Gods & Monsters: The Gods & Monsters Trilogy Book 1 Read online

  Natalie let go of her hand and ran to jump on her mattress that they’d placed there as Nathan sat up.

  “Di-saur,” he said, pointing to her bag.

  “Oh!” Jane knelt on the mattress next to him and opened her bag. She pulled out his favorite brachiosaurus and handed it to him. He clutched it to his chest and lay back down.

  Jane sighed and looked over to see Jason standing by the living room entrance. He watched her for a moment before walking away.

  Nathan’s fingers touched her hand, and he started scratching her skin. He always did this when he was a baby. He often opened her skin on her arms, but she let him because it was just something that he did to fall asleep.

  Lying down beside him, she put her arm over his chest and watched as he kept scratching her forearm with his eyes closed.

  She needed to sleep, but she couldn’t. Instead, she stared at his other hand clutching his toy. Jason may not realize how much their son needed these toys, but she knew how hard it would be on Nathan without them.

  Jane closed her eyes. It had been two days since they’d boarded up their windows and doors. Two days since the news had gone off the air. Two days since she’d had her last panic attack. Two days since she’d felt any sort of peace.

  She had tried to call Wendy’s husband but didn’t get an answer. She tried to call Wendy’s mom but there was no answer there either. All grim possibilities played through her mind as she worried over her friend’s children. She wondered if they’d made it somewhere safe, then she began to reflect on how little she’d done for them since Wendy’s death.

  Now, they were likely dead, and she’d only gone and seen them once since Wendy passed. And that was all because it had been too hard to learn her best friend’s husband had already moved on. That didn’t mean that the children had, though, and Jane should have sucked it up to at least check on them from time to time.

  “I’m such a terrible friend,” she whispered, trying her hardest to not disturb Nathan as she cried. She hadn’t been there for them, and she was probably going to fail her own children, too. Jane bit her lip to keep herself from making noise. She hated being like this.

  As her body began to tremble, a faint tingle slid across her mouth, and she sighed before slowly releasing her lip from her bite. Her breath came easier, and she rolled on her side to cuddle with Nathan who still dug his fingernails into her arm. The tingling feeling on her lips spread to her face, then down her spine until most of her back felt a strange warmth that seemed to dance between fire and ice.

  Her trembling eased and her chest stopped aching from her cries as the strange sensation moved down her arm to where Nathan still scratched. He abruptly stopped, and the stinging cuts left by his fingernails warmed.

  Jane hugged her son, feeling an increased pressure around her, then drifted off to sleep.

  Three loud gunshots woke Jane from her peaceful nap. She tensed, looking around the darkened room before noticing Jason peeking out the cracks of one of their windows.

  She carefully slipped out of Nathan’s grip, covered him up. Natalie was on her own mattress, and Jane quickly covered her before going to Jason. “What’s happening?” Her heart rate sped up as shouts and cries grew louder.

  “I think the truck ran out of gas or something. I’m not sure,” Jason muttered with his eyes glued to the scene out on the street.

  Jane was hesitant but got the courage and pushed up on her tippy toes to peer through the crack. The scene terrified her. Their quiet neighborhood had become a war zone, and even more so when she noticed an Army Humvee stalled across from their house.

  Several more shots went off, and Jane’s heart pounded as she watched two soldiers come into view. One struggled to lift an unconscious comrade from the ground, while the second offered cover fire.

  With a scream, the assisting soldier dropped the now conscious, snarling man to the ground. Fear was in his pain-filled eyes as he backed away from his wild friend. He clutched his neck tightly and disappeared from her view as he stumbled away. Jane’s heart hurt, knowing it was too late for him. He was infected.

  The scream had distracted the other soldier from the swarming, infected mass for just a second. An infected woman grabbed his arm and bit down to the bone.

