Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) by Raymond Lee Page B

Janjai roughly by her arm and shoved her down the stairs. She almost fell, but grabbed the rail just in time. Understanding what he wanted, she went to the room on her own and sat on the cot, pulling her knees up. She sat there, rocking, as the horrible images of what had just happened played through her mind.
    He joined her there shortly after, carrying a loaded backpack and his rifle. As the sound of the kitchen window breaking reached them, he did something he’d never done before. He closed the door while standing in the room with her, locking both of them in.
    He turned around and she saw his pajamas were covered in sweat and blood spray. His face was so red it looked like it would explode, like a water balloon filled with blood.
    “They can’t get us in here, but we can still get out. I have the key. At least, I’ll get out. As for you, my wife …” He bent down and opened the backpack, extracting his leather belt.
    Janjai’s heart stopped as she looked at the belt. To most people, it was an accessory. To her, it was a deadly weapon. The welts on her back tingled as she recalled her last session with it.
    “You might not understand my words, but just like a bitch, you’ll understand this,” he said, comparing her to a dog. “I’m your master. You don’t run off and you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Otis got bit because of you. I had to leave him out there to be eaten on. If he’s lucky, he’ll die instead of becoming one of them. Now you’ll pay for that, and if you live through this, you’ll know better than to run again.”
    As he wrenched her off the cot, Janjai took a deep breath and pictured herself in Colorado with Pimjai, happy and free. The scorching hot fire that came with each slap of the leather across her skin threatened to steal her daydream away but she held on tight to the image as Hank unleashed his rage. Soon, her body’s protective defenses took over and she couldn’t even feel the lashes, only the sting the first twenty had left behind.
    He finally stopped, allowing her body to fall to the concrete floor where she lay in her own blood, closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep, thinking how wonderful it would be if she didn’t wake back up.
     
    Hal peeked through the crack in the boards they’d nailed over the windows, checking the street. All clear, or so it seemed. The TV and internet might not work, but Paul was a survivalist, like Hal. He had a radio for situations like this, and every now and then, Hal was able to make contact with someone. He knew what was going on out there. It was hell and damnation. The end of days.
    The military was doing the best it could to control the situation but killing people who were already dead wasn’t the easiest task. By the time they’d figured out the zombies’ brains had to be destroyed, many of them had been killed or worse. Turned into them.
    Russia had been injecting poor, unsuspecting women with the virus for five years. Thousands of those women entered America every year and immediately spread the disease to their husbands. If they had children, those children were born with the disease in their system. If either the Russian woman or the man she married committed adultery, more people were infected and the virus spread through all of those people and anyone they slept with. Then there were the Russian-American marriages that ended in divorce, leaving the women and now infected men to find new spouses. Whoever they slept with along the way got the disease. And of course, the scariest part of all, was the obvious. How many of those people, ignorant to this disease which according to reports, wouldn’t have been picked up on any tests, had donated blood during those five years?
    It would be impossible to calculate how many people had been infected, and according to the information Hal had found on news sites before the internet ceased to exist, some of the infected were still walking around clueless.
    Death triggered the