Not Dead Enough: Zombie Paranormal Romance (Project Rebellion: SARA Book 1) (4 page)

“Yeah? Why’s that then?” With a confidence born of her belief that this was all a dream, she strode back into the center of the room.

He looked her up and down and she shivered, suddenly feeling dirty. Like he’d undressed her with his eyes.

“You’re a very lucky woman.”

He sat down, spreading his arms out along the back of the couch with the air of a king sitting on his throne. His shirt pulled over a muscled chest and firm abs. A drool-worthy sight, but it left her cold. Arrogant confidence surrounded him like a cape, which irritated the hell out of her. He reminded her way too much of Buddy. All charm when he wanted something, and fists when he didn’t get it.

“Go me. Why?” Once she had hold of a subject she was like a terrier. She didn’t let go.

Captain AA sat forward. The slick expression on his face made her pause. His smile didn’t reach his dead, black eyes. “Because you’ve been chosen to become a mother to a master race.”

She blinked to let that one sink in. She laughed. “What the hell...? Master race? Who do you think you are? A Nazi?”

Double-A rose to his feet, threat written in every line of his body. Julia’s survival instincts screamed at her to run, hide, do anything to get away from the predator in front of her. She backed up, too far, and hard hands clamped down on her upper arms. They held her still as Double-A approached.

“No, they lost. Stupid mistakes.” He shook his head. “But they had the right idea about pure blood. They tried to produce a pure race, and that’s where they went wrong. You can’t breed the stink of humanity out to breed true. You have to make pure breeding stock to begin with.”

Then he was in front of her, faster than the eye could see. She sucked a breath in as the guy behind her wrapped a hand around her forehead and pulled her head to the side, baring her neck. Fear rolled down her spine, the whimper escaping her lips unbidden as Double-A smiled, revealing sharp fangs.

“So pretty. You’ll breed true.” He stroked a thumb over the softness of her cheek gently. “
If
you survive the change.”

He struck, driving his fangs deep into her neck. The last thing she heard as she descended into darkness was the sound of her own screams.

*

The darkness was filled with pain. Heated razor blades tore at her insides, sliced at her guts even as they scraped the inside of her ribs. Agony lanced her veins, like each cell was a shard of glass. Thousands of shards, all driven around her body on their destructive journey by her faltering heart. It sped up, slammed against her ribs as though it couldn’t bear to be in her chest a moment longer. She gasped, but her lungs were in on the conspiracy against her. Every breath felt like antifreeze and bleach had been poured down her throat.

Coughing, her body tried to get rid of the offending substance, in this case her entire lung, and she slowly became aware that she was being carried. A hard band was clamped around her waist, so tight it felt like it was cutting her in half. When she opened her eyes, her vision was filled with someone’s ass. She blinked to focus. Then groaned. She was being carried over someone’s shoulder… again.

Only for a second though, before he ducked down and stepped through the doorway back into her cell. He rolled his shoulder and heaved her off, dropping her to the floor. She hit the dirt and cried out, more pain heaped on the agony already invading every cell. Slumped to the side, she couldn’t stop the flow of tears down her cheeks.

She thought her misery was complete. Until her stomach started to churn. Hot and cold chills raced over her skin as she moved fretfully. She wouldn’t throw up, she hated to throw up.

A male laugh, low and chilling, rolled around the small cell. It was the same guy who had taken her from the house. Her own personal tormentor. He turned to look out the door of the cell, still chuckling.

“Yeah, she’s gonna be out of it for hours.”

Fury worked its fingers through the blanket of her misery. The bastard found her pain funny. Even though her head swam at the movement, she managed to work her gaze up his leg. All smart-suit and expensive shoes, he evidently liked to dress well. In too much pain for even a small grin, she made do with a mental one and turned. Her stomach heaved and she retched, throwing up black blood all over his shiny shoes.

“What the fuck?!” His roar echoed in the small room and almost deafened her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care when he kicked her, the blow to her cheek throwing her backward. One more pain was nothing. She just laughed, the slick, foul substance still in her mouth and covering her teeth.

