In just the last few years, the world had changed dramatically. For ordinary folks to merely survive, they were forced to change along with it. While zombies continued to roam mindlessly from place to place, a small compound was one of the few places on earth that had successfully kept a zombie-free zone around it.
The folks there had adapted, and that gave them hope. They knew that if they had adapted and survived, perhaps other communities out in the zombie-infested world had as well. It was that hope that kept the small community growing and thriving in one of the worst-hit areas of the undead plague.
Resting on the eastern edge of Florida, near the Atlantic Ocean, the place existed as a refuge for the living. Within the relative safety of the place, two men walked side-by-side, discussing their plans and hopes for the growing community within.
It was a beacon against the very real darkness creeping across the continent, the repurposed Kennedy Space Center was where Angel Hernandez had decided to try and regroup with whatever remnants of humanity within the Americas and Canada he could find. It wasn’t far from the base where he had reunited with Reece in their battle against their former commander.
It felt like years ago to Reece, but it had only happened a couple of months earlier. Kennedy was only a few kilometers travel from Cape Canaveral, the place where the two of them had finally ended the traitor’s life. The space center was a perfect refuge. It had numerous natural water barriers that provided for great isolation from the rest of the zombie-infested continent and fertile soil for planting.
The two former astronauts headed down the main paved thoroughfare through the large space center. They each marveled at all they had been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time and how quickly their small community had grown. It was all due to everyone pitching in and working together.
When Reece and Karina first arrived, Angel had set up a base of operations within several industrial facilities that were located at the heart of the center. With over thirty members, most were normal humans but with a slowly growing community of people that could transform into jaguar-like animals. This latter group numbered a half dozen so far.
All came from normal people that, over time, Angel had bitten to save their life from some mortal wound or another. As a rakshasa, Angel and the others had superior healing abilities that allowed them to overcome wounds that would kill a normal human.
Together they began to make the place a home; from gathering, farming, and fishing for food to transforming the center’s buildings into shelters, storage sheds, a meeting center, and an infirmary. It had been months since Angel had begun the process. After Reece and Karina joined the community, the place had taken off, both in the number of people and infrastructure development. Now, it could be considered a small town with all the townsfolk working together to make it better.
Both former astronauts had traded in their uniforms for more practical attire for living in the community. Angel had chosen to dress in work attire. He had told Reece that he thought it set a better example for the community than dressing purely for comfort.
Today, he wore a white collared button-down with short sleeves over jeans with old-fashioned cowboy boots. The boots were the only footwear that the former astronaut seemed to wear. Reece preferred comfort, so he had decided on a grey t-shirt over black cargo pants and combat boots for the day. They were all items they had picked from their clothing storage building, stocked by several resourceful survivors from the surrounding area. The contrast between the two men was subtle but showcased their differing outlooks. While Angel took the lead in guiding the community and seemed to enjoy it, Reece didn’t think of himself that way.
Despite their differences, or perhaps because of them, the two men began to bond over the shared goal of setting up a safe and secure refuge. They agreed that the community was for all people who were fleeing the rampaging threat of millions of people who had been infected, died, and risen as undead creatures all over the land.
While the pair walked in comfortable silence, Reece pondered all that had transpired of late. As the days had worn on, Karina seemed to always be around Reece, unless she was on a solo run. Reece found that he enjoyed her attention. He cared deeply for the lilitu, unorthodox as she was. Together, they had helped and gotten to know most of the other folks at the refuge, even befriending many of them.
It didn’t take long for the community to warm to the two new arrivals. In addition to their friendly and helpful demeanor, they also had met in battle with a common foe and that had helped create a strong bond with several members of the community before they had even arrived at the refuge. Reece and Karina had helped eliminate an imminent threat, and actions always speak louder than words.
It also didn’t hurt that Reece had already had some history with the unofficial leader of the community, Angel Hernandez. As people quickly accepted Reece, partly because of her proximity to him and despite her ‘condition’, they began to accept Karina as well.