  He cried out as he tried to free himself. Despite being larger than the woman, he could not get out of her grasp. So he aimed point blank at her forehead and fired. She fell to the ground, finally dead, but the damage was done. He was also infected now. But unlike his friend, he fell to the ground as two other infected bit and began ripping him apart.

  His bloodcurdling screams caused Jane’s eyes to widen in horror, but for some reason she suddenly dropped her gaze to the bag lying on the street.

  Staring at it in a trance, she felt her racing heart suddenly steady. Warmth radiated out from her chest all through her body, and she let out a slow breath, still hearing the screams and gunshots but not affected at all.

  Her fingers twitched, and she turned her head as she felt drawn to go down the hall. Every bit of fear and sadness that had been tearing her apart vanished as the urge to be something greater settled in her mind.

  She stopped thinking about how bad her life had been—how horrible her relationship was with Jason, how much she feared failing her children—and a new thought consumed her: what if I don’t fail?

  A confident and powerful feeling surged through her. She turned and walked away from the window, and only when she had a window from one of their back bedrooms pushed open, did she realize she was leaving her house.

  As awareness touched her mind, she easily shrugged away the fear and climbed out the window, falling to the grass more gracefully than she normally would have thought possible. She looked around and shut the window before walking away.

  Once she neared the edge of the house, she heard Jason whispering for her to get back. She looked over her shoulder, not feeling an ounce of emotion as she stared into his brown eyes, then turning forward again, she rounded the corner of the house.

  The bag on the street came to mind, and she nodded to herself: get the bag. She didn’t know what was in it, but she knew she had to get it.

  Peeking out behind a trash can, Jane watched the attack taking place. This was the second time she’d seen an infected crowd this size. There were too many to count, and they were busy gorging themselves on the fallen soldier’s remains.

  The soldier, originally unconscious, lifted his head, snarling with the blood of his companion dripping down his face.

  Jane didn’t react to the gruesome scene and continued focusing on the bag. She stayed low, not paying attention to the other bodies or trash strewn across her yard and the street, and got behind a truck that was only ten feet from the bag she needed.

  The grunts, crunching of bone, and tearing of flesh did little to deter her from her task. She quickly ran out and knelt to look at the bag that had held all her attention.

  It was partially zipped, but she could see weapons and ammunition inside. There was even an M-16 right beside it, which she only knew its name because of war movies she enjoyed watching, and she figured whoever had been carrying the bag, had dropped everything.

  She wasted no time hoisting all of it onto her shoulder. A handgun on the ground caught her attention as she adjusted her hold, and she grabbed that one, too.

  The hungry groans grew louder as their meal disappeared into their stomachs, and Jane knew time had run out.

  Glancing up, she realized she’d been discovered. The infected people snarled and stumbled toward her. Jane knew returning home was out of the question now. So, she turned and sprinted in the opposite direction.

  They followed.

  Jane wasn’t in great shape, but she ran fast without looking back. She would have kept going, but a groan made her look around for the source. There, about a hundred yards ahead of her, she spotted the soldier who’d been bitten in the neck. He was lying on the ground but still alive. Though, with the amount of blood poo
led around him, she doubted he’d be alive much longer—and that meant he’d be one of them. A zombie.

  She came to a stop beside him and finally looked behind her. The horde was getting closer, but she turned back to the soldier.

  Blood seeped from his mouth and the gaping hole that had torn his neck open. His eyes, wide in fear, locked onto hers, and his gasps for breath increased.

  Jane held his teary-eyed stare while he struggled to form words and tilted her head, not filled with any concern over his fate.

  “Kill me,” he said. She stared at him silently, turning once again to the ever closer mob of infected people. “Please,” he begged as tears fell from his brown eyes. “Don’t let them eat me alive.” The whites had already started to turn red.

  Jane lifted the gun. The brave soldier gave a slight nod as a single tear rolled down her cheek, and she squeezed the trigger.

  The shot rang out louder than any of the previous shots she had heard since the beginning of the outbreak, but she lowered her arm and continued her jog down the deserted street.

