Love For My Zombie Kings: A Reverse Harem Zombie Romance (Zombies Rule The World Book 1)
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Love for
My
Zombie Kings
Zombies Rule the World Series
Book One
-A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance-
LeeSha McCoy
Copyright © 2020 LeeSha McCoy
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to any persons, alive or dead and references to places and buildings are used fictitiously.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
First Edition.
Contents
Contents
With thanks to…
Note to new readers.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Thanks so much for reading!
With thanks to…
My test Queens,
Nikki Nik, Leanne, Latoya, Tanisha, Keosha, Octavia & Toi.
This was so much fun!
Thank you!
A special thanks to…
My Arc readers,
Aliscia, Chinita, Lakesha, Quin Niecy & Tyra Lynn.
Thank you so much, Beauts!
Note to new readers.
LeeSha McCoy is an Urban Romance Author.
Her writing style is a little different, and the majority of her books are written in a UK Urban slang, which is not always grammatically correct.
She may also use certain words and phrases that you may not be familiar with.
Additional note to reader.
This book is shorter than the other books in the series (and faster paced) due to it initially being included in a zombie anthology.
Each book after this dives deeper into all the brothers.
Warning.
This book includes descriptive scenes of sex and some scenes that readers may find disturbing.
Discretion is advised.
Not for the faint of heart.
Love for my Zombie Kings
Five dead brothers want me, and I plan to keep them all.
The dead took over the night a year ago, bringing with them terror beyond our wildest dreams. As a scientist and a specialist in DNA, I've been in the thick of it since the very beginning.
Now, however, a new type of zombie has emerged.
They've called it a Zed-Two.
It's stronger, faster, but most importantly, part human. It can shift from human to zombie in the blink of an eye, but also eat half a human body in about twice the time.
One was captured by another lab, but it escaped. Now my lab seems to have gotten their claws into one.
But it quickly becomes apparent that he wasn't captured at all. He wanted to come here.
And I'm the reason why.
I've become a puppet on his string. He twists shit inside my mind.
The things he can do and the things he makes me feel through the glass...
Now one of his brothers has gotten himself captured, too.
And all hell’s about to break loose.
One
Mikka
“They’re calling them zombie hybrids, or Zed-Twos.”
Gia stares at me. “Zombie hybrids? What the fuck?” she hisses.
My glasses steam up as I eye-nod her over my teacup. I’m glad she’s kept her voice down, especially in here. The last thing I want is for this coffee shop to erupt in panic. I shouldn’t even be telling her this, but she’s my best friend, and I tell her everything.
“They can shift between zombie and human form, apparently. A lab up in Cheshire captured one for all of half an hour before some idiot let it escape.”
Her shoulders tense. “What, so they can talk and shit?” She starts playing with her braids; a tell-tale sign that she’s beginning to panic.
I scan the area around us to make sure no one is listening. “I’m not sure, but they captured it in broad daylight.”
She gasps. “It was day walking?”
I nod.
“We can still kill them though, right?”
My shoulders lift in a shrug. “They gassed the one they caught but it was hard work. They’re completely different to the others.”
She bites her knuckles. “Fuck, Mikka. I’m not ready for this.”
“Trust me, I don’t think any of us are.”
Since the dead rose a year ago, everything’s been surreal. Britain has only just adjusted to having the dead rule the night, and now there could be a whole new threat coming for us.
Something smart enough to open doors and look human unless they shift.
“This shit can't be real,” she gushes. “I just spent thousands installing new security shutters at the hair shop and house, and now you’re telling me that something might be able to break inside anyway?”
I rest a hand over hers, noticing how they’re trembling. “Hey, just keep a big ass knife by every door, okay? And make sure you lock up earlier so you can get home way before dusk. These ones aren’t common yet, and they haven’t come after us. We’ll just have to stay safe until we can figure out what they want.”
“But if they can’t even be caught…”
I sigh. “Maybe it’s time—”
“No.” She snatches her hand away. “I’m not leaving you. If you’re staying, so am I.”
I smile in defeat. Both our families left England when all this craziness started. They reside in America now. One of the very few countries left that don’t have any night walkers. They’re still under strict curfews, though, and the military patrol the streets. I’m convinced they do have zombies over there, they just exterminate them as soon as they rise.
We probably should’ve done the same.
“Why don’t you stay with me then?” I suggest. My work paid for the best security system there is. A perk of working for ZoNaR. Zombie National Research.
She exhales deeply. “Nah, I’ll be fine. I just need a minute to digest this shit. I still don’t know how you can do what you do.”
