Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) (18 page)

Hal crept up behind the man and grabbed a mass of his hair while wrapping his other hand around his neck. “Stab him right in the center of his forehead,” he instructed.

Maura paled a little but did as told.

Hal dropped the body and reached out to her. She backed away, avoiding his touch.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “Did you get bitten or scratched?”

Maura shook her head quickly. “No, no. He didn’t get me. He almost did but he didn’t.”

“Good.” Hal heard a growl and whipped around, fearing another zombie creeping up on him, but nothing was there. “What’s that?”

“It’s coming from the basement,” Maura said as the growling grew louder. “There’s more.”

“We just killed Dad and the kids. It has to be Mom.”

“The mail-order bride.” Maura’s nostrils flared as she gripped the machete tighter and stepped forward. “The mail-order bride who hadn’t been here long enough to have given birth to kids of this age. That whore killed some other woman’s kids.”

Before Hal could think of anything to say in response to that, Maura passed him and started down the stairs.

“Maura, wait!” Hal ran to the bag he’d dropped and found the flashlights he’d picked up in the dining room. He crossed over to the top of the stairs and switched one on, illuminating Maura as she made her way down in the dark.

She glared up at him. “Don’t stop me.”

“Don’t let anger get you killed,” he replied, handing her the other flashlight.

She took it with a muttered, “Thanks,” and proceeded down the stairs.

Hal moved his light over the room, sweeping it from corner to corner in search of zombies ready to attack them. When his flashlight’s beam finally landed on one he was surprised to see her tied to a column with rope. “What in the world?”

He and Maura stepped closer and the woman lunged for them. It looked as if she’d had both wrists tied to the column. One wrist had since broken and been freed. She reached toward them with that arm, the hand flopping lifelessly from its broken hinge. The other wrist was still tied, keeping her from escape.

“They must have tied her up down here after the outbreak,” Maura said, no emotion to her voice. “Maybe they thought they’d find a cure and save her. Dumbasses didn’t know they were already dead themselves.”

“The children wouldn’t have been if they weren’t hers,” Hal pointed out. “The father would have gotten sick, turned, and bit them.”

“Or they got too close to her,” Maura suggested.

“That too. Either way, they all died down here together.”

“No, they all turned into monsters down here together,” Maura corrected him. “Dad and the kids died upstairs. This bitch is dying down here.”

Maura roared, releasing her pent up fury in a war cry as she raised her machete and lunged. Hal expected her to sink the blade into the woman’s head so was surprised to see it slice through the rope instead.

“You want me, bitch,” Maura taunted the zombie as she sheathed her machete. “Come and get me.”

The zombie, having been tied up for over a month, didn’t need any encouragement and lurched forward to the closest source of food it saw, which happened to be Maura. The two women fell to the ground, knocking the flashlight out of Maura’s hand, but Maura had been ready. She grabbed a handful of the infected woman’s hair and rolled over on top of her. Once on top she delivered a series of punches to the zombie’s face.

Hal stepped forward, his reflex to pull Maura off before the zombie bit her, but he stopped himself. This was something Maura had to do to cleanse herself of all the hatred and bitterness inside. Hopefully it would help her let go of what had happened with her fiancé and forgive herself.

He kept his light shining on the zombie so Maura could see what she was doing and silently prayed she didn’t get infected while fighting the thing instead of just killing it.

Being already dead, the zombie didn’t wear down from Maura’s punches, and managed to grab onto Maura’s arms. Maura surprised Hal by rolling over, using the zombie’s grip on her arms to pull it along. Once she found herself on her back she kicked the zombie off of her and quickly rose to a crouching position.

As the zombie moved toward her, she lowered her head and surged forward, connecting her head with the zombie’s midsection and knocking it down. Then she brought a foot down on its shoulder, breaking the bone.

It grabbed Maura’s foot and opened its mouth to bite, but Maura quickly unsheathed her machete again and sliced off the bony hand holding onto her so she could slip away from its grasp.

She kicked its side. “Get up. Get up and look me in the face.”

The zombie slowly, awkwardly, rose to its feet and faced Maura. Its good hand was gone, the other one hung limply from a broken wrist. Unable to grip onto her, it still reached for Maura, a hungry growl the only sound the once pretty woman made.

“This is for all the pain you’ve caused women like me,” Maura told it, her voice almost a whisper before she let out a growl of her own and rammed the machete into the zombie’s forehead.

The fight could have stopped there but it didn’t. Maura continued stabbing the zombie long after its body fell to the ground, completely useless. She stabbed and screamed and stomped and kicked until she herself fell to the cold, concrete floor, covered in blood and muck and hardly able to draw in a breath.

Hal stood in the same spot, providing light for her. Not saying a word.

“Don’t you judge me,” she snapped at him, wiping a hand across her face to wipe off the grime. She only succeeded in smearing it.

“Do you feel better now?”

“No. You think this just goes away? You think killing one of these whores erases what they brought over here with them?”

“I was hoping it would, for your sake. It has to be hard living with that.” He directed a beam of light at the flashlight she’d dropped. “Pick it up. Let’s get back to the house and get you cleaned up.”

Maura grabbed her flashlight and stood. She gave the zombie’s body one last kick and bent down to hoist a large bag of cat litter.

“What are you doing with that?”

“Cat litter has lots of uses,” she simply said as she walked past him and up the stairs.

Shaking his head, Hal hurried up the stairs behind her. As long as she could still help him carry back what they’d found in the house, she could take whatever else she wanted.

