Alive (The Crave)
Alive
A
Crave
Novel, Book 1
Megan D. Martin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Alive: A Crave Novel, Book 1
Copyright © 2013 Megan D. Martin
Edited by Leona Bushman
Cover by Najla Qamber Designs
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.
http://www.MeganDMartin.com
First Printing, 2013
For my sweet Elijah.
I love you
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
-Romans 6:4
Chapter One
Here it is
. The end of her life. Eve always knew it would come, and that it would be exactly like this. With a swarm of dead flesh and tangling limbs. She knew it wouldn’t be peaceful when she reached a ripe old age, holding her grandchild’s hand, and telling stories that he or she had already heard a million times. No, she knew that had never been in the cards for her. Not with the way the world had crumbled four years ago.
People had died in waves, the sickness ravaging their bodies within days, some within hours. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had died and actually
stayed
dead. Yes, that would have been idyllic. But they didn’t. Once the virus had destroyed them, they came back, a shell of their former self—a jenk. At least that’s what Eve called them. They were what bedtime stories and bad TV shows tried to create before the Crave came.
Zombies
.
Surrounded by a horde of them in the middle of an open field, Eve swung her head back and forth, evaluating each rotting corpse as they moved toward her. The strong scent of bleach filled her nostrils, stronger in the heat of the Texas day. They each sported gray rotting skin with eyes like cloudy glass that looked into a bottomless pit. Dark black blood seeped from their orifices, not gushing, but a thick stain, like oil on their faces. They staggered toward her in a wave of more than twenty. Each one of them moaning in desperation, vying to be the first to taste her flesh, to suck the marrow from her very bones.
She started slashing with her Craftsman long bladed screw-driver—severing heads, dropping the decimated bodies like flies, with a squirt of their oily blood. It still wasn’t enough. They moved closer with every second, a different one to replace each she felled.
Eve had been fighting for too long, had been in positions nearly as compromising as this one since the day the earth had become this hell. As she slashed her Craftsman again, she felt no relief in the thuds that accompanied her swing. She took no joy the way she used to, in ridding the world of these cursed beings. A part of her was ready for this. Ready to let go and be free of the world that bound her to a life of peril. A life where she slept with one eye open and looked forward to nothing.
They were only feet away now. The closest, a woman. She had been dead a long time. Eve could tell by the thick crust that had developed on her gray-black skin. She only had one eye. The socket of the other was dried out and hollow. Her good eye, if it could even be called that, was an undetermined color. A white film coated the iris and pupil. Though Eve doubted the jenk could see her, the woman still staggered toward her. Her left arm swayed sluggishly at her side, her right long since gone. The old shirt she wore hung off the shoulder of the missing limb, tattered and half eaten. No doubt a result of her untimely death, when another jenk had gutted her, and turned her in to the undead she had become.
No expression crossed the woman’s face other than blatant hunger. A look they all wore, perhaps because it was their only vice. They craved warm flesh of the living. No undead rot would do for them.
Pity
.
Eve planned to slice the woman’s head off her shoulders and send her matted brown hair blowing through the breeze, but she didn’t. She hesitated. The first time in more than three years she had reconsidered a kill. She would let this happen.
It’s time to join them.
She closed her eyes and for a moment reveled in the peace that flooded her body. The utter knowledge that things would never be the same. There was a freedom in that, a freedom of accepting that things were complete shit. After a few minutes, she would cease to care. She would become one of the mindless. One of the jenks.
The woman’s snarl and labored breathing were only feet away. She could hear the others too. Closing in from all sides. Soon they would make a meal out of her. Olive’s freckled face flashed behind her closed lids and regret burned in her veins. She had never found her sister, like she promised.
“What the fuck are you doing?” A male voice wrung out from across the clearing as she heard the zing of an arrow hitting home. Eve opened her eyes and watched the female jenk fall to the ground, a wooden shaft protruding from her dirty head.
“Duck!” Without thinking twice, Eve obeyed the command. She snatched the arrow from the head of the felled woman and rolled across the grass. Kicking her foot out and sending the closest jenk crashing to the ground. She drove the arrow through his brain, finishing him off.
No brain, no game.
She heard the whistling sound of numerous arrows as she turned and took on the jenk coming up behind her. Gripping her Craftsman with both hands, she dispatched it with a simple flick of her wrists while others continued to fall around her.
Who is this guy?
Eve killed two more in the time that the unknown archer finished off at least ten of the desiccated beings. It wasn’t until they were all felled that she finally saw him. He jumped down from a tree some twenty yards away, at the edge of the clearing. She couldn’t tell much about him, besides that he seemed relatively young with dark skin.
