Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1)

by Lee, Raymond

  Once he filled the backpack he slung it over his shoulders and headed for the exit. This side of the building didn’t have any windows so he was blind to what he would be walking into but he’d rather take that door than travel back through the other rooms to get to the front door. He’d already come across a few zombies in the rooms he’d scavenged in.

  He held the rock hammer in his right hand and opened the door with his left. The alley looked empty but he knew better than to let his guard down. That’s when they seemed to pop up out of nowhere.

  Damian crept down the alley, mentally taking inventory of his haul as he headed toward the street. The wilderness store was a goldmine, full of survival supplies. Unfortunately he only had two arms and one back which meant he could only fill and carry one backpack. He’d been forced to use a so-not-fashionable fanny pack but it held first aid supplies that could come in handy, matches, and batteries. He’d grabbed a machete and now carried that in the sheath at his waist, but he still kept the rock hammer permanently in hand. He’d gotten pretty good with it. The backpack was filled with canned goods, a can opener, and flashlights.

  He rounded the building and came out on the street where he’d parked the SUV. His relief of seeing the car still there was short lived as he saw the infected people around it. They were fresh. New. The new ones freaked him out worse than the ones who looked as if they’d already started to decay. They all had the cloudy white eyes and they all shuffled along. They all groaned, but those fresh ones were reminders of what could happen to him. If the infected ever got their hands on him, he prayed they ate him whole. He’d take that death over becoming infected himself and hurting others.

  Damian cussed under his breath as he counted ten of them. He was good with the hammer, and the machete was sharp enough he figured he could do some good damage with it even if forced to use his right hand, but even with a weapon in each hand he was only one person against ten monsters intent on eating him. He should ditch the car and walk.

  But that meant giving up the fifteen gallon jugs of water he’d stored in the SUV earlier, and the gas. Screw that. The zombies hadn’t noticed him there so he could just hang out by the building and wait until they moved along. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere though. They were just kind of clustered there by the Escalade, not doing a damn thing.

  “Dammit.” He didn’t want to wait there but Cruz was scavenging the other side of the street and should be returning soon. If the zombies hadn’t moved on by then, Cruz could help him take them out. Cruz was a diva just like every other actor he’d worked with, but the guy knew how to use a gun and two against ten were definitely better odds.

  He’d resigned to wait it out when something gripped his shoulder.

  He screamed, knowing better but unable to stop his body’s reaction as he twisted around to see a white-eyed monster’s open mouth coming toward him. He shrugged the man’s hand off his shoulder and swung the rock hammer. His aim was perfect and the sharp end of the hammer broke through the zombie’s skin and cracked the skull. Dark blood splattered on him and he cringed, knowing how dangerous the tainted blood was. Lips pressed tight together, he quickly wiped his face with his sleeve, fearful of getting any in his mouth.

  He yanked on the hammer, withdrawing it from the zombie’s head with a sickening plopping noise, and turned to see his scream had attracted the zombies. They were no longer hanging out by the Escalade but were instead shuffling right toward him. Three zombies crept toward him from between the buildings and to his left, four more neared. He hadn’t even known those had been there but his scream had brought them forth.

  He was surrounded. Seventeen against one.

  With no other option, he grabbed the machete with his right hand and swung it in tandem with the rock hammer in his left. The machete was sharp enough to do most of the work for him, slicing the arms of the zombies reaching out for him as he fought to drive the rock hammer into the others’ skulls before they could get their teeth on him. But as his arms tired of the constant swinging and he struggled with his ability to dual wield, he realized he was delaying the inevitable. He was going to die, or turn. Cruz might be an action hero in the movies but he was just an actor in real life. He wasn’t going to save him in time.

  But Damian refused to just stand there and let the bastards munch on him without a fight. He’d been ganged up on before, by skinheads who couldn’t decide whether they hated him more for his color or his attraction to other men, so he knew how to take a beating without falling down. And quite frankly, his pride just wouldn’t allow it. So he kept swinging, hammering and slicing as many as he could, kicking them back when they got too close and just praying that when the end came, he wouldn’t come back as one of his attackers.

