by Aurelia Skye
“No,” I protested actively. “You can’t do that to Lian.”
“Yes, he can. It was my idea, Natalie. He can’t be wandering around risking our existence, and he certainly can’t stay. He’ll just keep trying to get rid of you. He hasn’t accepted that I love you, and you’re part of my life. Knowing how stubborn he can be, he’ll probably never accept that.”
My heart skipped a beat at the “L word,” and despite the seriousness of the moment, I wanted to melt against him and whisper the words too. Instead, I forced my spine to remain erect. “This isn’t good for you though. You’ll have to live with what happened, and the decision to get rid of him.”
Lian looked grim when he nodded. “I understand that, and I won’t pretend like it won’t affect me, but it’s the only way. I won’t have you endangered, and letting him go endangers all of us.”
I shook my head again. “He’s your father. You won’t be able to live with this.”
“I will,” said Lian.
“It’s already done,” added Collier.
I quirked a brow. “What do you mean, it’s already done?”
“My radio line is open, and as soon as Avi got confirmation of our suspicions, he had orders to implement Liu’s arrest. We have volunteers standing by, and I imagine the deed is already done, or about to be finished.”
I shook my head, appalled. It wasn’t that I wanted to defend Liu, or protect him from justice. I was just truly concerned about what his passing—especially like this—would do to Lian. A selfish part of me was also afraid of what it would do to my relationship with him. Indirectly, it was somewhat my fault Liu faced the firing squad. Would Lian grow bitter over the idea and start to blame me completely?
“There’s nothing you can do to change it now.” Lian’s pragmatism seemed to weigh heavily on him. “Instead, you should focus on getting better.”
I stopped fighting Liu’s fate with a resigned sigh. “Not here in the infirmary, Lian. I mean it, Finn.” I glared at him. “I’m going to return to our room and rest.”
Finn surprised me by nodding. “That’ll be fine. You don’t have to be on constant supervision. None of your wounds are life-threatening, and it looks like they treated you properly. I’d say well, but I doubt they treated you in a good way emotionally.”
I snorted. “They tried to saddle me with two husbands I didn’t want.”
“What happened to them?” asked Collier, his expression inscrutable.
“I think one’s dead for sure, but I don’t know if I got the other one or not. Either way, they were incapacitated and incapable of consummating the marriage. I guess it’s annulled then?” I managed a feeble smile, though I wasn’t feeling any true amusement. Between the events of the night and what was happening right now to Liu, it was hard to think of anything lighthearted.
I reached out and took Lian’s hand, listening hard for the sound of bullets. It was surely my imagination, but I thought I heard several pops in a row. That seemed unlikely, since we were belowground, and they did the deed at the firing range on the main level outside. Whether or not it was my imagination, it still sent a chill through me, even as a surge of relief filled me. With Liu no longer trying to kill me, I was safer.
I wasn’t safe though. None of us were with the crosshairs of the militia focused on us. As the door opened, revealing the arrival of Chris and Avi, with Grayson trailing between the two of them and gripping Chris’s hand, my family felt complete. I saw Collier slip away from the corner of my eye as the rest of them surrounded me, pressing close so that there was a hand from each of them on some part of my body.
Chris lifted Grayson, who wanted to give me a hug and kiss. I reciprocated gently, moving carefully because of the pain that still flared in my hip. Then I snuggled against them as they surrounded me. I was fearful of what the future held, but bolstered by the presence of the men around me.
We’d found strength, solace, and love in each other, and that was something the militia couldn’t destroy. We’d fight like hell to save what we had, and that was what would help us win. Maybe I was feeling foolishly optimistic, or perhaps it was the pain medicine kicking in from the injection Finn had just given me, but I was suddenly giddy with relief and happy to be back. I was certain it wouldn’t be an easy victory, but we would manage to prevail in the coming days, as long as we had each other.
Bonus Excerpt
Here are the first two chapters of “Catching Hell,” the first book in the Hell Virus series.
