along behind him.

  “Stay close to me,” Greer said as he guided her to the door. Peeking around the corner, he made sure the coast was clear. Taking a deep breath, he raised his gun and boldly stepped out into the hall. Upon finding nothing but an empty hall, Greer relaxed, but continued to hold his gun at the ready.

  “Where’s my friend?” Alyssa asked.

  “Hush up and pipe down,” snarled the general. “You don’t want to draw their attention to us.”

  From around the corner two Walkers stepped forth, growling and staggering toward them. Alyssa screamed from the suddenness of their blood-curdling arrival. Both were the worse for wear. The first zombie was missing its entire scalp, as well as both ears. A halo of blood from its bowl-cut head dripped down its hideous face. The other one was missing the bottom half of its jaw. Its face was even less of a face than the first one. A large bloody gash of meaty nasal cavity took the place of its nose, and its teeth dangled in front with an ugly overbite. If these grotesque features weren’t bad enough, burn marks from whatever explosion had taken its face off charred its flesh and clothes. Alyssa felt like screaming again but clasped her hand over her mouth to stop herself.

  “Never mind,” said Greer, slightly annoyed. “Baldy and Extra-Crispy here heard you the first time.”

  Greer let go of Alyssa’s wrist and walked boldly down the hall to confront the creatures. As he intercepted them he advanced with small steady steps, to better focus his aim. Greer shot twice and dropped both monsters with a couple of precision head shots. Baldy was still writhing at his feet when he reached it, so he put another one through its white-capped dome just to be sure.

  Alyssa began to approach the middle of the T-junction where Greer stood, nudging the thing with his foot, but he raised his hand and stopped her. She couldn’t see what was down the other hallway, but Greer fired the remainder of his ammunition. The general let the empty cartridge fall to the floor and quickly slapped in a new one. He continued firing of round after round. The muzzle flashes lit up the wall at the end of the darkened hall like a movie screen so that Alyssa could see the swarm of bent and twisted shadows slowly creeping toward them.

  Firing away, Greer pushed his way down the hallway until he was out of sight. Alyssa felt hands wrap around her mouth from behind and pull her into the darkness.

  The barrel of Greer’s gun smoked as the last of the spent shells tinkled onto the floor. “Hoo-fucking-rah!” he said, proud of himself for having taken out the monsters in precisions fashion. He may be getting up there in years but, to his great consolation, he hadn’t missed a step.

  Greer holstered his gun and turned back toward where Alyssa stood. “Bet you didn’t think an old timer like me could…” General Greer’s voice trailed off as he looked up to see only an empty hallway and no sign of the girl. “God-fucking-dammit!”

  20

  My Zombie Valentine

  Jared Barnes pushed against the command room’s sliding doors. The motors were shot, but they slowly, albeit noisily, screeched open. Suddenly an overflow of office supplies came spilling out of the widening slit. The entrance had been blockaded by a pile of desks, chairs, and cracked computer monitors that crackled with electric spurts of energy.

  The light fixtures that hung from the ceiling gently swayed back and forth, casting shadows in their wake. Most of them were nearly burnt out, the bulbs shattered from the fire-fight that chewed up the command center, but a couple of luminescent stragglers flickered with life—barely hanging by a neon thread.

  Squeezing through the narrow entrance way, Barnes entered the room. He was hoping Rebecca was hanging on by a thread too. He hoped she’d be dug in, saving that last bullet for when she really needed it. “First Sergeant?” he called out. “Rebecca? Are you in here?”

  The pile of clutter shifted and then toppled over, making a ruckus as it went. Barnes paused and waited for the noise to subside, and when nothing roused, he continued his way into the darkened room.

  Looking around, Barns noticed everything was upturned, and had all the signs of a last stand. Bullet holes peppered all four walls. Even the computers, obviously caught in the crossfire, sparked and fizzed with war wounds. Papers were strewn about everywhere and
blood spatter spackled nearly everything. But oddly, there weren’t any bodies. Which he was beginning to realize was a bad sign.

  Amid the flickering lights and the swaying shadows, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a shadow whisk by.

