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  This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Eve Brenner – Zombie Experiment

  Copyright © 2016 by Alessia Giacomi

  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.

  Cover Artist and Formatting by Dreams2media

  Edited by EAL Editing Services

  Published by:

  CHBB Publishing LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

  any means without written permission of the author.

  This book is dedicated to my mother. Perhaps the strongest woman I know. She is my constant reminder that all is possible through sheer will, persistence, and faith. If there were words to thank her, I would, but since there aren’t I will simply say I love you more.

  “The true man wants two things: danger and play.

  For that reason, he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”

  ― Friedrich Nietzsche

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  PART 1: ZOMBIES DON’T CRY

  CHAPTER ONE

  MRS. JANE BRENNER

  Abandoning my bed sheets I slither out of bed slowly and silently so as not to wake Tom. He had suffered enough and didn’t need to know that his wife would slip out every night to visit their dead daughter’s bedroom. I had made it into a nightly ritual since being given the news that Eve had passed. Eventually, Tom begged me to stop, that he couldn’t bear the reminder, so I promised him I would stop, the promise was enough to calm him, but it wasn’t enough to soothe the empty space in my heart. So after a few months of pacing back and forth, I abandoned the promise I had made him and began to sneak off in the middle of the night.

  I tip toe down the hallway toward Eve’s room. The door is closed and I run my hand along it lovingly as if it were Eve. I carefully turn the doorknob and enter the room, sealing the door behind me. I begin to breathe again once I’m inside the room, with a long deep breath. I had been trying so hard to be silent that I forgot that breathing was necessary.

  My fingers find the edge of Eve’s dresser and I run my hand along it wiping any dust away. My hands shake as I reach for the drawers and pull out some of her clothing. They still smell like her, I thought, as I hold the clothes up to my face and inhale her. The scent allowed me to imagine she was still here, and I lose myself to the illusion for a moment and think of her embracing me.

  When I pull the clothing away from my face, I find them soaked with tears. How long had I been sobbing into the garments? I had no idea. I quickly place them back in the drawer from whence they came. I didn’t want to contaminate her scent, but I feared I may have just done that.

  I head over to Eve’s bed and sit on it. A pillow calls to me and I hold it to me tightly praying that it would transform into my daughter, but it never did. In all the nights I had visited her room I had repeated the same wish, but it never came true, and my pain never left me for a moment. I simply learned to live with pain and regret. My regret came from not seeing Eve before she left, not being able to say goodbye to my baby girl was the worst feeling I could have ever known. Worse than the fact that my cancer had returned, worse than the fact that my husband had forgotten how to smile, and worse than mourning the fact that nothing was the same anymore. I just wanted the chance to say goodbye.

  I hold the pillow tightly and try to speak to it as if it were Eve. “Eve, I miss you so much,” I speak softly. I wouldn’t want to wake Tom or have him be witness to any of this.

  He would think me mad and commit me before daylight spilled over the house. Poor Tom simply couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to erase her, he found it much too painful to remember Eve, but I found it more painful to forget. Memory had to be honored, to be cherished, but any mention of Eve’s name would send Tom into a state of depression, so I stopped. I’ve not said her name out loud since. Now when we speak, I keep to topics such as the weather, the garden, the dog, my illness, and that was it. We had been reduced to this because we simply weren’t on the same page to communicate. Did this mean I loved him any less? God no! but I missed him, I missed us, I just missed the way we were.

  “Eve wherever you are, if you can hear me…I just want you to know that we love you very much. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to protect you from that fire, if I could go back and do things differently I would have come to the campus more, maybe I could have saved you, I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t matter now, I will see you soon enough and we’ll both need to watch over Dad, he’s going to be so lonely without us.”

  The thought of Tom alone day in day out practically kills me right then and there. I didn’t want to do this to him; it was so unfair that he would lose everyone, even poor Winston was getting quite old. Poor little pup would outlive me, but not Tom.

  I place the pillow back down on Eve’s bed and adjust the sheets so that they looked perfect once more. I walk back over to Eve’s dresser and open another drawer. This time, I find a tee-shirt to sniff, when I pull it out of the drawer I notice something, I could have sworn I saw a red glow, but it halts so quickly that I must have imagined it.

  There, tucked between Eve’s clothing, is a small envelope. I frantically grab it and hold it to my chest, a piece of Eve had been hiding in here and I had been too full of grief to go through any of her stuff. Perhaps there was more?

  When I feel brave enough, I bring the envelope into view but notice that it’s not addressed to me. Instead, it simply says “Cam”, but of course, it would say, Cam, she loved him dearly. My thoughts race toward a wedding that would never happen, grandkids that I would never meet, and I’m heartbroken.