The HLV virus, dubbed Hell Virus by the survivors, wiped out ninety percent of the population. Running low on supplies, Alyssa has to leave the safety of her sanctuary to find food. She’s ill-equipped to deal with a SHTF situation, and she’s nearly raped on her first run. A small squad of military men save her and take her in, with the stipulation she becomes a fully functioning member of their team. She wants to learn how to take care of herself, but she also finds herself wanting to take care of ALL the soldiers in creative and unexpected ways. Life without pleasure is pointless, but when she’s already lost everything else, can she risk losing her heart to the group?
Alyssa is learning about her own boundaries, survival, and how to love more than one person. If the idea of a polyamorous relationship with multiple men bothers you, this probably isn’t the series for you. If you enjoy sex with your survival, and you’d like to indulge in the fantasy of having a group of hot military men at your command, you’ll probably enjoy this story. Be aware this is definitely on the steamy side and appropriate for 18+ only. It’s a new adult title and not intended for young’uns.
Buy or borrow for free with Kindle Unlimited
CHAPTER ONE
I hadn’t seen another person in at least two months. It was difficult to keep track of passing time, but I’d found an old calendar in my mom’s sewing room. It was from three years ago, and I knew she’d kept it because she liked the flowers painted on it. The days were probably wrong, but the dates would always be the same, and crossing off a little box was strangely satisfying each night. It was a mark to show I had survived one more day. Who would have imagined life would be like this, that someday I would consider it a victory that I got to put a mark on a calendar box?
I wasn’t entirely certain surviving another day was actually that much of a victory anyway. I had nothing much to live for now that my family was gone. They were taken out in the first wave of the virus, all except my sister. She was there with me when my mother, father, and brother succumbed to the HLV virus.
I couldn’t remember what HLV stood for anymore, but Becky and I had started calling it the Hell Virus. It seemed as appropriate as anything, considering the way it ravaged the people who caught it. It started with a flush that permeated their bodies, along with a high fever that never broke. Their brains cooked in their skulls, and their hands turned into claws as the body stiffened with convulsions they couldn’t control in the last throes of the fever.
Having watched them go through it, Becky and I had concluded they were lucky it was over for them, though we had mourned our family. At least we still had each other. Then.
That was before the second wave, and the last I’d heard from the news—which had been spotty even before then—we could thank an ambitious pharmaceutical company for that development. They had rushed a vaccine to market without proper testing or safety protocols, and because an old congressional act exempted them from repercussions for such actions, they seemed to focus more on profit than on safety. I was sure that someone somewhere had wanted to actually prevent people from getting HLV, but wasn’t naïve enough to think it had been their primary concern. That had been the bottom line, at least according to my dad, and he’d been a smart man about such things.
While the pharmaceutical companies mixed up their death cocktail, doctors tried to unravel the virus itself. They had determined there were three types of people—those whose immune system suppressed it into a dormant state, those who were completely immune, and those who would succumb
to infection. The lethality was close to one hundred percent. They had established that by the time the vaccine was available for volunteers to try it.
Neither my sister nor I knew then if we were dormant or immune, but Becky had volunteered to receive the vaccine, while I had refused. My parents had always been skeptical about such things, eyeing with suspicion anything that fueled the corporate machine over the welfare of people. Unfortunately for Becky, she had been selected to receive it, and it had reactivated and mutated the strain that had been dormant in her. That’s how we knew she’d been dormant instead of immune, because the immune people hadn’t caught Hell Virus even in the second wave.
The original strain had been dormant in her immune system, but the vaccine had created a further complication and added a new twist. Not only did she die from high fever, but she bled out in the process. Of course the original strain of the virus, which had been airborne before its mutation and remained so afterward, picked up the adaptation quickly enough, and it didn’t matter if you’d had the vaccine or not. Only some who had originally been immune remained immune to the new and improved Hell Virus.
