Zombie Love Read online

  Zombie Love

  Delilah Devlin

  Copyright © 2016 Delilah Devlin

  Kindle Edition

  A woman desperate to save her infected boyfriend from certain extermination faces her battle alone, in secret, until one day she has to trust he’s still inside the monster she feeds…

  Note: This 5,500-word short story was previously released in Love, Lust and Zombies, but has been reedited and expanded.

  From the Author

  To those of you who’ve read me before—hello, friends! To new readers, welcome to my world!

  As you’ll discover, I tend to bounce around in different genres, from contemporary to historical to paranormal to sci-fi—all are very sexy, so be warned. I also write in many lengths from short story to full-length novel. If you can’t tell, I love to write. And when a story is fast, it’s short. If my characters need more pages, well, you get the picture.

  I love hearing from readers and have a very active blog and Facebook friend page. I run contests, talk about my favorite TV shows, what I collect, what drives me crazy. I ramble a bit. I’m doing it right now. But if you’d like to learn more about me and what I’m doing or writing about, be sure to check out the “About Delilah Devlin” page after the story.

  And if you enjoy this story, please consider leaving a review on your favorite retail site or simply tell a friend. Readers do influence other readers. We have to trust someone to tell us whether we’ll have fun when we open a new story!

  Sincerely,

  Delilah Devlin

  Visit www.DelilahDevlin.com for more titles and release dates, and subscribe to Delilah’s newsletter at newsletter.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Book

  From the Author

  Zombie Love

  About Delilah Devlin

  Night Fall Series

  Excerpt from Night Fall on Dark Mountain

  Zombie Love

  ‡

  No one knew where the infection began. However, rumors abounded. It was a government experiment gone awry. Or an ancient plague released by melting icecaps. If anyone knew, they weren’t saying. Before long, no one cared about its origin. We were too busy trying to survive in our new world.

  A bite…a kiss…was all it took to change everything. We eyed our neighbors with suspicion, held our families close, until, one by one, they were struck. The contagion spread, leading to panicked looting and murder. Businesses and homes boarded up windows, locked doors. Travel was limited. Curfews enforced. Silence settled over cities, interrupted only by the rattle of gunfire or the screams of sirens. Haunting but distant—someone else’s tragedy, until it arrived in your home. And then how did one face the horror? Well, there were regulations to follow, specific entities to inform. However, I chose a different path from everyone else I knew. One I hoped I wouldn’t regret.

  Over the long weeks since Danny’s infection, I noted the mindless roars lessened in their intensity. He ceased slamming his fists and head against the walls and thick Plexiglas until they were bloody. His features, though coarser than they’d been before, and gray-tinged, were no longer frightening. Bruising faded. Split lips, cheekbones, and knuckles healed.

  The clumsy jerking motions he made as he moved around the space where we’d trapped him eased into something less inhuman. Still unsteady on his feet, he used his hands to push off the walls or press against the ceiling to keep the wavering from sending him to his knees.

  Physically, he was improving. I recognized him now beneath the dirty clothes and scruffy beard. But his eyes still betrayed his savage soul. They gleamed red. The darkening of his irises, one frightening red fleck at a time, had been the first sign the disease had struck. Red had eventually consumed the brilliant blue.

  I’d defied the law, refusing to report him or quarantine myself, and instead, had locked him in the garage studio he’d built when he’d been an aspiring musician, but which now served as his prison cell.

  I’d watched the news as the disease continued to spread. The virus which caused an unending hunger for raw meat, turned law-abiding citizens into mindless murderers. At first, the sick had been quarantined in hospitals then prisons. When those reached capacity, the infected were loaded onto train boxcars and sent to internment camps, or so the government said, until a cure could be found.

  But rumors had started almost immediately that everyone who boarded those trains was destined to be “put down”—a humane solution, which protected the rest of the population. But still, the disease ran rampant.

  Businesses operated, but only because people needed basic commodities and the money to buy them. There was a military presence on every street corner.