I chuckle as I reach for my salted caramel doughnut. “You know I have a curious mind. Besides, I’m not high enough up to work a top-secret study like that—even if we did manage to get our hands on one.” I’ve only been at ZoNaR for a little over eight months.
She rests her hand on mine, suddenly serious. “Just, be careful, alright? I mean it, Mikka.”
Without fail, every time I give her updates, she says that. And I always reply the same. “Don't worry. I'll be fine.”
Gia and I leave CuppaT around three. We only see each other every couple of weeks. I work six days a week, and she runs her mum’s hair salon that was left to her, so our schedules are hectic and don’t leave much time for socialising.
Neither of us had a lot of friends growing up. It’s pretty much been the two of us since I can remember. Our parents were friends for years before we were, and they left Engl
and together too, taking my brother and Gia’s two sisters with them. They begged us to go with them, but because I stayed for work, so did Gia.
“My anxiety is at an all-time high right now,” Gia says as she rushes to get inside my car. “God knows who’s lurking.”
I lock the doors and start the engine. “Seriously, calm down or I’ll stop telling you shit.” I always have to be tough on her because she’ll worry herself to death otherwise, but I do know what she means this time.
I’m more worried about who’s hungry, though.
And not just for human flesh.
My sadistic self sits at my bedroom window at night to listen to the screams and unnatural moans and groans that disturb the peaceful streets. I live in the city, next to an abandoned building, too, so I hear all sorts of things that would make the average person’s blood run cold.
Zombies don’t just eat the unfortunate humans they prey on, they also attack them in other ways. The males are more savage than the females, but both are brutal and cruel when it comes to finding their sick, sexual gratification. They fuck their victims to death, literally; I’ve even seen a female suck the womb straight out of a middle-aged woman.
If this was a movie, you could almost find humour in the world we live in, but the reality is, this is real life and times are fucking frightening. One day the world was normal and we were free to do what we wanted, the next, someone in a lab fucks up and turns the entire world into a prison.
A game of life and death.
The only thing we can really be grateful for, at the moment, is that these monsters can’t reproduce. ‘Cause if they could, there’d be a swarm of dead babies crawling the streets and causing ten times more havoc.
And that’s what terrifies me most about this new, evolved type of zombie. What if these ones can breed with each other? If they’re able to walk among us, to blend in and look human, it means they’re not truly dead and God knows what they’re capable of. They could snatch up any one of us in the middle of the day and do anything they wanted to us.
Just like they do at night.
I’ll never forget the time I had to listen to a woman screaming outside my house for hours on end, right on my driveway. She was dragged from her car by two males who proceeded to torture her until finally eating her afterwards. By the time the sun rose, only her blood remained on the asphalt, and now her boarded up house opposite mine is a daily reminder of what could be my fate.
That’s why I always get home before dusk. My worst nightmare would be losing my innocence to death before finding a brutal one.
“I’m sorry,” Gina gushes, “I swear, I’ll be fine.”
I shake my head as I insert my parking ticket into the machine so the barrier lifts. “Just think about fairies or something.” I know she loves Tinker Bell still, even at the age of twenty-six.
“Yes! That’s what I’m gonna do when I get home. I’m gonna call Joe over and have a Tinker marathon.”
I smile to myself, ‘cause when all this shit first started, I’d have to watch the Disney channel before bed. It was the only thing that would keep the nightmares at bay. I thought I was immune to it all now, though, but since the news of these new zombies broke at work a few days ago, even I’ve felt a little edgy.
“Mikka!” Gia screams.
The seatbelt cuts into my shoulder as I slam my brakes on at the exit of the parking lot, almost running over a tall guy wearing a hoodie. My heart fucking pounds inside my chest.
I glare at him as he continues across the road with no care in the damn world. I roll down Gia’s window. “Watch where the fuck—”
He pulls his hood down a little as he glances back, and his intimidating stare sends a shiver up my spine. In another situation, I’d be gushing to Gia about how fine this guy is; tall, dark, athletic, short hair, and sexy deep-set eyes, but as he pins me to my seat and clenches his chiselled jawline, all I can do is stay silenced.
He continues to walk by but keeps his attention trained on me until he reaches the path and our gazes finally break.
“Jesus,” I breathe, resting a brief hand against my chest. “Sorry, sis.”
“It’s cool. That dickhead came out of nowhere.”
I slowly press the gas as I signal to turn into the main road. “Right.”
“Girl, I thought he was gonna come grab you out the car and slap your ass. You okay?”
I nod. “I think so.”
I guess I’m just a little more on edge than I thought.
