The Withered Series (Book 1): Wither Read online

  The sound of gunfire from down the hall startles both of us. I take my one shot and slam my head back, grateful to hear a sickening crunch. His grip eases slightly.

  “Bitch!”

  An elbow to his side and a swift kick once I wriggle forward leaves the man enraged. He cups his nose as blood pours from it, trailing into his matted beard. My nails crack and splinter as I claw along the slick floor, fighting to dig into the grout lines for leverage.

  The door stands open wide before me. The wounded girl must have escaped. A blood trail leads into the hall, illuminated by the fallen flashlight. I look around in search of my gun, but it is lost to shadow. Clambering to my feet, I use the sheets on my mother’s bed to rise.

  My stomach falls away when I find my feet and discover the horror this man bestowed on her. Blood no longer pumps through the wide gash in her neck. It pools in the dip of her collarbone. Streams of crimson trail down what little is left of her arm to soak into the sheets. Her chest is concaved, shredded as if by a rabid animal instead of a human. Much of her flesh lies in ribbons. The muscles in her neck have been flayed open by a knife. Her eyes are open, unseeing but looking right at me.

  “Oh, God!” I press my hand to her neck. The warmth of her blood between my fingers and the reality of her brutal end makes the room spin.

  One thought slowly surfaces as Pete lumbers to his feet behind me. He has a knife.

  Looking back over my shoulder in the fading light, I see him wavering on his feet, searching the floor. A glint of silver near his feet makes my heart stop. Please don’t see it.

  He raises his gaze toward me as he grabs his nose and realigns it. A look of unadulterated fury stares back at me and I realize he won’t need the knife to hurt me.

  I leap to the side a second before he strikes, pushing off from the wall and spinning just out of reach. My cheek smacks into the supply cabinet when I misjudge my escape. I steady myself and fling open the doors, desperately tossing the contents at the man as he turns on me.

  Pete bats them away and closes the gap between us. I bring a bed pan down over his head when he takes a swipe at me, but it doesn’t faze him. “Got you, girlie!”

  His hand wraps around my arms as I try to run and yanks me toward him. I shriek and rake my hands down his arms, feeling his flesh curl under my nails. His arm snakes around my neck, choking off my air.

  Gunfire pings against tile and metal in the hall but my attacker is lost to the disturbance. I hear screams in the distance as I fight against his grip, kicking and landing punches that seem useless. I’m going to die! Oh God, please don’t let this happen!

  My screams become strangled gasps as he shoves me to the ground. His legs wind around my waist, stilling my fight. He slams my temple against the floor and stars light up the room. Blood trails down from my eyebrow, stinging my eyes. I feel the impact again and again but am helpless to stop him.

  “Pretty girl gonna die,” he crows in my ear as he reaches over my head. My eyes bulge as the cold steel of his blade presses to my cheek. His free hand squeezes my throat.

  The light in the room fades and lethargy seeps through my body as oxygen is withheld. My hands fall to my sides. I can feel myself slipping away.

  “Please.” I stretch out my hand for help as a pair of boots pauses in the doorway and turns toward me.

  A gunshot at close range makes my ears ring. The grip on my neck releases. Warm matter sprays my face. A foul sludge slips between my lips as I fight for breath. The approach of footsteps sounds like the march of a giant in my wounded ear drums.

  Large hands roll me onto my side, pushed away from my motionless attacker. I claw at the floor as my lungs expand, gasping in air. A distorted voice calls to me but I can’t make out the muffled words. The only thing I can think of as I stare bleary eyed up at my savior is that their face looks wrong, elongated and grotesque. Then the darkness takes me.

  TWO

  A fever consumed me sometime during the night. Frequent delirium makes me hear voices that do not exist. They come and go. Sometimes they are nothing more than a whisper. A part of me almost wishes they are real. Then I wouldn’t feel so blasted insane!

  Nausea impairs my every thought as I roll my head to the side to vomit. I hear it splatter against the floor, but I don't open my eyes. The retching will only grow worse if I do.