  I want to open it, but my manners prevent me. If it wasn’t addressed to me I couldn’t very well open it. I needed Cam.

  Tomorrow I would call Alex and tell her to convince him to come home. I hadn’t seen him in nearly two years and perhaps it was time for goodbyes as well. I wasn’t getting any better, and I wasn’t going to. Th
e only time that was certain was right now! I’d be damned if I was going to die without knowing what was in this envelope. I simply had to know!

  CHAPTER TWO

  EVE

  Watching Cam and Alex drive away to Little Lake cemetery dressed in black mourning clothes leaves me feeling abandoned. My fists clench as the car becomes less and less visible, I should be going with them, but instead, I would have to walk and once there, I would have to remain hidden.

  Of course, CSIS would be looking for me, they would be monitoring my mother’s funeral, and I’m sure they were expecting me to lose all sort of rational and stupidly attend. Quite frankly I had thought about it, but Alex and Cam begged me not to make an appearance. They were, of course, right, a living dead girl is not something you want to see at a funeral. The dead are supposed to stay that way.

  I begin my walk towards the cemetery and am very cautious not to bump into anyone on the way there. I tuck my hair into my baseball cap so that I barely resemble a female in my black hoodie and dark jeans. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself, if anyone in town recognized me I would have to run, and I was so tired of running already. I wanted to stay put in town for a bit and let this whole thing blow over. I guess I was hoping that CSIS would forget all about me and stop hunting me. Part of me also wanted to tell my father everything. He needed me, and now that Mom was gone, I didn’t want him to feel so alone. Cam and Alex kept telling me to make an appearance and be open and honest with him, but I worried he’d have a heart attack and I’d be an orphan in the span of a week.

  What was I going to tell him anyway? “Hey, Dad! Funny story…I died, and then I came back as something else…a zombie actually.” I can hear the laughter in my own head.

  The word “zombie” sounded so stupid. They weren’t supposed to be real, but here I was Little Lakes’ very own zombie girl. I would make a rather cute mascot if I wasn’t absolutely terrifying when I fed. My arm wasn’t very appealing either. It had been getting worse, a bit of a green tinge to the skin from my wrist to my shoulder, and the original bite mark no longer healed, instead it looked black and oozy. I was constantly cleaning the wound and trying to keep it dry, but the rot was inevitable. Eventually, I would decay, that’s what zombies do, that’s what dead people do. The dead weren’t meant to walk the Earth, bodies just can’t hack it without functioning hearts, fresh blood, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Somehow I was still here, wishing I wasn’t.

  As I continue my walk toward the cemetery I spot a few cars and try to hide as they pass. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but extra caution seemed necessary if I wanted to make it to my mom’s funeral at all.

  It begins to rain as I continue along my extended route. I would have to enter the cemetery through the back entrance today. All eyes would be on the front gates as the hearse enters with mourners following close behind. I feel a twinge of pain in my chest as I think of my mother lying inside a box, but the pain was merely imagined, no heartbeat meant no actual possibility of heart palpitations.

  When I arrive at the back entrance of the cemetery I find that it is muddy and unwelcoming. I trudge through the mud making me appear all the more zombie-like and slow. I guess it wasn’t simply enough that I was rotting, or that my face looked as though it had never known rest, and my eyes, don’t even get me started on my eyes! They forced me to wear sunglasses to hide their inhuman glow.

  As I wander through the mud attempting to stay hidden amongst the trees and gravestones, I glimpse a sea of black ahead of me. My eyes scan the mourners and land on Cam immediately. It was as though he was staring back at me, which wasn’t possible since I was still too far back and extremely hidden in the distance. I watch as his arm encircles Alex who is weeping without sound. The agony on her face mirrored my own, yet I couldn’t cry as she did. I only felt anger. There was this feeling of rage building inside me, replacing the sorrow I should feel. My mother had been stolen, taken without consent, but death didn’t need anyone’s consent did it?

  My feet shuffle in the mud as I try to fight the urge to run up and join the rest of them. That urge grows stronger when I spot my father. He’s not standing around the open grave like the rest of them; he sits amongst the sea of black because his grief-stricken legs wouldn’t hold him. I spit at the injustice of it all and fight back tears. He had known happiness once, and it had all been stolen from him, I knew how that felt, I just wished he didn’t.

  The priest begins to speak as the casket begins to lower. I notice everyone is sobbing, but the two men standing behind my father. They were not family, they were not friends. From the look of their suits and sunglasses, I would say they were Agents. They were waiting for me to make an appearance. If only they knew how sorry I was to disappoint them. I had already promised Alex and Cam that I would stay hidden, and I would not place a heavier weight on their shoulders today by slaughtering two government agents.

