Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella

by Mary, Kate L.

  “We’ll have to get another person to listen if we do that,” the chubby man in front of her said.

  They already had two guys on duty at all times so they could alternate between the three apartments occupied by James’s family, but the doctor knew that bringing a third person in would be no problem. There were plenty of people dying for a cushy job after months of near-death experiences.

  “Get those bugs in place and I will get you the manpower. Understood?”

  Both men nodded.

  No one in this building would dare argue with Dr. Helton, which was how she liked it. She knew she came across as a cold person who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, something she had proven earlier when she’d cut the guards’ tongues out herself, and it was a persona she’d worked hard to cultivate over the years. She’d been in on the ground floor of planning this apocalypse and she wasn’t about to do anything to risk her spot at this point, meaning she had to rule with an iron fist.

  “Good,” she said as she turned and walked out.

  She had to pass through the observation wing on her way to her office, but the trip was more than welcome. Not only did it give her a chance to check on the subjects they had injected with the most recent strain of the virus, but it also allowed her a glimpse of the two men who’d had their tongues removed. They were in rooms across from one another, which was another part of their punishment because it would give them an excellent view into the cell of the other person. The first man was curled up on the bed looking like he was praying to die, but the second one was standing at the window when she approached. His face and lips were swollen and purple from earlier, and the hate that swam in his eyes when he met Dr. Helton’s gaze almost made her laugh. He had been the one idiotic enough to discuss top-secret information in front of a survivor, yet he was angry with her? He was even dumber than she’d thought.

  She met his glare with one of her own but he didn’t back down. He had guts, she had to give him that. Few men would still be standing after having their tongues cut out, let alone have the balls to stare her down the way he was right now. Not that it mattered. She would relieve him of that glare soon enough. By the time they were finished with this man, he would be nothing but a ball of agony.

  “We’ll be injecting the other man this evening,” she told the nurse at the end of the hall. “I want his friend here to watch as he turns.”

  The woman with the clipboard, Helen was her name, nodded once before hurrying away.

  Dr. Helton smiled before turning her back on the man. His glare was still as fiery as ever, but she didn’t miss the fear that shimmered in his eyes.

  The cell next to him held the test subject she’d injected this morning right before being summoned by Star and they were already seeing results. He was currently writhing on the floor, his mouth open in silent screams as the virus worked its way through his body. This particular virus was a mutation of the original and the man on the other side of the glass was only the second person lucky enough to be infected by it.

  The first person was in the cell next to him. He’d been injected only a week earlier but had already turned. The difference between this strain and the original was that it had changed him before his heart had stopped beating. He’d become violent while still alive, had attacked anyone who’d come into the cell. They’d thought they’d found a missing piece of the puzzle with the mutation, but he had eventually succumbed to the virus and was now slowly rotting away just like all the others. Still, Star was hopeful that this particular strain would affect someone the way he wanted it to. He was even talking about releasing the mutated virus to see how it affected the general population. Dr. Helton wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but he was the man in charge.

  With the exception of turning the patient before the heart stopped beating, this strain seemed to be no different than the first one, but their hope was that the blood of Angus James would help them find the piece they’d been missing. They wanted the virus to change the man but not kill him completely. They wanted mindless drones who would follow orders unquestioningly, who wouldn’t feel pain, and who would serve Star.

  When she reached his cell she found Angus James awake and lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as if it held some special interest to him. She paused and watched, wondering for a moment what he was doing. Until then it hadn’t occurred to her how empty his cell was. He had nothing at all that would help him pass the time. Perhaps books would be a nice addition to his cell. She had no qualms about torturing a person, but she also didn’t see the harm in giving him something to do. It would keep him from going insane if nothing else.

  Somehow, though, she doubted Star would agree to the request. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that the man she’d chosen to follow was a sociopath, but she’d once heard that as much as four percent of the population had sociopathic tendencies and she supposed that she had a little bit of that inside her as well. She had, after all, aided him in releasing a virus that wiped out most of the human race and had never even lost a minute of sleep over it.

  James glanced her way just as she was about to turn to leave. His gray eyes captured hers and Dr. Helton found herself suddenly frozen as she stared back at him. Those eyes told a story that was both captivating and frightening. There was so much violence and pain and regret in the look he gave her that she had the sudden desire to know everything about him. Where he’d come from and who he’d been before the virus was released. It was clear just by talking to him that James was not an educated man, and she’d pictured him giving up much easier than he had. But he was holding on better than anyone had expected. He did as he was told thanks to the threat she’d made against his family, but the defiant look in his eyes never faded, and he always gave the impression that he was preparing to strike, like he was a rattlesnake shaking it’s tail, warning them that the second he had the chance he would take them all down with his venom.

  She almost felt bad that he’d never have the chance to try.

  “Dr. Helton?”

  She turned at the sound of her name, ripping her gaze from James’s. “Yes?”

