Duality (The Hitchhiker Strain)
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Authors: Kellie Sheridan
Duality
Book Two of the Hitchhiker Strain
Kellie Sheridan
Copyright ©
2014 Kellie Sheridan
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and plot are all either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
First edition.
ISBN-13:
978-1-927940-03-7
Be sure to check out these other books by Kellie Sheridan
The Hitchhiker Strain
End Dayz
Mortality
Beautiful Madness
Follow the White Rabbit
For Erica and Mickey.
I couldn’t have done this without you.
Thanks for putting up with all of my publishing shenanigans.
Chelsea Zimmerman is dead and gone.
Sometimes I have to force myself t
o remember that one simple fact.
There are times when I'm alone where I almost feel like my old self again, times when I remember what the world was like
before
. In my mind's eye, I can see my mother's face or the second-floor classroom where I took AP English. The feeling of laughter. The sensations of creating art.
I can remember. But I can never go back.
Chelsea Zimmerman is little more than the person I used to be.
Flesh tears under my unkempt fingernails as I devour my latest kill, sharing the meal wi
th a red-haired man who smells of fish. As I bring each handful of innards up to my mouth, saliva drips freely onto my chin, mingling with the blood there before it dribbles onto the carcass. In this moment, I am complete. In this moment, I am glad for the loss of Chelsea Zimmerman.
Seventy-eight people. In a quiet moment when the beast has retreated, I add one more number to my tally of the dead. I have killed seventy-eight people. I've... eaten
—even now, that's hard to think about—many more, but for seventy-eight, I'm the reason they're no longer alive.
Two numbers exist in my mind during the quiet moments near sanity. Seventy-eight and one.
It's funny. Before, when I used to devour
—heh—stories about the zombie apocalypse, I always imagined that the undead loved the taste of human flesh. I don't.
Although technically speaking, I’m not one of the undead.
Flesh tastes exactly how you'd imagine. All kinds of not good. But that doesn't matter. It’s not about the taste or even about fueling the body—it’s a need that creeps into your soul and stifles everything you ever were or could have been. I guess that’s not that funny.
What's
actually
funny in all this is how much I used to love zombie movies. Zombie anything, really—shows, books, comics, whatever. I always thought I’d be great in the zombie apocalypse and in a way, I was right. But I’m playing for the other team.
Seventy-eight people
.
After a large meal, I rest. Unless there's something new to draw my at
tention, that's the routine. Eat then sleep. Part of me does this out of habit, another part of me does it because I know that if I go to sleep satisfied, I'll wake up a little bit more Chelsea—I’ll regain access to a long-forgotten memory, maybe have a little more control over my own actions. Anything. It won’t last, but I appreciate the reprieve all the same.
Most of the time, it
’s the beast who’s in control. Together, we react on pure instinct. We’re driven by hunger. I play my small part, steering my body through the motions, pushing myself past dangerous situations. Essentially, I’ve become the backseat driver in my own body.
At first, right after I w
as bitten, the beast was a mere itch in the back of my mind and the pit of my stomach. I was so sure that the bite was a death sentence. Even though I was the first of my family to be bitten, Dad was prepared to put me down for good once I’d breathed my last breath, but the moment never came. I got sick, but I didn’t die. I beat the infection, but something
else
stayed behind. I conquered the virus and the overwhelming hunger that gnawed away at my soul remained.
When I first heard what they were calling the newest strain of the infection that destroyed everything, I thought it was because of the flesh-hungry
passenger that takes up residence in the mind of those who were bitten. I wish it were that simple.
It didn
’t take long for the beast to win the battle of control for my body and shove me into the cage of my own mind. Now I’m the one who has taken up residence where I don’t belong. Now my body functions to feed the needs of the beast. The shadow of the girl that was Chelsea Zimmerman has become the unwelcome passenger.
That
is why we call it the Hitchhiker Strain.
I know now that my recovery wasn
’t as miraculous as it seemed. Countless others survived the infection, only to form a stronger breed of the infected, while the minds of those who succumbed are forced to watch in silent horror. Eventually, your old life starts to feel more like an echo, and even the horror fades away.
After two days of wandering with only the beast for company, I’m pathetically happy to come across another of my kind—a woman, maybe twice my age, with long, beautiful brown hair that hangs nearly to her waist.
With a long stretch of
highway ahead of me and my next meal a massive question mark in the back of my mind, it’s easy to get excited about nearly anything, but another person is an especially welcome surprise. People as a source of comfort rather than a food source—what a novel idea.
For the most part, I never get a really good look at the other wanderers I see. We ignore each other, content in the knowledge that there
’s enough of our food supply to go ‘round. Perhaps we’ll ally briefly to more effectively take down our prey or be drawn to the same commotion and end up wandering together for days, even weeks, and inevitably, we always separate. Still, I revel in every moment where I can assure myself that I’m not the sole remaining person on this godforsaken planet.
I
’m headed south while the bewildered-looking woman is headed north on the same stretch of road. She’s still the span of a few cars away; I study her, trying to engrave her face in my mind and inventing a persona and history to go with it. Small crinkles around her eyes suggest she laughed a lot. The chipped flecks of polish on her nails say she hasn’t been stuck like this as long as I have—possibly only for a few weeks. We pass without acknowledging each other, but it’s a comfort to know that buried somewhere in her mind is someone who might have been as happy to see me as I was to see her.
Today, for a moment, I am not completely alone.
I hear the crunch of metal before a scream rips through the air. It speaks of injury rather than terror—easy prey. But it is also a beacon for any other wanderer in the area. I have to move quickly.
