Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1)

by Lee, Raymond

  She leaned over and tugged one of Sky’s dark brown curls. “You’re beautiful like this. When you meet Emma, do you want her weirded out because you copycatted her look or do you want her impressed by your own look? It’s totally cool, by the way.”

  This made Sky smile. “I am pretty cool.”

  “Yes you are. You have my blood after all.”

  Sky rolled her eyes. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too.” Raven’s belly grumbled on cue. “We’re out of food. You inhaled the last of the Twinkies this morning and there aren’t any more leftovers in the fridge.”

  “I thought this hotel offered breakfast.”

  “They did before this virus happened. Now they want everyone to stay in their rooms.”

  “And starve? They want us to die of hunger?”

  “So dramatic,” Raven muttered as she reached for the phone on the nightstand. “I’ll call the front desk and see what our options are for food.”

  She dialed the front desk and waited. The phone just kept ringing. She tried again and the same thing happened.

  “They aren’t answering,” she said as she hung up the phone.

  “I’m starving.”

  “Alright, alright. There were vending machines on the second floor. I’ll see if anything’s left.”

  “I wanna come!” Sky jumped off the bed.

  “No way. You aren’t leaving this room.” Raven pointed at her as she stood from the bed, snapped her fingers and pointed back to the bed. “Park your butt right there and do not move from that spot until I come back.”

  “I’m tired of being in this room. We haven’t even been able to see Hollywood yet.”

  “I’m only going to the vending machines, Sky. You’re not missing anything. Stay here where it’s safe.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Sky Marie.”

  “Fine.” Sky plopped back down on the bed, a sour expression on her face as Idina Menzel’s voice filled the room. “I’m sick of this song.”

  Raven grabbed the keycard and slipped out the door. “So am I.”

  The vending machines had been hit pretty hard, only a few bags of Nutter Butters left inside one. The other held an assortment of baked chips, because honestly, who liked baked chips?

  “Starving little girls can’t be choosy,” Raven muttered to herself as she fished inside her front jeans pocket for coins.

  Someone screamed.

  Raven jerked in response, coins spilling onto the carpeted floor. She turned, trying to discern where the sound had come from. It was female, but not young enough to be Sky.

  Thank God.

  The woman screamed again, the sound more panicked than before, but more than that. It was the sound of real horror. It turned Raven’s blood cold.

  The scream came again, followed by another, this one belonging to a man. Then gunshots. Then the man screaming in pain. The woman didn’t quit screaming after that. It all came from down the hall, around the corner.

  Raven could turn around, go up the stairs she’d come down to get to the vending machine, or she could go down the hall and help. The virus was all over the news. The infected were killing people, eating people. She had no weapon. She had a little sister upstairs to protect.

  The woman screamed again.

  “Stay in the room, Sky,” she whispered as she traveled down the hallway, praying the little girl obeyed her.

  She heard garbled, growling sounds as she neared the end of the hallway and she nearly turned around. The woman cried out and she couldn’t leave her. She had to do something.

  She turned the corner and gasped.

  A young, brunette woman struggled on the floor as a crazy looking man attacked her like a rabid dog. The woman saw her and quit pushing on the man currently chewing on her shoulder. She rolled over.

  “Help me!” the woman called out as the man fell on her back and sank his teeth into her. Her eyes bulged in pain as the growling man feasted.

  Across from her, another man lay lifeless on the floor, a zombie eating his stomach. A gun lay beside him, having fallen from his hand.

  “Help,” the woman pleaded again.

  Raven shook her head, tears falling. She couldn’t. She didn’t have a weapon. If she could even get to the fallen man’s gun she might not be able to shoot it. She’d never even seen a real gun before. And the woman …

  “You’re infected now,” she said.

  The zombies heard that, looked up, focusing their cloudy white eyes on her, or the general vicinity of her. She wasn’t sure if they could see or not.

  Raven stepped back slowly, careful to not make a lot of noise, but it was too late. They knew she was there. They stood, shuffled forward, and another emerged from the stairwell down the hall.

  They were in the stairwell. Sky!

  Raven turned and ran toward the other end of the hall, to the stairwell she’d used by the vending machines. The elevator hadn’t opened earlier so she didn’t waste time trying it now. She reached the stairwell and made her way up to her floor, praying to find Sky safe and sound.

  She reached their floor and burst through the door into the hallway. And came face to face with Sky.

  “What the hell? I told you to stay in the room!”

  Tears dampened Sky’s cheeks and she shook as she squeezed her blue teddy bear tight against her chest. “The TV quit working and I heard screaming.”

  As if on cue, screams erupted from the floor above them. “They’re above us too?”

  “Who? What’s happening?”

  “Zombies, Sky. The Walking Dead is real now.” She grabbed her little sister’s elbow and guided her toward their room.

  “We need to leave, Raven.”

  “We can’t. They’re on the other floors and they’re using the stairwells. We have to hide until help comes.”

  “The doors don’t even lock.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing works. The TV, elevator, door locks. It’s all broken.”

  “Great.”

  A groaning noise sounded from down the hallway. They looked up in time to see two zombies shuffle around the corner.

  Sky screamed, announcing their presence.