  Helen stood in front of her with a syringe in one hand and a new clipboard in the other. She was a withered woman, not nearly as old as her skin made her look. Even though they hadn’t interacted much, Dr. Helton could picture exactly the type of person this nurse had been before the virus. A party animal that had stayed up all hours of the night and spent too much time in the sun during the day. She’d been a professional during work hours, but at night she had spent her time drinking and smoking her youth away, crawling into bed with any man who was willing to show her some affection. It was pathetic, but that was the kind of person you wanted in a position like this. The kind who craved acceptance, who would do anything they were told to do and not bat an eye because the idea of being cast aside was more terrifying than doing something illegal or immoral. Helen fit that description to a T, which was why Dr. Helton planned on keeping her around even though the woman had requested to be moved away from the observation wing.

  “I have the virus you requested,” Helen said. “I also wanted to let you know that Dr. Joshua Patrick left a message asking for you to call him.”

  “Very good,” the doctor said, taking the syringe. “I’ll return his call after we finish here.” She glanced past Helen to the guards. “I’m going to need your assistance.”

  Joshua

  The apprenticeship with Dr. Helton hadn’t been his idea, but it didn’t take long for Joshua to realize that it had been a good one. It was challenging, something he hadn’t expected during the zombie apocalypse, and not only did it help distract him from the destruction Anne had caused when she’d ripped out his heart, but it gave him more insight into what was happening inside the CDC. He hadn’t been admitted to the more top secret areas of the building yet, but he’d learned more about the virus than he’d ever known before and about how it killed. He’d wondered how the new antibiotic developed by the CDC could possib
ly work on a virus—it hadn’t made sense when viruses were impervious to antibiotics. He’d learned quickly, though, that when the virus had been released on the world it somehow managed to supercharge most of the bacteria out there, and that was what was actually infecting newborn babies. Infections that had at one time been simple for bodies to fight off now ravaged immune systems, and if it weren’t for the antibiotic the CDC created, the babies born these days would continue to die, eventually wiping out the human race once and for all.

  Joshua had been working with Dr. Helton for nearly seven months, shadowing her for eight hours a day seven days a week, when the girl was brought in. He spent most of his time these days deep within the CDC, back where the research labs sat waiting for great discoveries to be made and where things tended to be quieter, but the uproar that followed this girl seemed to nearly shake the entire building.

  He was bent over a microscope studying the way the newest vaccine affected the virus when it happened. Doors in the hallway were thrown open and people came rushing in. A filthy woman with white-blonde hair was yelling and crying as she ran next to a gurney, and on the bed was a girl whose arm was covered in blood. She was staring at the ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes that left no doubt in Joshua’s mind what had happened to her.

  Dr. Helton, who was also bent over a microscope, glanced up at the commotion, and it only took one look at the scene for her to come to the same conclusion he had.

  “She’s been bitten,” the doctor said.

  She jumped to her feet before Joshua could respond and swiped a syringe off the counter along with a vial of the experimental vaccine, and then she took off running.

  Dr. Helton was a stoic woman, perhaps even more so than Parvarti, who Joshua knew had been capable of emotion at one point in her life. But unlike his roommate, the doctor gave off the impression that she just might be a cyborg or some other kind of machine that used to exist within science fiction novels. She didn’t smile, didn’t react to bad news the way most people did, and barely blinked when they had any kind of setback in the lab. Everything that came her way seemed to be a puzzle that she challenged herself to solve, and even though Joshua didn’t trust her for a second, he had to admire her genius. She was without a doubt the most brilliant person he had ever worked with.

  Now, though, she was tearing down the hall after the group like a bat out of hell.

  He hurried after her on instinct, not sure what was about to happen but knowing that he wanted to be there. Over the cries of the woman who Joshua assumed was the mother of the child, he could hear Dr. Helton and a nurse, Helen he thought her name was, yelling back and forth to one another.

  “How long ago was she bitten?” the doctor asked.

  “Less than an hour. They were right outside the wall when it happened and the guards were able to get them inside quickly.” Helen had the girl’s wrist in her hand as she ran, two fingers poised to keep tabs on her pulse. “Her heart rate is slow, but steady.”

  “Good. She’s the perfect candidate.”

  That’s when it hit Joshua what was about to happen. They were going to inject this girl—who couldn’t be more than five years old—with the vaccine. With the experimental vaccine.

  He ran faster, his heart beating right along with the thump of his feet on the floor. He was torn between the desire to see if the drug would work the way he hoped it would, and the urge to stop this from happening. This girl, this child, was too young to be experimented on, and the vaccine was so new that no one outside the labs even knew it existed. It wasn’t even the first one they’d created. They’d been through several stages with the drug, all of which had failed, and even though this one—AJ200 they were calling it—seemed promising, their initial tests were still too new to even consider testing it on a human being. At least in his opinion.

  The group reached a room and the gurney was shoved through the door. Dr. Helton yelled for someone to move the mother back and Helen jumped at the order like she was a solider in the army, not a nurse who should have been looking out for the best interest of her patient. Once the mother was out of the way, Dr. Helton moved to the girl’s side. She checked the child’s pulse again before testing her reflexes and studying her pupils, and the whole time Joshua stood off to the side, too stunned to say a word.

