Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (133 page)

The lights didn’t go off so we laid
out blankets and pillows for ourselves and settled in to sleep for
the night. We were both exhausted and hoped we would be safe
sleeping next to each other. We didn’t really have any defenses.
Any guns or things we could use for a weapon were gone so we would
just have to rely on each other if someone came to harm
us.

We left the news on so we could hear
about the rest of the world, while we became sleepy enough to pass
out. The news anchor had a brand new important update every few
minutes. Breaking news was happening all over. One small tidbit
that caught my attention was about the origin of the disease. I
leaned forward to listen to her a little closer.

“
This is Chelsea with an
exclusive BTD news update. We have reports that the mysterious
illness was, in fact, accidentally released from a Centera
experimental laboratory. Scientists were studying the effects of a
new longevity drug by infecting rats with, what we now know to be,
a man-made virus. While we cannot be sure exactly how it happened
due to the death and disappearance of most of the staff, it is
speculated that the virus made the leap from animal to human when a
handler was bitten, then lost control of the situation.”

Centera
had caused this; I briefly
wondered if they would have the cure. Surely, they were smart
enough to create an antidote for whatever this virus or infection
was.

Rose had fallen asleep fairly quickly
after we lay down. She was worse off than I was because her bite
was bigger. I was beginning to understand the difference, as she
was more tired and stiff than I was. The bigger the bite, the
quicker the transition, or so it seemed. I, finally, drifted off
after a while of listening to a mix of the news and Rose
snoring.

I awoke to a feeling that something
wasn’t right. I looked over and saw Rose was sleeping with the
pillow over her face. Instantly, I relaxed a little, but panic took
over when I felt a hand cover my mouth, and something sharp and
cold pressed to my throat.

I struggled but the man on top of me
wasn’t letting me move. Rose was still snoring beside me, and the
lights were still on in the store. My eyes darted around behind
him, looking to see if there was someone else around.

Getting right down in my ear, he
whispered to me. “Imagine my good luck when I come looking for food
and find something to satisfy both my appetites.” I had no doubt
what he was talking about, as his hand slowly moved away from my
mouth.

“
One
sound and I will stab you through the neck.” Terrified, I lay
still, trying to think of what to do next. He moved my arms above
my head and held them there as he licked the side of my face. I
felt sick at the thought of what he planned to do to me.
Couldn’t Rose hear him moving around?
I closed my eyes and weighed my
options.

I could lie there and get taken
against my will, or I could fight. Just then, his hand moved down
my arm and over the open wound, sending pain shooting all the way
up and down to the tips of my fingers. Of course, I swallowed and
found my voice.

“
I’m infected.” I hoped he
wasn’t infected also, or someone who had nothing left to live for.
He didn’t smell infected to me, but I could doubt myself in a
situation like this. He laughed at me, not making any effort to
move off of me.

“
Yeah right, I am sure you
are infected.” Pushing the knife into me a little harder so I felt
it prick the tender skin of my neck, he glared at me. “Take off
your shirt.”

I slowly removed the cardigan from my
arms, praying that he would be disgusted. As the gauze came into
view, I made a point to unwrap it so he could see the grey and
black open wound that was spreading, over my wrist, from my finger.
His eyes widened, in horror, as I gave him a satisfied
look.

“
Told you,” he did jump
off me then and pointed down at me. I felt nothing but relief, as
the weight of his body was absent from mine.

“
You are infected, get
away from ,” he didn’t get to finish his sentence, as I heard a
loud crack and watched him fall to the floor bleeding from the side
of his head. Rose had hit him with a baseball bat and she stood
behind him, crouched like she would hit him again.”

“
Was he trying to rape
you, Cassie?” The weight of what could have just happened hit me
and I sank onto my knees in tears as she came up and wrapped her
arms around me.

“
I think so,” I was
whispering to her through sobs. “What are we going to do with
him?”

“
Go find some hungry flesh
eating people to deal with him.” She winked at me and went to grab
both his hands. She gestured toward me, “Help me lift him onto the
blanket; then we will drag him out of here.”

I helped her lift him and lay him on
the blanket she had been covered with. We drug him through the
store and out the front door, looking around outside. At first, I
didn’t see or hear anything; it was really quiet outside and the
parking lot was still an abandoned area.

I heard moaning before I saw them
coming. There were five of them; the one closest to us was
shuffling a little faster than the others. From the purple scrap of
tattered cloth hanging from the body, I assumed it was a woman.
That was the only telling sign, as her face was covered with gashes
and bites. The hair was short and a large chunk of it had been torn
from the side of her head. I knew they wouldn’t mess with me, but I
still didn’t want to be around them. The man behind her had on a
cop uniform and he had a deep gash in his neck that was trickling
blood down the front of him. His skin was the same gray and black
we had been seeing and I could see the bone in his arm. This made
me sick to my stomach and I turned to run back into the Kelmart
with Rose close behind me.

The man who had attacked me lay
unconscious as the small hoard of hungry shufflers advanced on him.
He must have woken up while they were feeding, because, as we made
it back to our beds, we heard his screams pierce the night’s
silence. The lights went out, at that very moment, scaring me to
death. The timing could not have been creepier. I climbed
underneath my blanket with Rose and we tried to go back to sleep. I
didn’t want to sleep without her beside me, in case another
predator came calling.

That morning, we had junk food for
breakfast and talked about how nice it would have been to have
running water for one more day.