  “Shit.” Raven grabbed her sister and opened the first door she could reach.

  “This isn’t our room.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Raven shoved her sister inside and looked around. The room was empty, vacant. “Get in the closet. Lock the door.”

  “What about you?”

  “I need to find a weapon.” Raven opened drawers and turned back sheets, checking to see if the room’s previous occupants had left anything useful behind. It appeared the room had been cleaned before the outbreak and no one had used it. “Dammit, I need something sharp.”

  “Like your necklace?”

  “I told you to get in the closet.” Raven looked down at her pendant, a large cross with the bottom sharpened into a dagger-like point. “This might just work.”

  “There’s no lock on the closet door. We can’t stay here.”

  “Where else are we supposed to go? They’re in the hallway.”

  The door opened and the zombies entered, their groaning turning into garbled growls.

  Sky screamed again, backing toward the balcony.

  “It’s going to be alright, Sky.” Raven removed her necklace, held the cross in her hand, sharpened end pointed out. It was sharp, but not very long. She’d have to get dangerously close to one of the zombies to hurt it, and by the time she stabbed one, the other would be on her. She’d be dead and soon after, so would Sky.

  They backed toward the sliding balcony doors, and Sky opened them, slipping outside.

  “Jump,” Raven instructed her, realizing this room was on the same side of the hall as theirs. The balconies were interior and lined the swimming pool.

  “What?”

  “Jump, Sky. Dive into the pool. It’s our only way out.”

  “No.” Sky’s voice quivered in fe
ar as she began to cry. “I can’t.”

  “Dammit, Sky.”

  Raven turned as the zombies closed in, grabbed her sister under her arm, and jumped off the balcony, into the pool below.

  They came out of the water sputtering.

  “Why’d you do that? You know I can’t swim.”

  “It was that or die,” Raven explained as she hoisted Sky onto the tiled floor and climbed out of the pool behind her.

  She’d just cleared the water when the zombies fell from the balcony. One landed in the pool with a splash. The other missed, landing on the tiled floor. Raven heard its bones break, which made it all the more horrifying when it rose up on its elbows and started crawling toward them, dragging its broken lower body along.

  Sky opened her mouth, but Raven clamped her hand over it, muffling the scream. “You can’t keep doing that,” she whispered. “They hear it and they come to it. I don’t think they can see well and they don’t move as fast as us. We’ll survive this if we’re quick and quiet, got it?”

  Sky nodded, her bottom lip quivering as she fought to not cry.

  “We’re gonna be fine, kid,” Raven assured her sister, hugging the little girl tight before surveying the area around them. “We have to find a safer place. This isn’t it.”

  As if her statement needed any further clarification, the zombie that had splashed into the pool stood and started walking toward them through the water.

  “Come on.” She grabbed Sky’s hand and pulled her toward the doorway to the first floor hallway. “Be very quiet. We don’t know how many are on this floor.”

  Sky’s only response was a whimper.

  Raven squeezed her hand and kept walking down the hall, toward the front of the hotel. The lights flickered on and off, intensifying the anxiety level. Raven wished they’d just go off. It was daytime. There was plenty of natural light, and maybe darkness would help them. It didn’t seem like the zombies could see very well to begin with.

  “Do we have a plan?” Sky whispered.

  “Yeah. Get the hell out of here,” Raven whispered back.

  “Out on the street? I thought we were supposed to stay inside because it was safer.”

  “It was until the undead cannibals got in with us. We definitely aren’t safe here, not when the doors don’t even lock and there are zombies creeping on multiple floors. We’ll find a safer building.”

  “How are we supposed to get to a safer building? We need a gun.”

  The matter-of-fact way Sky made the statement brought a smile to Raven’s mouth despite the circumstances. “You know how to shoot a gun now?”

  “No.”

  “Then we don’t need one. We’ve already got people-eating monsters chasing us. The last thing we need is for one of us to shoot the other in the ass.”

  “How do we stop them?”

  “I don’t know that we can, but we can definitely outrun them.”

  They reached the lobby and found it painted in blood. Raven barely managed to close her hand over Sky’s mouth before the girl erupted into a screaming fit.

  “Shhh, Sky. Be quiet, Sis.” Raven whispered, desperately trying to silence the screams she could only muffle with her hand. She knew the girl was terrified. Hell, the sight in front of her had her nearly pissing her own pants.

  The man at the counter, the same man who’d checked them in a week ago, was now draped over that counter with his intestines scattered around him. The upper half of him, anyway. Judging by the blood trail, the lower half had been dragged away.

  Sky finally quit screaming, the shrill cries turning into choked sobs as she struggled to breathe.

  “That’s better. It’ll be alright,” Raven soothed her. “We’ll find someplace safe.”

  At that moment, the dead man growled, rising up on his elbows. The sisters both gasped, too stunned to expel their breath as the man reached out toward them, snarling. Determined to reach them, he pushed himself forward, falling off the counter with a splat as what remained of his mangled intestines fell out.

  Sky bent at the waist and vomited the Twinkies she’d had for breakfast.