All told, between both strains, the losses were projected to be around ninety percent of the population, according to the last newscast before the station went dark. I’d at first assumed a media blackout, but then other stations went offline, and the power grid had failed early the next morning. I remembered it clearly, both because it was the last time the TV functioned and because the power went down two days after Becky died.
My folks hadn’t been preppers, but they had been prepared. They were skeptical of the government’s willingness to be forthcoming and had tried to prepare for any sort of disaster. More than once, I’d heard them discuss the repercussions of an EMP blast or a total financial collapse. I had always been somewhat dismissive of their fears, but I’d never mocked them. My parents raised me to be open-minded, to consider other ways of doing things, and to think for myself. Never just trust anyone and take them at their word, especially if they were in a position of power over you, as corporations and the government were.
With their mindset, they had stockpiled some food and a few weapons. I knew how to use them, and the food had been enough to sustain us for almost nine months, since the country went into lockdown as the virus crept over the nation, and most people voluntarily quarantined themselves in their homes.
My parents and my little brother Jimmy had been gone within the first month after the first wave of the outbreak, but Becky and I had endured for almost another five months together before she got the vaccine.
As I loaded the gun, preparing myself to step outside, I wished my parents had been hardcore peppers with thirty-plus years of food in storage. Unfortunately, they’d been prepared for short-term disaster, never expecting something like the HLV virus. The sad reality was I was on my last case of food, and I didn’t want to wait until I was out. If I went foraging for food when I was weak and hungry, I was likely to end up dead.
As far as I knew, there was no one else alive in my neighborhood. I wasn’t expecting to find a whole lot though, because almost three months ago, a large group on motorcycles had moved through the area, picking things clean. When I first heard their approaching engines, my instinct had been to step outside and flag down someone. I’d lost Becky just two weeks before, and I was already feeling the ache of loneliness and the need to connect with another human being.
Something about the situation held me back though, and instead of going out to greet the arrivals, I had retreated into the subbasement through the trapdoor, hidden by the fake panel of flooring my mom had nailed to it. If you were standing in the main basement, you wouldn’t be able to tell there was a trapdoor leading to the subbasement. That was where Mom and Dad had fashioned their semi-bunker and stored all their supplies.
I hadn’t had time to grab the few things I’d kept upstairs, and I figured they’d be picked clean, and I was right when I emerged hours later, after the sounds of their engines had faded. They messed up the house a bit and stole some things, including my favorite pillow, but the damage could have been far worse. I knew that, because I watched through the periscope in the basement, installed by my father, who had been ex-Navy. I think the idea had started as a joke, but it had proven useful and my only means of following the chaos outside.
I’d seen them ravage the neighborhood and load things into their repurposed U-Hauls. They’d strewn everything about, leaving piles of discarded objects in the streets and people’s yards. They’d made me angry as I witnessed their destruction, but I couldn’t bear to watch it for long. Most of all, I watched the cage.
That had been an awful sight, and if I’d had more weapons and training, I probably would have tried to liberate the four women being held in the cage. It was on a trailer fashioned to the back of a large motorcycle, and they were forced to stand pressed together to fit into the small enclosure. I had a feeling if they’d discovered I was hiding, they would have made room for one more in that cage, so I hadn’t ventured out. I’d stayed quiet and still as they’d pored through my house and took my meager stores upstairs, leaving me nothing. If it weren’t for my parents, I would have had nothing, and I would have ended up in that cage.
I’d been too afraid to leave the house since. I hadn’t even gone outside except at night to bury my waste and try to tend to the garden as best I could in the dark. Without enough water and proper illumination, it was a losing task, and though I knew the food growing there was crucial, I’d finally abandoned it. I was just too afraid to go outside.
Now, things had come to a head. I could put it off for another week, relying on the last of my rations until I was starving, or I could summon some courage and step outside. Surely that gang was long gone, and though I doubted I’d find anything of use in the houses around me, I at least had to try. After that, I’d have to go farther afield, and the idea made me break out in a cold sweat.
