Stay Dead | Book 1 | Wild Undead
Page 1
Wild Undead
Stay Dead
L.C. Mortimer
Published by L.C. Mortimer, 2021.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
WILD UNDEAD
First edition. May 28, 2021.
Copyright © 2021 L.C. Mortimer.
Written by L.C. Mortimer.
Also by L.C. Mortimer
Enchanted Academy
The Wolf
The Fairy
The Hook
Enchanted Academy Box Set: The Complete Collection Books 1-4
The Beauty
Stay Dead
Wild Undead
Which Village
A Hex A Day
Once Upon a Curse
Standalone
Swords of Darkness
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 1
The Lost Fallen
Outbreak: A Zombie Novel
Hybrid Academy: The Complete Collection
Shifter Falls Academy: Year Two
Beyond Rainbows: A Zombie Novel
Blood Rum: A Vampire Story
She Smiles at Midnight
Spunky
The Darkness We Seek: A YA Epic Fantasy Novel
Outcasts
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By L.C. Mortimer
Wild Undead (Stay Dead)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Author
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse
Chapter 1
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Further Reading: Outbreak: A Zombie Novel
Also By L.C. Mortimer
Zombies never stay dead.
Winter Hawk in on day three of a five-day cruise when the zombie infection decides to make its appearance.
She's seen her share of bad days, but nothing compares to the fact that the people around Winter are dying and coming back to life in droves.
Winter has to get off of the cruise ship and away from the infection, no matter what it takes. Armed with a first aid, a couple of water bottles, and an unlikely companion, she embarks on a journey that will change everything.
If she can manage to survive.
Chapter 1
Winter
“COME DANCE WITH US!” Angela yelled over the sound of music at the bar on the Lido deck. “It’s going to be so much fun! You can’t miss it!”
My roommate wanted to head down to the dance club, which was going to be opening in about twenty minutes. Every night of the cruise, there was some sort of special party happening. She wasn’t the kind of person to miss out on that.
“Not tonight,” I told her. “Last night almost killed me.”
“You’re just saying that because your new heels broke!”
“I am literally saying that because my heels broke,” I agreed. I hadn’t planned on dancing on the cruise, so I’d packed only one pair of high heels to wear. They were too new, and I hadn’t broken them in yet, and they’d made it all of five songs before crapping out on me. “My feet hurt. I’m just going to take a chill night.”
For a moment, I thought Angela was going to argue with me, but she didn’t. Instead, she just shrugged. Maybe the cruise was good for her. Maybe it was helping her to calm down a little bit.
“Suit yourself. More fun for me.”
“I know you’ll have a great time,” I said, raising my glass to her.
Angela didn’t seem too irritated with decision to stay behind. She raised her own glass, downed the rest of the bright-blue drink, and slammed it down on the bar.
“Later, loser,” she laughed playfully.
Then she was gone.
And I was alone.
I sipped my own drink and glanced around. I was surrounded by people, but they were all strangers. That was okay. I actually kind of enjoyed being alone in a crowded room. This was the first time in quite a long time where I’d been able to just relax.
I had nothing to do here, and it was everything I thought it could be.
This really had been a wild vacation so far. I’d gotten to go swimming every day and I’d done a little bit of dancing. The buffets had been incredible, and most of the food had been stuff I went really crazy about.
If I wasn’t careful, I was going to gain about fifteen pounds on this trip, but I didn’t even care.
I didn’t have to worry about work. I didn’t have to worry about paying my rent. There was literally nothing that made me sad, stressed, or anxious on the trip. All I had to do was drink and relax.
What more could a girl wish for?
When Angela invited me to come along to her family reunion, I’d been hesitant at first. After all, I wasn’t exactly a member of her family. Her boyfriend had backed out at the last second, though, and his ticket had been paid for. Angela said if I paid the transfer fee to put his ticket into my name, I could join the fun.
I was so glad I hadn’t turned them down.
Now I was in the middle of the ocean, drinking and listening to music. I was surrounded by people who were having just as much fun as I was. That was the exciting thing about all of this. There were so many different people on board that anything could happen. I’d met people from different states, I’d hung out with people from other countries, and I’d even run into one person who had graduated from the same high school as me, albeit 20 years prior.
“Excuse me,” I felt a tap on my arm and turned to see a woman standing next to me. She was tall and lanky with poofy red hair. She reminded me of Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus. “What kind of drink is that?” She held out a long, skinny finger and pointed it at my drink.
“This?” I held up my glass and tried to remember. “Um, I think it’s the Paradise Cruise Delight. Sorry,” I added. “I’ve been trying all of the different drinks, so I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“That’s okay,” she laughed and turned to the bartender. “Hey, can I order one of those?” She pointed to my drink.