  A shuffling sound from around the corner spurred Raven into action before she could follow suit. She grabbed Sky’s arm and pulled her into the closest room.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Something’s moving out there,” Raven explained, shutting the door behind them. They were in a small room with cooking appliances and refrigerators. Pots and pans hung by hooks suspended from the ceiling. “This must be where they prepare the breakfast foods. There should be knives or something useful. Start searching, but do it quietly.”

  They quickly rummaged through cabinets and drawers. Although she found food and drinks, Raven couldn’t find a single knife that wasn’t plastic.

  “Dammit. What kind of kitchen doesn’t have a knife?”

  “The kind that only cooks scrambled eggs and sausage patties,” Sky answered.

  The knob on the door leading out to the breakfast area of the lobby started jangling.

  “Raven!”

  Sky ran to her side and she quickly tucked her under her arm. With her necklace the only weapon she had, she pulled her sister toward the door they’d entered through.

  “That other one’s out there. He was crawling toward us.”

  “He was dragging himself,” Raven corrected her. “He doesn’t have any legs. I’d rather go against him than one who can walk, and for all we know there’s more than one outside that breakfast area door.”

  Sky whimpered.

  “I love you, Sky.” Raven kissed her younger sister’s head. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She grasped the doorknob and paused. “As soon as I open this door we’re going to run to the front exit. We’re right at the lobby entrance so we just go into the lobby and cut a right, then out through those doors. If the man at the counter has managed to drag himself this far we can probably jump right over him. Got it?”

  Sky nodded. “Just don’t leave me.”

  “You know I never would.”

  “Not on purpose, but like Mom and Dad did.”

  “Not even like that,” Raven managed to get out past the ball of anguish that had formed in her throat. “We’re going now, before anything gets in that other door. You ready?”

  Sky nodded.

  “Let’s go. Move fast.”

  Raven twisted the knob, pulled the door open, and led her sister out. They successfully jumped over the desk attendant’s moving torso, rounded the corner, and came face to face with three zombies blocking the exit.

  “Shit!” Raven grabbed Sky and whirled around, but the two zombies that had been trying to get through the kitchen door were approaching from that direction.

  “Raven, what do we do?”

  Raven barely made her sister’s words out, the little girl’s voice trembled so badly. She looked around and found a door to their right.

  “We hide,” she answered as she pulled the door open, revealing a small closet. She shoved Sky in with the sweepers and mops, and jumped in behind her. She pulled the door to close them inside, but a zombie hand grabbed the edge and pulled it back.

  “Shit!”

  She pulled with all her strength but now three of them had grabbed the edge of the door and their combined strength outweighed hers. She had her sharpened cross and an assortment of mops and sweepers to work with.

  “I can’t hold the door any longer, Sky. I need you to grab a mop and try to ram the wooden part through these things’ faces.”

  “I can’t!” Tears streamed down Sky’s chubby cheeks. “It’s too scary. They’re too big.”

  “I can’t fight five of them alone and I can’t hold this door. They’re going to get in.”

  “I can’t do it. I can’t do it!”

  Raven inhaled deeply. She couldn’t get mad at Sky. She was just a little girl and understandably scared out of her mind.

  “OK, but I have to let this door go. I’ll fight them.
You just run.”

  “What? I can’t leave you.”

  “You can and you will!” Raven regretted snapping, but now was not the time for babying her sister. They were both going to die if she didn’t act fast. She knew she couldn’t fight off all five zombies, but she could buy her sister time to escape. If one of them was to survive, she planned on it being Sky.

  “Sorry I yelled, Sky, but I need you now. Grab that short sweeper right there, just in case you need it, and then you run. Stay low and you can run right past them. They’re slow so you keep on running.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll catch up.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.” She choked, barely managing to keep the sob from forming. “No matter what, Sky, I will always be with you.”

  Sky hugged her waist quickly and Raven savored the moment before her little sister let go and grabbed the shortest sweeper, gripping the handle in both hands.

  “You just run, Sky. Run as fast as you can out those doors and use that if you have to.”

  “Where do I go once outside?”

  “Just keep running.”

  Sky chewed her bottom lip, then finally nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “I love you, Sky. You can do this. Just run fast.”

  Raven let go of the door and grabbed a mop, figuring it would deal more damage than her cross. Sky ran out just as she’d been instructed and the zombies, intent on Raven, let her pass. She impaled the closest one with the mop, gagging at the wet, crunching sound it made as it sank through the man’s forehead. Blood splattered onto her, but she didn’t have time to retch. She had to buy Sky time to escape.

  A shrill scream cut through the noise of the zombies’ growls and Raven’s heart sank.

  “Sky?”

  No answer. Just screaming.

  Raven kicked and punched, dodged and stabbed, trying to clear a path to her sister, but the zombies had seemed to multiply since they’d attempted to hide in the closet, and everything happened too fast.

  Maura Seton sat outside the house, her car turned off so she didn’t attract the wildlife. That’s what she thought of them. The zombies. They were like wild carnivores on the prowl.

  That’s what she’d find inside the house, if he was still there. Maybe he’d gotten out, or had been somewhere entirely else when the disease took him over and turned him into one of them. Maybe the military had gotten to him and ended him before he had a chance to turn.