“Fucking bitch!”

He kicked her again and then she knew nothing.

*

Consciousness returned in fits and starts. At first Julia couldn’t move. A prisoner in her own body, she just lay there and went with the ebb and flow until she became more aware. She still lay on her back, the dirt cold under her. At least, she knew it was cold, but where normally she’d be shivering and curling up, trying to conserve as much heat as possible, it didn’t bother her. She recognized the low temperature and dismissed it as irrelevant.

Finally, she could open her eyes. The insides of the lids scratched across the surface of her eyes, and she winced at the sound. Loud. Loud. Too loud. In fact, everything was loud, from her breathing to the steady, slow beat of her heart. The sound fascinated her as she listened to it. One beat, then the next. The next. She frowned. The time between each beat was getting longer. Shit, had they given her something? Was she dying?

But, try as she might, no panic attached itself to the knowledge that her heart was slowing. Instead, she looked up and studied the ceiling above her. Like the cell, it was crude. Rough wood. Boards across joists, probably making the floor of a room above. She tried to croak out a shout, to attract attention if anyone was up there, but no sound emerged. Just a dry, dull wheeze. Great, she sounded like a set of deflated bagpipes.

The cell had been pitch black before, but now she could see. They must have put a light in here. Why they’d do that though, she didn’t know. The memory of sharp fangs slicing into her neck made her gasp for breath. After all, it wasn’t like they were particularly bothered about her health.

She fought her own muscles where they had her locked into place. No, not locked. They weren’t tight; they were lax, like loose rubber bands. She closed her eyes and controlled her breathing. She remembered being kicked in the face...hard. Had the blow damaged her neck somehow?

As soon as the thought crossed her mind though, she dismissed it. She could feel the dirt and gravel pressing against the back of her leg where her pants had ridden up. If she were paralyzed, she wouldn’t be able to feel anything. There was nothing wrong with her, but it was like the signals weren’t getting through for some reason.

That wasn’t as concerning as the darkness she could feel circling in her blood like a shark. Predatory. Aware. Something dark that hadn’t been there before, but was strong. In desperation, she reached for it, and it welcomed her.

A gasp whispered over her lips as it spread out in her bloodstream, sank down and infiltrated every cell in her body. With the darkness came a new energy, and she turned her head just as the door creaked open.

The woman from the room, the one who’d had the blood around her mouth, slipped through the opening. Julia narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t seen it before, possibly because she’d been too worried about Captain AA and his goon, but there was something wrong with the woman. Even now, she hummed to herself and didn’t look at Julia directly.

“Open the door, the door is open,” she half sang to herself. “Let the birdie out. Birdie to fly, fly, fly away.”

Without realizing she’d moved, Julia was on her feet in a low crouch. Half a second was all it took for her to assess the room. They were alone in the same cell she’d been in earlier. There was no light, but she could see easily. How and why she had no clue, but it didn’t matter. The door was open and all that separated her from freedom was the woman in front of her.

“Rock-a-bye-baby, on the tree top,” she sang, sinking into a crouch by the door. Her eyes were bright, but they weren’t focused on anything. Certainly not on Julia. “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. Birdie to fly. Fly, fly away….” she crooned, mashing different songs together in a new melody that made no sense.

Julia watched her carefully, assessing the distance between herself and the door. Could she make it, or would the other woman sound the alarm? She’d been in the room before, and neither of the men had been bothered about her. She was one of them; the darkness in her eyes the same.

“Fly birdie.” She looked directly at Julia and made shooing motions with her hand. “Look after baby. Baby-baby, Alice. Look after Alice. Birdie fly.”

That was all Julia needed. Bursting into motion, she was across the room in a heartbeat and past the singing woman in the next. Her shoulder hit the half-closed door, but the pain barely registered in her haste. She paused for half a second. The corridor was empty.

Her feet barely touched the floor as she sped toward the stairs. A faint gust of a breeze brought her the scent of the freedom. The smell of the forest and wet undergrowth filled her nose as she took the stairs two at a time, expecting hard hands to grab for her at any moment.