  Hiding Danny had proven tricky. The need to purchase large quantities of fresh meat meant I spent a good part of the daylight traveling to grocers in other counties so that my buying habits weren’t noted. I couldn’t risk having my home raided and losing Danny.

  I’d do anything to protect him from extermination. No one knew whether the illness was reversible, but I was willing to wait, and hoped the signs of improvement that I noted every day in my journal weren’t just my wishful thinking. I’d loved him since high school—the shy girl who’d fallen for the bad boy rocker. The engagement ring he’d given me days before he’d become ill was hidden away in a drawer—something I pulled out when I wanted to remind myself why I was doing this.

  Today, his gaze followed me through the thick glass without blinking. The raw, intense hunger was tinged with something else. Regret perhaps? Was he remembering us?

  As I did every day, I unlocked the door to the studio and carried in a fresh set of comfortable clothing, a towel and washcloth, soap, and a tall pitcher of warm water.

  Unlike days past, he didn’t rush toward me only to be jerked back when he reached the end of his chain.

  I slid everything as close as I dared, and then backed away from the door, all the while holding his smoldering gaze. “Please bathe, Danny. I’ll bring you food in a little while.” I reached the door and turned the knob behind me. “I love you.”

  My life was reduced to this. Foraging for food. Cleaning the perimeter of the dirty enclosure where I kept him. He’d helped prepare his own prison, installing a toilet where the old mudroom sink had hung on the wall before he’d converted the space. Welding chain to a manacle and testing the length to ensure my safety when I entered. He’d removed his sound equipment and instruments. Placed a sturdy metal cot in the corner.

  The morning he’d woken, feeling as though he had the worst hangover ever and rushing to the fridge for the hamburger I’d thawed the night before, he’d recognized the signs.

  I’d awoken with him standing in the doorway, his eyes haunted.

  “What’s wrong?” I’d asked.

  He’d given me a tight smile, but then I’d noted the deep gray shadows beneath his eyes, the slick of perspiration on his forehead. The reddening irises. “Danny?” I’d asked, sitting up on my elbows as my stomach roiled.

  No, it can’t be happening. Not to us. We’d done everything right. We’d stayed clear of quarantined areas. Used our own vehicles rather than public transportation to get back and forth to work. We never drank after one another. Didn’t eat out in restaurants where we couldn’t watch the cutlery and plates being sterilized. Didn’t kiss.

  “How?” I’d asked, my throat thickening with tears.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, baby. But I have to go. I’ll walk to the center. Turn myself in. I won’t tell them where I live, but you’ll need to sanitize when I’m gone.”

  My stomach tightened in rejection. “You aren’t going there.”

  His sweet smile stretched, although his eyes watered with unshed tears. “
I don’t have any choice. I’m already scared to death I may have infected you.”

  I shook my head, the back of my throat burning. “You know what they say about those places. I won’t ever see you again.”

  He spread his hands and gripped the doorframe, his head bowed. “I love you, Trish.” Then he backed away from the door.

  I threw back the covers. “No! We’ll find another way. Wait this out. They’ll find a treatment.”

  But he walked away, down the hallway toward the front door.

  I scrambled from the bed and followed. Before he reached the door, I encircled his waist with my arms and held him back. “Don’t do this. Stay with me. We’ll find a way to keep me safe. You still have a little time.”

  While he’d finished the raw hamburger and I’d drank a pot of hot coffee, we’d conspired. By the end of the day, I’d hit the hardware store two counties over, and he’d cleared his beloved studio.

  That hug at the doorway was the last time I’d touched him.

  I locked the door and walked around to the glass. The pile of clothing was where I’d left it. My gaze shot to Danny. He hadn’t torn the clothing to shreds as he had every time I placed a fresh stack inside his cage since the illness had taken his mind.

  Instead as I watched, my eyes filling, he hobbled toward it. He shucked the grimy, blood-encrusted sweatpants he’d worn since he’d slipped the manacle around his own wrist. He bent and picked up the washcloth and clumsily soaked it in the water, rubbed it on the soap, and began to wash.

