Coming In Hot Box Set

by Gina Kincade

  A couple of the new grads who had done their preceptorship in the medical department had agreed to come on full time and live at the Odyssey.

  She would still have to work to cover when there were holes in the schedule, but her role was to keep everything moving along and making sure that nothing but the best care was provided. It wasn’t going to be easy. The government had set strict guidelines, and random checks and audits would be performed, but it would be worth it.

  She stood at the door looking into the room she had set aside for trauma and smiled. It was really happening. She felt Draven’s phoenix before his body pressed up against her back, and his arms wrapped around her waist. He kissed the side of her neck.

  “Hey,” she said as she turned in his arms.

  “Are you ready?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Probably not, but I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”

  “You’ll have plenty of help. I know it’ll be great.”

  “I hope so. I just wish Trista were here to see it all come together.” She didn’t know what had happened between her and Ry, but not long after Draven had claimed her, Trista announced she was leaving.

  Ry had been a bear of a man since, but he hadn’t chased her. Cortney had thought that the mating craze would take care of things, but Trista hadn’t come back. It had been over six months.

  “They’ll figure it out,” he assured her.

  “I know, but it doesn’t mean I can’t try to prod things along.”

  He shook his head and laughed, but didn’t try to dissuade her. “If anyone can make those two forget about being stubborn, it’s you.”

  He gave her an extra squeeze and planted a sweet kiss on her lips that left her wanting more. “I love you, Cortney,” he told her when he finally released her.

  “I love you too, mate. I have a feeling life is going to be crazy for a while. What do you say we make the best of our last night alone in the castle while we can?” She nipped his bottom lip, then licked the tender spot.

  He smiled. “Best idea ever.” He kissed her again, then led her out, shutting the lights behind them.

  Operation Twilight By Josie Jax

  Urban Fantasy Apocalyptic Zombie Romance

  Chapter One

  There had to be some way—any way—to make the hallucinations go away. But they wouldn’t get the hell out of Wylee Quartermaine’s sight, out of her ears or her mouth or even her lungs.

  That’s because she was pretty sure the crazy things were real.

  She clamped her eyes shut and snatched a dangerous moment of blissful nothingness. “Concentrate, Wylee, concentrate,” she murmured to herself.

  It didn’t help. She could still hear the dead silence on the streets of Twilight Cove shattered only by the rush of the Atlantic Ocean’s surf on the abandoned beach two blocks away.

  And the feral snarls of the mob of rotters inching their way toward her.

  She narrowed her eyes and tried to block out the horror and destruction. But damn it, she was so bone-shit exhausted. She gave it another try, gulped in some muggy May air, and took a risky few seconds to study the way the moonlight sliced its beams between the deserted city structures and up the littered sidewalks. She’d love to take time to indulge in the memory of how the touristy metropolis had looked on a Friday night—bustling and dreamlike.

  No more dreams. “What a fucking nightmare. Some vacation.” The last word came out edged by rage.

  Ever since the first case of the strange disease had arrived in Twilight Cove Medical Center’s ER weeks ago when she was off taking some long-overdue PTO, things had gone haywire. While she vacationed on Barracuda Island, the epidemic back home had been spreading through the city and its outlying areas, spidering like veins pumped up on breeding bacteria, oozing and eating away at flesh. It had swooped in so fast, it seemed as if the city had peeled back the Sheetrock on a perfectly good wall and discovered swarms of termites eating away at the lumber beneath. Which left the invaders free to raid the wood floors, the furniture, the humans.

  Devour the people of Twilight Cove.

  Then the town went completely off the grid and the disease just kept escalating the way the Black Death had in the fourteenth century.

  Only it was the twenty-first century. This kind of medical chaos shouldn’t be happening in this day and age, not with all the vaccines and medications and health research under the world’s belt.

  But it did happen. It is happening.

  A shiver raced up her spine and caused the hair to bristle on her nape. God, she’d seen some shit. Way more gore than she’d ever witnessed in her entire decade of nursing.

