Thicker than Blood
Read Thicker than Blood Online
Authors: Madeline Sheehan
Tags: #Friendship, #zombies, #Dark, #thriller suspense, #Dystopian, #undead apocalypse, #apocalypse romance, #apocalypse fiction survival, #madeline sheehan, #undeniable series
by
Madeline Sheehan
and
Claire C. Riley
Thicker Than Blood
Copyright © 2015
by Madeline Sheehan and Claire C. Riley
Smashwords Version
ISBN #9781311704160
Edited by Pam Berehulke
Cover by Okay Creations
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment
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If you would like to share this book with another person, please
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respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products
of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is
purely coincidental.
Sneak Peek:
Beneath Blood and
Bone
Excerpt:
The Beautiful Dead
by Daryl Banner
Leisel and Evelyn lost everything. Husbands.
Families. Friends. Lives that made sense. All they had left was
each other, and a friendship that could withstand anything…
Even an apocalypse.
Until one fateful night, the marginal safety they’d
come to rely on comes to a vicious and brutal end. With the help of
Alex and Jami, both unlikely allies, Leisel and Evelyn are able to
escape their shattered sanctuary only to find themselves
face-to-face with a much altered, much crueler life where they have
to find the way—and the will—to stay alive in a world they no
longer recognize.
Traveling across a broken and infection-ridden
country, the road-weary group is pitted against endless violence,
improbable circumstances, and the ultimate loss.
Everything comes at a price, especially safety, the
cost of which could very well strip them of the one thing they’ve
tried so hard to cling to—their humanity.
Yet along with all the trials they’re forced to
endure, there’s also hope in the form of love. Having loved Leisel
from afar, Alex attempts to put the pieces of her fractured heart
back together.
But in such a savage world, is there room for
love?
In a place of nightmares-made-reality, where the
living should be feared far more than the dead, an unbreakable
friendship and a love against all odds can mean the difference
between life and death.
There are friends…
and then there are Leisel and Evelyn.
To always having someone to rely on, a person in your
corner to fight for you no matter the reason, no matter the
cost.
To having more than a friend, more than a sister, but
a soul mate.
To the hope they give us, the strength they provide
us, and the unconditional love they empower us with.
To best friends.
The zombie apocalypse didn’t happen like it does in
the movies.
Disaster didn’t strike when we weren’t
looking. No, we were all looking. We were all waiting. It was a
slow trickle that began with a nightly news broadcast. Yet another
disease, another epidemic, was sweeping through the third world
with crippling effects, decimating entire villages within mere
days. The Vaal Fever they’d called it, and it took no mercy on its
victims. Men, women, and children alike were ravaged by the
disease, and most perished as a result.
Only, they didn’t stay dead.
They awoke and attacked the survivors,
spreading the virus through both their saliva and blood. And what
could we do? Like all the other pandemics we’d lived through, we
could do nothing but hope that the Centers for Disease Control
could put a stop to it, or that the armed forces would protect us
and ensure it wouldn’t spread. So we hoped and we waited, trying
not to worry.
We went about our daily lives. Like usual, we
woke up every morning, we went to work and to school, we continued
talking, laughing, living. But in the back of our minds, we were
waiting. Seven billion people were all waiting.
That slow trickle grew, becoming a flood as
more reports streamed in from all over the world. As a nation, we
stayed glued to our radios, to our televisions, to the Internet,
watching helplessly as the pandemic continued to spread. After
that, governments worldwide took aggressive action to stop the
disease from entering their countries. Airports shut down, shipping
companies refused to sail, importing and exporting were no
more.
Then the floodgates broke, and we learned the
truth.
There was no treatment. There was no
cure.
Africa was the first to succumb, then China,
and Russia quickly followed. Suddenly our usually busy, bustling
lives came to a standstill. Supermarkets and drug stores began
limiting bulk purchases, generators were suddenly in great demand,
and people had begun wearing face masks. Others stopped going to
work altogether, refusing to leave their homes in order to avoid
any sort of contact with other people.