Before long, Reece and Karina had both become tremendous assets for the community by becoming successful runners. Runners were responsible for going outside of the refuge to scavenge for goods and locate other survivors for possible inclusion into the community. Reece with his Helios solar-cycle and Karina with her vampiric speed greatly increased the range of the community’s grasp.
They brought back supplies for the community nearly every day, impressive by any standard. Using long-range radios that had been scavenged, they communicated with other groups of survivors. These radios had become popular over the last couple of decades due to many people’s unease with the divisive state of most of the nations on the planet.
That worked to everyone’s advantage because it provided a way for small and separated communities and even individuals to get and stay in touch with each other. The folks at Kennedy tried to ensure that these other survivors didn’t pose a threat to the community before they would bring them back to bolster their numbers. There was still a belief in strength and safety in numbers, even though larger numbers seemed to attract the undead.
The group at the center had used this combination of communications and escorting to bring in over ninety more people from several communities that had been hiding around the middle of Florida, within reachable range of the center. There were rumors of the Order placing spies among the survivors and Angel didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances with the fledgling community.
So far, Reece hadn’t had much luck in locating Naeva. Whenever he wasn’t on runs with Karina or clearing out nearby pockets of undead, he spoke with other communities over the radio. It turned out to be pretty good for many baseless rumors, but little else. About the only thing on which that the communities had a consensus was that a couple of months back, a wave of the infected swept back down through Florida and then back up the length of the state again. Nevertheless, he kept at it every day.
He also didn’t have any luck with the hard drive they had taken from the station other than to show all the bases that the Order controlled. The data was years old now, so it was of limited use. Many of the files were still encrypted. Pasha and Aika had been decrypting them one at a time onboard the space station, but there were still hundreds of files remaining to be done as the pair had limited time for the task. Unfortunately, neither Reece nor anyone else at the space center knew much about hacking computers or file decryption. Reece filed all these worries into the back of his mind as they closed in on their destination.
The two men were headed to the community’s meeting center which doubled as a welcome center for bringing in survivors. Reece had just returned from a run with Karina to collect a group of people that had been living in an isolated retirement community. The group had settled there after the original inhabitants had all become flesh-hungry monsters that had left in search of more prey.
It was one of those expensive, all-inclusive places, so it had provided many amenities for the people staying there, including gardens in which to grow food. Unfortunately, it didn’t provide much in terms of security, and nearly half the group’s number had perished and joined the undead horde over the last month. The rest were desperate for a more secure place to call home, and they answered Angel’s call on the long-range radio while he was giving one of his daily broadcasts.
He was always careful not to reveal their location nor ask for the location of the people answering his call. He had them pick a convenient meeting place and then would send out Reece and Karina to meet with them and escort them to the center. It had worked well so far, and Reece had just found Angel and brought him along after delivering a new group to the welcome center.
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"So, you said there were seven of them?" asked Angel as he tabulated requirements to house and feed the new additions.
"Yeah, there’s a young family of four. A mother and father and two teenage girls. It sounds like they got lucky. There’s also an older couple, maybe fifties, that are survivalists and they took them in," replied Reece.
"What about the seventh?" asked Angel, noticing Reece had only mentioned six people so far.
"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about her."
"Her?"
"Yeah. She arrived just after we had met the first six at the rendezvous point. The older survivalist is Jack, the same guy that answered your broadcast. Neither he nor the others knew who she was. She told us her name is Ciera Adesina and she had overheard the conversation and had made her way to the rendezvous point too since she was all alone," answered Reece.
"And you don’t trust her," reasoned Angel.
"Well, not really. I don’t want to keep her out, but we need to keep an eye on her. I’ve got a strange feeling about what her motives might be," clarified Reece as they approached the entrance to the large NASA structure that was the heart of the space center.
