RecruitZ (Afterworld Series)
Read RecruitZ (Afterworld Series) Online
Authors: Karice Bolton
Tags: #dystopian action, #fantasy about zombies, #postapocalptic, #dystopian apocalyptic, #apocacylptic, #fantasy contemporary
Copyright © 2013
Karice Bolton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events either are the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To contact the author, please visit her online at
http://www.karicebolton.com
or via
Twitter/Facebook @KariceBolton.
If you’d like to be included on her mailing list to find out about
new releases,
click here
or go to Karice Bolton’s
website
LONELY SOULS
ALTERED SOULS
RELEASED SOULS
SHATTERED SOULS
AWAKENING
LEGIONS
CATACLYSM
TAKEN NOVELLA (A Watchers Prequel)
BEYOND CONTROL
BEYOND DOUBT
BEYOND REASON - Coming Soon
RecruitZ
AlibiZ-Coming Soon
Dedication
To my husband and mother. Thank you for all of your support and encouragement as I talked endlessly about the Afterworld.
Love you both so much!
And to my dad who’s up above enjoying the show.
Excerpt Lonely Souls (Witch Avenue Series #1)
Excerpt Awakening (Watchers Trilogy #1)
Excerpt Beyond Control (Beyond Love Series #1)
Revenge fueled me and anger drove me. That combination was all I had left to remind me that I was still human—that I was still alive. What I’d become wasn’t what I was born to be, but it was what the world needed.
I sat in the passenger seat horrified, but I didn’t dare drag my gaze away. The world had been told zombies no longer threatened human existence. Yet I was staring at an onslaught of them taking slow, deliberate steps toward our vehicle. We had barely pulled into our driveway when the horde descended out of nowhere.
I managed to slide my fingers along the door to the electric lock. I didn’t know why I thought that would save us. The undead had never let a lock deter them before. I looked around our house and it looked untouched. These creatures were only in our yard, coming for us at a most vulnerable time.
Gavin attempted to take the car out of auto-drive, pressing the buttons frantically and commanding it with voice controls. The car only responded with words. We didn’t control it. The car controlled us.
“Pedestrians within minimum safe distance,” the car said, acknowledging Gavin’s attempts to drive us out of danger.
No shit! We want to run the pedestrians over.
Tiny beads of sweat began forming at my hairline as I watched Gavin repeatedly engage and disengage various controls. Nothing would let us override the car’s safety features.
Gavin’s foot pressed on the accelerator trying to override the computer system, but the car still refused to budge. His foot slid off the pedal, and he quickly replaced it.
Damn these self-driving cars!
The engine red-lined with each attempt from Gavin’s override, but the brain of the car overruled Gavin’s actions with every rev of the motor. Gavin kept shaking his head as his finger slid up and down the dashboard. He glanced at me, his green eyes connecting with mine. I didn’t want to believe what I saw behind them so I turned to look out the window.
I gripped the console as I watched the twitches and spasms of the zombies’ movements closing in on us. They were everywhere…the grass, the sidewalk, the driveway. There was no mistaking the rotting, grey flesh that exposed the muscle and bone of the undead. They were something I’d run from countless times, but this time we had nowhere to run. The undead had us trapped. They would rip us to shreds in an instant.
“I think some of ‘em are new,” I said, turning my attention back to Gavin.
There were some clean-looking zombies staggering toward us, their flesh mostly intact. That made no sense. The outbreak had been contained for months. There should be no freshly infected roaming around. Everyone had been vaccinated. The only stragglers evading capture had been around awhile, so their bodies were beat up badly by the time they were caught. Not these.
“Let’s hope not,” he murmured, not bothering to look out the window to confirm nor deny my suspicions.
“We can’t run. They’d totally get us before we got away,” I said, hoping he’d correct me, tell me that we had a chance.
He didn’t.
He slammed his fist into the steering wheel and looked over at me. When the outbreak happened, we never looked back. We were always on the move, running from the disease that took our families and friends. That was the key to survival. Never stay in one place. Always stay on the move. Now we had nowhere to move. I glanced over at Gavin and saw the fear in his eyes. Even with everything we’d encountered, his eyes had never held this amount of terror.
“Babe, whatever happens…”
“Knock it off,” I said.
“We have nothing to fight them with, and a horde this size needs a distraction.”
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed, shaking my head. The fear was pulsing through me at an unstoppable rate. “We didn’t live through the outbreak to die now.”
I gritted my teeth, grabbed the civilian anti-zombie kit from under my seat, unzipped it, and looked for anything inside that might help. We were instructed to drop these kits off at government collection stations. I was grateful we never got around to it.
Gavin held down the ignition and reverse buttons at the same time in a vain attempt to override the safety sensors.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
“Try rebooting the car. Turn it off and take the key out. Give it a few seconds and slip the key back in. Maybe if you pop it in reverse before the car can sense the zombies, it’ll let us reverse,” I directed.