I slipped the shotgun over my shoulder and grasped the rifle in my hand. The shotgun was my backup weapon, because it held less ammo, but it was also easier to aim. I had limited experience with the weapons, though my parents had insisted on drilling all us children on the proper use and safety when they first acquired the gun safe and stocked it with a few weapons.
I’d never had much interest in it though, and I hadn’t honed my skills. That was coming back to haunt me, but I didn’t know how to practice now. Target shooting would waste shells and be too loud. It would give away my location in this eerily silent world, only occasionally broken by a pack of raving maniacs on their motorcycles, with their sex slaves in tow.
The weather was pleasantly cool this early in the autumn morning, and I donned a flannel shirt over my jeans and camisole. I expected it to get hotter later on, so I had dressed in layers. I wore a backpack on my back, currently mostly empty, that I was hoping to fill with supplies.
Unfortunately, my supposition about the neighborhood proved correct. I covered three blocks in as many hours, seeing more dead bodies than I wanted to even start to count. It was obvious who’d died during the first wave, and who had died after Hell’s mutation. There was a lot more blood and fresher corpses in the second scenario.
All my scavenging left me was a bag of dog jerky treats I had a vague idea of being able to rehydrate in some water to make a soup base and a dented can with no label. I had acquired it at a different home, but knowing my luck, it would also prove to be dog food of some sort. Maybe I’d luck out, and it would be that fancy cat food that looked almost like real tuna.
I laughed at the thought and jerked, startled at the sound. I hadn’t had any reason to laugh over the last few months, and I hadn’t spoken a word out loud in just as long. I guess I’d gotten in the habit of being silent, trying to remain invisible. In this new world, I had no idea who was a predator, but I didn’t want to be prey.
Feeling defeated, I made my way back to my house, knowing I’d have to venture out the next day, or at least the day
after. I couldn’t put it off any longer than that. At the last house I checked, which happened to be my next-door neighbors’ and the home of my ex-boyfriend, who had become an ex long before he’d become a corpse, I found Jeremy’s old dirt bike still in the garage. The keys were on a shelf with hooks in the garage, hanging where they’d always left the house and car keys.
The key for their fancy Mercedes SUV was there as well, and I thought about it briefly, but wasn’t sure what the roads were like. The dirt bike seemed more maneuverable, though loud. Of course, either vehicle would be loud enough to announce my presence. Maybe I should just go on foot, but I wasn’t certain I could reach anywhere I could search and still make it back to my house before dark if I started walking. I wasn’t ready to leave the safety of my home for more than a few hours, let alone an overnight or longer stay. I wasn’t ready for any of this, but I knew I was going to have to toughen up and do it anyway if I wanted to survive.
I took the key with me and closed the garage again, certain the dirt bike wouldn’t be disturbed, but deciding not to leave the key with it just in case. If there was more activity in the neighborhood than I was aware, why make it easy for them to steal my planned scouting vehicle?
I went home and made my way down to the subbasement, where I had moved permanently after the motorcycle gang had come through. I was sleeping on a self-inflating mattress that required a couple of pumps of the foot pump every few days to stay solid. It wasn’t as comfortable as my old bed, but there was no room in the small space to bring down the queen-size from upstairs, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it by myself anyway.
Oh, I could move the mattress, and probably the box springs, but there was no way I could move the heavy frame and headboard set my mom had carved with her own hands. It was one of her first endeavors in carpentry when I was just eight years old, but it was still sturdy and beautiful, as gorgeous as the day she had applied the final layer of stain. She could have sold it for a few thousand dollars, and as her reputation as a woodworker had grown, I was certain she could have gotten even more for it, but it had been a gift to me, and I cherished it. I knew in my heart I’d probably have to leave my house someday, and for good, and the bed was what I’d miss the most.