  “Hey uglies!”

  The woman’s voice came from across the street, momentarily shocking Damian into stopping. A zombie closed in on him, gripping his shoulders in its strong hands as it opened its mouth to go in for the kill.

  A shot sounded and the top of the zombie’s head exploded, blood spraying Damian’s face. He jerked back, panicking as the blood covered him. He raised the bottom of his shirt and used it to wipe the infected liquid away.

  When he looked up, it was to see the zombies had abandoned him to turn on their attackers. Cruz had replaced his gun with a large knife and was currently stabbing zombies in the forehead with it. A young girl held out a curved blade but shook too much to do anything with it. She had her back to another girl, a teenager with short, dark blue hair, who wielded a katana like she was some kind of warrior princess. She sliced through zombies, chopping off heads like they were made of butter.

  In a matter of minutes, the street was littered with zombie remains.

  “Did you get bit?” the blue-haired girl asked as he stepped over the zombie Cruz had shot.

  “No, I’m good. Thanks to all of you. Thought I was a goner for a minute there.”

  Cruz didn’t say anything as he wiped his bloody blade on his pant leg and slid it into its sheath.

  “Get any of that in your mouth?” The woman slipped a pack off her back and lowered it to the ground before unzipping it to root around.

  “No, my mouth was closed.”

  “Good.” She took out a package of disinfectant wipes and held it out to him. “Might wanna clean yourself up.”

  “Thanks.” Damian grabbed a couple of the wipes. “I’m Damian Quincy Jones and this is —”

  “Cruz Thomas,” the younger girl finished for him, blushing as she twirled a strand of blonde hair around her finger. “I’ve seen all the Action X movies.”

  “I’m Raven,” the blue-haired woman said, not seeming the least bit impressed by the fact she was standing before a big name actor, “and this is Jeremy. Yes, she’s a girl and her name is Jeremy and I’m named after a bird. You always give your full name, Damian Quincy Jones?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you related to Quincy Jones or just douchey enough to imply that you are every time you meet someone?”

  Damian laughed, enjoying her attitude. “I like you, Raven.”

  “You should. We just saved your ass.”

  “Pretty sure my bullet through that zombie’s brain saved him,” Cruz advised. “Thanks for the backup though and the wipes. We best be on our way. That gunshot probably attracted more and I don’t want to be here when they arrive. You two should get going as well.”

  Cruz walked past the girls, heading for the Escalade.

  “He’s a lot nicer in his interviews,” Jeremy murmured.

  “They all are, sugar.” Damian rolled his eyes. He was used to the celebrity attitude but would have thought the zombie apocalypse would have changed things. “Did I get all the blood off my face?”

  “Yep.” Raven put away the wipes and slid the pack onto her back again. “Where are you two headed?”

  “Kansas.”

  “Kansas?”

  “Cruz’s mom lives there and since phone lines aren’t working, he doesn
’t know how she’s doing so we’re going there to get her.” He didn’t voice his opinion that it was likely a lost cause and the woman would probably be dead if she wasn’t able to get to one of the military camps that had been set up. “Where are you two headed?”

  “We were thinking Arizona, to one of the military camps, but we have to find a car that miraculously has some keys inside. I came here by plane for a trip so I don’t have a car, and Jeremy’s aunt was killed in hers.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Damian offered what he hoped was a look of condolence to the girl. “I don’t know where you’re from but I know it’s the south based on that drawl you have. Around here, people don’t tend to leave their keys in cars so unless you know how to hotwire one, you’re out of luck. Why not come along with us? After finding Cruz’s mom, we’ll be headed to one of the camps anyway. They should be as good as any you’d find in Arizona.”

  Cruz approached. “What are you doing?”

