Forever Between (Between Life and Death Book 2) (25 page)

Read Forever Between (Between Life and Death Book 2) Online

Authors: Ann Christy

Tags: #zombies, #strong female leads, #zombie, #coming of age, #zombie horror, #post-apocalyptic fiction, #action and adventure, #post-apocalyptic science fiction, #undead, #women science fiction, #horror, #literary horror

At Emily’s cage, I do a quick visual check to be sure she’s still chained. She is, but it’s hard to tell at first because of her pacing. Mornings are tough for her. Her hunger is strongest in the morning and she’s not at all herself. After she eats she’ll be much more like her old self, only with a speech impediment and an aversion to bathing.

At the sight of the tray, with its plastic bowl of deboned and featherless birds, second bowl of water for drinking, and pile of wet cloth for her to wash with afterwards, Emily stops pacing and sniffs at the air, her lips parting in anticipation. It’s disappointing, but not unusual, to see a dribble of drool coming from the side of her mouth.

Unlocking the cage door before Charlie finishes and gets back is a no-no, but I do it anyway. He runs up by the time I’ve got the chain unwound and says, “Hey! Don’t get sloppy now! Getting into a rut is a good way to get dead.” He shoots a sidelong glance at Emily, weaving side to side a little as she stands and stares at the tray.

“Sorry,” I respond, but I must not sound serious enough for him because he grabs my elbow and gives me a look. I sigh, but he
is
right, so I say, “I really am. I won’t do it again.”

He grins and nods, so I know all is forgiven. He picks up the tray where I laid it down to get the door and hands it to me. Emily is calmest when I bring in the tray, less likely to lunge and wind up sprawled on the floor after coming to the end of her chains.

“Here we go, Emily,” I say and step inside the cage.

Emily shakes her head at my voice, her face creasing in confusion, but her eyes remain locked on the bowl with the birds.

I step in just a couple of steps, then crouch, lowering the tray slowly. As much as I hate to say it, Emily is a bit like a hungry puppy in the way she acts. As I lower the tray, she lowers herself toward the floor.

“Sit down, Emily,” I say and tap the tray still out of her reach. I break her line of sight to the bowl by waving my hand in front of it.

Her good eye—though I think her other eye is far less bulgy looking now—flicks up toward me from under her brow. I sit on the floor and pat it. “Sit, Emily.”

Inwardly, it makes me cringe to talk to her like this. It works, because she copies me. It’s awkward, but she makes much less mess when she sits. As soon as she’s seated, I slide the tray toward her. A bit of water sloshes out of the drinking bowl as she grabs at the tray, but not too much.

Charlie waits outside the closed, but not locked, cage as per protocol. In his hands, he has a crossbow. The other in-betweeners are all worked up because they can smell her breakfast and hear our activity. We’ve put boards and cubicle parts all around their cage so that Emily won’t have to look at them, so at least they can’t see us. It’s disturbing when they watch us like they do.

Emily’s eating habits in the morning leave a lot to be desired. There’s a big serving spoon on her tray made of plastic but she’s never used it. She’s thrown it a few times, but she doesn’t seem to understand what it’s for until after she’s eaten. When she’s herself, she’ll go pick it up if it’s within reach of her chains and slide it back to me. Today, she doesn’t throw it or even look at it. She just digs into the birds, barely chewing as she swallows down the first few floppy, boneless carcasses.

After her third, she slows down a little, swallowing over and over as if she’s got something stuck in her throat. Her eyes are shinier and her skin looks better already. It’s amazing how fast it works. Emily used to tell me that she thought the birds had won the war for the planet. She thought everything else, including humans, were the losers and the birds would rule the Earth. Given how many birds she needs each and every day to maintain her coherence and regain some semblance of herself, I think that may have been a premature assessment.

A tuneless little hum comes out of her while she eats another bird, this time more slowly and biting it apart rather than stuffing it whole into her mouth. She finally spies the blood pooled in the bowl and she lets out a squeal like a little girl who just discovered she’s having cake for breakfast. The last two of her morning birds fall out and hit the tray with wet slaps as she tips the bowl to drink out the blood.

Watching her eat is a horror, but something I’m also terribly grateful for. Charlie asked me the other day why I smiled when I sat with her through her meals. All I could answer was that I was happy to see her transform into herself after she did and that made me happy to watch her eat. He’d nodded, but followed it quickly by a shake of his head. He’s not as impressed with her transformations as I am. He doesn’t trust them.

And like the rest of our group, he doesn’t think this is a sustainable situation. According to all of them, and simple logic if I’m truthful, this can only end badly. I remain hopeful despite the logic. She was right about the nanites fixing her brain tumor and eventually, I hope to see the nanites reprogrammed to eat the nanites that keep the in-betweeners as they are.

If the in-betweeners will die when they get those new nanites or simply live again, I don’t yet know. I can’t know. But I can hope.

I’ll keep taking trips to the sign that welcomes travelers to our town and looking for a message from the hospital, just as the note from Violet said to do. I’ll keep going and looking and waiting. And if that day doesn’t come, I’ll go back to the hospital again. I’ll worry about what comes at the end of all of this later.

For now, I have Emily.

She finishes her breakfast of birds. The bowl is licked clean of blood and she tips back her water bowl, her throat working as she drinks her fill. Pink rivulets run down her chin and neck, re-staining her already stained smock. When she’s done, her bowl doesn’t drop and hit the tray or floor. Rather, she sets it down awkwardly, but with purpose, onto the tray.

I look at her eyes and smile, knowing what I’ll see.

And there she is.

Emily.

“Monin, Fronica,” she says.

“Good morning, Emily.”

Ready for Book Three?

The third and final book in this trilogy, Between Life and Death, is available for pre-order on Amazon
here
.

From the Author

Thank you for reading!

I sure hope you liked what I’ve been doing with my version of the zombie apocalypse. As I was thinking about the whole concept, I realized that I wasn’t as enthralled with the idea of the actual apocalypse anymore, but rather, my imagination was fired up by what would happen afterward. What would it be like for those who are left after most of the biting and entrail-showing is done?

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Table of Contents

Forever Between

Dedication

Other Works by Ann Christy

Today - The Girl in the Cage

Today - A Promise of Hope

Two Years Ago - Save the Rotator Cuff

Today - Two for the Road

Twenty Months Ago - Campfires without Songs

Today - Downtown is the Place to Be

Seven Months Ago - Booze Run