  After covering one more block, she knew she’d finally lost the crowd and doubled back toward her home. She stopped by the neighbor’s fence to ensure the coast was clear before she made the final run to safety.

  When she looked down at her feet, she realized she was almost standing on Max, her neighbor’s dog. The lower half of his body was missing, leaving nothing but dried up blood and bits of flesh covered in flies and maggots. She scrunched up her nose in disgust and proceeded across the yard to the bedroom window she had crawled out of earlier and tapped it lightly.

  Jason’s brown eyes looked back at her through the window, and without speaking to her, he opened the window to let her climb back in.

  After she managed to squeeze through, she shoved the bag at him. “There are your necessary items.”

  Jason took it but looked at her with a confused and angry expression, but Jane was too full of her adrenalin rush to care about his irritation with her, so she took the bag from his hands and brushed past him.

  She stopped by the living room and stared at her children who still slept soundly. Her gaze lingered on the dinosaur toy in Nathan’s hand, and she smiled a little as a proud feeling filled her up.

  “Jane!” Jason hissed, grabbing her forearm. “Are you crazy?”

  “You already know I am, Jason.” She smirked and watched his eyes widen. “You remind me every time you look at me.”

  He let her arm go, and she walked to the kitchen.

  She heard him following her, but she was ready for a fight. She looked forward to it.

  “What are you talking about?” He stood on the opposite side of the table as she placed the bag down and opened it up.

  She pulled out a few clips, a knife of some sort, a med-kit, and started to organize the rest of her haul. “What do you mean?” she asked, holding up another gun. “Do you want this one? It’s an M9.”

  He stared at her before snatching it out of her hand. “How do you know what this is called? And answer my fucking question—what do you mean I remind you you’re crazy?”

  Jane kept going through the bag. “I recognize them from the movies.” She slid the one she used to kill the soldier with into the waist of her jeans. “And I meant what I said—you look at me like I’m crazy and pathetic. It’s fine. At least you feel something when you look at me.”

  “I do not look at you like that!” he snapped. “You’re acting crazy now, though. Don’t pull this shit again. And quit talking like this. I don’t need to deal with your dramatics.”

  She calmly lifted her gaze to meet his. “My dramatics?”

  “Yes.” He jabbed his finger at a boarded up window. “I told you to pack survival items, and you get your feelings hurt and go run off. You’re not a soldier, Jane. You could have gotten killed, or worse, made them come in here to get the kids!”

  “I ran away from the house so they would go away because I wanted the bag.”

  “You wanted the bag?” He let out a bitter laugh. “What the hell has gotten into you? Do you even care what happens to you?”

  “No,” she said and returned to looking at everything, then added, “But I knew I would be fine.”

  “What?” He took the knife out of her hand and tossed it on the table. “You knew you’d be fine?”

  She nodded. “I can’t explain it. I just knew I needed to get the bag.”

  Jason shook his head in disbelief. “You just had to get the bag?”

  “Yes!”

  He glared at her in silence, and she held his glare. “Don’t do it again,” he said, and she could hear the rage struggling to escape from him.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just don’t do it again! We need to stay together. I can’t have you running off so you can pretend you’re a warrior and getting hurt. This isn’t like the movies or games you always want to fight in. When are you going to grow up and be responsible? This isn’t some game! You can die and put our children in danger.”

  Her mouth fell open, but she quickly snapped it shut. “Don’t tell me what to do. You wanted me to pack stuff that would keep us alive. Well, I got them! We’re safer now. We can protect the kids because I ran out there like a warrior and got weapons. Take what you want, but I’m keeping the rifle and M9.”

  Jason sighed. “Did you take your medicine?”

  Jane tensed and stared at him for a good thirty seconds. “Yes, I took my pills.”

