Not Dead Enough: Zombie Paranormal Romance (Project Rebellion: SARA Book 1) (2 page)

Her gaze shot to the side door. The front she always locked, but had she locked the side door after taking the garbage out? Shit, she couldn’t remember, and even so, the flimsy lock wouldn’t stand up to much. She needed to throw the deadbolt.

Heart slamming against her ribs, she slid her feet through the broken glass, trying to push it out of the way instead of stepping on it. Shards stabbed into the delicate skin, but she gritted her teeth and carried on. Secure the house first, deal with the blood later. A footstep on the porch outside drew a squeak from her lips and she threw herself across the remaining space to throw the bolt.

She leaned against the wall by the door, her breathing coming in ragged pants as she listened. The soft chuckle on the other side of the door froze her in place. She hadn’t imagined it; there was someone outside.

Buddy’s men. This was it. Tonight was the night he’d been telling her about in his little body-disposal call last week.

Fear galvanized her, and she took off across the kitchen. Blood on her feet made them slippery and she almost fell on the wooden floor in the hall, one shoulder slamming hard into the wall but she recovered immediately and hit the stairs. Taking them two at a time, she turned right at the top and raced into her bedroom.

Her hands shook as she yanked open the drawer on the bedside cabinet. At the back was a handgun, one given to her by her lone friend in the town, Thomas. Her fingers closed around it, and she yanked it free to check it as she’d been shown. As she did, she moved to the window, trying to look down on the back garden from behind the blinds. Dark figures moved in the lengthening shadows.

“Oh my god .” There was more than one of them.

Trying to suppress her panic, Julia reached for the phone by her bed and lifted it to her ear. It was dead.

“Nonono....” She pressed the button a couple of times, waiting for the tone, but it remained stubbornly dead. They’d cut the phone line. “Shit.”

Dropping the phone, she took another look down into the garden. Three figures stood motionless, watching the house. As though they sensed her attention, all three looked up. A cold chill washed over her, and she backed up out of sight, looking around the room. Without a car, she was screwed. Probably with it as well, since she was sure they’d have the front of the house covered. And since no one in this town gave a rat’s ass about her, screaming wouldn’t help.

She needed her cell, needed to call Thomas. The local sheriff, he could help her, even if it was only getting her to the nearest city she could disappear into.

“Dammit. Downstairs.” She’d left her purse by the front door. She had to get to it, before they got in.

Ignoring the bloody footprints she left in her wake, she launched herself out of the room, thundering down the stairs. No sense in being quiet. They knew she was in here. Almost at the bottom, she screamed when she heard the back door burst open. Turning that way, she fired blindly, backing up to reach her purse. If she could just get her cell.

“Hello, ma’am. Pleasure to see you again.”

She turned, eyes wild and heart pounding, to find the guy from the street by the front door, her purse dangling from his hand. But something was wrong. He wasn’t wearing shades now and his eyes were too dark.

Then he smiled, revealing sharp fangs. Julia screamed and turned to run. These weren’t Buddy’s men, but she didn’t care. One nightmare or another, if she didn’t get out of here, she was going to die.

She didn’t make it. Another figure stepped into her path, a hard hand closing around the handgun and plucking it from her grasp with ease.

“Well hello, pretty one,” he leered down at her.

Tall and handsome, he could easily have passed for a poster boy. Except for the darkness in his eyes and the cruel twist to his lips. She shivered, unable to stop the whimper escaping her lips as he leaned down.

“I do hope the boss lets me have a little playtime with you when he’s done.”

Chapter Two

Brett Perkins had always believed in life after death. He’d just never thought it would be the same one.

It was a question he’d thought about a lot. Occupational hazard. Up to a few months ago he and the three others in the room with him had been soldiers. An assignment to a base in the ass-end of beyond had seemed like a dead-end move for his career. Until he’d realized that he’d been sent to a top-secret project. One so classified that he’d been told most of the higher-ups didn’t even know about it. That knowledge had puffed his chest out until he’d figured out the truth. The Project was top-secret for a reason. Genetic experiments on soldiers didn’t go down so well with anyone who had a conscience.

Trouble was, no one left the Project. Not alive. Definitely not human.