Two
Mikka
After setting my security system to effectively lock me inside my house, I go upstairs to run the water in my jacuzzi tub. As much as I act as if all is okay when I’m around Gia, I still get worried.
Life has changed so much. No one stays out after dark, unless they’re insane. No partying on the weekends, no sounds of laughter from kids playing in the street, and knives are now a legal, permanent accessory in handbags and pockets. And instead of spending money on material things, people constantly upgrade their own security systems so they can feel safe at home.
I actually feel safer at work than I do here; security at ZoNaR is tighter than I am, but out in the open and when I’m at home—alone—it’s a whole different ball game. I might not have been studying the night walkers for long, but I've been following along with this shit since it started. And I mean the very night it started, ‘cause I didn't have a choice not to.
I shudder just thinking about it, especially because the club that was initially attacked is only five minutes from my apartment, and I heard it all go down.
I could hear people screaming for their lives, and not only from fear either. There were many shrieks of terror; petrified ones, from men and women both young and old. Ones that told me that what was happening was far from normal night-time drunkenness.
I was almost tempted to go have a look; the curious part of me wanted to know what the hell was going on, but I soon sat my ass down when that breaking news announcement came on over my rerun of Waiting to Exhale.
The Dead Attack Nightclub.
I almost passed out from being so scared.
At first, many people had theories that lucifer himself had raised the dead to punish us all for God, but after the initial shock of what had happened, others began speculating that the affliction was manmade, and that the government fucked up while testing a new vaccine for a new strain of winter flu that had just surfaced.
And they weren't wrong.
The idea was questioned by many, and of course refuted, but I'm one of the few that know the whole devastating truth.
See, I might be fairly new at ZoNaR, but I've spent years in the vaccine field. I graduated Uni early at sixteen; I was a child genius, in particular when it came to science and DNA. I soaked that shit up from as young as I can remember. Everything about science fascinates me.
I'm the youngest in the specialist team by far—I’m only twenty—but I’m also the smartest. My skills for finding out how genetic material will react to almost anything is second to no one else. When the head of the NHS’ vaccine team came to me at the University of Cambridge and asked me to sign an NDA, I knew he was going to talk to me about the dead.
He showed me CCTV footage of the infected subject digging up graves at Hilltop Cemetery and eating chunks out of them. He savagely tore through their limbs and faces, leaving each body mainly intact before moving onto the next.
The local council thought it was some kind of sick prank, so they reburied the bodies and appealed for witnesses to the crime until they could gain access to the local authority’s CCTV, but the next night and before the police could study the footage, everything changed.
The bodies rose again on their own, and that’s when the city was attacked.
And now, just over a year later, a new species has appeared that will send the entire world into panic once again if their existence is made public. ‘Cause these new super zombies are the most terrifying things I've ever seen.
I didn’t tell Gia, but I saw bodycam footage of the one they captured, and let me tell you, nothing has ever struck fear into my soul quite like how that did.
The man appeared completely normal, until he literally shifted into a monster. One minute his face was as human as they come, gorgeous even, but the next, his eyes were an intense, fiery amber and patches of his arms began shedding from his body.
And he was so fast, they had to use gas, bullets, and flamethrowers to slow him enough to capture him.
They managed to get a sample of his DNA, but ZoNaR haven’t been privy to the makeup yet. It’s been three days, so I’m hoping it comes soon. The longer it takes, the more worrying I think the results will be.
If these Zed-Twos are as smart as what my boss thinks they could be, we will all be in some serious shit. And if they’re not fully dead like other zombies, as it appears they aren’t, the world as we know it—even now—could be over.
There are many things that have me worried after seeing that footage. Like, not once did he try to eat or attack his captors. If anything, the whole ordeal looked like a game to him.
I’m pretty sure our sister lab is hiding shit, but as soon as I get a copy of his genetic makeup, I intend to run tests through my own programme that I built myself. Then, I can predict what exactly these things might be able to do.
I turn off the bath and sigh with contentment as I slip my body into the bubbling, caramel scented water. I only have baths on Sundays; I’m not really a morning person, and I hit snooze on all six of my alarms before I get up. I also work late into the evenings from home; my job doesn’t end when I clock out of the labs at four so I can make it back here before it gets dark. I pretty much work sixteen-hour days – sometimes longer.
I untie my curly hair and slip off my designer glasses to drop them on the floor beside the bath. I close my eyes and rest my head back. I can’t spend too long in here. I need to Skype my mum and brother soon. They’re leaving for a Caribbean cruise for two weeks; lucky for some.