With nothing to do, we busied
ourselves gathering up anything useful we could find in the
Kelmart. I got us each a backpack and we started filling it with
necessities. It took us all day to sort out just one aisle of the
mess in the store. People came in and out, mostly running around,
picking things up and leaving again. We noticed that we could smell
them, and knew if they were infected or not. We still didn’t have a
nagging desire to eat them, but that could have been because of the
constant snacking we were forcing on ourselves. Both of us were
becoming more ravenous. Rose kept her baseball bat handy. After the
night before, we weren’t taking any chances.

Going to sleep that night was easier
than it had been the past couple of nights. I felt like my body was
wearing down, and I was getting tired quickly. I almost felt like I
had a mild case of the flu. Rose confirmed she felt the same
way.

The third day we were in the Kelmart,
we realized that we didn’t want to stay there. Sure there was
plenty of food and we could probably live comfortably, but if we
any hope of finding a doctor that could help us, leaving would be
necessary. After the news said the CDC might have been the cause, I
thought perhaps they had the cure. We would need to find a vehicle.
I didn’t think either one of us could stand to walk any more. Our
muscles were becoming stiff, and the wounds were spreading from our
bites. Driving would be our best bet. We would need to go towards
Georgia, and being on the Northern tip of North Carolina, it would
be around a ten hour drive to Atlanta, without stops.

We walked quietly to the back of the
store. I thought there might be some type of vehicle we could get
and drive around. I was thinking they might have a golf cart or
something similar, but we were met with a deserted storeroom. There
were no vehicles in sight, so we headed out the back
door.

When we got outside, the sun was high
in the sky and my eyes fell upon an old, beat-up, white pickup
truck. It was empty and I found myself wondering if there were keys
in it. We walked over to examine it more closely, when a loud noise
came from behind us. I clutched my ears as they started to ring and
Rose screeched. I turned to see a large man coming at me and a
smaller man behind him in the Dumpster.

“
The hell you think you
are doing, looking at my truck?” He was angry and he had a gun. The
loud noise was his warning shot and now it was pointed at my
chest.

“
I’m sorry, dude,” I said
as I started to back away.” We didn’t know there was anyone around
it. I thought that it was abandoned.” I raised my hands
defensively, as I backed up toward Rose.

“
You were planning on
stealing it, weren’t you, you little bitch? I know your type.” He
was walking towards me as quickly as I could back up.

“
Dad,” Dumpster boy piped
up, “They are just girls. Stop being such a hard ass.” I looked at
Rose, who was obviously elated to have been called a girl, and then
back at the gun still pointed at my chest.

The boy walked over to his father and
put his hand on his arm. The man was still breathing hard and his
eyes didn’t leave mine, but he put the gun down.

“
Name’s Cage.” He put his
hand out for me to take and smiled a dazzling smile; I forgot my
name for a minute. “That’s my dad, Trent.”

I found my voice; although, it
sounded strained. “I’m Cassie, this is Rose. What are you doing in
there?”

“
Looking for supplies,” he
said and grinned again. “Pops here is a regular
MacGyver.”

Rose looked back and forth between
the two strangers. “Doesn’t the Kelmart have everything you could
possibly need?”

They exchanged a glance like that was
the first time they had thought of that, and I had to fight a
chuckle that hung in my throat.

“
Where are you going to go
in your truck?” I asked, purely out of curiosity. I was a little
relaxed, thanks to Cage’s rescue, and leaned back on the side of
it.

“
Somewhere for us to know,
and…” Trent started to be rude again; I could tell by the way he
was looking at me, but Cage cut him off.

“
Would you two like to
ride with us? We are going to find a safety camp like they have
been talking about on the radio. Hopefully, we will find my mom
there.” He smiled again, and I felt instantly relaxed.

Trent looked very angry with his son,
but he didn’t say anything. Something was exchanged in the looks
they gave each other and Trent went back over to the Dumpster.
Having a second thought, he turned back to us.

“
I am going to see if
there is anything worth taking in the Kelmart; you watch that they
don’t steal the truck, Cage.” With one last menacing look in my
direction, he took off inside the store.

I had a chance to take in Cage’s
appearance at that point. He had sandy brown hair and green eyes
that were staring right at me. I let my eyes travel down his
T-shirt and noticed that he filled it out nicely; I stopped my eyes
from going any lower and looked back up at him. I noticed the edges
of a bite mark poking out from the neckline of his
T-shirt.

“
You’ve been bitten!” I
didn’t even think as I rushed forward and pulled his T-shirt
sideways. I revealed a long gash that seemed to be spreading from
the bite towards his shoulder.

His green eyes flashed angrily, as he
jerked away from me and fixed his shirt back.

“
What’s your problem? You
can’t just grab onto people you don’t know.” He was yelling at me
and I backed away from him.

I was embarrassed at how forward I
had been and stared at my feet. His dad rushed out of the Kelmart
just then, fully loaded with two cans of hornet spray. He was
holding them pointed at us, ready to spray.

“
What’s wrong, son? I
heard you yelling.”

I didn’t know what hornet spray would
do to me, but I figured it wouldn’t be pleasant. Cage’s green eyes
burned into mine. “Nothing, Dad, I was reenacting the attack for
them, complete with sound effects.” He smiled at his dad, who
rolled his eyes.

“
Alright, everyone in the
truck,” I noticed he had acquired a backpack full of goodies while
he had been inside. I wondered what all he deemed necessary besides
hornet spray. He seemed resigned to taking us with him rather
quickly.

“
Hang on; we have supplies
to take with us.” I ran inside, quickly grabbing our backpacks and
the blanket we had used, running back outside and grinning at
Trent. He rolled his eyes and climbed into the driver’s side as
Cage climbed into the passenger side. I was next, and then Rose. I
was practically on top of Cage and we were in very tight quarters.
I hoped that he didn’t mind.