“What the fuck were you thinking? Just gonna let those fuckers kill you?” She fought the urge to cringe by looking down at her old worn boots since she
had
planned to let them have her, to die, like the other ninety percent of the world and become a mindless flesh-eating being. Despite what this new stranger thought, she wasn’t stupid…just tired. “You’ve survived this long just to fucking give up?”
The voice was closer now and she cut her eyes at him, relinquishing the determined gaze she’d had on her boot. He had almost reached her. His body became larger with each step. When he got within a few feet of her she realized that he wasn’t just any younger man. His tall body was hard packed with muscle, wearing tattered black cargo pants and a white, blood stained, undershirt that seemed bright in contrast to his light ebony skin tone. He was built like a model.
She hadn’t seen a man with a body of such perfection since before the Crave. And even then it was only in a magazine. Her eyes roamed over his torso as he neared her. Each muscle seized as he walked, tightening with his movements. The strap of his bow slanted diagonal across his chest. It wasn’t until he was only a few feet away that she finally looked at his face. If her free hand hadn’t been covered with drying infected blood, she would have covered her mouth with it to hide the gasp that escaped her lips. As it went, she didn’t and stood there gaping at the familiar man before her.
“Gage?” Eve couldn’t believe it as she stared into the gray eyes that had haunted her for the last four years. Black brows drew together as recognition swamped his features.
“Eve?” Her name on his lips sounded just as she remembered it, rough and sweet. His voice was a little deeper now, but definitely not in a bad way. “I can’t believe you’re alive,” he whispered and moved toward her, his arms leaving his sides as if to hug her.
The sight of him reaching for her, reminded her of who she wasn’t anymore. “Don’t move.” He’d barely shifted an inch before she had her Craftsman pressed against the flesh over his heart. The bladed-screwdriver looked harmless to someone who didn’t know better, but Eve had sharpened the metal and now it could rival any sword. He froze. At this angle he towered at least a foot over her five foot one height.
When did you get so tall?
“Eve, it’s me.” His clear gray gaze did nothing to squelch her fear. The last time a man had said such words to her, she had been sixteen years old. The Crave had only happened six months before. Her parents were gone, but it hadn’t been for long. She was with her sister when they’d come across old Will Prater several miles outside of town. He had been their neighbor for years and they had barely made it out of their hometown alive when they came across him on that old dirt road. It had been far too long since she’d seen a familiar face that wasn’t trying to feast on her flesh for dinner. He’d promised them food and shelter. It’d taken her two weeks to get her and her sister out of the basement he locked them in, but not without consequence. Olive had suffered and for that Eve had made him pay.
“You can trust me.” Gage’s deep voice jarred her back to the present.
“Funny. You and trust aren’t two things that go together in my book.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but failed miserably. Some things died hard; especially when it came to the first and only boy she’d ever loved.
He narrowed his gaze. “Still bitter, I see.” He scoffed the words at her, wearing the same smug look on his face that he’d worn all those years ago when he’d ripped her heart apart.
“Still an asshole, huh?”
Give me a reason to gut you. Do it.
Instead of riling him like she planned, the words had the opposite effect—he smiled. The corners of his eyes crinkled just like she remembered and his lips parted revealing the same dazzling white teeth. His lazy smile. She fought the urge to sigh. Like her, he must have taken every tube of toothpaste he came across and conserved.
“I never thought I would see the day that Eve Wicker would say asshole.” When she didn’t respond his smile turned bitter. “Shouldn’t you be asking for forgiveness or apologizing for hurting my precious feelings?” His words were venom, blazing a path through her system, reminding her of the kind, forgiving person she used to be. The person she would never be again.
“People change.” Her words wiped the smile off his face, bringing on a dark look that had her considering running in the opposite direction.
“There’s no doubt in that. This world…is life altering.” He said the last words so quietly, she could barely hear them. Pain laced his gaze as he focused in on her. “Put the pry bar down, Eve. I’m not going to hurt you.” He sounded sincere and she wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t. “Hell, I haven’t seen another living person in over six months and to come across you of all people…” His voice trailed off, some sort of hidden emotion in his eyes. “I just want to talk and eat. I have food.” The last word made her ears prick and her stomach grumble.
It had been days since she’d had anything of real substance. She’d been on the move trying to escape the horde they’d just dispatched. She’d had little time to set traps or search for sustenance.
“What kind of food?”
Gage watched silently as the woman before him slipped the blood-spattered, surprisingly sharp pry bar down his torso. She did the movement deliberately, her sea green eyes never leaving his. He couldn’t believe it was her,
his
Eve, standing before him. At first, he hadn’t recognized her. The pretty girl she used to be, paled in comparison to the woman she had become. She’d only been sixteen years old the last time he saw her. Her blond hair used to reach her waist and he’d never seen her wear anything except long, blue jean skirts and long-sleeve button ups—the only type of clothing she’d owned. Now…now she was a whole other story.
