Time of Zombies (Book 2): The Zombie Hunter's Wife

The Zombie
Hunter’s Wife

(Time of Zombies, Book 2)

Jill James

Also in Time of Zombie series

Love in the Time of Zombies

A Time to Kill Zombies

Visit Jill James at:

Facebook
Author Page

Twitter

Jill James
Writes

Published
by Gray Sweater Press

Copyright ©
October 2015 by Jill James

This
ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book
with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for
your use only, then please return to the retailer and purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved. Except for use
in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part
in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written
permission of the author.

All characters in this book have no
existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever
to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired
by any individual known or unknown to the author and all incidents are pure
invention.

Cover Art designed by
Elaina Lee of For The Muse Design

This book is dedicated to
RJ Kennett for showing me that writing about zombies can be fun. Special thank
you to Charity Truth Wilson for giving Rogue Vantage their name via Facebook
contest.

Blurb:

Michelle Greggs lost
everything the day the dead came back to life. All she wants is security, but
that is in short supply in the zombie apocalypse. Teddy Ridgewood wants to show
Michelle she has a deep, inner strength, and she’ll need it when a twisted
preacher sets his sights on her for his toxic church.

Title
 
Table of Contents
 
Chapters 
1
 
2
 
3
 
4
 
5
 
6
 
7
 
8
 
9
 
10
 
11
 
12
 
13
 
14
 
15
 
16
 
17
 
18
 
19
 
20
 
21
 
22
 
23
 
24
 
25
 
Dear Reader Letter
 
Other books by Jill James
 
Author
links

Anger and fear battled for territory within her as
her husband walked up the hill to their home. Even if he hadn’t still been in his
dark-blue SFPD uniform, Michelle Greggs would recognize Mitch anywhere. The half
of his face she could see retained the stunning good looks she’d fallen for all
those years ago when they were in high school, when he’d been captain of the
football team and she’d been the nerdy girl who beat out the head cheerleader
to win his heart. He turned slightly, his head set at a tilted angle and his neck
twisted as if broken. The other half of his face was in ravaged ruins, his
eyeball pulled from the socket, hung by a tendon, and rested on his bloody and
torn cheek. Black mucous oozed from his wide-open mouth and ran down his police
uniform shirt to mix with the blood dripping from his chin, making the dark
shirt glisten sickly in the sunshine. The shirt she’d ironed with loving care last
night was encrusted with thick gore. The pants with their knife-sharp military pleats
were torn and bloody as well.

Her breath caught on a wheezing gasp. His head
turned and one blue eye tracked her as she skittered backward, reaching,
grabbing for the doorknob.

From two houses away he’d heard her small inhalation
of breath.

From two houses away she heard his ravenous moan,
the sound rising as he spotted fresh meat.

She bit her lip and stifled her screams as he
moved faster. The thing that had been her soul mate shambled closer, tripping
over the crack in the sidewalk. The one he kept telling her he would fix and
now he never would.

A deeper, trailing moan rumbled from his chest and
the hair rose on the nape of her neck.
How had he gotten so close, so fast?
She
forced her mind to concentrate. His hands came up and reached for her. The
nails dirty and broken, filled with unmentionable crud, traveled across her
gaze.

Her heart raced and thumped in her chest. She
couldn’t breathe. Maybe if she stood perfectly still he would leave. Her cry
broke the silence as Mitch stumbled into her and his hands encircled her
throat. She brought her arms up and pushed against his filthy, slippery shirt,
but the hands tightened as his moans grew and he pulled her toward his chomping
jaw filled with sharp, broken teeth tainted with flesh and blood.

Blackness took the edge of her vision and she
stopped pushing. His fetid breath whooshed over her and she gagged. If she just
let it happen, they would be together forever. They had no children. No one to
leave behind, the flu took care of that. How hard could dying be?

I don’t want to die.

The thought, along with a million others raced
through her in a millisecond and added steel to her spine. With force, she brought
the heel of her shoe to his shin and kicked as hard as she could, just as he’d
taught her. His moans stopped like a broken wind-up toy as he toppled sideways
and fell to the ground, his leg bent impossibly backward. He lay there like a helpless
turtle trying to turn over, his athletic prowess gone.

