Empty Bodies (Book 2): Adaptation
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Empty Bodies
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ADAPTATION
(Book Two of the Empty Bodies Series)
by Zach Bohannon
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EMPTY BODIES 2: ADAPTATION
Zach Bohannon
Copyright
© 2015 by Zach Bohannon. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Edited by:
Jennifer Collins
Proofread by:
Christy McQuire
Cover design by Johnny Digges
For the readers:
Thank you.
PROLOGUE
The place they brought him to was cold and no light peeked in under the blindfold, so he assumed that it was also dark. They hadn’t taken the blindfold off of him since they brought him here, so he couldn’t know for sure, not that it mattered.
It had been hours since the men had visited. Hours since they had brought food or water. His lips were dry and his stomach growled, which he could hear every now and again.
He wasn’t the only one they’d brought here.
He’d counted at least three others. Two of them he guessed to be girls from the higher pitched mumble through their gags, and the other was definitely a man. For whatever reason, they hadn’t gagged the man like they had him and the two girls, but the man didn’t ever yell or cry out. He remained calm, now and then mumbling scripture to himself and praying.
The door opened.
A gentle breeze hit his face and he heard at least two dogs barking. The girls tried to scream through their gags but they were muted. He was doing the same as his heart raced and he pissed himself, again.
The barking was getting closer. Before he knew it, he felt a wet nose on his leg and one of the dogs was sniffing the piss that had run down to his shin.
“Come on, you little shit,” a male voice demanded. The dog pulled away from his leg and began to bark again, and the prisoner jolted. His hands were tied above his head and his feet barely touched the ground, leaving him vulnerable to whatever these people or dogs wanted to do to him.
He stopped trying to vocalize through the sock stuffed in his mouth when he heard another type of growl.
It was familiar.
It was one of
them
.
The thing snarled and the sound was unmistakable. It lurked closer until it stopped just a few feet in front of where the prisoners were restrained. All four of them were silent now, other than the trembling that came through their heavy breathing.
“You got ‘em?” a man asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Get those ready.”
Chains rustled and he heard one of the girls yelp through her gag. The snarling intensified and it sounded as if the men were struggling.
“Hold him!”
“I’m fucking trying! Get his arms!”
The two men were breathing heavily and, next to him, he heard the man of faith begin to pray again.
“Father, please be with me. O’ holy Lord, hallowed be thy name…”.
The struggle sounded like it had stopped, and all he could hear now was the snarls, chains clanking, and the men in front of him working to catch their breath.
Then he heard footsteps approach him. They stopped right in front of him, and he felt warm breath hit his cheek.
“You ready for this, boy?” the man asked.
He didn’t respond. If they’d given him any water, he might have pissed again, but instead he revealed his fear with a constant shudder and tears.
They removed his blindfold.
Face to face with one of the creatures now, all he could do was scream.
CHAPTER ONE
Lawrence
It was the fourth day that Lawrence Holloway had traveled these roads, and five days since humanity’s sudden fall. As much as he wanted to explore and find out what was happening elsewhere, he couldn’t bring himself to veer off of this now familiar route. Further keeping him from breaking his habit was the fact that it was raining and he didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a bad storm. He made at least one run a day, usually by himself. His goal: to find more people who were alive.
Lawrence had a sort of knack for helping others. In his younger days, he started medical school with high hopes of becoming a surgeon and using his education and gift to help people live better lives. He had always done well in school, and was smart and ambitious. Only a year into the program, however, he got his girlfriend pregnant with their son, forcing Lawrence to drop out of school to support a child. After working a middle-grade office job for about eighteen months, Lawrence decided to enter the medical field as an EMT, later becoming a full-fledged certified paramedic. He loved the job, and continued to study higher levels of medical practice on his own time with hopes of returning to medical school someday to fulfill his dream of becoming a surgeon. Now, as he scanned the desolate highway, he doubted that day would ever come. But, his desire to help people hadn’t left him, as he now looked for others to bring into the small community they were building at the hospital.
So far, he had found only four survivors.
There was Trevor, who he actually picked up on the way to the hospital, just hours after everything had gone to hell. Lawrence had been driving down the road in his pickup truck when he came across a man in his 30’s struggling with one of the monsters. He’d pulled the car over and, though terribly frightened, jumped out of the vehicle and ran towards the beast with a baseball bat. It had distracted the thing long enough to where Trevor could escape its grasp and look on as Lawrence bashed the thing over the head with the aluminum bat. And he didn’t stop at one swing. Lawrence knocked the thing down and continued to attack the monster, even long after it had stopped moving. Blood had shot up from the creature’s body, painting Lawrence’s powder blue dress shirt a crimson red. Time had slowed down, and after what had seemed to be an hour
—
he looked back and saw the young man he’d saved looking toward him with a dropped jaw, and eyes wide enough to throw a football through
—
before Lawrence broke down and started to cry. The young man walked over to try and comfort him, and Lawrence allowed it, though he didn’t tell Trevor why he was so distraught.
Then, there were the two women he saved from the accident off of the highway. He’d been driving down I-40, the same path he was taking now, looking for more survivors on the second day. It was his first run since finding refuge at the hospital and had foolishly gone out alone. As he approached a bridge, a van came into view from the on-ramp. He occasionally saw other survivors driving out on the road, but spent most of his time and energy dodging abandoned vehicles and the walking corpses of the sick. Lawrence was about a half mile back from the van when he saw it skid and then flip off the side of the road.
When he reached the van, creatures were already beginning to surround it, and he was forced to act quickly and take them down before they could reach whoever was inside the van. He pulled out the Glock he’d taken off of a fallen police officer, and gunned down the few beasts that were ambling toward the van.
As he checked inside the vehicle for survivors, he found an older woman unconscious behind the wheel, and a younger woman around thirty beginning to stir in the middle row of the van. He called in for back-up and an additional ambulance, and was lucky that no other creatures were in the immediate vicinity.
Their names were Melissa and Jessica, and he hadn’t had a lot of time to get to know them yet. Melissa, the older woman, was still unconscious, but she was stable and being looked after at the hospital. The younger girl, Jessica, was awake and responsive, resting easy at the hospital.