When we got word that the disease had found
its way to Europe and South America, panic—birthed from fear and
helplessness—turned to violence. The American army wasn’t big
enough, wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t prepared enough for the sheer
magnitude of the public outcry. Because of their lack of planning,
a civil war broke out between the army and the citizens they were
meant to protect.
As a result, entire cities went down in
flames before the disease had even reached American soil. But when
it did, when the first American fell to his knees, the government
was ill prepared for the fallout and the sickness spread like
wildfire. Indiscriminate, it took the weak, the strong, the young,
and the old.
Before long, news reports and radio
broadcasts were no more. The airwaves were filled with nothing but
static. Our neighborhoods, our cities and states, the entire
country, the whole world—all went silent.
When the world awoke again, it awoke with a
rattling groan that promised only misery and loss.
And eventually death.
Leisel
There was blood everywhere—on the bed, on the walls,
on the floor. Some had even managed to find its way to the
ceiling.
I looked down at my red-stained hands, at my
naked body. It was all over me, coating the pale freckled skin on
my arms, torso, legs, and feet. It was everywhere.
I hadn’t seen so much blood in one place
in…well, not in the past four years since I’d been living in this
sanctuary from the outside world.
A small, manic laugh escaped my dry and
scratchy throat, bubbling past my lips. A sanctuary? Well, it might
be for most, but that wasn’t the case for everyone, and least of
all for me.
This place, Fredericksville, a once small and
quiet town, and my current home, was one of the last known
functioning towns left in the country. And for all intents and
purposes, it was a safe place to live. Families survived within,
protected by fortified walls and guarded by armed men who kept us
safe from the numerous threats from outside. We had a leader, one
man, and a council of sorts composed of a small group of men who
created our laws. Together they devised a system of checks and
balances to keep the peace.
Everyone had a job to do, determined by
whatever skills one possessed in the old world. Women who could sew
were still sewing, and teachers like myself were still teaching.
Men who could build were still building, chefs were still cooking,
farmers were still farming, police were still policing, soldiers
were still fighting, officials were still officiating.
And our leader…
I looked up, away from my bloodied skin
and across the dimly lit room to where an equally naked and
bloodied body lay still on the bed. My husband, Lawrence Whitney,
the leader of our community…was now dead and no longer
leading.
Another laugh bubbled up and my eyes began to
water. I’d killed my husband, a man who wasn’t just a man but was
the man in charge, the most powerful man in my world. And no matter
how broken this world might be, murder was still a crime, at least
behind these walls, and subsequently punishable by death.
There would be no trial, no defense
attorney to help me present my tale of woe to a jury of my peers,
to showcase the bruises, new and old, that covered my body. No one
would help me explain the real reason why my visits to the
infirmary were more frequent than most, why I often had one arm in
a sling, why sunglasses always hid my eyes, and why I could
occasionally be seen
hobbling on a pair of crutches.
When it came to committing murder in this new
world, the only thing one had to look forward to was death. Without
the resources or space to house a long-term prison, the people of
Fredericksville had little choice but to quickly and efficiently
end the lives of their violent offenders.
I’d known this, and still I’d allowed my
emotions to get the better of me. Allowed my pain to cloud my
judgment. Allowed my fear to take control, to rear its ugly head
and end the source of my misery, my prison, once and for all.
Oh God, why? Why had I done this, and here in
our home of all places? There was no escape, no running and hiding
from this mess I’d made. Not within the confines of a walled town,
surrounded by armed men. The very same men who would be at our door
at the first sign of morning light, ready to escort my husband on
his daily duties, only to find him brutally murdered. And me, the
bloodstained and obvious culprit.
If they didn’t kill me outright, I would be
taken into custody immediately, not allowed to see or speak to
anyone. Within an hour of my apprehension, my crime would be known
to all. Word traveled fast in such a small community, especially
one with little in the way of modern entertainment. There was no
television to be watched, no cell phones to keep us busy, and what
little electricity that was harnessed from the nearby river was
used solely for communication purposes within Fredericksville,
lighting the community buildings, and providing a small amount of
refrigeration in the cookhouse. Face-to-face gossip was our only
source of entertainment, because it was all we had left.