  She wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow and assessed the tightening arc of freaks creeping toward her with glazed eyes and emaciated, gut-splattered bodies. A distant whisper on the wind distracted her.

  “Wylee…”

  There it was again. She’d been hearing it a lot tonight, and every single time, it sent a sharp pain through her chest.

  She whirled around. “Who—?” Her breastbone weighed heavy in her torso, so she pulled in a breath and held it. She tightened her grip on the machete in one hand, the semiautomatic weapon in the other, and scanned the area for the source. All she could see were the shufflers, yet the muffled din continued to reverberate off the buildings around her and seemed to shake the concrete beneath her boots.

  The deep tenor, it was so familiar…

  Her vision swirled; her heart rate galloped. “Gabe?”

  “Wylee…” The voice boomed again, the way he used to speak to her during times of urgency. Or passion. She closed her eyes again and conjured the memory. The magic of his touch had been potent enough to rouse her in seconds, making her soaking wet and bringing her to swift orgasm. Something stirred in her soul, deep in her belly. She clenched her abdominal muscles and fought the onslaught of the sweet memories of her fiancé, Dr. Gabriel Phoenix.

  She could swear she could see him across the bloody crowd. Tall, handsome, powerful. So sexy and hot, just recalling him thrusting into her center dampened her panties, even now in the midst of this doom.

  She shook her head, causing the rope of her untidy braid to slither along her back. She shouldn’t dwell on him or allow the hallucinations to get the better of her. It wasn’t good for her mental health to keep imagining something that wasn’t possible. He’d been infected. He’d turned.

  And he’d died by her hand.

  Then she went and lost her damn mind.

  So the delusions had to be due to the stress caused by this gruesome situation—“the rise of ‘the others,’” as she’d taken to calling it—and having to snuff out the life of the man she’d loved. The man who’d surprised her with a proposal just two weeks ago on their vacation on Barracuda Island. The two-carat diamond platinum bling now spun loosely around her left ring finger. Wylee choked back a sob. He’d been the man she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with.

  Well, she wouldn’t have to endure the torture of the past or the present much longer. She would probably die, too, and if at all possible, she preferred to spend eternity searching for his spirit.

  Really, she welcomed death.

  Flies buzzed around her head. She couldn’t wait for this hell to end.

  But she would do it her way, not theirs.

  The gruesome bodies moved closer still. It was just a matter of time, of luck, and of her endurance and skill at ending her life the correct way, so she wouldn’t turn into one of them.

  Something caught her eye above. The stunning blaze of a shooting star streaked across the velvety night sky, reminding her of the night Gabe had proposed to her. She groaned and blinked back the sting of tears.

  Make a wish.

  Wylee threw her head back and laughed even as moisture spilled from her eyes and stained her cheeks. “Right. ‘Make a wish,’ my ass.” She lifted a shoulder, keeping her gun aimed at a particularly frisky rotter. “Oh, why the heck not? Okay, so how about… I wish for
my life back, my job, and…Gabe. Ha, right. Like that’s gonna happen.”

  Even through her skepticism, she allowed a moment to pass. She glanced around, waiting for something—anything—different to happen. A shoe to drop. A drumbeat. Twilight Cove to come back to life. Just anything at all. But death continued to close in on her with each lumbering quarter step they took. She stumbled backward, meeting with resistance. Heat from the brick building blanketed her shoulders, spine, and rump, jolting her back to the hell she existed in now. Trapped, she’d reached the end of any possible escape.

  So much for stupid wishes. I’m dead. I’m done for.

  Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, but her stomach couldn’t handle the decomposing stench of the monsters surrounding her. She fought against her gag reflex, pressing the crook of her elbow over her nose and mouth. God, if only she could have her life back as a nurse. She’d welcome cleaning up vomit, blood, and wounds. What heaven, being able to comfort the living with a hug, a few words of encouragement, a squeeze of the hand. She’d complained far too much, not appreciating what she’d had in her career, her life. Yet now here she stood, her entire body perspiring, and every sore muscle twitching from the wielding of weapons, fighting, killing, running.

