The Frenzy Series (Book 1): Frenzy, page 1
Table of Contents
Frenzy
Copyright
Dedication
The Plague of Darkness
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Frenzy
Copyright © 2016 by Casey L. Bond. All rights reserved.
First Edition.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior express permission of the author except as provided by USA Copyright Law. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.
This book is a work of fiction and does not represent any individual, living or dead. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible,
King James Version, Cambridge, 1769. All rights reserved.
Book cover designed by Cover Me, Darling.
Professionally Edited by The Girl with the Red Pen.
Paperback and E-book formatted by Cover Me, Darling and Athena Interior Book Design.
Published in the United States of America.
ISBN-13: 978-1522932635
ISBN-10: 1522932631
To Elton. Some people say that love can’t exist at first sight. I’m glad we disagree. I love you and always have.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.” Exodus 10:21
Mercedes brushed my hair back from the sides of my face and kissed my forehead. The scent of pine soap clung to her skin. We’d washed in the river this afternoon, splashing in the sunshine and forgetting the ominous task that night would bring with it.
“I don’t want you to go,” I told her.
She smiled. Mercedes’ smile could disarm the most hateful of people. I was sure it could even calm the rough seas mentioned in the books she taught me to read. “I’ll be fine. There are other people with me.”
“And a night-walker.”
“They aren’t how you imagine. The night-walkers are….intense, but they’ve never threatened, only helped us. People like to perpetuate fear and cause drama where there isn’t any.” She let go of my hair.
“Will you wake me in the morning? When you come home?”
Mercedes chuckled. “Porschia. You and I both know that you’ll already be awake. Will you please try to get some sleep?”
“I’ll try. It’s just hard with you being gone.”
“Mother, Father, and Ford will be here.”
I shook my head. “They aren’t you.”
“I love you, too,” she replied. “I promise to come straight home to you, after the morning rotation and after I grab our rations. You know we need them. This winter’s been terrible.”
My stomach growled.
“How are you not afraid?” Tears welled in my eyes. I wished so much that I had an ounce of her courage.
“I’ve done it before.”
“One night, Cedes.”
“Now, I know what I need to do. It isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t dangerous. And I plan to volunteer again and again. As long as we need it and they accept me, I’ll be fine. It’s seriously no big deal, Porschia. Maybe one day you’ll go with me.”
“Father won’t allow it.”
She winked at me. “Father won’t always be there to stop you. Now, I have to get going. Evening rotation starts soon.”
“Love you,” I told her, hugging her one last time.
“Love you back. Listen, stay in your room.” She knew Mother’s mood had been sour all day.
Mother wore her manipulative face this morning, my least favorite. She blew out a long breath, filling the air with the rancid scents of disappointment and aggravation. That was her modus operandi: out with the bad, in with the good. But Miranda Grant never found enough good. She could never inhale enough hope or contentment to keep her from suffocating. So she struggled through every second of the day, a perpetual frown thinning her lips, a rigid frame and cold, dismissive eyes.
She yelled more often than not, reminding me I was more the cause of her disdain than the utter despair we found ourselves in. The world had gone to shit and she didn’t ask for this life. But then again, none of us did. Mother handled it more poorly than everyone else—her moods and actions swinging violently back and forth across an invisible pendulum. One moment she would dismiss me without so much as a glance or flippant gesture, and the next she would strike out. But I learned to use the reflexes I was given, snatching her wrist before her hand could make contact with my cheek.
This morning, she chose the well-trodden path of disdain when she should have been mourning. If I knew my mother, she would soon go into fix-it mode because she knew better than everyone else in Blackwater about what was wrong with the world. All anyone had to do was ask her. And if they didn’t ask, she would gladly offer the solution in detail, at which point I would gratefully fade into the background and sneak away. Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Hearing it often enough, I was sure, would make my ears bleed.
I tugged down the sleeve of my hand-me-down dress until it grazed my wrist, almost reaching to where it should ideally lay. Mother leaned against the Formica countertop, assessing me. Her steely blue eyes took in every detail, every stray thread; the way the dress didn’t and would never fit me the way it had my sister. I would never measure up to Mercedes; never fill her shoes, literally and figuratively. My sister was beautiful, petite, and full of life. She was happy; the embodiment of everything Mother thought should be mixed together to create the recipe of the perfect woman, the perfect daughter. I was her exact opposite.
