Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1)

by Lee, Raymond

  “I’m taking what is owed to me.”

  She raised the bat, readied her swing.

  “I’m taking this house and everything in it.”

  Swing. The ugly nesting dolls sitting on a side table smashed.

  “Maura. Too loud. They’ll …” Daniel’s head slumped again. “They’ll come.”

  “Let them come!” she screamed. “They’re your people, right? Weren’t they created by the woman you gave your name to? The woman you chose to honor?”

  She crouched before him. “Let them come. This is my house now. I’ll gladly kill any piece of Russian trash or any freak they created with their nasty virus if they step on my property.”

  Daniel didn’t respond.

  “Say something.”

  His mouth didn’t move. The only sounds he made were the ragged breaths escaping his lips.

  “Say something,” Maura growled. She’d come all this way for closure, willing to face the infected people now roaming the streets if necessary. She would not be denied her closure. She poked him but got no response.

  “Wake up!” she screamed as loud as she could.

  He jerked, a slight movement, then raised his head, opened his eyes. Seemed to strain to see her through the redness coating them. “I’m sorry. Go now. Please.”

  “Go now? You think you can just kick me out? Make me. I want to see you make me leave.”

  His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why so much hate? You have to forgive.”

  Maura laughed at the absurdity as she stood and walked in a circle before him, testing the bat’s weight in her hand. “I have to forgive you? Why? Is that the custom after someone rips your heart out and shreds it beyond recognition? Am I to just forget all the hurt and betrayal and just give you a clean slate because it’s what you want?”

  She stopped and looked down at him. “What about what I wanted? You didn’t give a damn about what I wanted.”

  “Maura.” He tried to straighten himself and winced in pain, his hand going to the mottled wound on his thigh. The skin around it had darkened to a mix of scarlet red and blackish purples. “What would Jesus do?”

  The laugh tore out of her, the strangely angry sound too powerful for her to restrain. All his talk about being a good Christian had been lies just as his promises to her had been. He’d lied. He’d used her, hurt her for his own selfish needs then married an ungodly woman. Now he dared to throw Jesus in her face?

  Maura raised the bat, the love for him that had kept her fury at bay snapping as memories of her all alone, crying as she struggled to face life without him, assaulted her.

  “I’m not particularly concerned with what Jesus would do,” she informed him. “I’m thinking what would Madea do?”

  She brought the bat down, heard the crack of bone as it connected with the top of his head. Everything went black as memories overtook her. All she could see were images of how miserable she’d been for the past two years, how she’d been forced to think of the love of her life with another woman, a mail-order bride, knowing she’d been forgotten. She heard the cracking sounds and the blood splatter but couldn’t see through the haze of torturous memories.

  With a rage-filled scream, she lowered the bat to the ground and fell to her knees. Wetness soaked into her jeans and she looked down to see blood from the carpet marring them.

  “Look what you made me do.” She looked at Daniel, finally able to see again. Now that she could, she couldn’t see what it was about him that had attracted her. The redness of his blood brought out the pasty white of his complexion. He wasn’t a particularly big man, nor very handsome. His nose was kind of puggish, and now it was crooked on top of that. Three of his teeth now rested on his shirt. She pictured the crooked grin he used to give her. That, she had adored, but now it was ruined, what with his teeth missing and his lower jaw just hanging there, unhinged.

  “You made me get blood on the carpet. I finally get what’s mine and you make me ruin it. Don’t you have anything to say?”

  He remained silent.

  Enraged, she grabbed his lower jaw and moved it up and down for him. “Say something! Speak!”

  His silence only angered her more.

  “Seriously? You leave me without a goodbye once, run back home without telling me and then arrange a wedding to some floozy, only telling me by text after I’d finally gotten a response to who knows how many I’d sent to you that you were marrying that skank and now you decide to just leave me again without a goodbye when I’ve come all this way? Coward.”

