by Rose Francis
The Naughty List Presents:
Forever After
A TNL Post-Apocalyptic Romance Anthology
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(c) 2014 The Naughty List, Respective Authors & Copyright Holders
This work of fiction is intended for mature audiences only. All characters represented within are eighteen years of age or older and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. None of the characters engaging in sexual activities are blood related. The works appearing in this collection are the property of their respective authors or copyright holders and are used here by The Naughty List with their explicit permission. Do not reproduce illegally.
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Table of Contents
Trapped
By Rose Francis
The Wolf, The Witch, and The Wasteland
By Jacqueline Sweet
Marked by the Alpha Wolf (Braving Darkness Book One)
By Scarlett Grove
The World Burns
By Boyd Craven
Euphoria/Dysphoria
By Michelle Browne & Nicolas Wilson
When Dreamers Wake
By J.E. & M. Keep
Acid (Dark Moon Pack): Episode One
By Pop Cherry
the end of Everything
By Katie Ayres
** More FREE and Discount eBooks from TNL **
Trapped (Expanded Edition)
By Rose Francis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE: ESCAPE
CHAPTER TWO: ILLUMINATION
CHAPTER THREE: DANGER
CHAPTER FOUR: ADMISSION
CHAPTER FIVE: STALLING
CHAPTER SIX: TRAPPED
CHAPTER SEVEN: RESISTANCE
CHAPTER EIGHT: CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER NINE: INSATIABLE
CHAPTER TEN: SURRENDER
PART TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN: STRUGGLE
CHAPTER TWELVE: ORIENTATION
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SEARCH
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: DUPED
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: RETURN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: REUNITED
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: ‘SAFETY’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: OBSERVATION
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
He saw the blood on his hands first—a deep maroon almost beautiful in the way it coated his fingers, glistening in the moonlight.
He looked down at himself—turning over his arm, checking his chest, and touching his neck to see where the blood had come from, and he saw traces of it on his shirt.
He almost panicked, wondering if he had been shot or stabbed and why he didn’t feel any pain.
Then he began examining the rest of himself—his legs, and his back.
It was the smell that got him—a rancid whiff from nearby. His eyes finally rested on the obvious source of the blood that his still-foggy brain had trouble processing.
He studied the glassy eyes of the human casing left behind by a clearly departed soul, and the carelessness of the flung arm. All of the dead man’s limbs were almost doll-like in their positioning, and the head was bent at an angle, away from the bloody wound at its neck. The midsection, where the man’s intestines had once been safely contained, now gaped, and the intestines spilled onto the moonlit ground, lubricated in a deep crimson. The chewed ends clearly indicated that they had been partially eaten.
Derek put his hand to his mouth and felt something slick around it. Blood, he guessed, and then tasted it and confirmed it.
But surely not from the body in front of him? Perhaps he had slipped and fallen? Right into the pool of blood surrounding the body before him?
Derek shook his head, trying to shake off the other possibility making its way to his consciousness.
No, no, no.
Why would he? He was no animal. And even if he had blacked out, wouldn’t he remember some part of it? The initial encounter? The source, or a remnant of the depraved desire that led to the mangled body, splayed nearby?
Then it all began coming back to him…
PART ONE
LOVE
IN THE
TIME
OF
ZOMBIES
CHAPTER ONE: ESCAPE
Steven managed to calm himself during his drive, running over what he had been told about the virus and the outbreak in his head, the voices and words on replay, acting as some sort of salve.
They will be depersonalized, he had been told. The individual who had lived before will cease to exist as brain damage wipes away their character, their personality. Eventually, they will become almost like automatons.
Steven observed the landscape: skeletons of all types—metal, brick, and human—were everywhere. Healthy bodies attacked and relieved of flesh by the famished, diseased Morphs had by now been picked clean by scavengers—vultures and coyotes happily moved in. Even some of those animals were now dead from having feasted on a diseased body that had fallen from murder or suicide.
The higher cerebral functions get reduced, leaving the more primitive parts.
The first wave of military responses had been a disaster. Local cops and soldiers found out the hard way that while keeping the peace was easier in the daytime, it was beyond life-threatening at night. No matter how many of them were armed and ready, the rabid, diseased were plentiful, hungry, and emboldened by night. The defense teams didn’t really know what they were in for, and it had worked against them.
You won’t be able to tell all of the infected immediately—like other diseases, the infection doesn’t manifest itself the same way in everyone.