  Barnes quickly drew his weapon and spun around. But there was nothing there. Cautiously, he stepped over some toppled over filing cabinets and made his way toward the general’s desk. It was the only thing in the room that was still standing upright. His foot crunched down on a random fluorescent light bulb. The crackle and pop of glass sounded much louder in the stillness of the vacant room. Barnes paused and listened, hoping that he hadn’t drawn any attention to himself. He raised his weapon and continued slowly toward the desk.

  Cautiously, he aimed the barrel of his gun over the edge and pointed it at the dark shadow it cast. He jumped behind the desk ready to fire at whatever might be lurking there, but there wasn’t anything there. Maybe she did get out alive, he thought. He began to feel a slight sense of hope as he turned back around to leave.

  “Grrrah!” a female voice growled, and leapt out at him from his blind spot.

  Barnes blocked her attack with raised arms but the brunt of her dead weight slamming into him causing them both to topple over the desk together. They hit the ground with a thud.

  Pinned beneath her, Barnes gripped her wrists tight and stared at the woman’s face in devastating alarm. Valentine craned her neck toward him and chomped at the air, her snapping teeth coming millimeters away from nipping his nose. Part of her right cheek had been torn off, revealing her toothy half-smile. Unable to get at him, she growled angrily.

  Tears began to flood out of Barnes’s eyes as he looked into the mutilated face of First Sergeant Valentine. She stared back at him with those damned milky-white eyes, indifferent to his emotional pain and wanting nothing more than to nibble him to death—a fitting thing for a zombie lover to do, he thought. His zombie Valentine.

  “No,” he said, holding her at bay. “Not you, too.”

  Barnes rolled his shoulder and thrust his hips as hard as he could. Valentine flipped over and crashed into the floor with a loud thump. Barnes retrieved his gun, which had been knocked out of his hands in their tussle, and quickly sprang onto his feet.

  “Riahhrrr!” Valentine growled, more angrily than before, as she struggled to get up onto her stiff legs. Cocking her head to the side, like a wild animal curiously trying to contemplate the next move of its prey, she looked at Barnes as if she was trying to recall from memory why he was so familiar. But the struggle to regain any trace of her past humanity soon lost out to the infection’s overriding instinct to feed. She bared her teeth and lunged forward.

  Sgt. Barnes fired two shots through her left eye, and Valentine crumpled to the ground. Looking down at her lifeless, contorted body, he wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. Sniffling, he holstered his gun and then bent down, removed her dog tags, and placed them around his neck. Peeling off his jacket, he leaned down and gently placed it over her head. It was the least he could do for the woman he loved. The woman he had just killed.

  Barnes wasn’t the cynical type, but he felt miserable, as if he had just finished a wild drinking binge and suddenly was forced to sober the hell up. Suddenly he was wide awake, and the Dionysian dream was over. All that remained was the cold, vividly harsh realization that all of this, this nightmare, a world populated with the living dead, was his reality now.

  SSgt. Barnes stood up straight, composed himself, and then left the room. He didn’t look back.

  As he departed the crippled compound, he held up a small transceiver gripped snuggly in the palm of his hand. Barnes flicked open the red cover guard with his thumb and pressed down hard on the button. Orange balls of fire lit up the night sky as the entire compound exploded behind him.

  21

  Dangerous Encounters

  Above the darkened city, the military green Black Hawk MEDEVAC helicopter cut across the night sky like a large mechanical dragonfly. Rachael Ramirez awoke to the loud rumble of the motor and the chopping sound of its blades as it made its way the night sky. She was strapped into a seat, and her hands were bound with medical gauze. Looking over, she saw Dr. Hemingway sitting beside her. “What’s going on? Where are you taking me?”

  “Welcome back among the living,” said Hemingway. “How do you feel?”

  Rachael paused and tried to focused on where she felt pain, but she didn’t feel much of anything. “I feel…It’s strange…I feel perfectly fine.”

  “That’s excellent,” Hemingway said, smiling at Rachael with the kind of hauntingly infatuated look a lovesick stalker might have. “We are currently headed to the Bradley Air Force base located on the other side of the city. It is where the general and the rest of the remaining military personnel and survivors will convene. Believe me, it’s the safest place to be right now.”

  Suddenly Rachael remembered Alyssa. “Wait, what about Alyssa? The girl I was with, what happened to her?”