  The fact he could think through the process of cleaning himself made me sob.

  The sound must have penetrated the glass because his dark gaze found mine. His features were still cast in a dull, emotionless mask, but his red eyes told another story. He was there. A glimmer of my lover was fighting to come back.

  I smiled at him, dashing away my tears, and walked toward the glass to press my splayed fingers there. “I’ll wait,” I said. “I’m still here. I won’t give up.”

  *

  This day, I was followed home. Although I’d been careful to hit a new store and to wind my way home keeping to back roads, I spotted the nondescript car parked in a distant neighbor’s driveway where a car shouldn’t be. That neighbor had been taken away weeks ago.

  I left the meat in the trunk, not wanting to unpack until it was dark in case I was being watched. Maybe I was paranoid, but the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

  Pretending unconcern, I stopped to check the mail in the box beside my door and took my time unlocking the front door. I betrayed nothing furtive—not a glance over my shoulder or a deepening breath. Once inside, I stood beside my living room window and lifted a slat in my blinds to take a look.

  The driver’s side door opened. A tall man in familiar dark cargo pants, a long-sleeved black shirt, and with a holster strapped to his thigh, stepped out, his gaze locked on my house.

  My heartbeat thundered against my chest. My mind raced. What mistake had I made? Who might have reported me? Someone at work? Had my fatigue, my constant jumpiness given us away? I backed away from the window. I picked up a remote and turned on the stereo, upping the volume. Should he knock at my door, I’d pretend I hadn’t heard.

  I raced to the garage.

  The moment I entered my gaze found Danny’s staring back at me.

  He sat on his cot. An astounding fact since he’d overturned it and flung it against the wall the first day I’d refused to free him. It had stayed in a far corner ever since, forgotten.

  He looked better. His hair was clean. His body free of grime and gore. He’d piled his dirty clothing and the linens he’d used to bathe himself in the same spot where I’d left the clean stack. They were folded haphazardly, but the effort he’d made was apparent. He really was becoming more organized in his thoughts.

  I raised my hand against the window, and then lowered my forehead against the cool glass. “We’ve run out of time.”

  Shuffling footsteps drew near. Although my head was lowered, I caught the movement of his hand. I glanced up to find him spreading his fingers over the spot where mine were pressed—only the Plexiglas between us.

  “Whaaaa” he said, his lips twisting then firming.

  Was he trying to speak? “What’s wrong?” I guessed.

  He gave a harsh nod.

  There wasn’t time to rejoice at the fact he was communicating. “Someone’s here. An enforcer. I’m afraid he knows.”

  His eyes closed for a moment, and then opened. Regret shone in his gleaming eyes. “Tiiime.”

  “We’re out of time.” I nodded. “We came so close.” My voice wavered at the end, edged with a shaky sob.

  He shook his head and raised the manacled arm. “Tiiime.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not ready.”

  “Nnnnow.”

  My mind stilled. He was speaking—after a fashion. His emotions weren’t wild and raw. What other choice did I have but to free him? If the enforcer saw him like he was now, he’d call in an extraction team. Danny would be gone, and I’d be jailed for failing to report.

  “I’m afraid,” I said, meeting his gaze. Afraid to free him. Afraid that if I didn’t, he’d be killed.

  He bent his head and touched his forehead to the glass; his gaze bored into mine. “I…sssstill.”

  What did he mean? That he’d hold still? Or that he was still my Danny?

  The doorbell rang in the distance. I was out of time.

  I scurried to the studio door, unlocked it, then pulled the key from my pocket and held it up.

  Danny slowly raised the manacled arm and stepped closer. He’d either lunge for me and take a bite, or…

  He held still.

  I unlocked his cuff then took a deep breath and turned slowly on my heel. My shoulders tight, I walked away, aware of the shuffling steps following behind me.