  She dropped the blood covered bat and went into the kitchen. All that exercise had worked up an appetite. She quickly washed her hands and perused the refrigerator. It contained a lot of fruit and vegetables, some strange looking meat, and some cartons with foreign lettering on them.

  “He even eats that Russian shit,” she muttered, opening the freezer and extracting a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. It was sealed so she didn’t have to worry about the slut’s germs all over it. She unsealed the carton, popped the lid off and found a spoon in a drawer. Pulling up a stool at the counter in the middle of the kitchen, she stabbed the ice cream with the metal object harder than necessary, eyes tearing up in anger and sadness as she thought about how she couldn’t even kiss Daniel goodbye. She’d so enjoyed kissing him but now he was tainted.

  The ice cream tasted like cardboard. She set it down on the counter and lowered her head. The flood of tears came suddenly. She loved Daniel and now he was gone. She’d lost him again and he hadn’t shown any inkling that he’d been happy to see her. He’d just told her to get out. How was that for closure?

  She now knew she’d been right about the type of person he’d married. The woman being a cheating whore was a fact now, not just something she’d called her in anger, something she’d hoped karma would have delivered to him. Karma did its job, but why did it hurt her too? What had she done to deserve this pain? She knew he hadn’t been happy all this time. How could he have been?

  But why was she still unhappy? Why did she still miss the man she used to know? It should have stopped. The pain kept raging though.

  “It’ll never be over,” she whispered to herself as she let her gaze roam over the kitchen in search of Tylenol, aspirin, anything to help null the pain throbbing between her eyes.

  Not seeing anything, she got up and found the bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet and searched the bottles there, finally finding something.

  A horrible moaning sound came from the living room.

  “Daniel, is that you?”

  The sound came again, louder.

  “It’ll never end,” she repeated as she unsheathed the machete she’d found earlier and met him in the hallway. His beautiful blue eyes were gone, replaced with cloudy white orbs.

  “That bitch took your eyes away from me too,” she growled before she rammed the blade into his forehead.

  Hal brought the car to a stop in front of Paul’s house, his stomach churning. He told himself it was just hunger, not wanting to admit, even to himself, that he was scared of what he would find in the small blue house with the pale yellow shutters.

  Judging by the scenes he’d driven past on his way to Paul’s and the attack he’d found himself under at the gas station, the whole world had gone crazy. The inmates at the prison weren’t half as scary as what walked the streets now.

  And if Paul was one of them …

  He’d do what he had to do. It would be the right thing. Paul was a good man but if he’d turned into one of the demons terrorizing people he was no longer Paul. He was evil and evil had to be destroyed. If there was anything Hal knew how to do, it was seek out evil and destroy it.

  He opened the car door and stepped out onto the street. He didn’t bother shutting the door. The risk of it making a sound was too great and once he entered Paul’s house he’d have access to the garage and the vehicles inside it. Anything had to be better than the blood-soaked car he’d traveled here in. Definitely time f
or a trade-in.

  The gun and its one remaining bullet still nestled in the pocket of his hoodie, he cautiously approached the house. From the outside, the house looked normal. Peaceful even. The whole street looked good, just empty. He’d heard the news about the evacuation on the radio as he’d driven there, before the radio went out. It explained the lack of cars. Everyone had packed up and sought refuge at one of the military bases set up for the uninfected.

  Everyone but Paul. He knew the house would not be empty. What he didn’t know was what would be dwelling inside, and if it would be dead, alive, or dead and moving.

  He made his way around the house, opened the gate to the privacy fence enclosing the backyard and went for the hide-a-key. He moved aside the heavy planter on the back porch and retrieved the key, thankful Paul hadn’t changed its location. He didn’t want to make any noise when he entered.

  He unlocked the back door as quietly as he could and pocketed the key. With his gun now in his right hand, he slowly turned the doorknob and pushed, careful not to make the slightest squeak.