  Everyone in attendance is asked to throw in a bit of dirt, a symbolic farewell to the woman who was my mother. My father does not participate; I suppose I would react the same way. I was angry too; I wouldn’t want to assist in burying her. Throwing dirt on her casket would mean accepting her demise, and there was no accepting this. You live with it, but you never accept it.

  The crowd begins to thin out after this. My father thanks, each attendee as they approach him. He gives a fake smile as he thanks them, just like my mother, polite through the pain. It seemed to be the Brenner motto.

  Then there were three. Alex, Cam, and my father stand over the grave site in silence. I want to run to them, but the CSIS men remain, and from the looks of it, they had brought back up. Several similar cars remain parked around my father’s car. Who knows how many men Vallincourt and Agent Williams had sent after me.

  The thought of Agent Williams makes me shudder. To think I had given myself to that man. I suddenly feel violently ill and clutch at my stomach thinking it’s guilt at first, but then realizing that it’s far more. My body shudders and contorts violently. It takes so much of my energy that I am forced to my knees. A million dagger-like sensations fill my stomach and I wretch until I vomit blood onto an older gravestone implanted in the ground. The name on the gravestone is now illegible and stained red. I try to be silent, but the vomiting continues.

  I land on the cool grass, allowing it to absorb my body and cradle me. The vomiting had ceased, but something new had dawned on me. I didn’t have much time left. Soon the Azrael Virus would take all that was left of me, and I still had much to do before that happened.

  My energy is low and my body fumbles to raise itself, but I force it along. There was no time to waste and I needed a meal in order to keep functioning. My nose leads me to a fast food joint’s drive through window. I walk straight up to it not caring about who lived and who died. I just needed to eat, now!

  I stand at the window as it opens. The young girl begins to hand me things without glancing over at me. It is not until I drop the items to the ground, creating a cola and fry puddle beneath me that she realizes that I’m not in a car, and I’m not interested in any sort of Meal Deal. Her eyes fill with terror as she looks at me, and her breath catches in her throat. Perhaps the scariest moment for me was that I didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt for what I was about to do. Before she can slam the button to close the drive-through window, my hands are on her collar. I drag her through the window and slam her onto the pavement. Her eyes roll around in her head disoriented from her head hitting the concrete. It would be easier for her this way.

  Without hesitation, I lower my face to her abdomen and begin to chew as her blood spurts and splatters everywhere. I hear the gushing sounds of victory and screams surrounding me. Perhaps they were hers, but I was too hungry to know for certain. A set of headlights find me and soon I am airborne. My body lands with a thud a few feet away from the drive through diner. My hip feels extremely crumpled from the landing, but other than that I simply feel hung
ry.

  The large man gets out of the car with its headlights still glaring at me.

  “You little bitch! What did you do? Why did you kill that young girl back there?”

  He spits on me while I remain shattered on the ground. I can tell that he wants to be the hero tonight, but he shakes as he speaks and so he should. I knew I would be healed momentarily and I’d be able to take him down. He sure looked deliciously plump and I lick my lips as I watch him pull out his phone and dial 911.

  “Did you just lick your lips at me? You’re one fucking gross psycho!” He spits again showing his discomfort rather than his disgust. He didn’t feel safe around me, nor should he.

  “Yeah, 911. We have a situation at the Diner at 33rd and Lake Road. There’s this crazy looking chick who just ripped one of the employees apart…yes tore right through her…yes uh huh…no this is not a sick joke! There is a young girl’s body laying by the drive-through window in pieces!” He begins to raise his voice at the questioning of his credibility and paces back and forth pulling at his hair as he tries to convince the authorities of this heinous crime.

  Customers and staff members begin to spill out of the diner, and I knew that I would need to get out of here now. I had drawn too much attention to myself already. My hip was nearly healed, but I force myself to stand before its full completion. This causes me to stand at an unnatural angle and I walk toward the large man who now drops his phone at the sight of me.

  “You can’t be walking, I hit you really good. How the fuck are you walking?”

  He most likely would have wet his pants if I had given him a moment to do so, but instead, I rip his head clean off his shoulders and take it as a meal to go. Screams fill the air as I disappear into the dusk-filled forest across the road. No one would dare follow me, except for the police, but by the time they arrived I would be gone and untraceable.

  ***

  The next morning I find myself in Alex’s backyard. I suppose I had slept out here all night. Next to me is half a head with brains sticking out of it. It looked like a morbid fruit bowl. I would like to say that I ignored the urge to finish off the meal, but it was simply too appealing and I chow down before dumping the rest of the head into a garbage bin by the side of the house.