“Paradise Cruise Delight? Yeah. Coming right up.”
“So, I guess I was right,” I chuckled, looking over at my new friend.
“I guess so. Are you having fun so far?”
“Day three,” I said. “It’s good so far.”
“Hard to believe it’s almost over, right? I’m Megan, by the way.”
“Winter,” I said. Megan reached out and shook my hand. It was a strangely formal greeting for being in the middle of a bar floating on the sea, but I wasn’t going to complain. It really was hard to believe that everything was almost over.
Soon I’d have to go back home. Back to my little apartment, back to my job. I’d have to go back to my ordinary, run-of-the-mill life. Probably, I should start trying to figure out what I wanted to do next with my life. That was really the hardest thing of all.
Everyone had this idea that by the time you were in your mid-to-late 20s, you’d have everything figured out.
Well, I didn’t.
>
In fact, I’d dare to say it was almost humorous just how much I didn’t have figured out.
I was quickly approaching the age where people would start to think it was strange I wasn’t married or parenting a gaggle of kiddos, but sometimes life takes us in directions we’re just not ready for. Being able to unwind on this cruise and just forget about all of that pressure was something I wasn’t taking for granted. Not one bit.
“One Paradise Cruise Delight,” the bartender said, placing Megan’s drink on the counter.
“This looks great!” Megan reached for a dollop of whipped cream and licked it off her finger. “Perfect,” she sighed with happiness. Then she turned back to me. “Nice meeting you, Winter. Thanks for the recommendation!”
“Anytime,” I waved her off, watching as Megan went to rejoin her friend group. It seemed like they were having a pretty good time drinking and eating. My stomach rumbled, as if on cue, but I knew I wasn’t actually hungry. I’d spent so much time eating that it should probably have been illegal. If the cruise industry went out of business, I would know I was single-handedly responsible thanks to the amount of food and vodka I’d consumed on this trip.
A group walked by, shoving each other playfully and laughing. I looked over as the college-aged guys headed for one of the pools. Even though it was getting late, nobody seemed to be heading to bed. That was one of the things I was really loving about this vacation.
People weren’t afraid to stay up late and have fun.
People weren’t afraid to party.
There was going to be a movie showing in the next twenty minutes or so right there on the Lido Deck. It was supposed to be some sort of murder mystery I’d never heard of, but I was always down to watch a movie, so that was why I was hanging out at this particular bar. My feet still ached, but propping them up and watching some classic flick under the stars sounded pretty damn good to me.
I had a little bit of time before the film started, so I finally hopped up from the bar and grabbed my drink. My feet cried out in protest, but I rolled my eyes at the pain. It was just pain. It was just a little bit of discomfort.
On the cruise, all I did was walk around, but soon I’d be back home and shoved right back into my regular routine. That meant there would be no walking, no jogging, and no dancing. I’d be working and then going back to my apartment to watch movies alone. It would be kind of sad and pathetic, but that was my life.
Now, I took my time perusing the Lido deck. I grabbed a couple of cucumbers and munched on them as I walked around searching for the perfect lounge chair to sit in. There were so many chairs sprawled across the deck that it was hard to find the right one. Finally, I selected a chair up on one of the balconies, and I settled in with my drink, my phone, and my room key.
No, there was no service on the ship, but my phone was used for a lot more than phone calls and the Internet. I had taken a ton of pictures, for one thing. I had a lot of eBooks on there, for another. Besides, I’d downloaded a ton of movies before the trip, so even if this one turned out to be a bust, I’d have something I could turn to.
Getting comfy, I waited patiently for the film to start. I decided to do a little bit of people watching as I waited. After all, what better way to see what kind of fellow travelers were on the cruise than to look around? It was interesting to see what kind of people decided to hop onto a boat and float around in the ocean drunk for a few days.
A couple of girls who seemed to be on some sort of bachelorette trip were drinking and walking around laughing. The bride, whom I’d spotted a few times on the ship because she was always wearing all white, was playing with a tiara she was wearing. That seemed a bit much for my tastes, but she was on vacation and could do as she liked.
Then I spotted a family of five bustling around, searching for a group of five chairs together. The dad of the group was leading the group hurriedly, walking faster than everyone else. The mom seemed like she was trying to wrangle the kids together. I was reminded of a group of geese trying to keep all of their goslings together at the lake.
“Good luck,” I muttered under my breath. Almost all of the chairs were clustered in groups of two and three. People had dropped towels on random chairs here and there, as well as snacks and drinks and shoes. One thing I’d noticed was that people would do just about anything to mark an area as “theirs.”
With so many cruisers, you had to be aggressive when it came to marking your territory.