  The kitchen was empty but the smell of blood and who knew what else assaulted him. He brought the back of his wrist to his mouth and fought down the urge to vomit. He’d smelled blood before, and lots of it, but never after it’d had time to congeal. He knew he didn’t just smell blood. He was smelling death. Something, or someone, was rotting in the house.

  He crept forward, carefully closing the door behind him. It made the slightest clicking sound as it shut and the small sound made him wince.

  Dirty dishes rested in the sink, a glass of milk sat on the counter. Judging by the smell, he placed it to be a day or more old. Small bugs flew around the rim of the glass. It didn’t smell half as bad as what wafted up from the basement.

  He started to walk toward the scratched up basement door to investigate but a cry unlike anything he’d ever heard sounded from down the hall. He cocked his head to the side and listened. It came again, a mix between the wail of a baby and the growl of an animal. Then he heard the soft shushing sounds of another female voice.

  Angela. He looked at the family photo on the fridge, held there by a Florida magnet, a souvenir from a family vacation, he assumed. Paul, his first wife, and Angela around the age of four waved to the camera as they stood next to Mickey Mouse. Another picture was a more current image. Paul, Angela and a woman he assumed to be the mail-order bride. She was tall with dark hair and a lot of makeup. Angela’s light brown hair was much longer in this picture and she wore a T-shirt with some grumpy looking cat on the front.

  Hal’s gut churned as he followed the sound, hoping he didn’t find a hideous scene at the end of it. He hadn’t seen Angela since she was about five years old, but he’d promised Paul at her birth that if anything ever happened to him, he’d take care of the girl.

  The growling wail grew louder as he traveled the hall and he discerned which door it came from. The second from last.

  “Angela?” he called as he gripped the knob. “Angela, it’s Hallelujah Brown. I’m an old friend of your dad’s and your godfather. Are you in here?”

  “Yes,” came a small trembling voice.

  “I’m coming in, honey.”

  He turned the knob and pushed. The first thing he saw was Angela, sitting in the corner of the room in a black T-shirt, jean cutoffs and black hiking boots. She sat huddled in the corner with her knees pulled up to her chin, hands clasped in front. Her eyes darted from him to the other side of the room, tears making them glisten.

  Hal stepped inside and turned to see the rest of the room that had been hidden by the door. He cried out in alarm and sheer disgust as his gaze settled on the crib and the tiny cloudy-eyed monster growling inside it. “What is that?”

  “My little sister,” Angela answered. “I think she’s hungry.”

  “Lord help us,” Hal whispered, walking toward the crib.

  The baby, no more than a year old, stood and gripped the bars, moaning and growling. A face that should have been sweet looked anything but. It snarled at him viciously as drool dripped from the corners of its mouth. Its skin had a slight greenish tint and he knew the few teeth he could see protruding from its gums as its lips pulled back to make monstrous sounds were deadly weapons. This thing was not a child, not in any human sense, but he realized that Paul and Angela would have trouble seeing that. Now he knew what Paul had been referring to when he’d asked Hal over the phone to do what he could not.

  “Where’s your father?”

  Angela sobbed. “He tied himself up in the basement with Elena after he killed her. He had to. She was going to kill us all. He told me you would be coming for me and to wait here.”

  “Did he turn?”

  Angela shook her head. “I heard the gunshot. He made sure you were coming first, then he killed himself down there so I wouldn’t see.”

  “He killed himself.”

  “He stopped himself from becoming a monster. I wouldn’t have been able to kill him, even if he tried to eat me.”

  Hal looked at the baby monster again, his stomach rolling. “Have you touched her?”

  “Daddy said not to, no matter what. She can hold bottles on her own so I tossed one in the crib but she hasn’t picked it up. She won’t stop crying. She sounds hungry.”

  “Oh, she’s hungry all right.” Hal ran his finger over his gun’s trigger, remembering the zombies who’d attacked him at the gas station. They were all hungry.