Before he could get his hands around to push up,
Michelle reached for his gun on the service belt. She unsnapped the holster,
pulled Mitch’s service weapon out, and pointed it at her husband’s face.

No. Not her husband. This thing was not her
husband. This undead thing stole her husband from her.

Her vision blurred with tears. They froze on her
wind-chilled cheeks as they poured, hot then cold, down her face. She put her
foot on his chest, shoved the gun into the hole where his eye should be and
pulled the trigger.

Her rubbery legs gave out and she fell to the cement
steps as the echo of the gunshot buzzed in her head. Her hand shook until the
gun left her grip and clattered to the pavement. She stared at the thing that
had been Mitch just a few hours ago.

“You promised to come back,” she whispered at him.

“You promised to come back,” she screamed at him.

Her yell echoed down the deserted street, her only
answer the cry of a seagull winging overhead. Her neighbors had left days ago. Mitch
and Michelle’s house the only occupied one on the block. The army had promised
one final sweep before dusk. She’d begged Mitch to just leave. He’d refused to
go AWOL from the SFPD. He’d promised to go in this morning and tell them he was
leaving.

Four hours.

Four hours and her husband was dead, and then undead,
and now truly dead.

And she was alone.

So fast. Everything had happened so damned fast. Just
months since billions died worldwide from the flu. Just weeks since the
president of the United States ordered a vaccine put in the food and water. Just
days since the dead didn’t stay dead. Just days since they’d infected others
with their blood and their bites.

Sounds intruded into her solitude. The moans of
the undead echoed in the distance, lost to the earthshaking booms further to
the south as the army destroyed entire blocks of apartments and homes to seal
off the city. The last news report on the television this morning before it
went to permanent snowy static said they would destroy the Caldecott Tunnel as
well.

She shuddered, her hands shaking as she picked up
the gun and set it on her lap. She’d spent her whole life in San Francisco and
it wasn’t home anymore, now it would be the city of the undead. No more views
of the bay. No more drives over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin for shopping
and exploring antiques shops. No more.

“Damn you.” Her yell bounced off the houses. She
shook her head. She didn’t even know who she was damning, God, the zombies, or
herself for killing the only man she had ever loved.

A Humvee rumbled up her street and a soldier in
dusty, bloody camo jumped out.

“Ready to go?”

“Just a minute, please,” she begged over her
shoulder as she laid Mitch out straight and placed his hands on his chest. Falling
to her knees, she kissed the undamaged cheek. A sob caught and broke loose.

“Come on, lady. If we don’t get to the evac site on
schedule, they blow the bridge without us.”

She hefted the duffel bag onto her shoulder, all of
her old life contained in the one bag the army was allowing. Mitch’s bag sat
abandoned on the steps. She turned away and walked down the sidewalk. The
soldier stopped her at the vehicle’s door.

“No weapons.”

“It’s my husband’s service revolver. I don’t want
to lose it,” Michelle pleaded, glancing back.

“The drivers are collecting weapons. You’ll get
them returned when you get to where you are going.”

“Thank you. Where would that be?” She forced her
mind to move forward, because there was sure as hell no going back.

She climbed in the rear and the soldier got in the
front passenger seat. “The last group out is going to Brentwood. In the far
East Bay. I’ve heard it’s nice. Farm country. Little town. Whole hella lot less
zombs.”

Leaning back, Michelle closed her eyes. She’d been
to Brentwood as a kid with her parents during cherry-picking season. The town
could be quaint, but it wasn’t San Francisco. As a little girl she’d dreamed of
traveling the world, but no city in the world compared to the city by the bay.

“Ma’am, you got anymore family we can pick up? Got
a few seats left if we hurry.”

She opened her eyes to look at a man who looked
too young to shave, let alone be in the army. “My parents died during the
influenza pandemic and that cop back there was my husband. I don’t have a family.

“What about you? Where are you from?” she
whispered.

The man swallowed deeply and his Adam’s apple
bobbed, while a devastated look came over him. “I’m from New York City. I don’t
know.”

News and information from outside California had
ended almost as soon as the dead rose. The last info from New York City
mentioned nukes.

She wasn’t old enough to be this boy’s mother, but
she felt like it after the last few months. Things spiraled from bad to worse
to—to this.

Reaching out, she put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m
sorry.”