Ending up with sick, armed policemen and soldiers turned out to be a very bad idea.
Forces had to be pulled back as regrouping for the defense plan took place, but it was too late—the virus spread faster and faster.
Most people show telltale symptoms within hours. At first, it looks like the flu, but later, discolorations occur in the eyes, the skin, and on the tongue—which, hopefully, one does not get close enough to see. The face may begin to sag in parts, the connective tissue no longer functioning as it should.
Human trials had been running for a while, and the virus now acted just as the scientists and engineers wanted; it had all the desired effects and behaved within all their time perimeters. Everyone had been so damned proud.
Still, there will be some of the infected who look almost fine till nearly the end at the turnover point, when they become famished, bloodthirsty monsters. There will be no doubt when this stage is reached.
The experiment had been a success—every aspect of the new weapon had been controlled—except for the part where it slipped out into the public without their knowledge.
As for the victim, symptoms begin with a headache and fever. Later, nausea and vomiting may occur.
Initially, everyone was advised to stay inside no matter what, or to quickly get inside and lock up if they weren’t already indoors. They were warned to stay aw
ay from anyone who looked sick in any way. It was the best advice—necessary to keep the healthy safe from the infected for a time, until things could be figured out. But of course, everyone wouldn’t listen. There was always some bullheaded asshole putting everyone else in danger, wasn’t there?
Some people left to buy food and guns, and some of those folks never made it back home.
A sensitivity to light eventually sets in, and an aversion to liquids. The victim becomes churlish before they seem to zone out completely. They become almost vacant—until they come alive again, ready for your blood.
Some people stayed inside, but some also answered their doors to someone in distress, unknowingly allowing an infected person in. Soon, hotels, hospitals, and schools became packed with hope and easy meals for the diseased.
They feast only on the healthy—they are repelled by others who are infected. They may team up in packs, but they do not turn on each other. They can even sniff out the disease in someone newly infected.
San Diego County: Ground Zero.
Containment efforts weren’t turning out well in other states, either. Only few havens of health remained—some forts and other government buildings—and the healthy people in those fortresses wanted to keep it that way.
A person who is immune, however—even if the disease manages to get a hold of him or her for a short while—is fair game to the infected. We figure the immune smell different from those who will completely succumb.
Steven smiled to himself. It had been so easy to convince the authorities to let him out to gather intelligence, and possibly, a few survivors.
“I know you think San Diego’s a wasteland, but I know about a few pockets of guarded life. Let me do a quick check; I’ll be in and out in a few days.” And then the clincher: “I know where there could be more of what you need.”
The good news was that such an outbreak was unprecedented, and ultimately, people didn’t really know what to do. While Steven had hoped a more uniformed, orderly response would have occurred in such a situation, the reality was that, like civilians, the authorities—including officers and scientists—panicked, and even worse, politics ended up getting in the way of common sense: disagreements when it came to ranks, bureaus, and jurisdiction. Several agencies got caught with their pants down, and the virus spread before they knew what was happening.
Now, no real protocol was being followed anymore—only theories being tested and failing. Lots of regrouping while the virus was reproducing.
They are contagious the minute infection sets in. Once a symptom shows up, the victim should be put down.
Steven had stuck to his duty at first—examining the land, gathering intelligence, and taking down the infected people he had encountered along the way—but he had some personal business to take care of; he couldn’t go on without doing so. He had hoped to save both of his friends, but for one of them, it was too late.
Please let her be okay, he thought as he pulled up to the familiar apartment building, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.
*
Serena cowered more as the thunderous knocking came again, even harder than the previous bout of pounding. Surely the door would come off its hinges with that kind of force.
“Serena, open up!” the masculine voice behind it said. “If you’re in there and you don’t open up in the next twenty seconds, I’m literally going to blow the door away, so stand away from it!”
Serena recognized the voice that had been shouting at her for the past half a minute, and all the logic she had left told her that it was safe to open her door to the man behind it, since there was no way he was there to harm her. He had been sent to help her, no doubt. He might have even found her husband.
She felt a surge of hope as she forced herself to unwind from her balled up position against the wall, exhaling a weak, “Coming!” as she headed for the door.
She peeked through the peephole to confirm identity and saw a familiar dirty blond head with a worked-up reddish face staring back at the door as if trying to see through it.
Serena slowly opened the door to him.
Steven let out an unabashed breath of relief as his sky-colored eyes took her in, and his arms relaxed momentarily.