It was a ten-story concrete building that had been painted white. It had a large storage dock on the side and both the meeting center and the infirmary were within the main section. They entered from the front of the building through operational sliding glass doors. Past the long burgundy carpeted entrance was a large alabaster room filled with metal tables and chairs. It could hold over a hundred people easily. Presently, it only held twelve. The seven new people, Karina, and four trusted members of the current community; the latter there to keep an eye on the new folks.
Karina’s schoolgirl outfit had been ruined in their battle with the behemoth wolf monster, so she had opted for a white tank-top and blue shorts with white high-quality running shoes—the only shoes that lasted her more than a week due to her speed and need to often run long distances. Reece was silently thankful about the loss of the getup but was having trouble engineering quality footwear for the girl. Of course, he thought she still looked a bit too sexy, no matter what clothes she chose to wear.
The other four community members were dressed similarly to each other, with army green t-shirts and combat fatigues and boots. They each carried a rifle and a pistol strapped to their dominant leg. This was more for show than anything else, as Karina could single-handedly take care of any issues that might arise. Their caution wasn’t entirely unfounded.
They had brought in a large group early on that had tried to take the center by force. Ever since putting down the insurrection that claimed the lives of two community members, they took these precautions to ensure the safety of the overall community and stop any violence before it began.
Once they had approached the new group, Reece began making introductions. The survivalists were Jack and Sarah Collins. They were both heavily tanned with early wrinkles from hard work in the sun, with hard eyes that spoke of hard lives. Jack had light brown hair that had just begun to grey. Sarah’s hair was a darker brown and showed no signs of greying.
They both looked in shape and healthy and dressed in functional clothing. He had a blue t-shirt and cargo pants while she wore a white tank-top and old-fashioned blue jean cut-offs that went to her knees. Each member of the family of four was also in good shape. This was probably why they were still alive.
The man’s name was Wallace and he was dark-skinned, well-muscled, and tall. He had short-cropped wiry hair and was about thirty or so years old. His wife, Jenna was a very pale-skinned woman with jet black hair and also in excellent shape, though she was small for a fully grown woman. They made an attractive pair and their daughters were no different.
The two sisters, Evie and Ellie could almost be twins, except one was a couple of years older. They both had kinky dark-brown hair that framed beautiful faces with dark brown eyes and light-brown skin. Their hair both stood up and fell to their shoulders, looking almost like manes.
They were both tall for their ages and slender. They also wore functional clothing, and all dressed the same, with light grey t-shirts, dark-grey over-shirts, and black cargo pants with black leather boots. All their guns, knives, and other gear had been set on an adjacent table for the time being.
The last new arrival was the young woman, Ciera. She looked to be in her late teens. She had kinky brown hair that fell below her shoulders and was pulled back away from her smoldering dark-brown eyes. She had full voluptuous lips that complimented her dark complexion.
Her face was heart-shaped with thick black eyebrows and long thick eyelashes. A perfectly straight nose was the finishing touch on a face made for a fashion model. Her head was well-suited for her beautiful face and tapered down to a long, slender neck that was covered by a wide black lacey choker.
She wore a form-fitting white tank top over large perky breasts and short jean shorts, the kind with the pockets showing. The outfit didn’t leave much to the imagination and revealed most of her perfectly unblemished dark skin. Her physique was both athletic and voluptuous.
Angel understood why Reece was so suspicious, not just because of the way she had appeared, but because a woman who looked like she did normally didn’t survive the apocalypse by herself for very long.
Her beauty made her one in a million and considering what had just happened to humanity, she may be the most beautiful young lady in the world who just happened to show up at their doorstep. Reece wondered if she was sent here to be some kind of mole. If not, Reece pondered how she happened to be surviving alone in this world and still managed to look not just beautiful, but clean and well-manicured, with perfect hair and teeth.