  “You’re going to kill her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes and no.” He looked at Angela. “Your little sister already died. That thing is not her. Call it a zombie if you like. Call it a demon. Either word fits. There’s nothing that can be done to save your sister. She is in God’s arms already. That monster in her body needs to be destroyed.”

  “I can’t watch.”

  “I wouldn’t allow you to. It’s bad enough you have this memory of her. Just remember it isn’t her. Remember her the way she was.”

  Angela nodded and stood. “Please make it quick.”

  “I will. She won’t suffer.” He met Angela’s eyes, eyes that had seen far more than any twelve-year old should have seen. “I promise.”

  “My dad said you were a good man. I trust him so I trust you.”

  She left the room, shutting the door behind her.

  Hal looked back at the baby. It continued snarling at him, drool spilling down its cheeks. “I’m sorry, Paul. You just find your peace, brother. I’ll take care of your girls.”

  He walked over to the crib, placed the gun against the baby’s tiny forehead and pulled the trigger, putting it out of its misery like the rabid animal it was.

  II

  Survival

  The streets were silent. Deadly silent. Raven watched them anyway. She’d been thinking of changing locations for a while now, but every time she felt it safe to venture out she would see a group of the dead bastards roaming down there. If she had a bomb she’d take out the whole state of California, self included, just to pay those monsters back for what they’d taken from her. Sometimes she thought about just taking herself out of the picture but she didn’t have the guts.

  Oh, she had the guts to kill herself, to end the constant memories of what had happened, to wipe away the image of Sky’s little body mangled and ripped to shreds. She didn’t have the guts to face her little sister though if they met somewhere in the afterlife. She’d told her to run, and Sky had listened. Had trusted her.

  She’d sent the little girl straight into their claws. She’d made it as far as the street and that was when a group of them got her.

  Somehow she had survived, and she hated herself for it every day. That hadn’t been the plan. She was supposed to be the one to die, to keep the zombies busy until Sky got away. Losing her parents had been hard, yes, but nothing like this. She wasn’t to blame for her parents’ deaths. Sky’s death? That was all on her.

  She scooped up the rest of the canned fruit she’d found in the cabinet and tossed the
can, listening to the loud clang it made as it hit the sidewalk below. Nothing stirred. Maybe the zombies had moved on to terrorize another area.

  After fighting her way through the zombies at the hotel she’d ran a few blocks and found this building. The bottom was a music store, specializing in rare vinyl. It would have been a place she’d have loved to visit while sightseeing with Sky. Now it was just a place to hide. She’d been using the abandoned apartment on the second floor as her shelter for the past two weeks. The owner of the store had vacated pretty quickly, judging by the look of things, but some food had been left behind, mostly perishables. Those were gone now. She was down to fruit in a can and some ramen noodles. Not that she had any water to cook them in. She’d found toiletries to clean up with and a Metallica T-shirt to replace the bloody one she’d had on. She was stuck with her blood-stained jeans and combat boots.

  She was going to have to go out there again. Maybe stay out there until she found other survivors. Surely she wasn’t the last person alive in Hollywood. Maybe they were all just hiding like her although she never saw any sign of anyone and she spent every day sitting on that window sill, watching.

  “I need to go out there.” Still she sat. Her spirit just wasn’t in it. She wondered if starvation was painful, and how long it would take. If it wasn’t so bad, maybe she could do it. Just sit there and watch that street until the Lord took her. If He even wanted her after what she’d allowed to happen to Sky.

  A loud clattering noise caught her attention and she turned her head toward the alley across the street. A young girl emerged from between two buildings, crying hysterically and making far too much noise.

  Raven opened her mouth to warn the girl not to be so loud when another noise wafted up to where she sat. She’d recognize that growlish moan anywhere. She craned her neck and saw them down the street, three zombies shuffling along.

  “Be quiet!” she yelled down to the girl. “They’re coming. They’ll hear you!”

  The girl, thin and blonde, in skinny jeans, flats, and a pink Hollister T-shirt, fell to her knees, wailing. Right there in the same street the zombies were walking.