Trapped: Expanded Edition

Prologue

He saw the blood on his hands first—a deep maroon almost beautiful in the way it coated his fingers, glistening in the moonlight.

He looked down at himself—turning over his arm, checking his chest, and touching his neck to see where the blood had come from, and he saw traces of it on his shirt.

He almost panicked, wondering if he had been shot or stabbed and why he didn’t feel any pain.

Then he began examining the rest of himself—his legs and his back.

It was the smell that got him—a rancid whiff from nearby.

His eyes finally rested on the obvious source of the blood that his still-foggy brain had trouble processing.

He studied the glassy eyes of the human casing left behind by a clearly departed soul, and the carelessness of the flung arm. All of the dead man’s limbs were almost doll-like in their positioning, and the head was bent at an angle, away from the bloody wound at its neck. The midsection, where the man’s intestines had once been safely contained, now gaped, and the intestines spilled onto the moonlit ground, lubricated in a deep crimson. The chewed ends indicated that they had been partially eaten.

Derek put his hand to his mouth and felt something slick around it.

Blood, he guessed, and then tasted it and confirmed it.

But surely not from the body in front of him? Perhaps he had slipped and fallen? Right into the pool of blood surrounding the body?

Derek shook his head, trying to shake off the other possibility making its way to his consciousness.

No, no, no.

Why would he? He was no animal. And even if he had blacked out, wouldn’t he remember some part of it? The initial encounter? The source or a remnant of the depraved desire that led to the mangled body splayed nearby?

Then it all began coming back to him…

Part I

Love in the Time of Zombies

Chapter One

Escape

Steven managed to calm himself during his drive by running over what he had been told about the virus and the outbreak in his head, the voices and words on replay, acting as some sort of salve.

They will be depersonalized, he had been told. The individual who had lived before will cease to exist as brain damage wipes away their character, their personality. Eventually, they will become almost like automatons.

Steven observed the landscape: skeletons of all types—metal, brick, and human—were everywhere. Healthy bodies attacked and relieved of flesh by the famished, diseased Morphs had by now been picked clean by scavengers—vultures and coyotes had happily moved in.

Even some of those animals were now dead from having feasted on a diseased body that had fallen from murder or suicide.

The higher cerebral functions get reduced, leaving the more primitive parts.

The first wave of military responses had been a disaster. Local cops and soldiers found out the hard way that while keeping the peace was easier in the daytime, it was beyond life-threatening at night. No matter how many of them were armed and ready, the rabid diseased were plentiful, hungry, and emboldened by night. The defense teams didn’t really know what they were in for and it had worked against them.

You won’t be able to tell all of the infected immediately—like other diseases, the infection doesn’t manifest itself the same way in everyone.

Ending up with sick armed policemen and soldiers turned out to be a very bad idea.

Forces had to be pulled back as regrouping for the defense plan took place, but it was too late—the virus spread faster and faster.

Most people show telltale symptoms within hours. At first, it looks like the flu, but later, discolorations occur in the eyes, the skin, and on the tongue—which, hopefully, one does not get close enough to see. The face may begin to sag in parts, the connective tissue no longer functioning as it should.

Human trials had been running for a while, and the virus now acted just as the scientists and engineers wanted; it had all the desired effects and behaved within all their time parameters. Everyone had been so damned proud.

Still, some of the infected will look almost fine until nearly the end at the turnover point when they become famished, bloodthirsty monsters. There will be no doubt when this stage is reached.

The experiment had been a success—every aspect of the new weapon had been controlled—except for the part where it slipped out into the public without their knowledge.

As for the victim, symptoms begin with a headache and fever. Later, nausea and vomiting may occur.

Initially, everyone was advised to stay inside no matter what, or to quickly get inside and lock up if they weren’t already indoors. They were warned to stay away from anyone who looked sick in any way.

It was the best advice—necessary to keep the healthy safe from the infected for a time—until things could be figured out. But, of course, everyone wouldn’t listen. There was always some bullheaded asshole putting everyone else in danger, wasn’t there?

Some people left to buy food and guns, and some of those folks never made it back home.

A sensitivity to light eventually sets in, as well as an aversion to liquids. The victim becomes churlish before they appear to zone out completely. They become almost vacant until they come alive again, ready for your blood.

Some people stayed inside, but some also answered their doors to someone in distress, unknowingly allowing an infected person in.

Soon, hotels, hospitals, and schools became packed with hope and easy meals for the diseased.