Now he was neither human nor alive.

And life after death sucked hairy-ass donkey balls. Gigantic ones.

“Would you hold still?” he demanded. He squinted, trying to match up the torn flesh on the arm of the man sitting in front of him so he could staple it shut.

“Sorry. How’s this?” Evan Fredericks, their section leader, altered his position so Brett had better access. For some reason Brett had found himself designated as the team medic. Which, given their newly dead-but-not-dead state, meant he got to get busy with the office supplies.

“Perfect, thanks.”

Ignoring the white of the bone deep in the wound, if he could even call it a wound since it didn’t bother Fredericks at all, Brett pulled the ragged edges together and pressed down quickly with the stapler. Stolen from the desk behind him, it was bright pink, with a happy face and some chick’s name on it. Sophie. He grunted. Nice name.

Wrapping a length of stretchy bandage around his handiwork, he tapped Fredericks on the shoulder. “Okay, good to go,” he said. “But you’re gonna need to eat something soon, to seal that up.”

A grimace crossed Fredericks face momentarily. Brett ignored it as he moved to root through the drawer of a nearby desk for more staples. Some elements of their new natures were taking more time to adjust to than others, but the need to eat was one Brett suspected none of them would ever get used to.

Because they weren't talking about hitting up the local diner and chowing down on a burger. In fact, just the thought of cooked meat made his stomach churn, even if his brain told him he wanted it. No, their new bodies needed something else to power and repair them. To stop their dead flesh falling into rot and decay.

Warm meat. Hot blood. Something that only moments before had a heartbeat. Something with a heartbeat if the need got bad enough. Either way, they only had a small window of opportunity. As soon as the flesh cooled, their bodies rejected it and they couldn't eat.

In a sick twist of irony, their dead bodies needed food nearer to alive than they were. And they couldn’t avoid the need. If they refused to eat, wounds didn’t close, and their flesh began to look wrong. Like they were starting to decay. None of them wanted that.

Dying wasn’t the worst of it. Decaying in your own dead body with no way to end it all?
That
was a nightmare Brett didn’t want to contemplate. With the Project always on their tails, looking to recover their wayward creations, they had enough problems without adding to the burden.

Methodically, he searched the small office they’d holed up in for anything useful. They’d torch the place before they left to cover their tracks and remove any genetic material, just in case, but he had to do something to occupy his hands. Keep busy. Anything to avoid thinking.

He cast a surreptitious glance around the room. Dominic Fletcher sat at a desk by the door, and Kelwood was across the room, rocking to himself. Brett caught Fletcher’s eye and shared a look of worry. Jared had been that way since they’d been infected, his only conversation about his wife and child. A wife and child he wouldn't be able to see again. He was dead to them now; he had to be . There was no way back to their old life. Not with what they were now.

Fredericks stood by the window, rolling his shoulder as he tested the range of motion in the injured limb. Despite the fact that the cut had opened his arm to the bone, no pain registered in his expression. Wounds didn’t bother them. No physical damage did.

Brett looked down, opening and closing his hand. He could still feel… touch, sense. But it was like their pain responses had been turned off the instant the Project had pumped whatever crap they had into their veins.

He didn’t remember their infection. All he remembered was being brought in injured and wondering if the pitted ceiling of the temporary med-bay would be the last thing he’d ever see. He’d woken up in a cage with the others, and it had all gone downhill from there.

The project had thrown everything it had to offer at them. Bloods, Lycans… even Reanimates. Brett shivered at the memory. Zombies powered by nothing more than the need to eat, their dead, empty eyes had always given him the creeps. And they’d killed them all. Nothing thrown into the cage stood a chance. Bloods, Lycans, Reanimates.… Nothing stood a chance against what they were.

S.A.R.A.

The initials hung in his mind like a shimmering jewel. Self-Aware Re-Animate.

They’d turned him into a fucking zombie.

Anger surged through him and he slammed the drawer shut. The force shot it through the back of the desk and into the one behind it with a loud crack that made the others look around at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Wasn’t concentrating.”