  Always on the run.

  Always destroying.

  Never again to heal others or ease their pain or love them.

  There’s nothing left. Gabe is gone. As far as I know, the world is gone. My job and my life are over.

  The single thought wasn’t even halfway through her dense brain before her stomach growled.

  “Great.” The hunger pains urged her to live and fight while her brain and heart and soul longed to end this misery. She hadn’t eaten more than stolen snacks since this all started. By golly, she had to admit that despite the gut-rot odor wafting on the sea air, what she wouldn’t give for a cold deli sandwich and a hot shower. Mmm, sink her teeth into some soft bread, meaty layers, cold tomatoes and lettuce, a dollop of tangy mayo. Her mouth watered.

  She scanned the clogged perimeter, knowing there was no escape route. Still, if she could bludgeon her way out of this stanky mob, go do some scavenging for some Spam or something, and rejuvenate for just one more day before she ended it…

  But why? She was doomed, and she was dog-tired and beat down to the point of no recovery. More than anything, she longed to give in, to just plop down right here on the warm, hard, gut-ridden concrete and die.

  Huh, what a luxury that would be, to sleep for the remainder of eternity.

  “Wait. No, I can’t”—she raised her weapon and whacked off the nearest spazzer’s head—“give up.” Blood splattered her face, boots, and dark clothing, the way it had when she’d been assisting Gabe in surgery.

  A group of snarlers dove for the rolling head. They hissed and growled at each other, fighting for their next meal. Sickening fiends. But she really couldn’t blame them. Toss a sandwich at her and she’d definitely dive into the shark-infested ocean for a single crumb.

  “Disgusting sons of bitches,” she muttered under her breath, and wiped secretions and blood off the gleaming blade with the headless corpse’s worn jeans.

  And here she’d thought assisting as a nurse in the OR during a triple bypass topped a horror slasher movie. Well, she’d been dead wrong. Nothing could compare to this.

  This was all-out warfare. A nightmare on steroids.

  Five more sucklings limped closer, roaring, foaming at the mouth, stinking like rotting skunks. Wylee popped off five shots in a row and mowed them down one by one.

  The acrid odor of gunpowder filled her nostrils and masked the smell of death. How had she gone so quickly from a nurse’s mission of saving lives to the rabid determination of taking them?

  Of course, a person had to be alive in order to be killed in the first place. But still. She never could shake that evil sense of committing murder every time she hacked away with the machete or aimed the firearm and pressed the trigger.

  Just like she’d done with Gabe.

  Gabriel. Oh, God, how her heart ached for him, missed him.

  Loved him so badly, it sliced right through her.

  She blinked away the memories and focused on the present.

  More of the crazed stiffs stumbled around the corner, helping to distract her emotions and morph them from sadness into anger. She clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes on them. The demon things were everywhere, like a roach infestation. Riddle the bastards in this corner with bullets, they pop out of a crack in that corner. Blow off that one’s head, ten more appear out of nowhere to take its place. She couldn’t keep up with them. They seemed to be multiplying before her very eyes. Her pulse picked up in tempo and volume, pounding in her head and muffling her hearing. She sucked in hot air, glanced from side to side, up, down. Suffocating. She would probably die of suffocation before they even bit into her flesh.

  Her soaked back scraped brick as she tried to scramble to her right, closer to a window or a door, she wasn’t sure which because the schizos were covering the building and crawling up each other’s backs, trying to climb the wall in Spiderman fashion. Others grabbed at her, hungry for her blood, and a pitiful whine escaped her throat when she thought she felt a nip at her ankle.

  “No!” She let out a bloodcurdling scream and kicked at something by her feet. “Get off me, you motherfuckers.”

