by Jean Booth
After her suggestion panned out and she’d proven to them that gore didn’t bother her, she became the one to prepare the bodies for disposal. So far, her excuse held and no one wondered what was happening with the organs once they were removed. She was actually thanked for her foresight into the body removal process.
Jessica was surprised at how much she hated being in a hospital. The sterile surroundings reminded her of the last time she’d been in one of these places. She hated the reminders. Any time she tried to rest, she was inundated with images of the massacre that had occurred when she’d been infected.
During the day, she’d train with the other Privates learning evasive maneuvers, tactical shooting with paintballs, and she also learned what was known about the differences between the healthy and the infected. They’d learned the hard way that they couldn’t catch one of them alive. They’d tried that, keeping it contained in one of the quarantine rooms, but it had proved to be fatal for many of the survivors, and the zombie.
When the virus had first gone bad, and they’d started the sanctuary at the hospital, Stevens had captured one of the infected. It wasn’t one of the smart ones, but it was hungry. They’d attached an animal grasper to its neck and had contained it in one of the rooms they now used to quarantine people. The scientists tried to tie it down, but only ended up getting scratched. They had turned as well, but not as quickly as ones who had been bitten.
Their spiral started with flu-like symptoms, before flatlining. They’d wake up a few hours later and have to be put down, just like the creature they’d tried to observe and experiment on.
Jessica had to laugh to herself at the irony. Now they had one happily living in their midst, although they didn’t know it. She kept her secret close, not wanting to jeopardize this sweet setup she’d managed to procure. While she didn’t like the reminders the hospital setting gave her, she enjoyed not having to go out and hunt for her food.
While munching on brains and the occasional heart, Jessica found her meals stagnant. It was like eating steak for every meal, and she missed the potatoes. She left one of the doors open to the outside one day, allowing a lone zombie into the hospital. Leading him to the survivors wasn’t a difficult task. She hid in the shadows as he attacked. He appeared to have been starving.
Barely able to focus on the task at hand, he attacked a room of survivors. Three were slaughtered before someone was able to kill the zombie. Jessica had used that distraction to her benefit. She’d torn out some organs, saving them in a plastic bag for later. The meat was the most difficult. She had to make it look like the zombie had ripped apart the people, without letting on that it was actually her.
She ripped apart a thigh, tossing it into her bag. The sound of a gunshot told her she was out of time. Carefully hiding her stash in an unused cupboard, she placed her hands on another body and started doing compressions. To anyone who looked, she’d gotten bloodied trying to help save someone, not because she was tearing meat from the dead body.
The only time she had any real trouble with the survivors was when they were supposed to eat. She couldn’t handle the food the healthy humans ate. Her stomach wouldn’t tolerate anything that wasn’t coated in blood any longer. She would take her small rations and excuse herself to eat elsewhere. She was new enough that her behavior wasn’t abnormal, but it was starting to raise some brows. She knew that Stevens would start to question her odd behavior soon, and she had to find a way to distract him.
For the most part, the other survivors left her alone. Without Sergeant Stevens’ watchful eye and Private McCloud’s obvious interest in her, she’d have been all but invisible.
Ian McCloud proved to be another problem entirely. She found herself oddly attracted to him, both physically and emotionally. She hadn’t thought she could have these feelings now that she was infected, and it made her apprehensive. He appeared to return her attraction and did everything he could to catch her attention.
She tried to ignore him, to halt his interest in her, but the truth was, she was curious. Could she still be intimate with another, even though she was, medically speaking, dead?
They ran into each other one moonlit night, after she’d secretly let in the zombie, fed, and cleaned up. He was the one who had killed the infected she’d released and she helped him dispose of the remains. They came together that night, on top of the roof, under the stars.
It was passionate, filled with need, desire, and a hunger she’d forgotten. When it was over, she lay in his arms, knowing it’d be the last time someone held her like this. She knew now that she could still love and was able to express that love as a healthy human did. She also knew it could never happen if she was hungry. It was hard enough to listen to his rapid pulse and not rip him apart while she was satiated. She craved his healthy heart more than she craved the love she felt towards him. It was also too difficult for her to lie there with him, feeling twinges of love and not be able to explain everything.
If he knew he’d just been with a zombie, he’d kill her.
She was grateful to Stevens the next day when he told her she’d be going on the next raid. They’d be leaving the next day to hunt down supplies and to find out if the rumors were true. They’d been hearing rumors about a group of survivors that were doing more than simply surviving. They were living.
Their leader had set up a compound that was protected from the infected and they were living off the land as people had in the old days.