Hank was dead. His body lie on the living room floor, slumped against the wall that his blood splatter now decorated. The rest of his blood leaked out the hole in his chest. Jan sat on the floor on the other side of the room, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked back and forth. Angela sat next to her, the gun still in her hand. Next to him, Maura let out an appreciative whistle. “Good job, kid. Saved me the trouble.”

Hal lowered his bag to the floor and rushed over to Angela, kneeling before her to check her over for signs of injury. She seemed fine. Her skin was unmarred. She wasn’t crying.

“I had to kill him,” she said, her voice soft. “He hurt Jan, and he wanted to take me away from you.”

Angela met his gaze then and he saw it in her eyes that there was more she had to tell him, but not then, not with others around.

He nodded his understanding and looked over at Jan. She was hurt. Various shades of blue and purple were starting to color the right side of her face and her lip was cracked down the center.

“I told you he shouldn’t have been left alone with them,” Maura snapped as she crouched down in front of Jan and checked her face. “We found some pain reliever. It’ll help. Is anything broken?”

“No,” the Asian woman answered in a timid voice. “He only hit me in the face and not much before Angela … stopped him.”

“Oh, that’s another thing,” Angela said. “Jan speaks English, and she likes to be called Janjai. Hank called her Jan. It’s kind of not really her name.”

Hal blinked a few times then shook his head as if that would sort out all the tangled thoughts inside it.

“It’s been a rough day, huh?”

“A strange one at that,” he agreed before standing back up and looking at Hank’s dead body. “We didn’t hear the shot. Must have been while we were busy fighting off our own battle.”

“You were attacked?”

“A zombie family, in one of the houses. We killed them all so no worries. We’re safe now.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Janjai asked, her voice small and afraid.

“Of course not,” Hal answered, turning around. He was surprised to see Maura glaring at him as if daring him to say otherwise. Did she really think he would kick Janjai out of their little group and have her fend for herself? “You’re with us, Janjai. We only kick out bad people and I don’t think you’re bad. Being with a bad person doesn’t make you what they are.”

She nodded her head and offered a small smile of thanks.

Hal reached his hands down to help both women up. Janjai accepted his help. Maura stood on her own.

“We found quite a few gallons of bottled water at the last house. Why don’t you two use some now to wash up? We still have some supplies we brought in from the van. Use those to patch yourselves up. Angela and I will bury Hank in the backyard.”

“That is too much trouble,” Janjai argued. “You must be tired. I have done nothing to help.”

“Well, why don’t you hurry up and get cleaned up, then you can fix us up some dinner? We found water, food, I recall there being charcoal out on the back patio if you need to heat something. Having dinner ready after we’re done would be a huge help.”

Janjai smiled and nodded her head quickly. “I will.”

She hurried over to the area where Hal and Maura had placed the items they’d found during their scavenging mission and grabbed as much water as she could before leaving them.

“Wow. Finally get rid of one man who made her his servant and here you are already turning her into the cook,” Maura said, teeth clenched.

“She wanted to feel as if she was helping. It was the only thing I could think of at the moment that she could do in her condition.”

“Well, don’t get used to telling her what to do,” Maura warned him. “She was gullible enough to make herself dependent on one man, I won’t let her make that mistake twice.”

Hal watched her grab a few more gallons of water and head upstairs to the same bathroom Janjai had disappeared to.

“What was that about?” he asked Angela.

The girl shrugged. “The world’s gone nuts and so have the people. Let’s get him out of here before he starts to rot and smells the whole place up.”

“How are you doing? When I left you behind to observe Hank and Jan I didn’t think this would happen.” He studied the girl for signs of trauma. She was only twelve and she’d just taken a life. That was an act that left a mark.

“Honestly?” She looked at Hank’s body and shrugged. “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. I’m sure I’ll feel bad when it does, but he was a bad man. He’s been beating Janjai a long time and he was a threat to us. He knew who you were.” She lowered her voice. “He said his brother was a cop in Mississippi. He followed the case.”

Hal raised his hand to silence Angela and looked back over at the dead man’s body. “You did good. Let’s get him out of here. Once he’s in the ground we don’t have to think about him anymore. He didn’t tell Janjai about me, did he?”

“He didn’t think she could speak English and she wasn’t around when he told me.”

“Good.” He let out a sigh of relief but couldn’t help wondering how long his history would follow him. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse he wouldn’t think having been locked up for murder would be something he’d have to worry about hiding but apparently it was.

Maura let out the breath she’d been holding as she stood listening at the top of the stairs, flattened against the wall and out of sight. Hal had silenced Angela before she could give more but enough details had slipped out. Hal was a criminal. For all his righteous talk, he was no better than she. If Angela had killed Hank for wanting to take her away from him, there was no way she’d leave Hal to go with her and Janjai. They had to stay to protect her. He’d helped her earlier but how long would that last? How long until he tired of her and Janjai and turned against them? How long until she sank her blade into another man who betrayed her?

“Raven. Wake up.”

Raven’s eyes opened, and before they could adjust she was being shaken again.

“Wake up.”

“I’m up, I’m up.” She swatted at Damian, forcing him to stop shaking her shoulders, and sat up, groaning from the ache in her back caused by sleeping on the middle seat of the SUV. “What is it? What’s going on? Why are we stopped?” she asked, noticing the lack of motion.

“Cruz is gone.”

“What?” The sudden alarm caused by Damian’s announcement was an instant wake-up.

Raven checked her surroundings. Jeremy slept in the backseat. The Escalade was on the side of the road, nothing but trees on both sides. The engine wasn’t running. The keys were still in the ignition. Cruz was gone.

“What happened?”