  God Almighty, she’d turn the gun on herself before she’d let them take her alive.

  Or before she’d succumb to the sickness and turn into one of them.

  The spot on her ankle began to sting. Then it burned like an inferno and coursed up her leg…through her system.

  No. Please, no, no, no…

  Wylee had just two seconds to glance down and see a rip in her black leather boot edged by oozing blood.

  And Jesus help her, a toddler—eyes gleaming, mouth foaming—lay snarling nearby.

  “Shit.” Her narrow world of hope shattered.

  She’d been infected. For heaven’s sake, a tiny boy had been infected!

  Soon, she would be one of them, cannibalizing and swarming with them like a pack of rabid wolves.

  Like the boy.

  Her life was definitely over now. She would never be able to solve this epidemic, never be able to work as a nurse again. Which stood to reason, because she’d been a terrible nurse. She’d killed patients before, not with intent as she did now, slaughtering these growlers with a vengeance, but by her incompetence and inability to connect.

  By not appreciating her power of healing while she had the chance.

  And she would never see Gabe again, either, never kiss him, or become his wife. So what difference did any of this make, anyway? He was gone. She was a goner, too, for sure now that she’d been bitten. The world had already gone to shit. There was no turning back.

  Her bottom lip quivered and her vision blurred as her eyes filled with tears of regret and pain and the finality of life and death.

  She squeezed the weapon’s handle and clenched her teeth.

  But she would not give in without taking out as many of the bastards as she could.

  She leveled the gun and shot down a few more at close range, although deep down she knew it only delayed the inevitable. The bang-banging seemed to split her head in two. Their animal snarls became muted for a few seconds while she swayed and struggled to stay conscious and not give in to the infection or blessed insanity. Blood and guts splattered her tank top and bare arms. She ignored it and blew out a few more brains before shoving the tip of the machete between some crunchy ribs. Wylee grunted and twisted the weapon as if screwing a giant bolt into its pancreas. She pinned the woman to a door, groaned and rotated the blade some more until the crazer went limp. Using the imbedded weapon for leverage, she kicked and kneed several rotters, knocking them backward and into a dozen others. They toppled over the way bowling pins did, one into the next.

  It reminded her of him again.

  Her dead husband-to-be.


  An image assailed her of a night out partying and bowling with Gabe and their close-knit group of friends—doctors, nurses, and staff aids.

  Laughing, having a few stress-relieving drinks, stolen kisses from him laced by the taste of the bowling alley’s greasy burgers and fries, the resounding background explosion of a fifteen-pound ball crashing into a triangle of ten pins, screeches of victory or gutter-ball groans of disappointment.

  She swallowed back an aching lump. God, what a love life. They’d had so much fun and desperate affection for each other.

  “Wylee… Babe, I love you… Come here. Come to me now.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. The virus already made her delirious. Yes, she supposed she had gone a bit off the deep end, imagining his voice and all. It sounded so real, but she treasured it.

  Wylee gathered more courage, yanked out the long knife, and let the corpse crumple to the street. She stood there, gasping for air, drenched and staring out across the sea of mutants. Somewhere beyond all the stench, she caught the sweet scent of moonflowers. Would she have ordered them as part of her bride’s bouquet?

  Her gaze followed the majestic rise of Oceanview Drive, lined with palm trees, lampposts, park benches, and magnolias draped with Spanish moss. The street trekked upward through the once-bustling shops and condos and met the tall gates of Ashbourne Graveyard. She used to dodge it—avoid death and dying—but now it beckoned to her. Moonlight poured through the intricate iron bars, and a colony of seagulls swooped in and perched on the stone pillars.

  She’d planned to bury Gabe there not long ago. But the mob had pushed her out and kept her from him. She’d been forced to leave him there after he’d been bitten…and after she’d put him out of his misery. A lone tear trailed down her cheek. She’d left him there amid the ravagers and had been forced to flee without him.