  There is nothing left in me now. What little food I scavenged from the hospital vending machine is long gone. My stomach twists in knots, spoiled with acid. Every inch of my body aches, though it is not the pain that makes me ill, but the scent of rot that hovers around me.

  I feel as if a steel wool pad scratches against my throat when I swallow between heaves. Warm blood seeps from newly opened wounds along my eyebrow and hairline. With each retch, pain lances through my eye.

  “Easy,” a voice soothes. Large hands wrap around my arm, supporting me until my stomach empties.

  I’m delirious again. Now there’s a body to go with the voice. I spit and wipe at my mouth, disgusted by the foul aftertaste, then fall back against the sweaty cushion beneath my head.

  Pressing my stomach, I will the cramping to ease. Slowly it does, though I have no real sense of passage of time. Only misery and darkness. No light brightens the back of my eyelids. No sound reaches me as I slip in and out of a restless sleep.

  Sometime later, a damp cloth presses against my temple and I lean into the coolness. My fever has begun to ease. The aches are not nearly so pronounced. The relief I feel subsides when the cloth is removed. I hear splashing water and covet the refreshing chill until the cloth returns a moment later, only to find a sense of clarity beginning to return. I become aware of my surroundings. The scent of musk and disuse. Sounds of gunfire in the distance. Muffled shouting. The tremor that rises from the floor with each explosion in the distance.

  When I hear the steady inhale and exhale of breath nearby, I tense. Fingers press against the inner flesh of my wrist and I bolt upright, suddenly convinced of the fact that I am truly not alone.

  “Stop.” The grip on my wrist tightens as I buck against the stranger. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Get off me! Someone help me!”

  A bright light flares beside me, shining up to the ceiling. I blink several times to adjust to the light as the man grabs my chin and forces me to come eye to eye with him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeats with emphasis, his gaze never wavering from mine.

  My hair falls in sweaty clumps over my face but fails to hide the man before me. His face is angular and his jaw strong. His dark eyes are narrowed with concern. A heavy growth of stubble lines his face, revealing a hint of sandy blond amongst the darker brown of his facial hair. He doesn’t look much older than me. Maybe twenty-two or twenty-three at the most.

  His grip eases on my arm but he does not pull away. I can tell he is waiting, but for what I’m not sure. Maybe for me to freak out and start wailing like a banshee in fright, or to attack and attempt to flee. As the room begins to spin around me, I realize I’m in no condition to do either.

  “How are you feeling now?”

  I ignore his question. “Where am I?”

  “You’re safe.”

  “Is anywhere safe now?” I croak, rubbing at my throat. The flesh is tender, bruised. I wince, remembering the hands that sought to end my life only a short time ago.

  “This place is, for now.” I watch his eyes shift, rising to survey the damage I did to my eyebrow. Judging by the burning sting, I have reopened several new wounds. “Are you done fighting me?”

  I can tell that he knows I’m barely staying upright. I am weak, far too weak.

  “Don’t really have much choice,” I grumble. My shoulders ache as I hold myself aloft on the edge of a futon, sitting only two feet above a small, matted shag rug that may have once been a neon green. Now it is splattered with drying remnants of my earlier bouts with nausea. Heat floods my cheeks as I look away.

  “I tried to clean yo
u up the best I could. You had me worried for a while. I didn’t think your fever was going to break.”

  At the mention of my fever, a chill sprints down my spine. Am I infected too? Am I going to turn into one of the Withered?

  Determined not to think about it, I notice for the first time that he is concealed in fatigues. There is a Marine emblem on his chest. “Are you a soldier?”

  “Yes, Ma'am. Stationed out of MCRD PI. ” I stare up at him. That term means nothing to me. “It’s a Marine base located in Parris Island, SC. A recruitment training facility.”

  “South Carolina?” I rub my forehead. My headache is getting worse and my head feels too heavy for my neck to support, but I fight against my weariness. I try to focus, to keep him talking until I can determine his motives. “How did you end up here in St. Louis?”

  His expression darkens. “We were reassigned a couple weeks back.”

