Not Dead Enough

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Brett Perkins had always believed in life after death. He’d just never thought it would be the same one.

It was a question he’d thought about a lot. Occupational hazard. Up to a few months ago he and the three others in the room with him had been soldiers. An assignment to a base in the ass-end of beyond had seemed like a dead-end move for his career. Until he’d realized that he’d been sent to a top-secret project. One so classified that he’d been told most of the higher-ups didn’t even know about it. That knowledge had puffed his chest out until he’d figured out the truth. The Project was top-secret for a reason. Genetic experiments on soldiers didn’t go down so well with anyone who had a conscience.

Trouble was, no one left the Project. Not alive. Definitely not human.

Now he was neither human nor alive.

And life after death sucked hairy-ass donkey balls. Gigantic ones.

“Would you hold still?” he demanded. He squinted, trying to match up the torn flesh on the arm of the man sitting in front of him so he could staple it shut.

“Sorry. How’s this?” Evan Fredericks, their section leader, altered his position so Brett had better access. For some reason Brett had found himself designated as the team medic. Which, given their newly dead-but-not-dead state, meant he got to get busy with the office supplies.

“Perfect, thanks.”

Ignoring the white of the bone deep in the wound, if he could even call it a wound since it didn’t bother Fredericks at all, Brett pulled the ragged edges together and pressed down quickly with the stapler. Stolen from the desk behind him, it was bright pink, with a happy face and some chick’s name on it. Sophie. He grunted. Nice name.

Wrapping a length of stretchy bandage around his handiwork, he tapped Fredericks on the shoulder. “Okay, good to go,” he said. “But you’re gonna need to eat something soon, to seal that up.”

A grimace crossed Fredericks face momentarily. Brett ignored it as he moved to root through the drawer of a nearby desk for more staples. Some elements of their new natures were taking more time to adjust to than others, but the need to eat was one Brett suspected none of them would ever get used to.

Because they weren't talking about hitting up the local diner and chowing down on a burger. In fact, just the thought of cooked meat made his stomach churn, even if his brain told him he wanted it. No, their new bodies needed something else to power and repair them. To stop their dead flesh falling into rot and decay.

Warm meat. Hot blood. Something that only moments before had a heartbeat. Something with a heartbeat if the need got bad enough. Either way, they only had a small window of opportunity. As soon as the flesh cooled, their bodies rejected it and they couldn't eat.

In a sick twist of irony, their dead bodies needed food nearer to alive than they were. And they couldn’t avoid the need. If they refused to eat, wounds didn’t close, and their flesh began to look wrong. Like they were starting to decay. None of them wanted that.

Dying wasn’t the worst of it. Decaying in your own dead body with no way to end it all? That was a nightmare Brett didn’t want to contemplate. With the Project always on their tails, looking to recover their wayward creations, they had enough problems without adding to the burden.

Methodically, he searched the small office they’d holed up in for anything useful. They’d torch the place before they left to cover their tracks and remove any genetic material, just in case, but he had to do something to occupy his hands. Keep busy. Anything to avoid thinking.

He cast a surreptitious glance around the room. Dominic Fletcher sat at a desk by the door, and Kelwood was across the room, rocking to himself. Brett caught Fletcher’s eye and shared a look of worry. Jared had been that way since they’d been infected, his only conversation about his wife and child. A wife and child he wouldn't be able to see again. He was dead to them now; he had to be . There was no way back to their old life. Not with what they were now.

Fredericks stood by the window, rolling his shoulder as he tested the range of motion in the injured limb. Despite the fact that the cut had opened his arm to the bone, no pain registered in his expression. Wounds didn’t bother them. No physical damage did.

Brett looked down, opening and closing his hand. He could still feel… touch, sense. But it was like their pain responses had been turned off the instant the Project had pumped whatever crap they had into their veins.

He didn’t remember their infection. All he remembered was being brought in injured and wondering if the pitted ceiling of the temporary med-bay would be the last thing he’d ever see. He’d woken up in a cage with the others, and it had all gone downhill from there.

The project had thrown everything it had to offer at them. Bloods, Lycans… even Reanimates. Brett shivered at the memory. Zombies powered by nothing more than the need to eat, their dead, empty eyes had always given him the creeps. And they’d killed them all. Nothing thrown into the cage stood a chance. Bloods, Lycans, Reanimates.… Nothing stood a chance against what they were.

S.A.R.A.

The initials hung in his mind like a shimmering jewel. They called the creature he was a Self-Aware Re-Animate.

They’d turned him into a f*****g zombie.

Anger surged through him and he slammed the drawer shut. The force shot it through the back of the desk and into the one behind it with a loud crack that made the others look around.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Wasn’t concentrating.”

He went back to searching, but kept his attention on the others. Fredericks watched over Fletcher’s shoulder as he tapped away on the keyboard in front of him. Like their leader, he wore field dressings like they were a new fashion. His ribs had been taped up until he could eat enough to seal the vicious claw marks he’d gotten in an altercation with a vamp three nights ago.

Fletcher frowned at the screen, muttering something, but then his expression cleared and his fingers flew over the keys faster than he’d been able to when he was merely human. Like every night since their escape, he used the internet, hacking into police databases to gather intelligence about possible Blood attacks.

The Project made one big mistake when it had created its super-soldiers. It forgot the men and women it had experimented on had been soldiers. It had only taken one pack, Alpha Three, and their determination to rescue one of their own, to bring the Project to its knees. The subjects, the SARAs included, had escaped. Brett had naively imagined a world where they could disappear, pretend to be human and live out their lives.

Then the f*****g Bloods had started killing civilians. So now it was game on.

“Got something.” Fletcher’s voice broke the silence. “Shots fired, woman missing. Black blood-like substance found at the scene. Cops think its oil or something.”

“That’s their MO.” Without thinking or feeling himself move, Brett was right at Fletcher’s shoulder, looking down at the screen for the address. “Not far from here. Greenwood. Sounds like a shitty place.”

“That’s an hour at most,” Fredericks confirmed. “Right, let’s move. Fletcher, torch this place. Perkins, get some transport. Kelwood… Kel! We’re up, let’s go.”