  “What the hell does it sound like I’m doing?” Damian held Cruz’s glare. “Four is better than two.”

  “Not when that extra two means two extra stomachs to feed and it’s two girls we have to take care of.”

  The tip of the katana appeared beneath Cruz’s nose.

  “We can take care of ourselves and scavenge for our own food. However, we do need a ride and I think it’s a fair trade since we helped out here more than your cocky ass would like to acknowledge so we accept. Got a problem with that?”

  Damian laughed at the anger he saw in Cruz’s eyes, knowing the man couldn’t do a thing about it. “Raven, you and I are going to be good friends,” he said as they all walked to the Escalade to begin their journey together.

  The sound of the lock turning woke Janjai from her slumber. She sat up on the cot, back aching from the thin mattress masquerading as a barrier between her and the cot’s painful springs, and tried to mentally prepare herself for what may come next. She still hadn’t figured out why Hank had locked her up in here in the first place. She hadn’t done anything and the things he’d said about Russia and Asia made no sense. She’d obviously missed something on the news. Of course, she only watched the news while he was out or listened to it while pretending to do other things when he was home.

  She didn’t plan on Hank knowing she could speak and understand English until she was gone. Long gone. Once she was safely divorced and far away from him she had a lot of English words to say to him.

  The door opened and a cautious Hank stood there with a rifle in his hand, the barrel pointed at her.

  A sharp frightened sound escaped Janjai as she pressed her back against the wall and raised her knees to her chest. She’d seen Hank in a variety of mean, ugly ways and had been victim to his abuse before but he’d never pointed a gun at her.

  “Let me see your eyes!”

  Realizing she’d lowered her head to her knees, hiding her face and the scene before her, Janjai slowly raised her head, and opened her eyes. She knew he was a heartless bastard but what did he want of her? Was it important to see her fear before he killed her?

  His eyes narrowed as he peered at hers, seeming to study her.

  She held her breath as he stepped closer, crouched but ready to shoot. She didn’t understand. Did he expect her to attack him? Didn’t he realize she would have a long time ago if she wanted to? If she didn’t throw herself at him in a fit of rage all the times he’d hit her, why would she now? It wasn’t the first time he’d locked her in this room for weeks.

  A smile slowly spread across his face and he laughed with joy as he lowered the gun to the bed. “Oh thank goodness!”

  Janjai gasped as he picked her up and spun her around the room, enveloped in his bear hug, before kissing her.

  The kisses were worse than beatings, causing her stomach to revolt, but this time her shock was too great to react. It was the first time in nearly two years she didn’t have to fight the urge to throw up in his mouth as his clammy lips covered hers and she tasted beer and venison, his favorite meal.

  “So it’s just those Russians,” he said as he lowered her to the floor. “I’ll fix you up a bath so you can clean up before we go.”

  He left the room, her hand caught in his, and led her up the stairs and to the bedroom where he rifled through her dresser drawers and the closet, selecting attire for her.

  “Wait here,” he said as he pushed her so that her rump hit the mattress, and left. She heard him move down the hall, toward the kitchen, and then the back door opened and closed.

  Janjai looked at the clothes he’d set on the bed. A pair of jeans, thick socks, underclothes, a white T-shirt and a flannel shirt. Obviously they weren’t going anywhere nice, not that they did much but sometimes after he beat her or locked her up for long periods of time he’d do something to make up for it, or at least that’s what he thought it was. A nice dinner out barely made up for abuse.

  Janjai took advantage of his absence and turned on the TV set sitting on the dresser. Nothing happened. She checked the plug and saw it was plugged in. Strange. She tried booting up the computer on Hank’s desk and the same thing happened.

  She heard the door open again and quickly sat back on the bed, right where he’d left her. The floorboards creaked as he came up the hall but he didn’t enter the bedroom. He entered the bathroom.

  Janjai leaned forward to see him dumping two buckets of well water into the tub. Well water? They had water in the house. To her knowledge they had never had to use the water from the well before.