  He says nothing more, but he doesn’t have to. Everyone knows the government screwed up. This man, and countless others, were sent in to clean up its mess. What the government actually did was cause a shit storm that no one was prepared for.

  “How bad is it out there?” I turned off the TV long before the rioting took out the power plants. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to hear their version of the truth. The problem is no one really knows what the truth is any more. Guesses, opinions, and speculation are all there is now. I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter.

  He looks away from me. His adam’s apple bobs once and then again before he speaks. “It’s not good. We’ve lost New York, Chicago, LA and countless other cities.”

  “To them?”

  “The Withered Ones?” I nod, not liking the way the term rolls off his tongue with hardly any emotion. “No. They are the least of our worries.”

  I’m not sure I agree with that.

  I always prided myself in being prepared for anything. Self-defense classes at the Y and a few street brawls have helped me to survive on my own, but nothing could have prepared me for this. The term ‘zombie apocalypse’ has been thrown around. It’s sure as heck not like what I was expecting!

  I spent hours at the hospital window watching the Withered Ones shuffling along the streets, waiting for the gruesome deaths to begin, but they never did. They show no signs of hunger, or anger or fear, but I stay clear of them. I keep waiting for this to all be some sick joke, and one of them will finally decide I look tasty and take a chunk out of my arm.

  Glancing toward the window, I strain to hear the moans on the street below. They are out there. The Withered Ones, or Moaners, as some people like to call them now. A fitting name I guess.

  “You thought I was becoming one of them, didn’t you?” I ask after a moment of silence.

  “Of course you did,” I answer for him to fill his continued silence. How could he not? Fever is the first symptom. Anxiety. Unexplained pain. Rashes. Delirium. Sudden lowering of temperature to abnormal levels. Tremors. Loss of memory and a dozen other symptoms that pop up randomly. The end result is always the same...an all-consuming nothingness left in this disease’s wake.

  I saw it at the hospital. Watched the woman in the room across the hall from my mother slip into an eerie void. She was among the first, the doctors said.

  I don’t know what they did with her. She just disappeared from the ward. Maybe the military disposed of her. Maybe the doctors did. After more people started turning I stopped asking questions.

  He slowly nods and lowers his gaze so that his face is shielded by the brim of his camouflage hat. “Then why did you stay?”

  “I had to know for sure. Turns out it looks like you just have a common flu bug, mixed with a heavy dose of shock.”

  What would he have done with me if my fever hadn’t broken? Would he have left me here, locked in this tiny apartment to slowly starve to death? To beat endlessly against the door in a futile attempt to escape?

  “Would you have put a bullet between my eyes?” I ask. He clears his throat and turns his face away. His posture grows rigid and I have my answer. “Nice to know.”

  I look at the room around me and notice black garbage bags duct taped over the windows. Peering around the flashlight beam beside him, I spy used candles on the tabletop, their wicks long since spent. The furniture in the studio apartment is a hodge podge of garage sale finds. Nothing matches. Nothing smells good.

  Glancing at the ceiling, I discover that all of the air vents are covered. Torn drapes are shoved into cracks around the window sills. “You think it’s in the air, don’t you?”

  When he glances back at me, I notice something akin to appreciation in his gaze. “We don’t really know what caused the mutations.”

  “You don’t know or you don’t want to say?”

  His gaze narrows. “I don’t know.”

  I nod slowly. “Someone does.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Still. Better to be safe than sorry, huh?” I spy an upturned gas mask on the floor and realize the distorted face I saw before passing out was this mask, not a person’s face. I wonder why he has it. I’ve seen a few people darting around the streets with clothes tied around their faces. Maybe the military knows something they don’t deem important enough to share with the general public?

  Growing up on the streets, I’ve learned a thing or two about reading people. You have to when you don't have anyone to watch your back. I can’t get a firm read on this guy. He stays near enough to express concern for my well-being but not so close that it alarms me. He is cautious in how he moves, always slow and deliberate when he shifts, and always watching me.

  Trying to appear as if I have a choice in the matter, I lower myself onto my elbows. The trembling in my arms eases minimally. It is only a matter of time before I’m forced to lie down completely.