  I walked into the short corridor, through the kitchen, where I grabbed sunglasses from the purse on the counter and a beer from the fridge, which I opened and poured into a towel and then used to blot Danny’s face.

  He grimaced, but didn’t move. Not even when I placed the sunglasses on his face. I grabbed his hand and led him to the living room, shoving him gently into an armchair. I put the beer bottle in his hand and leaned close. “Don’t speak,” I whispered, and then hurried to the door.

  The moment I unlocked the door, the man in the black uniform shoved past me.

  “Excuse me?” I said, stepping into his path and lifting my chin.

  “Step aside, ma’am. I’m with enforcement.”

  I didn’t like the coldness in his features or his flinty eyes. “You can’t just invade my home. I still have rights.”

  His unblinking gaze landed on me, felt heavy, as though he were pushing on the top of my head. “I have the right to inspect any dwelling,” he said, his words clipped.

  “But why here?” I asked, not wanting to antagonize him, but I needed to keep his attention on me. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Leave herrr beee,” came a low, rumbling growl from behind me.

  I held my breath as the enforcer’s gaze shot past me.

  His eyes narrowed. “Sir, would you please stand up?”

  Danny set his beer beside his chair then slowly pushed off the seat. He was taller than the enforcer, and swayed only slightly. “Hell of headache,” Danny said slowly.

  “He has a hangover,” I blurted. “Try not to speak too loudly. He gets pissy when he’s drunk.”

  The man walked closer, his gaze locking on the sunglasses. His nostrils flared as he sniffed.

  But he could only smell soap and beer. Not the sweet almond. I knew because I sniffed too.

  Danny’s lax expression hardened. His mouth lifted in a one-sided snarl.

  “Seriously, you’re welcome to look around,” I blurted, getting more nervous by the second, “but it’s just us.”

  The enforcer glanced at me, and then back at Danny, who stood so still I couldn’t detect a breath. �
��Be sure to keep your doors locked. This whole area is red-zoned now. Infected areas surround this subdivision. You might want to limit your driving. Or move into the green zone.”

  “Thanks for your concern. I’m just not ready to leave my home. Not yet,” I murmured, quivering with relief as he turned and stomped toward the front door.

  I shot Danny a charged glance before following the enforcer to the door. Once he was outside, I turned the bolt then slowly faced Danny, unsure of what I’d unleashed.

  I pulled up sharp when I realized he’d moved closer. His hand reached out, touched my shoulder then my hair.

  “The glasses, Danny,” I said, my teeth chattering. I needed to see his eyes to be reassured the savage gleam wasn’t darkening again.

  His head dipped.

  Reaching up slowly, I took off the glasses and let them fall to the floor beside me. I hadn’t stood this close to him in forever, so close the air warmed between our bodies.

  His fingers clenched around my shoulder a little too hard.

  I winced. “That hurts, Danny.”

  His features hardened. “Lllock meee.” He shuffled backward and turned, swaying so hard he nearly fell. Then he lurched toward the kitchen.

  I followed him into the garage where he walked to the studio door. His hand pawed at the knob, but couldn’t quite grasp it.

  Sensing his growing frustration, and fearing it would escalate to anger, I patted his arm. “Let me,” I said, doing my best not to show my trepidation as I stepped between him and the door and twisted the knob.

  Once inside, he held himself erect as I returned the manacle to his wrist. “I’ll bring you food,” I whispered.

  *

  Two more days passed. I skipped work, calling to reassure them I was fine. I didn’t want another visit from enforcement.

  I hadn’t slept well the night before. I’d avoided Danny’s cage, feeding him, but then claiming fatigue so I could leave quickly.

  Watching him, not being able to touch him without fear, was taking a toll. I missed him. And the more his appearance returned to normal, the more I fought my desire to draw closer. But I couldn’t be sure I was safe. His hair was shaggy, and I longed to comb it, but just because he’d somehow restrained himself to behave when the enforcer had threatened our safety didn’t mean he was fully in control.