Death Said No

by Talia Mason

  DEATH SAID NO

  Copyright 2018 Sarah Million

  Published by Sarah Million@ Shattered Moon Publications

  Edition License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About Talia Mason

  Other books by Talia Mason

  The Hunted Heir

  The E Killer

  Aynesworthy House

  Connect with Talia Mason

  Acknowledgements

  To those that supported me during the writing of this book, thank you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ...and the meek shall inherit the earth

  ….but they did not...

  ...the earth is overrun by the damned.

  Few souls escaped the curse, the plague that put an end to civilization and reduced humanity to its former animal state.

  Gracie was one of the rare survivors and over time she had met few others.

  She had watched them die as their fate caught up with them and the disease finally claimed those it had missed on its initial spreading or, when unable to carry on a life in this hell that had once been the basis of all their hopes and dreams, they threw themselves on the mercy of their gods or just into the endless oblivion of sweet merciful death.

  To die, to sleep an endless sleep, oh what sweet relief from this hell that would be ...but no.

  Gracie was cursed to be the one that would survive, survive and pay for the sins of those that caused the end to all the goodness that there ever was in this world.

  Even those remaining that were uninfected were tainted, goodness and innocence were slowly stripped away by the need to survive and the desperation to meet basic human needs such as food, heat, shelter and above all safety.

  Gracie, in her pre-pandemic life, had been a writer.

  She was ever chained to screen and keypad, tappity...tappity...tapping away and never looking around herself as she spread words of dark deeds from one end of the page to the other describing acts of power, hate and violence for a world that was soon to have nothing but these acts.

  If only she had filled her mind and screen with acts of love and greatness, bravery and triumph over evil, maybe just then this world would not make her loathe herself so.

  It was while she was tapping away, giving the intimate details of the murder of a prostitute to the memory of her hard drive that it had started, unnoticed by Gracie.

  A week into the epidemic, whilst taking a rare coffee break, Gracie chanced to catch the tail end of a news article on T.V.

  This was the first Gracie had heard on the subject of which she had been so blissfully unaware.

  Upon visiting the news channel website Gracie found article upon article chronologically mapping each and every development of the horrors that led up to the international disaster.

  The first case was that of a heroin addict rushed into a hospital in the south of the country, the name of the addict or the hospital she would not remember but the story itself would remain all too clear in her mind haunting her waking hours and plaguing her dreams.

  The young man was rushed into hospital in a near death state from what they believed was an overdose yet none of the treatment that would normally have helped one in his supposed state had the normal effect, nor did his blood upon being analyzed appear normal.

  The blood was re-tested, fresh blood was drawn and tested and still the same results.

  Despite all ministrations the man died, all efforts to resuscitate him failed and time of death was pronounced, yet before the body could be transported to the mortuary a mere eight minutes later the man was found knelt over the eviscerated body of a young nurse feasting on and coating himself in her entrails.

  Each day of that following week more and more disemboweled bodies were found around the country, news reports blamed everything from chemical weapons affecting the psyche of the perpetrators to satanic cults.

  As the outbreak spread and the situation grew by terrifying proportions information was leaked from a government office regarding its original cause.

  In an attempt to combat the growing rate of opioid drug related crimes the government had set up a team of scientists to develop a serum that could be added to shipments of heroin to stop the body of its users gaining any effect from that or future hits of the drug.

  When tested on animals this serum appeared to work and it was rushed through secret tests on human subjects and was put into use before all its issues could be revealed and corrected.

  Once added to intercepted drug shipments and their components, unknown as it were to the traffickers, it was released to the everyday addict via the normal dealers.

  At first the serum had appeared to have the desired effect, once in Joe rat’s bloodstream it made permanent modifications to the chemical balance of his brain making him immune to all the effects of opiates in all forms both medicinal and street.

  For the first few months, apart from the psychological effects of forced withdrawal its users seemed to show no ill effects but then the first test subject showed signs that the miracle serum had altered something it should not have in the man's genetic makeup.