But they never came. She burst through the door at the top of the stairs to find herself in a barn. It was old, apparently unused and abandoned. The doors were ahead of her, open, with one hanging off its hinges. Beyond them, darkness called to her, and she ran.

Chapter Four

It had been almost two months since they'd become what they were. Long months. But it had taken the four SARAs much less time than that to figure out that, with the change, each of them had gained different abilities. Working on a classified base for a super-soldier project had given them all a sound working knowledge of the concept. People came in, got shot up—not always voluntarily—and they changed. If they survived the process, they ended up with a range of abilities that were definitely not human.

One virus created werewolves, another had created vampires, or Bloods, like the ones they were chasing. Yet another, one that was supposed to help soldiers regenerate and heal fatal wounds, didn't work quite as expected.

RA17.

It killed its subjects for a start, which was never good for any sort of clinical trial. But it had been when those same subjects had re-animated and eaten a mortuary worker that it really freaked people out.

Reanimated dead. Undead. Zombie.

Even the names gave Brett the creeps. Except that was his reality now. Had been ever since the mission that had put the four of them in the sick bay and they’d all been shot up with something new. A new version of RA17. Something the Project hadn’t tested before.

Until it had tested it on them.

Now Brett and the others were something more than human, something less than technically alive, and he ran easily through the night, his body like a machine. There was no muscle soreness, no fighting for breath. Hell, he wasn’t even breathing as he ran, and unless he concentrated, his heart didn’t beat. He just... was.

The four of them had spread out as they ran. At first they’d needed Kelwood to pick up the scent. Of all of them, his sense of smell was the best, almost as sensitive as a Lycan’s. Brett’s was the worst, only barely above what it had been before his conversion. Unless live blood was running, he was nasally blind. When blood ran though, he was a predator. Not just run of the mill either. The four of them were stronger, faster and more agile than anything they’d come up against, even Lycans and Bloods.

They were apex predators.

Now the scent of blood was strong, easy to follow, as though more of the enemy joined the first two as they travelled. Under the multiple scents was another one Brett could only just make out. Light and delicate, it was the kidnapped human. There was more than one. Another human scent, one mixed with new blood, and so strong that even Brett could tell it was female.

“They’re taking more women.” Kelwood’s voice cut through the darkness as the four of them slowed. Following the scent, they’d gone from fields upon fields of crops, into scrub-land, and finally into the woods where they stood. “Some are injured.”

They all turned toward him as he hunkered down, folding up in that weird way they’d all adopted since they’d been changed. It was as though their bodies didn’t have to follow the same laws of movement as before. The pose reminded Brett of a spider, which made no sense since none of them had eight freaking legs.

“They must be close.” Kelwood frowned as he ran a hand over the dirt in front of him. Now that he was moving, and they were under pressure, his manner had snapped back to totally professional. It was only when they stopped, and he had time to think, that he folded in on himself, his grief at losing his wife and child palpable. “I’m picking up the same scents overlapping, as though they’re coming in and out. No humans coming out, though.”

Fredericks went to say something, but a scream from deeper in the woods cut him off. Brett snapped his head up, the sound hitting him deep in the gut. Feminine, it held a note of terror that stripped away everything in him but the need to protect.

Without a thought, he launched himself into a run. He didn’t have Kelwood’s sense of smell, Frederick’s sense of strategy or Dom’s ability to take on a whole pack of Lycans and come out of it with little more than a scratch. Wha t he did have though, was speed. Of them all, he was the fastest.

He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth behind him as he ran. No need for a sense of smell. The screams had died down to whimpers, then nothing, but his hearing was excellent.

Certainly good enough to hear another voice call out softly. “Where are you, pretty one? Don’t hide from me now; I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

The voice was male. Cruel. The harsh tone in it that said bad things would happen when he got hold of his prey.

Brett reached the edge of a small clearing and stopped dead. That was another thing about their new natures that impressed the hell out of him. The ability to go from something approaching light speed to nothing. Absolute zero, total lack of movement.