They feast only on the healthy—they are repelled by others who are infected. They may team up in packs, but they do not turn on each other. They can even sniff out the disease in someone newly infected.

San Diego County: Ground Zero.

Containment efforts weren’t turning out well in other states either. Only a few havens of health remained—some forts and other government buildings—and the healthy people in those fortresses wanted to keep it that way.

A person who is immune, however—even if the disease manages to get a hold of him or her for a short while—is fair game to the infected. We figure the immune smell different from those who will completely succumb.

Steven smiled to himself.

It had been so easy to convince the authorities to let him out to gather intelligence, and possibly, a few survivors.

I know you think San Diego’s a wasteland, but I know about a few pockets of guarded life. Let me do a quick check; I’ll be in and out in a few days. And then the clincher: I know where there could be more of what you need.

The good news was that such an outbreak was unprecedented and, ultimately, people didn’t really know what to do.

While Steven had hoped a more uniformed, orderly response would have occurred in such a situation, the reality was that, like the civilians, the authorities—including officers and scientists—panicked, and even worse, politics ended up getting in the way of common sense: disagreements when it came to ranks, bureaus, and jurisdiction. Several agencies got caught with their pants down, and the virus spread before they knew what was happening.

Now, no real protocol was being followed anymore—only theories being tested and failing. Lots of regrouping while the virus was reproducing.

They are contagious the minute infection sets in. Once a symptom appears, the victim should be put down.

Steven had stuck to his duty at first—examining the land, gathering intelligence, and taking down the infected people he had encountered along the way—but he had some personal business to take care of; he couldn’t go on without doing so.

He had hoped to save both of his friends, but for one of them, it was too late.

Please let her be okay, he thought as he pulled up to the familiar apartment building, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.

Serena cowered more as the thunderous knocking came again—even harder than the previous bout of pounding. Surely the door would come off its hinges with that kind of force.

Serena, open up! the masculine voice behind it said. If you’re in there and you don’t open up in the next twenty seconds, I’m literally going to blow the door away, so stand away from it!

Serena recognized the voice that had been shouting at her for the past half a minute, and all the logic she had left told her that it was safe to open her door to the man behind it since there was no way he was there to harm her. He had been sent to help her, no doubt. He might have even found her husband.

A surge of hope gave her the energy to force herself to unwind from her balled up position against the wall, exhaling a weak, Coming! as she headed for the door.

She peeked through the peephole to confirm identity and saw a familiar dirty-blond head with a worked-up reddish face staring back at the door as if trying to see through it.

Serena slowly opened the door to him.

Steven let out an unabashed breath of relief as his sky-colored eyes took her in, and his arms relaxed momentarily.

Come with me, he said, his words immediately more gentle as he indicated the way with what looked like an AK-47.

Serena couldn’t help thinking how much he looked like a blond, blue-eyed Rambo now—his muscular, capable arms flexing as they moved, his oceanic eyes confident and commanding.

Serena knew little about guns, but the rifle he held reminded her of what she had seen in news images from mass shootings when that particular weapon was mentioned.

Steven was also visibly strapped with other weapons, a Glock among them, and she guessed that more were hidden underneath his clothes.

She recognized the Glock because it was the one weapon she was a bit familiar with—Steven had given both her and her husband gun lessons a few years ago using one like it.

Serena also knew that there was absolutely no room for refusal or doubt given Steven’s military history, so she obeyed immediately, fighting the desire to hug him, although she wasn’t sure why—the two of them had sort of become friends through her husband, striking up an easy friendship as if they, too, had known each other from school days. They even had an ongoing rivalry and battle-of-wits with the Words With Friends game whenever he was in town, both of them pretending to be the master strategist, although she beat him just about every time.

Plus, Serena hadn’t seen another human in over a week since her husband left to find food for them, and before that, it had been just her and her husband for the month and a half since the world was hit by what appeared to be a zombie-like outbreak.

All telecommunications went down soon after the haunting government messages and warnings about the breakout came screeching through televisions and phones, and weeks later, she and her husband had both been about to starve to death, having eaten and drunk everything from the cupboards and fridge of their fifth-floor apartment unit.

Serena had had plans to go grocery shopping the next day, having put it off for over a week before the government warnings came in, and now it was suddenly too late for any of them to safely leave their home.

She and Gregory successfully managed their supplies for a few weeks before he got worried.

Serena jokingly reminded him that she had successfully completed the Master Cleanse twice in the past and could handle