  The leaked report told that the test subject, named by the test researchers as subject A, firstly developed an unusual emotional detachment and marked aggressiveness toward those around him and had to be restrained for the sake of both himself and the medical team.

  Then secondly he developed unusual cravings for uncooked meat, considering this to be due to some blood disorder or deficiency his blood was tested again and again and with each test shown to be subtly changing until it was no longer recognizable as human.

  His blood had changed.

  As did the man, physically he had become weaker, gaunt, a shadow of his former self.

  All bodily functions began to fail, the man was wasting away.

  After two days he had died and was moved directly to the morgue to be prepped for a necropsy which was to begin within the hour to ascertain what had gone wrong with the serum.

  The necropsy, it is safe to say did not go as planned, as the pathologist performed his external examination of the corpse it rose up and grabbed him by the throat biting off the majority of his left cheek and then proceeding to eat the man alive.

  The pathologist’s assistant locked herself in the pathologist's office and set off the security alarm.

  This brought two armed security men rushing into the room, firearms already drawn due to the rarity of there being such a disturbance in the morgue that would require their immediate attendance.

  Upon seeing what was to all appearances, intents and purposes, a corpse covered in the blood of the half eaten doctor they opened fire, each emptying a full clip of bullets into the feasting undead.

  It fell, dead….And then it rose again for the second time taking hold of one of the security guards and biting into his shoulder as the second security guard rushed from the room into the corridor and returned with the fire axe he had wrenched from its position on the wall.

  As the undead that wa
s formerly subject A attacked his colleague, who we will name, as did the report guard A, guard B swung the axe and cleaved the corpse's head from its body.

  The pathologist’s assistant was seemingly physically unharmed although her mental state was greatly damaged, guard A had a deep gaping bite to his shoulder which bled profusely and guard B, although badly shaken, was unharmed and both the pathologist and the corpse remained dead.

  All were treated for injuries and shock and then debriefed by the research team that had discovered that a further two test subjects had also developed the same symptoms as subject A.

  Subjects B and C also wasted into death and then rose again to try and consume their carers, this time however soldiers were provided as an armed guard.

  Equipped with not their usual firearms but, after the events in the morgue, they were at the ready with Japanese katana swords.

  Within the following week all of the other seven test subjects had progressed as thus toward their death, rose again and were beheaded.

  A week later guard A had succumbed to an infection in the bite he had received and died of sepsis, despite the wasting illness and cravings being missing in the guard, he too rose from the dead rather unexpectedly and had to be executed by the soldiers.

  The one saving grace was that after the bite the guard had been kept on the compound to be monitored due to the rapid progress of infection in the wound and the fact it would not respond to treatment.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Within a month others at the facility, who had been previously unharmed, began to get ill, waste away and die.

  All rose again and all were executed.

  But it was too late.....the contagion was airborne.

  Many of those who had died had been home at the end of their shifts, had had contact with friends and family or even complete strangers in the street, supermarket or petrol station etc.

  The terrible fact was that it was impossible to even imagine how many people had come in contact with this new plague and then in turn passed it on to many, many more, not to mention the everyday Joe addict that had unknowingly been smoking or shooting up the serum.

  This new man made virus first infected the nation and then the world and whole populations began to slowly die then rise again.

  Soon the living were few and desperate and the dead were many and ravenous.

  Gracie found that the dead would feed on the living or on each other but strangely she had found that they would not feed on the animals and even stranger still, they would not try to feed on her.

  True they would kill Gracie given the chance for they hated all, human, animal, and even each other.

  They were without understanding, living on instinct and they hated that which they did not understand, which was everything.

  They seemed to hate Gracie more so than all, for there seemed to be something about Gracie that they sensed as different, a scent perhaps?

  Of course any misunderstanding must be avoided, whilst Gracie acknowledged this peculiar twist of fate she in no way resented it… Well not at first anyway.

  The thought of becoming food to one of the creatures sickened her beyond belief yet if she could have died, as did those that had been unaffected who had taken their own lives to escape this hell, she would have because none of those desperate people who had taken their own lives had risen again as the undead.