There was no way in heck that family was going to sit together unless they moved a bunch of chairs, but the crew members had been surprisingly strict about stuff like moving furniture. I’d noticed you could get away with almost anything on the cruise, but moving things seemed to be a no-go.
Someone started screaming, and I glanced over toward the bar, where an argument was breaking out. A tall man was yelling at the bartender, but I couldn’t really hear why. It wasn’t my problem, but I was drawn to the interaction, wondering what the heck was happening. The bartender was waving his arms at the patron. The guy seemed to be drunk. Then again, everyone seemed drunk.
“Did you hear about Jemma?”
“No, what about her?”
Two twenty-something women were walking around trying to find spots to sit. They settled on a pair of chairs directly in front of mine. I tried not to sigh as I realized they were really tall, and that it would be kind of tricky to see the screen, not to mention the bar dispute. I’d spend a lot of time adjusting, moving back and forth, if I didn’t move.
Did I really want to go to all that trouble?
For a movie?
Or a bit of drama?
I wasn’t really sure if it was worth it. Then again, maybe the exhaustion of vacation was starting to catch up with me. One of the great things about vacation was that there was so much to do that it kept me busy, and it kept me from worrying too much about real life.
Then again, one of the problems with vacation was that it kept me too busy, so in the moments when there was nothing happening, it was far too easy for my regular problems to creep up on me, catching me unaware. If things got too quiet, I started to question what I was actually doing with my life and whether I was following the right path.
I started wondering whether I was just wasting my entire life while my friends all passed me by.
“She’s sick,” the first girl said. She had long, black hair. It was sleek and soft. What kind of conditioner did a girl like that use? More importantly, how many hours had she spent straightening it before she came to hang out?
I reached for my own hair and patted it. Wild and untamed during the trip, it begged to be wrangled back into submission, but I was on vacation. I could worry about things like styling my hair once I was back home. This was supposed to be fun time.
“With the virus?” Her friend’s hair hung in two long, blonde braids. They weren’t simply braids, either. They were the French braids that always took about a million hours to get in. Talk about two divas. I knew I shouldn’t judge them, but I wondered how many bags of hair supplies they’d had to pack in order to make looking like that possible on this trip.
That girl had a pair of sunglasses propped on top of her head even though it was dark outside. I didn’t think she really needed to use sunglasses in the dark, but what did I know?
Stop judging, I silently chided myself. I was here to have fun. I wasn’t here to gatekeep how people vacationed. If their appearance bothered me so much, I could move to a different spot, but as the opening credits of the movie started, I realized that I was far too tired and still slightly tipsy. I wasn’t going to be moving at all.
“Probably, yeah. They took her to the medical department about an hour ago. Sucks. Like, what a horrible way to spend your cruise. Can you believe it? I mean, getting sick sucks, but what kind of virus hits you that fast?”
Virus?
What virus were they talking about?
There had been some sort of announcement that morning about passengers who were becom
ing ill. No one seemed super worried about it. The cruise director had just reminded everyone to wash their hands and make sure they took care of themselves. No one was supposed to do anything crazy like share drinks or make out with strangers. A lot of people had complained, like making out with strangers was the entire point of vacation, but other people had been making a big show of washing their hands constantly.
Still, it sounded like whatever this girl, Jemma, had come down with was kind of serious.
“Ouch.”
“For real. Like, I can’t believe she got so sick. You know, I saw her puking, and it was really nasty.”
“Ew! Why would you tell me that?”
“Because it didn’t seem normal.”
“What do you mean?”
At this point, I was invested in the conversation. I needed to find out what happened. What kind of virus had this girl gotten? How did they know it wasn’t just normal food poisoning?
“Movie’s starting,” the girl with black hair said.
“Is she going to be okay?” Sunglasses asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. I’m sure she’s totally fine. I mean, we’re on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean. She probably just had some bad vodka.”
The girl with the sunglasses looked at her own drink and set it down on a little table beside her. I picked up my own drink and twisted the glass around. Was there anything in it that might make me sick? I didn’t feel sick. Still, I set the glass down and stared at it warily.
If the vodka on the ship was bad, I probably shouldn’t drink anymore, but I had a feeling that whatever virus their friend had gotten had nothing to do with vodka and everything to do with bad luck. That was how it always was, right?
Bad luck was the thing that always ruined everyone’s fun.
Just like my luck with dating.
And my luck with work.
And my luck with friends.
I closed my eyes for a second. I knew I needed to face the music. If Angela hadn’t taken pity on me and invited me on the family cruise, I would have been lying on my couch and scrolling through job ads online. I wouldn’t have been applying to any of them, of course, but I’d be looking at them.