I follow the sound to the scene of a wreck, the first to arrive. Hopefully the driver will exhaust himself soon and stop broadcasting his location to the flesh-eating population o
f this city.
An SUV has flipped onto its roof and its driver continues to howl from inside, half calling for help and half verbalizing what is sure to be excruciating pain.
The smell of flesh drives me forward.
Chelsea Zimmerman is gone.
Hunger remains.
"All set, Doc?"
"Ready whenever you are."
I roll up the left sleeve of my shirt, exposing the pale skin of my arm. Already cringing, I turn toward the opposite shoulder, still unwilling to watch after a month of daily injections. Despite being hailed as a 'miracle cure,’ the delivery system could really use some work.
Silently, Cole intertwines his fingers with mine while his eyes grow wide in horror.
"I told you it was massive." I resist the urge to turn and look at the monstrosity myself. I want it to be over with, once and for all.
"I figured you were embellishing for dramatic effect," Cole says, giving my hand a light squeeze.
"If you hadn't been avoiding these visits, you would have—" My tirade cuts off abruptly as Dr. Nickles inserts the needle under my skin. "Ugharrrggghh." My fingers clench around Cole's in a death grip until she withdraws it again.
When I first heard about the Veritas Serum, I thought it was literally the best news I would ever hear in my entire lifetime. And
I guess it still is. It saved me, but most days it leaves me wanting to bang my head against a wall because it still isn’t enough. To be fair, it has only been a couple months since Veritas first came up with the concoction that can wipe out all traces of the virus, but I thought there would have been more progress by now. Besides the day-to-day necessities, it is all anyone works on around here.
“
You’re sure she's not infected anymore?” jokes Cole. “She's got the moaning and the super strength down cold."
The doc bandages a small ball of cotton to the injection site and rolls her eyes at Cole's pathetic attempt at helping me relax. Still, the effort is appre
ciated, even if this is the first time he’s managed to make it down here with me.
"Har har." I start
to shrug my jacket back on, but the doctor holds up a finger.
"One second there, missy. I'm going to need to swab your mouth quickly and take some blood."
"What? More needles? That was never part of the deal." I glance at Cole for help, but he only shrugs in response.
“
A special treat for your last appointment. We need to run some final tests to ensure you're one hundred percent in the clear." She offers me a halfhearted smile. "This is what you've been waiting for, remember? Now open up."
I do as I'm told
and sit still as she gathers various samples. It doesn’t take long for Cole to wander off and start up a conversation with some of his friends. They’re all nice enough, but everyone here seems to constantly be talking about things way over my head, and I can rarely do more than nod along politely, wishing smart phones were still a thing. I try to listen in but can’t seem to focus on anything besides the constant poking and prodding. Thankfully, the whole thing takes less than ten minutes and is mostly painless.
I hop down from the examination table and walk over to Cole, hoping for a quick exit from the medical center. "Five minutes, okay?" he asks before following one of the lab assistants into the next room, leaving me with nothing better to do than watch
the center's most important residents.
When we first arrived at the Veritas Initiative's underground complex a month ago
—me with a fresh bite and a growing infection—this entire wing was eerily sterile. Now, all of the lab equipment has been moved to another room and there are makeshift cells everywhere, each housing one of the recently un-infected. There are three other cellblocks nearby, all housing more patients, nearly fifty in total.
They seem more like experiments than patients to me, and I go out of
my way to avoid them most days. Technically, they've all been cured of the secondary virus that robbed them of their freewill but left them with a taste for human flesh, but they're still a long way being the people they were before.
They barely seem huma
n at all, instead behaving like some hybrid parody, stuck between us and
them
.
One of the residents who has been here longest, a grizzled-looking Asian man we've started calling Peter, always stands at the door of his cell. Today, like every other day, he
’s straining against the bars, his arms reaching out to try and grab hold of someone. He snorts and groans with the effort but never seems as frenzied or carnal as the super Zs that are still out there, killing and feeding. He just…does it. Maybe that’s all he remembers how to do. Every day he's there pushing against the cold steel so hard that his pale skin puckers around the metal. He never gives up or even stops to eat until everyone has left the room.
Eventually, the doctors realized that he's
actually calmer and easier to work with if they let him hold on to someone. He doesn't try to hurt anyone. Not anymore. Instead, he stands there looking bewildered, staring at whomever it is he's holding on to as though he doesn't remember what's supposed to come next. No one quite knows what to make of it.
Today, Carolina Baxter is standing with Peter while some of the other scientists perform a routine examination. There's still a tranq-gun pointed at him at all times, but everyone is talking amongst the
mselves while they work, as though there’s no danger. As though this guy isn’t simply a victim of bad timing and even worse luck.
It doesn
’t seem right that I got off so easy. I was sloppy in a fight and was bitten, but I get to keep walking around and living my life while millions—probably billions—are gone. Since my infection was caught quickly enough to stop it from mutating, there’s nothing to worry about.
When it
’s caught this fast, it’s wiped out completely, and the hosts—oh how I loved being referred to as nothing more than a host for a virus—go on as though it never happened. At least that’s what we’re all banking on; I’ve felt like myself again for weeks already, and none of the guys who went before me have experienced any negative side effects.
I
sneeze into my sleeve and catch Peter's attention. He turns his brown eyes, framed by unkempt eyebrows, to me, not removing his hand from Carolina, and just stares. I have trouble looking away, only breaking from my thoughts when Cole taps me on the shoulder.
"Ready to go?"
"Yes please." I allow myself one long, slow blink as I turn away from Peter and follow Cole back through the maze of hallways and research facilities that make up his home. It's supposed to be my home now too, but I’m still hopelessly lost when I try to venture anywhere beyond my room, the medical center, and Cafeteria-B.