Turned: A Spine-Chilling Young Adult Apocalyptic Fiction (The Undead Series, Book 1) (16 page)

The rich green grass was abundant with yellow dandelions that immediately irked me as we busted out of the house. Their happiness and freedom was unfair if you ask me. The thunder rolled and far off in the distance, a lightning bolt struck down from the dark sky.

We made our way to the car as quickly as possible, and locked the doors once inside. I stuck the keys in the ignition and turned, but the car did not start.

“Shit!” I screamed, and turned it for a second and third attempt. The car would not even turn over.

“Oh my God,” Em moaned. “What are we going to do now?”

“We’re going to have to run,” I replied, looking up at the house and sensing movement come from it. Em followed my gaze up to the house and we both stared at the front door.

“Did you hear something?” she asked. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t take my eyes off the house. I stuck my key back in the ignition, but still nothing happened. I slammed my head down on the steering wheel.

“Fuck!” I growled. I was just about to get out of the car and look under the engine when Em shrieked.

“Oh my God!” she whined, but I didn’t pull my head up from the steering wheel. I couldn’t. Retta, it’s him!” she screamed again, and I pulled my head up to see Jasper limping out of the front door covered in blood with his gun in his hand and a grin on his face. He limped all the way to the driver’s side of the car and stared at me. He carried no gun and I wondered why.

“You’re a little ungrateful bitch,” he said calmly.

“We’re going to die!” Em moaned. I looked over at her with dark eyes.

“No…we’re not.” I replied doggedly. I couldn’t let Em wither away in weakness, and let Jasper kill us. I turned toward the window to face him.

“Leave us the fuck alone!” I barked. Jasper shook his head no.

“Oh Retta…if you would have just listened. I would have taken care of you! But now…now you’re ruining my whole plan. So now I’m going to have to kill you…well, not me.” He turned to face the back of the house.

“What is he doing?” Em cried.

“I don’t know,” I replied. As soon as I said that, I saw Ethan and the other zombie turn the corner of the house and lurk towards the car.

“Don’t scream too loud,” Jasper added as he walked towards the front door of the house. “They like it when you scream, and that would make too good of a movie for me.” With that, he walked up the stairs to the house and into the front door, locking the storm door behind him. I watched as he pulled out a camcorder and focused it on the zombies. He was going to record our gruesome deaths so that he could watch it whenever he wanted. This was so similar to the nightmare I had a few nights before.

“Run!” I screamed at Em, as I threw the door open and jumped out. Em, who took a second to absorb my commands, jumped out of the car after me and ran as fast as her body would let her…which wasn’t fast enough. She fell down to the ground almost ten feet from the gate, and pulled herself like an inchworm towards me. The zombies weren’t far behind us.

I struggled with the lock to the gate. I couldn’t find the key to it. The zombies were getting closer and closer to Em who was still struggling on the ground.

“Jesus Christ!” I screamed as I continued to struggle with the lock. I looked behind me to see the zombies closing in on Em.

“Oh my God!” she screamed in terror, as she attempted to pull herself off the ground. She was so weak. “Help me…dear God help me!”

But it was too late. The first zombie bent down and fell onto Em, taking a large bite out of the back of her thigh. Ethan followed after the first zombie, but didn’t stop at Em, he kept walking towards me.

The bloodcurdling screams from Em were deafening. I began to sob and pushed back towards the gate and slid down to the ground holding my belly. I didn’t mean to, but my body felt like a ton of concrete.

As Ethan limped closer to me, I watched the first zombie dip down and take another mouthful out of Em’s leg. Em moaned and groaned and screamed for a higher power to save her as the flesh and guts were ripped from her body. All I could do was stare in horror at the gruesome scene before me. The woman who risked her life so that I’d survive was getting shredded apart because of me. I felt my head shake violently from left to right. I couldn’t control it. My world turned red. I wouldn’t have been surprised if at that very moment, it began raining blood.

I barely heard the sounds behind me, but I turned around just in time to see five more zombies closing in on the gate. I jumped to my feet and away from the fence and turned back around to see Ethan less than ten feet from me. If I had a weapon, I wouldn’t have been so afraid…but I didn’t, because Jasper had hid them all. I ran a circle around the yard as Ethan bobbed greedily behind me.

I ran back towards the house in an attempt to lock myself in the car, but slipped at the end of the yard and fell onto the driveway. The cement cut my knee open and I crawled the rest of the way to the car. I barely got in before Ethan plastered his body up against the door, and zombie grime coated the windows. He stared gluttonously into my eyes as he attempted to bite his way through the glass. I looked up at the door to the house and there Jasper still stood, filming the scene before him.

One of them was going to kill me, and I knew it now. I was either going to get eaten by Ethan, or murdered by Jasper. I looked back at Ethan whose bloody teeth continued to scrape the window. I was…we were…completely trapped.

No matter what I did, I was going to die right now, right here in this car by one of my lovers when I was so close to salvation…and so was my baby, who had been conceived out of a tortuous rape by a monster.

The saddest part of it all, I thought, as Ethan’s teeth screeched on the glass, was that one day, when the population was restored, no one would ever know that Jasper murdered his brother, his pregnant fiancé and her unborn child. They’ll never know that he created the zombie virus that turned earth’s population into flesh-eating monsters. One day, the devil behind the door would be praised for restoring humanity, and the world would never know that he first destroyed it. I looked down at my belly again and wrapped both hands around my nearly non-existent bump that held my child.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I said, as I rubbed back and forth. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Look out for the next Undead novel, Thyra’s Curse, coming August 2015.

Kaylee Rae is an American writer who delivers raw apocalyptic thrillers, captivating paranormal romances and sexy suspense novels for voracious young adult readers.
Turned
is her first published fiction piece. She also writes non-fiction pieces on business, marketing, writing, and self-development, as well as coaches other aspiring authors on writing and marketing their own books. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband and two sons.

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