  I glance at the array of pill bottles, wet cloths and cleaning supplies accumulated on the floor nearby. “I guess this means you don’t intend to hurt me.”

  I watch his face for any hint of deceit but see none as he shakes his head. “No, Ma’am. That’s not my way.”

  He backs farther away, but remains in a crouch not far from my feet.

  “What’s your name?” I ask. Reaching near to the point of exhaustion, I push up on the cushion and struggle into a fully seated position. I feel better upright, more in control, though the tilt of the room reminds me that I’m far from well.

  “Cable.”

  I wait for him to continue but he doesn’t. Instead, he falls silent. “You got a last name to go with that?”

  “Cable is just fine, Ma’am.”

  “I’m no Ma’am.” I brush the hair back out of my face. My cheeks still feel warm and my skin is sensitive to the touch. “You can call me Avery.”

  When he cracks a small smile, his closed off expression softens. “I knew an Avery once. Had a mean streak to go with that flaming hair of hers.”

  The wistful tone in his voice makes me wonder. “She steal your heart?”

  He laughs, lowering his head as the memory grips him. “Nope, but she managed to swindle me out of a few days’ worth of lunch money, though.”

  “You got taken by a girl?”

  It’s hard to imagine a man of his build being fooled by a girl, no matter his age. “Nah. She was a pretty little thing. I practically offered it up to her.”

  I cross my legs before me, enduring a moment of lightheadedness. I clamp my fingers around my knees and focus on breathing until it passes. When I open my eyes I see that he’s watching me again. “How long have I been here?”

  “Four days.”

  “Four days!” My voice cracks with surprise as I jerk upright. “How did I...what did you...what the heck?”

  Cable pushes back into a seated position, drawing his legs inward to balance on his tailbone. Reaching over, he grabs a wet cloth from a bowl sitting beneath a cluttered end table and hands it to me. I press it to my forehead, grateful for the refreshing coolness. “That guy back at the hospital messed yo
u up pretty bad. You were in a lot of pain when I first brought you here so I gave you something to help you rest. You needed it.”

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to carry you out of there.” He pauses to swallow as his gaze grows unfocused. His lip curls with disgust. “I’ve seen my fair share of death in the past, but never anything like that. That was twisted stuff.”

  I curl inward, crossing my arms over my stomach in a protective huddle at the memory of my mother lying in a pool of blood, open and exposed like a carcass left on the side of a road. Nothing can erase that memory from me. Nor the sounds, smells, or fear that I experienced trapped beneath her bed.

  I won’t miss my mother. Not in the normal sense of the word, at least. She was familiar, even if she wasn’t always wanted. Still, she deserved better. “The blood wasn’t all mine.”

  He nods and takes the cloth as I offer it back to him. He dips it several times in the water and then hangs it over the side. “I figured that out once I got you back here and cleaned you up.”

  I run my hand down my bare arms and grow still. I was wearing a sweater at the hospital.

  Glancing down at my chest I see that I’m wearing a black tank top that is two sizes too big. My breath catches as I lift the blanket spread across my lap and discover that my legs are bare. “You undressed me!”

  He points to his right and I follow the direction of his finger. There, hanging on a makeshift drying line are my sweater and jeans; torn and soiled but far less bloody than they should be. “You went into shock. I had to get you warm.”

  “So you thought removing my clothes was the best option?” Heat races up through my neck and settles into my cheeks as I splutter.

  His expression is impossible to decipher but I would bet money that there’s a hint of humor buried within his dark eyes before he looks away. “You were wounded and covered in blood. I had to know the extent of your injuries. I’m sorry if this has caused you some discomfort.”

  “Discomfort?” I run my hands through my hair, wincing at the ratty tangles. On a good day my thick curls are hard to manage. I can only imagine how terrible I look now. “My mother was torn apart while I laid beneath her, listening. I was attacked and bludgeoned nearly to death only to wake to find some complete stranger has been groping me in my sleep. What’s to be uncomfortable about?”