He went back to searching, but kept his attention on the others. Fredericks watched over Fletcher’s shoulder as he tapped away on the keyboard in front of him. Like their leader, he wore field dressings like they were a new fashion. H is ribs had been taped up until he could eat enough to seal the vicious claw marks he’d gotten in an altercation with a vamp three nights ago.

Fletcher frowned at the screen, muttering something, but then his expression cleared and his fingers flew over the keys faster than he’d been able to when he was merely human. Like every night since their escape, he used the internet, hacking into police databases to gather intelligence about possible Blood attacks.

The Project made one big mistake when it had created its super-soldiers. It forgot the men and women it had experimented on
had
been soldiers. It had only taken one pack, Alpha Three, and their determination to rescue one of their own, to bring the Project to its knees. The subjects, the SARAs included, had escaped. Brett had naively imagined a world where they could disappear, pretend to be human and live out their lives.

Then the fucking Bloods had started killing civilians. So now it was game on.

“Got something.” Fletcher’s voice broke the silence. “Shots fired, woman missing. Black blood-like substance found at the scene. Cops think its oil or something.”

“That’s their MO.” Without thinking or feeling himself move, Brett was right at Fletcher’s shoulder, looking down at the screen for the address. “Not far from here. Greenwood. Sounds like a shitty place.”

“That’s an hour at most,” Fredericks confirmed. “Right, let’s move. Fletcher, torch this place. Perkins, get some transport. Kelwood… Kel! We’re up, let’s go.”

*

The town of Greenwood was just as much of a shithole as Brett suspected it would be. Nose wrinkling, he waited in the shadows as Fredericks cased the house. The police had long gone, but Brett could smell that they’d been here. Hell, he could practically still hear their heartbeats and, if he lapsed into his new senses too far, he’d be able to track each and every one of them back to their homes. Break down the doors that separated him from the hot, sweet flesh and blo—

“Keep it together, mate,” Dominic Fletcher’s rough voice broke through his little daydream. He turned his head. Dom had one shoulder propped up against the fence, but his eyes were steady on Brett’s.

“How’d you know I wa—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but the expression on Dom’s face said it all. He shrugged.

“You were tweaking,” he said, shaking his head rapidly to the side. Brett easily followed the movement, but to anyone else, it would be too fast. Like a DVD caught in a rapid replay loop. “Figured the ’mares had gotten you.”

“Yeah.… Hard to shake them off sometimes.” Brett let a heavy sigh escape him and leaned back against the fence. His gaze slid sideways to Dom, to the width of his tattooed chest and shoulders and frowned. “You gettin’ bigger, dude? Or did you find a weight-bench at the last place? And eat it?”

Dom looked down, and grinned as he tensed. The dressings pulled again as his abs popped into high relief. “No. At least if we gotta be zombies, we’re fucking ripped zombies, hey? Think the ladies will like me like this?”

“Nah, muscles like that they’ll want a monster prick. And yours… even with the increase, we’re talking maggot at best.”

Dom chuckled, his face splitting in a broad grin. “Wanker .”

“Asshole.”

The conversation degenerated into comfortable name-calling and then fell into silence for a moment until Dom spoke again. “Seriously though, whatever they put in that shit worked. If they could get rid of the side-effects, they’d make a fucking fortune in gyms.”

Brett arched his eyebrow. “You mean like… having no fucking heartbeat? And generally being dead?”

“Yeah, that.” Dom kicked at the dirt with a booted foot. “Bit of a downer that.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

The side door opened, the sound bringing them both to attention, only to relax when Fredericks and Kelwood emerged from the shadows at the side of the house. There were no lights on; they didn’t need them.

“Definitely Bloods,” Kelwood rasped, the first time any of them had heard his voice for a couple of days. Of all of them, his sense of smell was the keenest. “And a human female. She managed to shoot one before they took her.”

Brett frowned. “They didn’t kill her?”

Kelwood shook his head, his pale blue eyes focused for once. They were red-rimmed, but no one commented on it. They had more shit to deal with than bothering a guy about a tear or two.

“If they did, it wasn’t here.” He looked back at the house, a frown on his face. “Which is odd. Generally they kill their vics on-site and leave, but that makes at least three they’ve kidnapped.”