  Gracie, however, could not escape the hell she had found herself in because it had transpired that whatever kept her free from being food for the creatures that stalked every other living human also prevented her from dying, no matter how hard she tried...And she had tried but that did not mean that she could not receive injury or feel pain.

  Death was no longer the greatest equalizer of all.

  It had been six months since the public outbreak of the plague began and by the fourth month ninety nine percent of the country had become undead and as the few unaffected others Gracie knew had ended their lives she too planned to leave her wretched world behind.

  It took Gracie days to decide how.

  This being England very few people had guns and she was not one of those people so shooting herself was out of the question.

  She could drown herself in the lake but the thought of drowning made her skin crawl, setting herself alight was also a definite NO as the fear of the pain was worse than the thought of drowning.

  Gracie also discounted self suffocation and that left her with overdose, slitting her wrists or hanging herself...

  ...Gracie decided the most peaceful way would be to drift into an endless sleep and chose overdose.

  Taking a bottle of sleeping pills that had sat at the back of her bedside drawer since the doctor had prescribed them for her insomnia three years ago and a litre bottle of vodka from the freezer she went to her room, sat on her bed and set bottle and pills before her on the crumpled bed covers.

  She thought of her family that were among the first to fall and had gone wherever the truly dead go, slain by the creatures without enough of their bodies left to rise again.

  She thought of the endless peace and of all that she would be leaving behind, the ravenous creatures, the loneliness of being the only living person she was likely to see from one month to the next, the struggle to protect herself from the dead and the living alike and the desperate need for resources that caused the last few humans alive to turn against each other.

  Staring at the vodka and pills Gracie remembered drunken laughter filled nights spent with friends who were now some truly dead and some undead and wondered sorrowfully who would end the abomination they had become.

  She also thought of the day that the doctor had given her the pills, how she had taken the recommended dose that night and had then been unconscious for thirteen hours straight awaking with the groggy, exhausted hangover from hell when the after effects from the pills refused to fade until tea time the next day.

  Gracie thought how the following night she had shoved them to the back of the drawer to be forgotten for the next three years.

  At least, Gracie thought, if she took them all there would be no chance of this not working.

  As she uncapped the pills and spread them in groups of two across the bedspread ready to be comfortably swallowed Gracie contemplated what a shame it was that there was no electricity so her last moments here, in this hell could at least be passed without the oppressive silence that seemed to crush her under its weight.

  Laughing at the drama of the moment Gracie uncapped the vodka scooped up the first two pills and deposited them into her mouth, with two gulps they were swallowed...then with a fiery liquid burn they were back when the vodka bounced as her stomach rejected it.

  It had been years since Gracie had last drunk neat vodka and she figured that she was out of practice.

  Cursing her failure to foresee this obvious flaw in the plan that she had imagined would run smoothly and ease her into death she went back downstairs to the kitchen and found two pint glasses and two warm cans of coke.

  Gracie dropped a glass and watched as it shattered on the floor, cursing some more she left the shattered shards strewn across the floor and picked a third glass from the cupboards shelf.

  Once back to her bed she stood both glasses on the bed side cabinet, half filled each with vodka and dumped a can of coke into each watching and cursing still more as it fizzed over the side of the glass, inpatient for her last deed on this earth to be finalized.

  Once the drinks had settled Gracie topped them up once more, this time with more vodka.

  Taking the first glass she scooped up another two pills put them in her mouth, took a couple gulps of her drink and repeated...and repeated again and again and so on until all the pills were gone, all fifty eight of them.

  Gracie lay back waiting for sleep as she drank the remainder of her drink.

  Sleep didn't take long to claim her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Death rejected Gracie, cast her back into her living hell with a debilitati
ng hangover and for hours she dry wretched, her body trying to reject the poison that she had consumed.

  The light burned her eyes and along with the deafening silence made her head pound.

  Once recovered from the after effects of drink and drug Gracie tried to hang herself, a terrifying ordeal that no more killed her than her previous attempt at suicide.

  Although Gracie's body was starved of oxygen as she panicked and began to feel faint she could not pass out, even though the room spun and her whole body felt numb from the lack of oxygen in the blood in her veins.