  “She’s been informed that the vaccine is still in the early stages of testing?” Dr. Helton said as she slid the needle into the vial. She pulled the plunger on the syringe back, and the liquid rushed in, bright green and thick.

  “She has,” Helen said.

  The doctor pulled the needle out and pushed the plunger just enough to make sure all the air was expelled. “Good.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Joshua said, suddenly finding it impossible to stay silent.

  Dr. Helton’s brown eyes snapped his way. The syringe was still poised in front of her, waiting and ready to be injected into the little girl’s vein. “She’s dead for sure without it. This way, she at least has a chance.”

  She was right and Joshua knew it, but that didn’t mean he felt good about standing by and letting this happen. Do no harm, that was the oath he’d taken as a doctor, and he didn’t see how injecting an experimental vaccine into a child could possibly be categorized as doing no harm.

  He turned to face the mother. “You’re okay with this?”

  The woman’s face was streaked with tears and dirt, and her clothes were barely more than rags. Her blonde hair was matted and greasy and probably crawling with bugs. She looked like she’d been to hell and back a dozen times.

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Do it. Do anything.”

  Joshua could almost picture the woman handing a ticket to the devil as she climbed aboard the one-way train headed for hell. The crazy thing was, the devil looked a heck of a lot like Dr. Helton.

  The doctor tossed the now empty vial aside and took a deep breath. Her hands were steady when she approached the little girl. The child was so lethargic that it was obvious the virus had already worked itself deep inside her bloodstream.

  Suddenly, Joshua was reminded of another girl and another time. Emily. When he’d first met Vivian, getting to the daughter she’d given up had been Vivian’s only goal. A child she hadn’t seen in four years who was all the way on the other side of the country. Even in his slightly shocked state Joshua had thought it was noble, and as he’d gotten to know Vivian more, he’d come to understand that everything she did had a deeper purpose. It was as if she was trying to right every wrong she’d ever witnessed by living her life to help others, even at her own peril.

  When Emily had been bitten they’d all watched in helplessness as she had slipped into a coma-like state. No one had known what would happen to her back then. If she would turn into a monster who wanted to kill them all or if she would simply die, and as the only doctor in the group, Joshua had felt so helpless that he’d hated himself. Hated that all his medical training hadn’t prepared him for this world. Hated that he hadn’t been able to pull a miracle out of a hat like some kind of magician. It was a feeling that only grew more and more intense as the weeks and months went by and more and more things that were out of his control happened. Watching children die from illnesses that had previously been easily treated, seeing friends die from complications of childbirth when any hospital in the old world could have taken care of it. He’d gone into medicine to make a difference, but in the apocalypse he had felt like a fraud.

  He held his breath when Dr. Helton slid the needle into the child’s vein. The girl didn’t even react. Didn’t flinch or blink or suck in a deep breath. Not even when the doctor pushed the plunger and the green liquid rushed into her body.

  Dr. Helton stepped back and the nurse released the mother. The woman ran to her child’s side, sobbing.

  “How long?” Helen’s voice belonged to someone much older than her and Joshua could tell that this woman spent a lot of her free time smoking.

  “We should see results in an hour if it’s going to work.
”

  The expressions of the two women standing next to him were very different. Dr. Helton was all business, a scientist who was waiting for results, while Helen looked at the sobbing mother with nothing but compassion.

  “I’ll stay with them,” the nurse said. “Let you know what happens.”

  Dr. Helton nodded once. “Good. Thank you.”

  She left the room without a second glance at the child, and Joshua followed. She didn’t speak until they had reached the end of the hall.

  “If you can’t do this job, I need to know now. Things are different. Before this outbreak we had to jump through hoops and wait for approval for human trials. Developing drugs took years. We don’t have years anymore. We have today. Now. I know it seems callous to inject a child with a drug when we have no idea if it will help her, but when we’re facing death, I will take the experiment every time. Most people these days would.”

  She was right. People were desperate and Joshua knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he’d been in the same position back when Emily was dying, he would have taken the chance at saving her, no matter how small.

  “You’re right.” He squared his shoulders and Dr. Helton tilted her head back so she could look up at him. Something about this woman made him feel small even though he towered over her by more than a foot. “I can do this. I want to.”

  “Good.” She turned and headed back down the hall.

  The girl lived and hope bloomed in the settlement. People felt safer knowing that a bite no longer meant certain death, and for a few months after that the number of zombie attacks went up as more and more people began taking risks. Groups would leave the settlement to search for supplies and get overrun, and a day didn’t go by that someone wasn’t brought into the CDC with a bite.

  Joshua was exhausted from working long days and nights, but even worse, he felt let down. The vaccine, which had seemed like a miracle to him at first, didn’t always work. In the beginning, he hadn’t been able to figure it out, but as he began to study his patients he noticed differences between them and a change in the virus. Some of the victims became violent before their hearts had stopped beating, almost as if they turned while still alive.