At a loss for any other words of comfort she
pulled back and closed her eyes again until they stopped and the sound of
people talking and moving around outside the vehicle intruded on the silent
shell she’d erected during the drive. The roar of engines came and went. Men
yelled and children cried.

Grabbing her duffel bag and getting out of the
Humvee, she was soon pushed and prodded into a line of people headed to a
fortified school bus. Desperation peeled off the people along with body odor. The
breeze off the bay carried it across the parking lot. Sheets of battered metal covered
the windows with a few slits left open for air. She shivered. Such a small
barrier to keep out the abominations rambling across the city.

A young woman with long black hair stepped onto
the bus in front of her. Stepping forward, she replied to the questions from
the clipboard-holding police officer. Even with his nameplate she didn’t
recognize his name or face.

“Name?”

“Mrs. Michelle Greggs.”

“Mr. Greggs?”

She shook her head and wiped a tear running down
her face.

“Dead or undead?”

“Dead,” she whispered.

“Confirmed?”

“Yes, I shot him in the head,” she spit out
between a clenched jaw.

“Thank you. Next.”

She tripped up the stairs, shaking her head at the
pit their world had fallen into. A place where shooting your husband was the
right thing to do. How had chaos taken hold so fast? A hand grasped her elbow
and caught her before she fell.

“You dropped your bag.”

Turning to get it, she fell backward on her butt
as the police officer at the door managed to push her inside as he was pulled
to the ground by a horde of zombies. Blood splattered the glass and stair
treads before the driver shut the doors. The sheets of metal hid the carnage,
but not the screams for help or the moans of undead hunger.

Again a hand reached for her elbow and helped her
up. She looked into the face of the woman with long, dark hair who had been in
front of her.

“I see an empty seat near the back,” the woman
said as the bus started moving.

The two of them grabbed handholds to walk to the rear
as the bus bucked and swayed, rolling over bumps that had been people. She
started crying again as she fell into the seat and the woman fell in beside
her.

Wiping her tears, Michelle stared at the woman
beside her. She had on a suit that probably cost more than Mitch made in a
month, heels, and pantyhose. Who wore pantyhose anymore? Probably women who wore
luminous pearls around their neck and diamond studs in their ears that looked
to be a few carats apiece.

She glanced around but everyone seemed occupied
with the people near them. This woman looked as if she were all alone too. “Thank
you for helping me there. I’m Michelle Greggs.”

The woman shook her hand. “Emily Gray. Are you
alone?”

She shuddered and nodded. The anguish was all too
fresh to go there. She tried to change the subject. “And you?”

“Yes,” Emily said as she reached and removed her
necklace and put it in a clutch purse she held. Next, went the earrings. She
pulled a silver necklace out of her shirt and placed it on the fabric.

Her fingers played with the pendant as she talked.
“My mother and father died a couple of days ago, trying to get to me. My
in-laws died of the flu epidemic. My husband died a couple of weeks ago.”

Her voice was gruff. Definitely something there. “Did
you have to kill him?”

A twisted smile came across her face. “Oh, no. That
was the police. Him and the hooker in the motel. His screams alerted the other
customers and they called for help.” The announcement was made so calmly they
could have been chatting over tea and scones.

Her mouth fell open. Emily reached and patted her
hand. “It’s okay, dear. It wasn’t the first time, but it definitely was the
last.”

The bus slowed and stopped at an intersection. The
pounding of meaty fists hit the sides of the bus. Bloody, gore-covered fingers
pushed through the slits, slivers of bone poking through skin. Screams echoed
inside the bus, overriding the moans outside. Women hugged men and children
grasped at their parents, their little hands holding on with all their strength.

“I killed him,” she got out between sobs, not sure
if they were for sadness or fright. “He was the moon, the sun, and the stars to
me and I had to kill him. He promised to come home and we would leave. He came
back to our home as the undead and he made me kill him. How could he do that to
me?”

A hand patted her back and rubbed in comforting
circles. “There, there. Maybe some small sense of him was left and he knew he
had to get home.”

“I don’t want to talk about it ever again. I don’t
want to think about it ever again.”

She just wanted to find four solid walls and a
roof and safety. Michelle wrapped her arms around herself and prayed for the
security the insanity had ripped away. Like a mantra for serenity, she
whispered repeatedly the name of the little town at the end of this ghastly
ride.

“Brentwood.”