Where Mercedes had been short and curvy, I was tall, and my bones protruded indelicately. Where her hair looked like golden honey in summer, mine was a dull, light brown and dry like the withered stalks of corn in winter. She was light and I was too much like my mother. I was dark. But unlike Mother, I wasn’t miserable. I just had a different outlook on life, different goals than those she had chosen for me. And unlike my sister, I wasn’t afraid to voice those aspirations, to carve my own path. Unlike my sister, I was alive. That fact alone made Mother hate me.
Mother cleared her throat and offered a slight smile, tucking an errant strand of silvering hair back into her tight bun. “You look terrible in her dress.” I stood taller, despite the words that should have made me cower. She noticed. Wrinkles formed around her tightly pursed lips and she narrowed her eyes. I tugged on the sleeves again. I was too tall for Mercedes’ dresses, too tall by several inches, but they were all we had so they would have to work. To Mother’s chagrin, I would wear them proudly. They were all I had left of Mercedes. All that was left of her light were her ebony dresses, the signature of all Colony women.
My feet carried me through the kitchen and out the back door before more venom could spew from her mouth. Ford wasn’t ready yet, but thankfully he was awake. While Mother was greeting me so warmly this morning, I’d heard the weary floorboards creaking overhead. He’d just rolled out of bed. Ford was fourteen going on twenty. Over the summer, his voice changed, turning deeper. He had changed, too. Just this spring, he was tall and lanky, limbs too overwhelming for his frame, but he grew up over the summer. He developed muscles, larger than any pubescent boy should have, and he grew in other ways, too. Ways that couldn’t be seen from the outside. Ford was more mature than most of the gangly boys he called friends.
Through the meager harvest and canning season in late summer, he helped in the garden without complaint, often for hours on end. He began to beg Father to let him join the rotation early, wanting to practice his archery skills in real life. His goal was to take down several bucks or a large bear to garner enough meat to give every family a healthy portion.
Ford also helped our neighbors with their gardens and chores, especially the elderly and infirm. While his few friends giggled about girls and ran around town, Ford kept his head down, and his tenaciousness didn’t go unnoticed. Just last week, the Elders announced his apprenticeship working with the Colony’s livestock. It was an important position in our community. What livestock we were able to breed were all we had to sustain us, should things get epically worse. And things, it seemed, were heading in that direction at a rapid clip.
I was glad I didn’t see him this morning. Hearing the growling of his empty stomach was driving me crazy. It didn’t bother me when my own howled and cramped, but Ford was still young. He was my baby brother, and younger siblings should never go hungry. Mercedes whispered through the wall vent more than once that she could hear my stomach rumbling from the other side of the wall that separated our beds. Her powerful voice would later fade, heavy with the despair we all felt but could do nothing about.
I eased the door closed behind me and stepped outside. Fog hung thickly in the air, a damp, silken blanket that covered the black earth underfoot. My leather boots sank into the mud with each step. It had been too dry during the spring and early summer, but late summer and fall was unseasonably wet, causing the river to swell and flood out of its banks. Our house was one of the closest to the water, so it was one of the first to flood. We were one of the first families to lose the majority of the crops we’d spent so much time tending. Everything planted in the front yard was lost, which meant we would only have the back yard gardens’ bounty to last us through the season and to provide food throughout the winter.
Trudging toward the rapids on leaden legs, I mentally prepared myself for the ceremony. It had been exactly one week since Mercedes left on the hunt with four other people. There were two men, one woman, one teenage girl, and Mercedes. The others returned without her, telling a horrific tale—a nightmare we all lived. She had been bitten by an Infected. The others in her party couldn’t risk helping her, even when she screamed and clawed into the black mud beneath her. They ran and didn’t look back, thankful to make it back to the crossing themselves, heaving for breath and thankful they’d made it. Why they weren’t accompanied by a night-walker was beyond me. It was part of the treaty, and until that night, the treaty had never been broken.
The sound of rushing water over smoothed rocks pulled me from imagining my sister’s fall. To most people it was a soothing sound, but to me, it was an awful reminder that Mercedes would never cross those rapids again. The smell of rich earth and fresh water mixed with the crisp leaves that blanketed the ground everywhere, leaving the branches above bare and cold. Like macabre fingers clawing toward the sun, they stretched toward the North Star that peered down from the lightening morning sky.
