Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) (5 page)

She turned and walked down the hallway, passing a bathroom and a bedroom that looked like a child’s. Junior’s room, every other weekend. She didn’t waste time looking through the young boy’s room. She should have been his step-mother, but instead she never met him and he didn’t even know she existed. Just as well. He was male. He would have turned out selfish just like his father. Just like all of them.

She found Daniel’s office and entered. She glared at the computer, the machine that likely introduced him to Olga. Olga. Ugliest name ever.

A door with six dead bolt locks stood open on her right. She stepped inside and whistled. Guns lined the wall. She noticed the empty space where the gun Daniel had pointed at her should have been stored. There were boxes of ammo, knives, and daggers.

Sadly, she didn’t know crap about guns, but she knew how to wield a knife. Who didn’t? She traded her kitchen knife out for a much more lethal machete and eyed the grenades. Those she could manage. Pull a pin and throw. Even with her bad aim, it didn’t matter. As long as she chucked the grenade somewhere within the vicinity of her target it would do its job. She found a sheath for the machete but she needed something to carry the grenades in.

She left the office and entered the master bedroom. The pain hit her like a hundred razor blades, slicing deep right through the chest. She pictured Daniel sleeping in that bed, looking so peaceful with eyes closed, drawing steady breaths. She should have been lying next to him in the image but she wasn’t. Some faceless hussy with a virus implanted in her DNA snuggled up to him. Some faceless whore that wore the flimsy nightgown draped over the chair next to the bed. He might not have slept with her in the biblical sense but they were married. She was his wife. They shared that bed, this whole house. She was his child’s stepmother. She was all the things Maura should have been.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. She didn’t even love Daniel. She would have infected Junior had he been there after the virus was activated. She might have eaten him like a freaking hamburger. But her nightgown was there next to Daniel’s bed. Next to where she herself should have rested her head at the end of the day.

Not that bitch.

Maura turned away, her breaths sharp and heavy. The pain intensifying as fiery hot anger rolled through her. She passed Junior’s room again but this time she stepped inside. It was so foreign to her. It shouldn’t be. She should know where everything in this house was. The little boy in the picture she picked up on the dresser shouldn’t be a stranger. He should have known her name. He didn’t have to call her Mom, but he should have at least known her name. He knew Olga’s ugly ass name.

Maura slammed the picture down, not wanting to look at it, not wanting to see the child she would never know. There was a backpack slung over the bedpost. Not a child’s cartoon character bag, but an army grade pack. What else but the best for the son of a Master Sergeant?

She reached out for it but something else caught her eye, something much better.

Daniel was slumped over when she walked back into the living room. The thought that he might have succumbed to the infection before she had a chance to give him an earful fueled her anger.

“You better not be dead yet.”

He raised his head and groaned. Blood red eyes focused on her. “Maura? Get weapons. Get out. Get out before I do something bad.”

“Before you do something bad? Abusing my trust, breaking my heart and leaving me for that vile waste of flesh wasn’t you doing something bad?”

“What?” He shook his head as if clearing it but groaned from the pain it seemed to cause. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You have to go now. Don’t want to hurt you.”

“You already hurt me. You hurt me worse than anyone ever hurt me. And now you just want me out of your house.”

“Not safe here. Safer in Nebraska.”

Maura barely heard the words he was straining to say, too worked up. She’d realized it once she’d seen the nightgown. He wanted her gone. He had never wanted her in his house, in his life. She was a diversion, a way to pass time before he’d had his idea of a dream wife shipped in. And now she was in his home, his wife’s home. He didn’t want her there, dishonoring the whore who’d cheated on him during their whole joke of a marriage.

Well, screw that. She was here and had no intention of leaving.

“I’m taking what is owed to me.”

She raised the bat, readied her swing.

“I’m taking this house and everything in it.”

Swing.
  The ugly nesting dolls sitting on a side table smashed. 

“Maura. Too loud. They’ll …” Daniel’s head slumped again. “They’ll come.”

“Let them come!” she screamed. “They’re your people, right? Weren’t they created by the woman you gave your name to? The woman you chose to honor?”

She crouched before him. “Let them come. This is my house now. I’ll gladly kill any piece of Russian trash or any freak they created with their nasty virus if they step on my property.”

Daniel didn’t respond.

“Say something.”

His mouth didn’t move. The only sounds he made were the ragged breaths escaping his lips.

“Say something,” Maura growled. She’d come all this way for closure, willing to face the infected people now roaming the streets if necessary. She would not be denied her closure. She poked him but got no response.

“Wake up!” she screamed as loud as she could.

He jerked, a slight movement, then raised his head, opened his eyes. Seemed to strain to see her through the redness coating them. “I’m sorry. Go now. Please.”

“Go now? You think you can just kick me out? Make me. I want to see you make me leave.”

His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why so much hate? You have to forgive.”

Maura laughed at the absurdity as she stood and walked in a circle before him, testing the bat’s weight in her hand. “I have to forgive you? Why? Is that the custom after someone rips your heart out and shreds it beyond recognition? Am I to just forget all the hurt and betrayal and just give you a clean slate because it’s what you want?”

She stopped and looked down at him. “What about what I wanted? You didn’t give a damn about what I wanted.”

“Maura.” He tried to straighten himself and winced in pain, his hand going to the mottled wound on his thigh. The skin around it had darkened to a mix of scarlet red and blackish purples. “What would Jesus do?”

The laugh tore out of her, the strangely angry sound too powerful for her to restrain. All his talk about being a good Christian had been lies just as his promises to her had been. He’d lied. He’d used her, hurt her for his own selfish needs then married an ungodly woman. Now he dared to throw Jesus in her face?