“Come with me,” he said, his words immediately more gentle as he indicated the way with what looked like an AK-47.
Serena couldn’t help thinking how much he looked like a blond, blue-eyed Rambo in the moment, his muscular, capable arms flexing as they moved, his blue eyes confident and commanding.
Serena knew little of guns, but the rifle he held reminded her of what she had seen in news images from mass shootings when that particular weapon was mentioned.
Steven was also visibly strapped with other weapons, a Glock among them, and she guessed that more were hidden underneath his clothes.
She recognized the Glock because it was the one weapon she was a bit familiar with—Steven had given both her and her husband gun lessons a few years ago using one like it.
Serena also knew in that moment that there was absolutely no room for refusal or doubt, given Steven’s military history, so she obeyed immediately, fighting back the desire to hug him, although she wasn’t sure why—the two of them had sort of become friends through her husband, striking up an easy friendship as if they, too, had known each other from school days. They even had an ongoing rivalry and battle-of-wits with the Words With Friends game whenever he was in town, both of them pretending to be the master strategist, although she beat him just about every time.
Plus, Serena hadn’t seen another human in over a week since her husband left to find food for them, and before that, it had been just her and her husband for the month and a half since the world was hit by what appeared to be a zombie-like outbreak.
All telecommunications went down soon after the haunting government messages and warnings came screeching through televisions and phones about the breakout, and weeks later, she and her husband had both been about to starve to death, having eaten and drunk everything from the cupboards and fridge of their fifth-floor apartment unit.
Serena had had plans to go grocery-shopping the next day, having put it off for over a week before the government warnings came in, and now it was suddenly too late for any of them to safely leave their home.
She and Gregory successfully managed their supplies for a few weeks before he got worried. Serena jokingly reminded him that she had successfully completed the Master Cleanse twice in the past and could handle a drastic reduction in intake, but eventually they were pretty much down to spices.
“We can’t continue like this,” Gregory said as she got ready to combine the last of the corn meal with the questionable water now flowing from their faucet for their next, and probably last meal.
They had both lost about twenty pounds in the five weeks since the outbreak—since a large portion of the population had suddenly turned into dull, lumbering bodies intent on human destruction, and the grids had shut down, electricity suddenly a vague memory.
“You’re smaller than when I met you, and you were, what, a two or four then? How much longer do you think we can go without food or water? Look at me,” Gregory said.
She took in his thin body, smaller than she had ever seen him, and his thick, wavy dark hair—dull instead of its usual glossy state for once.
“I have to do this,” he said. “We’ll both die here, and I can’t do that—I can’t just let you die without trying to save you.”
“I’ll go with you,” Serena said, unable to accept what his departure could mean.
He shook his head. “You can’t—that makes no sense. You’ll only be putting yourself in danger, and why should both of us be at risk? It’ll be harder for me to look out for you out there. Look, it’s one thing to slowly die of hunger here, but another to have your entrails ripped out and your face eaten off by them. At least in here, you still have a chance; I feel better that you’re at least unreachable here, and can maybe survive a bit longer. Someone coul
d find you here and help you.”
“You expect me to just let you go out there and die? Stay here with me then!”
“And have us both just die here without even trying? I already told you—I can’t stay here and do nothing to help us survive. I vowed to protect you, to do everything in my power to make sure you’re happy and safe. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
“You do realize what you’re doing by leaving?”
He grabbed her hands and his eyes held tears.
“I know exactly what I’m doing—I’m trying to save your life. If I don’t return in three days, just know I did everything I could. I love you, sweetheart, and I’m sorry.”
He embraced her, and they both cried, kissing each other, knowing it could be the last time.
“I don’t feel right about leaving,” Serena suddenly said to Steven, even as she followed him down the hall toward the staircase. “Is Gregory out there? Are you taking me to him?”
Steven didn’t look at her. He just kept moving as if through a battlefield, as if prepared for a ghoul to jump out of the wall any moment, despite the low chance the infected could have found their way up the elevator on the other side of her floor. The diseased figures seemed quite brainless, and would likely not figure out the buttons.
“He’s out there,” Steven finally said.
“Where?” she almost shouted, her heartbeat tripling.
Steven shrugged, and the look on his face made Serena’s heart start slowing back down.
“I’m hoping we run into him along the way,” Steven said, still not looking at her.
“Wait, then how did you know I was here? You haven’t spoken to him? Why should I go with you? He might come back here looking for me!”