Even her clothing didn’t have a smudge on them like she was ready to start a day of walking the art galleries instead of trying to live through a zombie apocalypse. Something just didn’t add up with this woman.
Angel gave Reece a nervous look after his quick appraisal of the small group of desperate people. From Angel’s look, Reece knew he shared his assessment and concerns about the too-perfect young woman.
"Hello, I’m Ciera... thank you so much for taking me in. I don’t know how much longer I could’ve survived out there on my own," replied the gorgeous woman as if reading their thoughts and trying to alter the path that they were heading down.
"How did you survive on your own out there?" asked Angel bluntly, clearly showing the woman his suspicion. "You don’t look like you’ve had much trouble at all."
"Relax, she’s clearly harmless and just wants some safety and security," cut in Reece as he took Angel’s lead.
The two men had developed a good cop, bad cop routine to help ferret out bad apples from the bunches of people seeking refuge from the apocalypse. Usually, Reece would play the bad cop, but clearly, Angel didn’t trust himself with this woman and threw Reece under the bus in dealing with her.
The hope was that she would confide in him and lower her guard so that he could determine whether or not she was okay. If not, maybe she would slip up and reveal ulterior motives. Either way, it had been effective in giving them both piece of mind about questionable folk.
Most turned out to be just fine, but Angel had discovered one man that had wanted to take advantage of the women and girls in the refuge. He was summarily removed from the group and told never to return on pain of death.
Now they were running the ruse on Ciera, seeing where it would lead them. Reece would have to spend some time with the woman, comforting her and making her feel safe and secure. He needed to befriend her and hopefully, it could blossom into a genuine friendship. Reece wasn’t keen on playing this role with people. He always felt like he was lying to them, but it was an important role to help protect the greater community.
"Fine," came Angel’s expected response. "But it’s on you if she happens to be up to something, so you’ll need to keep an eye on her. Sorry, Ciera, but we’ve had trouble in the past and can’t be too careful."
"It’s okay, I understand," she pouted before sidling up to Reece as her new protector. "Thank you for taking me in. I had been with a really good group for a while, but they had gone out looking for food and had never come back. It was just me and my friend, Amy. Amy got so depressed when her boyfriend never returned that she shot herself, drawing in zombies from everywhere.
I grabbed a backpack of bottled water and a radio and ran as fast and far as I could. I was able to lose the monsters in an old abandoned mall, where I cleaned myself up and found some fresh clothes. It was then that I heard your call over the radio and decided to try and find you."
The woman’s answer explained away much of their fears, and she used her beautifully sad dark-brown puppy-dog eyes to great effect. Angel’s demeanor softened, despite him needing to keep up the bad cop persona.
Reece saw through her act but couldn’t say if she was hiding something or just increasing her chances of survival by convincing them to trust her. If anything, he was even more suspicious of her than before.
"It’s alright, you’re safe now," he reassured her. "This is just a formality and I’m sure you’ll pass with flying colors in no time at all."
"Oh, thank you!" she cried as she threw her body into his, hugging him tightly as she physically sobbed in relief.
It was clear that the woman was pouring it on a bit thick, at least to Reece. He noticed the rest of the people present had looks of pity on their faces, every one of them. Reece filed that away as very odd. Whatever effect this woman was trying to have on everyone, it wasn’t working on him alone.
He felt her warmth through their close contact as she looked up at him with those dark-brown eyes, tears streaming down each cheek. She offered him a weak little smile before burying her face in his chest as she resumed sobbing uncontrollably. Reece had almost felt something palpable when she had looked at him from their nearness.
At that moment, he could feel something burning into the back of his head and he looked over to see Karina glaring at them both. Whatever spell the mysterious woman had cast on them all, Karina had broken it when she saw how close the woman was to her companion and source of sustenance.
Other men in the community had offered Karina their blood, but she always politely refused. She would only suck his blood, and now she felt a new threat had entered their lives. Not a physical threat, but a deeper, more primal threat to their relationship.