All Jessica knew was that if she found this leader, this brilliant human, she’d be gone. Either she’d succeed in killing him and creating a plan to find and destroy Caleb, or the leader would kill her. She knew she couldn’t continue living as she was. It was too hard emotionally to continue killing the survivors and she couldn’t live on her own. It was time to make a stand for herself and either kill Caleb or die trying.
SARAH
Sarah curled tighter into a ball on their small couch. She clenched a pillow to her chest, ignoring the pain in her arm. She’d gone to Matt immediately after killing Jessica. She had no illusions of hope. She knew her blood had mixed with Jessica’s. There wasn’t any way it could’ve missed. In a few moments she too would be like the others. Infected.
“Just do it already. I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered.
“No. Not while you’re still human.” He was firm in his resolve. He wouldn’t kill her while she was still herself.
Neither of them cared that the others had to clean up the mess from the battle. Once Sarah told Matt what had happened, he’d brought her directly to their small cottage, locked the door and pulled the curtains closed. He didn’t want the others to know what had happened until he had no other choice.
“What if you’re wrong? What if her blood missed you?” he asked, again.
Sarah knew he wasn’t sure he could kill her. She knew it would destroy him to be without her. He would wait until there was no other option.
She held up her arm so he could see the gash. It was covered in blood and he wasn’t stupid. He knew most of it wasn’t Sarah’s.
“I feel awful already. I think I’m changing. You promised you’d do what was necessary, I’m holding you to that promise.” Panic edged its way into her voice. She didn’t want to die, but if she had to, she was glad Matt would be the last person she saw.
She closed her eyes, holding on to the image of Matt, bent over her, his clear, kind eyes looking deep into her soul, and she passed out.
She woke in her bed, a bandage on her arm, pain still radiating from the wound. She slept again. She woke periodically for moments during the next few days but wouldn’t know about it until after. She barely moved, barely breathed, just slept.
When she finally came to, she felt different. She wasn’t having any unusual cravings, but she wasn’t herself either. She crawled out of bed and went into the small living room where she found Matt sitting, staring blankly at the wall, a cup of coffee cooling in his lap.
“Hey,” she said, her
voice a croak.
He jumped, spilling the coffee on the floor, and looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. He looked awful. He hadn’t shaved or changed his clothes since the battle; he also hadn’t bathed in days if the smell in the room was anything to measure by. He stared blankly at her, unable to register anything past exhaustion.
“Are you ok?” she whispered, moving closer. She touched his hand and he jumped again. “Matt, snap out of it. I need you to talk to me now.”
Her tone finally sunk in. He blinked, looking at her properly for the first time.
“You’re awake.” He sprang off the couch as if he’d been bitten.
“Why?” she asked. “The last thing I remember is cutting myself and having that thing’s blood all over me. What happened?”
Matt led her to the couch, and sat down next to her. He held her hands in his as he started talking. “You told me to kill you. I couldn’t do it. You passed out and your arm was just bleeding all over. I cleaned you up, stitched up your arm and put you to bed. That was four days ago.” He paused to gather his thoughts.
Sarah looked at him, shocked speechless. Matt wasn’t finished.
“You’d wake screaming and snarling like a rabid beast, but I still couldn’t kill you. I held you down until you passed out again and have barely left your side. The last time you woke was yesterday and you were really out of it. When you fell back to sleep I knew. Either you’d wake up and be with me or you’d never wake up again.” He looked at her with tears in his eyes. “I couldn’t do what you asked.”
“I’m glad,” she replied. “I feel strange, but I don’t have any weird cravings. I must’ve been wrong. My body was probably in shock from the unsanitary cut and the blood loss.”
“No, Sarah. You’re infected. For some reason, your body’s fighting or rejecting the infection, but had I not restrained you during the first few days, you’d have gone on a rampage. It was only in the past day that I could take the restraints off. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t care. You have the infection coursing through your veins, but you’re not changing.”
“How’s this possible?” she asked. He could only shake his head. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t left or let anyone in since the battle. They’ve been trying to speak to me for days. I told them I needed time, but I don’t know how much longer they’ll wait before coming in by force. “
“Should we tell them?”
“No,” Matt replied firmly. “They’ll just want to drain your blood or kill you. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow you hold the cure to whatever this is.”
His words made sense. If she was infected but didn’t have the symptoms, then she must hold some type of cure. He was wrong in not wanting to share it though. The others had to at least have a chance to survive. They also needed to be given the choice of whether to stay here or not; she was potentially dangerous after all.