Maura raised the bat, the love for him that had kept her fury at bay snapping as memories of her all alone, crying as she struggled to face life without him, assaulted her.

“I’m not particularly concerned with what Jesus would do,” she informed him. “I’m thinking what would Madea do?”

She brought the bat down, heard the crack of bone as it connected with the top of his head. Everything went black as memories overtook her. All she could see were images of how miserable she’d been for the past two years, how she’d been forced to think of the love of her life with another woman, a mail-order bride, knowing she’d been forgotten. She heard the cracking sounds and the blood splatter but couldn’t see through the haze of torturous memories.

With a rage-filled scream, she lowered the bat to the ground and fell to her knees. Wetness soaked into her jeans and she looked down to see blood from the carpet marring them.

“Look what you made me do.” She looked at Daniel, finally able to see again. Now that she could, she couldn’t see what it was about him that had attracted her. The redness of his blood brought out the pasty white of his complexion. He wasn’t a particularly big man, nor very handsome. His nose was kind of puggish, and now it was crooked on top of that. Three of his teeth now rested on his shirt. She pictured the crooked grin he used to give her. That, she had adored, but now it was ruined, what with his teeth missing and his lower jaw just hanging there, unhinged.

“You made me get blood on the carpet. I finally get what’s mine and you make me ruin it. Don’t you have anything to say?”

He remained silent.

Enraged, she grabbed his lower jaw and moved it up and down for him. “Say something! Speak!”

His silence only angered her more.

“Seriously? You leave me without a goodbye once, run back home without telling me and then arrange a wedding to some floozy, only telling me by text after I’d finally gotten a response to who knows how many I’d sent to you that you were marrying that skank and now you decide to just leave me again without a goodbye when I’ve come all this way? Coward.”

She dropped the blood covered bat and went into the kitchen. All that exercise had worked up an appetite. She quickly washed her hands and perused the refrigerator. It contained  a lot of fruit and vegetables, some strange looking meat, and some cartons with foreign lettering on them.

“He even eats that Russian shit,” she muttered, opening the freezer and extracting a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. It was sealed so she didn’t have to worry about the slut’s germs all over it. She unsealed the carton, popped the lid off and found a spoon in a drawer. Pulling up a stool at the counter in the middle of the kitchen, she stabbed the ice cream with the metal object harder than necessary, eyes tearing up in anger and sadness as she thought about how she couldn’t even kiss Daniel goodbye. She’d so enjoyed kissing him but now he was tainted.

The ice cream tasted like cardboard. She set it down on the counter and lowered her head. The flood of tears came suddenly. She loved Daniel and now he was gone. She’d lost him again and he hadn’t shown any inkling that he’d been happy to see her. He’d just told her to get out. How was that for closure?

She now knew she’d been right about the type of person he’d married. The woman being a cheating whore was a fact now, not just something she’d called her in anger, something she’d hoped karma would have delivered to him. Karma did its job, but why did it hurt her too? What had she done to deserve this pain?  She knew he hadn’t been happy all this time. How could he have been?

But why was she still unhappy? Why did she still miss the man she used to know? It should have stopped. The pain kept raging though.

“It’ll never be over,” she whispered to herself as she let her gaze roam over the kitchen in search of Tylenol, aspirin, anything to help null the pain throbbing between her eyes.

Not seeing anything, she got up and found the bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet and searched the bottles there, finally finding something.

A horrible moaning sound came from the living room.

“Daniel, is that you?”

The sound came again, louder.

“It’ll never end,” she repeated as she unsheathed the machete she’d found earlier and met him in the hallway. His beautiful blue eyes were gone, replaced with cloudy white orbs.

“That bitch took your eyes away from me too,” she growled before she rammed the blade into his forehead.

Hal brought the car to a stop in front of Paul’s house, his stomach churning. He told himself it was just hunger, not wanting to admit, even to himself, that he was scared of what he would find in the small blue house with the pale yellow shutters.

Judging by the scenes he’d driven past on his way to Paul’s and the attack he’d found himself under at the gas station, the whole world had gone crazy. The inmates at the prison weren’t half as scary as what walked the streets now.

And if Paul was one of them …

He’d do what he had to do. It would be the right thing. Paul was a good man but if he’d turned into one of the demons terrorizing people he was no longer Paul. He was evil and evil had to be destroyed. If there was anything Hal knew how to do, it was seek out evil and destroy it.

He opened the car door and stepped out onto the street. He didn’t bother shutting the door. The risk of it making a sound was too great and once he entered Paul’s house he’d have access to the garage and the vehicles inside it. Anything had to be better than the blood-soaked car he’d traveled here in. Definitely time for a trade-in.

The gun and its one remaining bullet still nestled in the pocket of his hoodie, he cautiously approached the house. From the outside, the house looked normal. Peaceful even. The whole street looked good, just empty. He’d heard the news about the evacuation on the radio as he’d driven there, before the radio went out. It explained the lack of cars. Everyone had packed up and sought refuge at one of the military bases set up for the uninfected.

Everyone but Paul. He knew the house would not be empty. What he didn’t know was what would be dwelling inside, and if it would be dead, alive, or dead and moving.

He made his way around the house, opened the gate to the privacy fence enclosing the backyard and went for the hide-a-key. He moved aside the heavy planter on the back porch and retrieved the key, thankful Paul hadn’t changed its location. He didn’t want to make any noise when he entered.

He unlocked the back door as quietly as he could and pocketed the key. With his gun now in his right hand, he slowly turned the doorknob and pushed, careful not to make the slightest squeak.