  “Are you sure? You’re acting like you used to, Jane. One moment you’re crying and staring off at nothing, the next you have no fear and act like you don’t have a care in the world. Why can’t you just be—” He shook his head and looked at her shaking hands.

  “Normal?” She supplied for him. “I’m not normal, Jason. I can’t be better just because you want me to be.”

  He looked her in the eye. “I just want you to be level headed and not always jumping from one extreme to the next! I can’t deal with you when I have to worry about everything else. I have to keep the kids safe. Just get it together. Get over your problems for once, but don’t be stupid. You seemed to be doing better. I just don’t get it.”

  “I’m never better,” she said, feeling her eyes prick as the adrenaline pumping through her veins faded. “But for a tiny moment, I believed I wouldn’t fail.” She rubbed her tears when she realized she was crying but continued staring at him. His brown eyes suddenly reminded her of the soldier she killed, and she felt terrible. She hadn’t failed, but she no longer felt great about succeeding. She had killed a man and felt nothing.

  Jason was right. She was one extreme or another. She was either an emotional mess or a monster.

  “Just make sure you take your pills,” he said, looking back on the table. “And no more believing you’re a soldier when we both know you’re not. You’re a mother, act like it. Now, go so I can figure out how to keep the kids from getting hurt with all this.”

  Jane turned away but snatched the M16 and ignored him as he told her to bring it back.

  Her eyes and throat burned as she went back into the living room. Jason always managed to make her feel so bad about herself, but he was always right, and that’s what killed her. She wasn’t a warrior or anything special. She was a woman who had to take pills to control her moods. She had so many more they’d given her for other things, but she had stopped taking those because they made her feel how she felt right now: out of control. Like she was suffocating as the world fell to ruins around her.

  She stood there, staring at nothing as Jason’s words, all his words throughout the years, kept bombarding her mind. She kept seeing that look from him. It was the look she’d seen from others, too, but having him do it to her—

  “Mommy?” Natalie’s soft voice called.

  Jane snapped out of her daze and put her weapons down on the floor. She crawled on the bed next to her daughter. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Where did those come from?” Natalie pointed to the guns. “A
re those toys?”

  “They’re not toys. Don’t touch them…. But I found them so we can be safe from the sick people.”

  Natalie looked at the guns before smiling. “Good job, Mommy.”

  Jane smiled softly and wrapped her arms around her. “Thanks, baby. Go to sleep now.”

  Natalie rolled on her side as Jane struggled to accept her daughter’s praise before crying herself to sleep.

  Despite Jason’s words getting to her, for the first time in years, she didn’t have a single nightmare. There were no monsters, or fear of failing as she fell into a deeper sleep. That night she dreamt of a dark figure holding her. Then the mysterious being wiped her tears and placed a kiss on her lips. The dark figure, who she knew was male, didn’t speak, but if he had, she somehow knew what he would say: Sweet dreams… Sweet Jane.

  DAVID AWOKE WITH A START. He quickly sat up, scanning the C-17 plane he was aboard before glancing at his chest. There wasn’t anything obvious, but he felt a definite tug, as if an invisible rope had knotted around his heart and urged him to come to… something.

  It did not frighten him, but it certainly had his complete attention. He brushed his fingers across his chest as if something would fall away, but there was nothing there. There was no pain either, but it made him restless, antsy. He was so absorbed in this foreign sensation, he didn’t even take notice when Gawain took a seat next to him.

  “You feel it as well?” Gawain asked.

  David looked over to see Gawain staring at his own chest. “What is it?” He rubbed at the center of the pulling sensation. The more time passed, the more restless he felt.

  “I do not know,” Gawain muttered. “It doesn’t hurt?”

  “No, you?”

  Gawain shook his head. “Just anxious. It looks like we are not the only ones.” He nodded toward their waking comrades.

  They all looked up with confused expressions. Some massaged their chests as they glanced around at one another.

  Arthur stood and walked toward where David and Gawain sat. “When did it start?”