  Doctor Hemingway looked at Rachel with a grave expression. “I’m sorry, but my orders were clear. If the base was overrun by the living dead, I was to get you out of there at any cost.”

  Rachael squinted her eyes at Hemingway and gestured back toward the tail of the helicopter. “So you just left her there to die? It that it, doctor?”

  “Right now, the cure is more important than the life of a random girl who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hell, getting you to safety and figuring out how to make an actual vaccine from your DNA is our top priority from here on out; nothing else matters.”

  “What? Cure? What cure?”

  “It’s your blood. It’s special.”

  “What do you mean it’s special?”

  Their eyes locked and Hemingway placed her warm hand on Rachael’s arm. “You are immune to the virus.”

  “Is that even possible?” asked Rachael in shock.

  “Oh, it’s definitely possible. Thank God.”

  Rachael’s heart sank. Why was she immune but her son wasn’t? It wasn’t fair. She lost the only thing she had ever loved with all of her heart, and for what? The joy of realizing how bitter it is to be the only one who cannot escape the goddamn nightmare because you just so happen to be invulnerable to the pestilence? Tears welled up in her eyes.

  All of a sudden the helicopter pilot yelled out, “Incoming!”

  The helicopter arched up and then took a sharp dive. Hemingway was thrown up and hit her head on the metal ceiling. Once the helo righted itself, Hemingway smashed back to the floor, unconscious. Rachael looked out the window into the darkness of night and squinted hard. In the dim moonlit sky, she could make out a barely perceptible smoke trail winding its way toward them. “What is it?” she asked aloud. As it came closer her eyes widened with realization. “It’s a rocket!” she screamed. But it was already too late.

  With a loud boom! the RPG hit the tail of the helicopter and took it clean off in a fiery explosion. Without the rear rotor the mammoth machine began to spin and twist out of control. It plummeted down toward a grassy park in a near to the city center. Not the most ideal place to crash land, Rachael thought, bracing herself.

  Dark trails of smoke spiraled down after the plummeting helicopter. Smashing into the ground, the aircraft exploded in a gigantic ball of flame, lighting up the field like the Fourth of July.

  Several dark figures approached the burning wreckage of the helicopter. They carried small firearms and sported flannel shirts, baseball caps, and blue jeans. As they approached the burning rubble one of them put up a hand.

  “What is it, Hank?”

  “I thought I…uh…heard sumptin’.”

  “You sure it ain’t just your imagination?”

  “Nah, man. I’m tellin’ ya. I heard sumpthin’ rustling ‘round in the wreckage.”

  The men paused and strained their necks, trying to listen to the thin air. Suddenly there was a clang and a panel of the helicopter f
ell to the ground with a crash. The five men jumped in fright, but managed to aim their weapons squarely at the area where the noise came from. But after a moment of stillness, they settled back down.

  “See, wasn’t nothin’.”

  “It’s ‘wasn’t anything’, Hank,” one of the men corrected.

  “That’s what I said,” Hank said defensively. “Whatever. You know what ah meant.”

  Just then a whole sheet of metal clamored to the ground and a well-roasted body stood up in the flames. It was burnt beyond all recognition. Stumbling forward, it staggered a few steps and fell down onto its hands and knees, crawling the rest of its way out of the burning wreckage. It eventually collapsed at the feet of Hank and his men, who stood around looking dumbfounded. All that remained was one giant piece of barely breathing charcoal. Hank gave the order with a hand signal and his men instantly surrounded the charred body and took aim.

  “Let’s put this poor sonuvabitch out of his misery,” Hank hollered.

  But before anyone could fire a single shot, the charcoal figure raised its hand and a woman’s voice pleaded for them to stop. “Please, don’t shoot! Don’t shoot me.”

  The men all looked at each other in dismay, mouths hanging wide open. Looking back at the roasted figure, they watched it collapse to the ground and then roll onto its back. What they saw next was even more astonishing.

  The dark charcoal shell flaked off and crumbled away to reveal the porcelain white skin of a naked woman laying sprawled out before them. She had pale white skin, like the undead had, but without any of the damage or rot. Even her nipples were a subdued pink, although her hair was unchanged and she was still definitely a brunette.

  She was the spitting image of an angel fallen from Heaven, Hank thought. “Praise the Lord!” he exclaimed. “It’s a sign!”