“No,” Matt said, taking her face in his hands so she’d have to look at him and know there was no negotiating with him on this. “I know what you’re thinking and I’ll be damned if I risk your life for the minute chance that the others could be saved. There’s no way, Sarah.”
She nodded, knowing it was ultimately her decision.
She took a shower, leaving him to explain the situation to the others however he wanted to. By the time she was finished, he was passed out on their bed. She yawned and joined him. Even though she’d just spent the better part of four days sleeping, she was exhausted. Together they slept, not knowing what the future held.
SARAH
Sarah woke with a start. The sweat-soaked covers were twisted uncomfortably around her body. “Dang,” she whispered. “That was some dream.”
She hobbled out of her and Matt’s room and into the kitchen where she made herself a large cup of gourmet decaf coffee. She couldn’t shake the realness of the dream, even with the cup warming her hands. She went back into their room, dressed quickly in a short-sleeved shirt and pants, unconsciously rubbing her belly for reassurance. It was only a dream.
She grabbed her purse, locked up the house and crossed the street to the only person she trusted, after Matt. She was glad now that Matt had insisted on staying close.
“Mary? You got a minute?” Sarah called as she entered the house, shivering as she remembered the scene she’d encountered in here in her dream.
“In the kitchen,” Mary called.
“I just had the strangest dream,” she said as she entered the kitchen, and made herself at home on a barstool.
“Oh?” Mary replied, her hands molding one of her famous apple pies.
Sarah proceeded to tell her everything as she stole bits of apple slices from the bowl on the counter. When she finished telling her adoptive mother the horrific story, they sat in stunned silence for a moment.
“Well, dear, it seems as if the baby disagrees with the pickle and banana sandwiches you keep eating,” Mary said with a knowing smile. “It was only a dream, Sarah.”
“I know. It was just so real.” She reached for another apple slice and Mary snatched her hand. She held it firmly, yet gently.
“Sarah, what happened?” Mary asked. Mary knew and loved Matt, but the boy had unresolved childhood issues, and a nasty temper.
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.
“This scar.” Mary hated to ask, but she had to know. “It’s fresh and hand-stitched. Did he hurt you?”
Sarah looked down at the arm Mary held. It was the same one that had held the knife in her dream, the knife she’d used to kill Jessica. There, on the inside of her forearm, was a long partially-healed cut, complete with uneven stitch marks.
She looked up at Mary, and began to shake.
“It was only a dream, wasn’t it?”
Zombie War started out as a very crazy dream I had one night. I woke up thinking, “Holy crap; that was so gross! I should write this down.” I sat at the computer with furry little cat bodies yelling at me to go back to bed, or feed them. There it sat for another few months while I finished writing and publishing Choice.
During this writing experience I discovered a couple of things.
1- I really dislike edits.
2- I am a very disturbed individual.
3- There’s an awful lot of people that helped me get to the final stages of both these books.
So without further ado, I would like to thank the people that helped me the most with my writing.
To my readers, honestly what’s the point of writing if you didn’t exist? I hope you enjoy this book, as well as any others you may have read. No two are the same, and I hope to continue with that. Thank you so much for your support!
Bryan, thanks always for understanding my frustrations and listening to me lament and whine about everything that’s going on in my zombie-filled world.
To the WH crew: You rock. Thanks for being my beta readers and telling me when things suck. I love being able to watch as you read the stories that live in my head and smile with you as you tell me what a disturbed individual I am.
Mom, thanks for putting the idea that I could actually tell a good story into my head. I would have never started had you not given me the seed.
My friend, Thomas Amo, thanks for the words of support when I needed them--you so rock! Marissa Ames, Auhor, and Karmin Dahl, thank you so much for beta reading this and making it as close to perfect as possible. What would I do without you?
This is my first book with my publisher, BHC Press, who also created the amazing trailer, formatting, and cover design for this book. I have to say, I’m still blown away at how awesome it was—I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us!
I know I’ve said it before, but I don’t think it can be said enough. I LOVE my fans and think you all are beyond amazing!
Thank you for your love and support and your need for more books. You are amazing, yes, you, reading this, you are a wonderful person, and I thank you from the bottom of my hea
rt for taking a chance and (hopefully) enjoying my writing. You rock!
~ Jean
Jean Booth was born in the sweltering Vegas desert. She moved about during her childhood until returning to her roots in Northern Nevada. She’s happily married with 9 cats as her children. For the entirety of her adult life she’s worked in healthcare, battling insurances and poor staffing to provide great care to those who need it. Her greatest escapes are the stories found in books and in her head that she’s finally decided to share.