  He left with the buckets and again she heard him leave through the kitchen door, returning shortly after.

  He came into the bedroom and grabbed the clothes, then her, guiding her to the bathtub with his hand clamped around her bicep. He settled her clothes on the spacesaver over the toilet and pointed to the tub. “Take bath.”

  Then he was gone.

  Janjai closed the door as far as he ever allowed. Locking doors in the house or even just closing one all the way brought on beatings and after what had to have been a few weeks in that basement room, living off canned food and inhaling the putrid smell of the camp toilet she’d had to use she didn’t think she’d survive a beating.

  Her back ached from the time she’d spent on the hard, uncomfortable cot and she smelled. All she wanted to do was slide down into a warm bubble bath and soak but she settled for the cool bubble-free well water. She didn’t bother messing with the bath knobs, knowing that if the water worked, Hank wouldn’t have bothered bringing water in from the well. The water wasn’t plentiful enough for her to really soak but it was enough for her to use the soap and rag to wash away the sweat and grime clinging to her body. She washed her long, black hair as well before emerging to towel off and dress in the clothes Hank had selected for her.

  The kitchen door opened and banged shut, followed by the loud voice of Hank’s hunting buddy, Otis.

  Janjai rolled her eyes. The last thing she needed after an extended stay in the basement room was a visit from Hank’s friend, but then again, without TV or internet, listening to Otis and Hank talk might be the only way she’d figure out what was going on.

  Normally it was Janjai’s job to cook and clean but Hank had managed to cook a whole chicken in an empty coffee can right there on top of the electric stove which, along with everything else in the house, wasn’t working.

  They ate the tender chicken and raw broccoli by candle light but the dinner was by no means romantic. Hank and Otis talked nonstop and although Janjai was thankful to finally know what was going on, she had trouble hiding her alarm so that Hank wouldn’t catch on to the fact she understood what they were saying. As they continued talking, she questioned if she really did understand. Maybe her English wasn’t as good as she thought.

  From what she gathered, the Russians had injected women with some kind of virus before they left to marry American men. This virus turned them into some type of cannibal that could only be killed by destroying its brain. Hank and Otis called them zom
bies. She knew what the word zombie meant but had trouble comprehending it as something real. Surely she was not translating their words correctly. Zombies were dead people. Dead people didn’t walk around eating other people in the real world. They only did that in books and movies and that TV show she’d seen Hank watching a few times, with the good looking Korean guy, the sheriff, and the dirty, unattractive redneck that women online seemed to love.

  But the more the men talked, the more it seemed like that was exactly what had happened. It was the end of the world as they knew it and zombies walked among them. She thought of her sister and fought back tears as she prayed for her safety and wondered if she’d ever see her again.

  “I think we have a good set-up here,” Otis said around a piece of chicken meat. “You got water in that well out there, there’s always gonna be animals in the woods to hunt for food, plenty of land to grow crops, and between the two of us we can shoot them freaks down.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Hank shook his balding head. “Before everything shut off, they were saying on the news that them things were grouping together like herds. Shooting down some stragglers won’t be too hard but if we get a group of them, we’re sitting ducks. I say we pack up and move to one of them military camps they put up. Before I lost contact with him, my brother said to head for Nebraska. The military has a base there they’ve set up for survivors. They have food, weapons—”

  “So do we.”

  “—and medicine. Doctors. We don’t have that and we could need it.”

  “I don’t know.” Otis took off his hat and scratched his head, somehow managing to reach it through the greasy mop of curly dirty blond hair, before replacing the baseball cap. “That’s a lot of road to travel out in the open.”

  “But we’ll be on the move. That’s gotta be safer than just sitting here.”

  “We have everything we need here. We’re both healthy, no need for doctors. This whole thing could blow over. You remember how scared everyone was about that H1N1 a few years ago, and that bird disease. The news works everyone up into a panic and the stuff always blows over.”