Surprisingly, Father was already waiting at the calm pool beneath the nearby waterfall. It wasn’t the largest fall along this river, but it was wide. The pool beneath the spilling water was pristine and calmed the ripples that the fall pushed outward. It was one of nature’s juxtapositions. Rage met temperance. Ferocity met timidity. Life met death.
All of those lost from and mourned by the Colony were honored here in this pool, so it seemed that Mercedes’ farewell was even more fittingly held here. It was the spot that we swam in as children, and where we bathed to rid ourselves of the dark, miry earth before Mother had a fit. It was her favorite place, where she would come to think, and where Noah had stolen her first kiss. Noah – the boy she’d loved since childhood, the boy who had grown into a man – the man she planned to marry this winter.
Standing alone near the water’s edge, I watched the swirling torrent just beneath the falls and let the rush of the water fill my ears. A waterfall of my own flowed steadily down my cheeks, spilling onto my dress drop by drop. Fresh. It smelled so fresh here. None of the Infected were across the bank, because their rot wasn’t present. Her rot wasn’t present.
The Colony considered her dead, but the truth was far worse. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t really alive, either. Mercedes was Infected now, and would begin to decay. Her pearly white teeth would yellow and chip off as she gnawed on blood and bone, sometimes animal, sometimes human, but always anything she could grab hold of. Her golden hair would thin, falling out in great clumps. I’d heard rumors from expeditions that chunks of hair littered the briary woods. Her skin would mottle and her muscles would weaken. She would remain a walking skeleton, her only concern her next meal, only barely surviving until something bigger came along that she couldn’t escape. Then, she would become the meal.
And if she ever were to catch a human, ever bite a human, she would infect them and spread her curse to another. The most humane thing, the Elders said, was to find the Infected and eliminate them. But the Colony was in survival mode now. Winter had just begun. The gardens were mostly barren, and though we stored what food we could spare our stomachs during the spring, summer and fall, there wouldn’t be enough to keep everyone from going hungry over the coming cold months. The priority would be hunting for meat that everyone would share, but that wouldn’t be quite enough for anyone. However, the meat would keep us alive until the last snow fell and we could begin planting again.
Feet shuffled in the tall grass behind me. Every resident, unless ill or physically handicapped, was expected to attend the farewell ceremonies. Most wanted to attend, to pay their respects, or so they claimed. In reality they wanted to gossip, to ferret out their fears of the Infected that lay just beyond the river. Fortunately, farewells didn’t happen that often. We’d only had three this year until now, and those three colonists died of natural causes.
Mercedes was the fourth. Oh, how Mother wailed when she learned of Mercedes’ fall. She cursed and screamed and questioned why it couldn’t have happened to me or to Ford. Then she raised her hands toward the heavens, called us liars, and demanded that we leave her house and not return. Ford didn’t outwardly flinch at her words, and I wouldn’t allow myself to. Not anymore. Instead, we came here, to the river.
Ever the peace-keeper, Father scolded her and called for the physician to give her a tincture to calm her nerves. He made excuses for her behavior and apologized on her behalf, though Ford and I both knew she wasn’t the tiniest bit sorry for her actions or the poisonous words that poured so easily from her mouth. I wished there was a remedy for bitchy. Mother desperately needed that.
To Father, Ford, and me, Mercedes wasn’t dead. She was living, and though it was a half-life we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemies (not even upon Mother), she was still alive. I took solace in that. Somehow, the knowledge that she was fighting to survive despite the infection was more comforting than covering her corpse with six feet of heavy, ebony soil. She was on this side of the grave, even if just barely. Even if only temporary.
Someone had to find a cure at some point. If she could just hold on. . .
As the trio of Elders, clad in white robes that draped from their bent bodies, stepped toward the water, I backed away. Too close now to discreetly bury myself in the midst of the gathered crowd, a sea of black and white cotton, I stopped and listened. I watched the flowing water, refusing to give credence to the words of old men who had no idea what it felt like to lose a family member to the Infected, who sought no cure and saw no hope in the future.
Survival was a necessity, not a way of life. They’d given up, and so had everyone else.
I couldn’t allow myself to listen to their propaganda. I listened for Mercedes and I heard her laughter in my mind, in the memories that she still lived on in. She would stay vibrant and healthy there until I died. I wished I could transfer them to someone else so I could to keep her alive forever.
Once the old men were finished taking turns speaking about Mercedes, whom they knew very little about because they never cared to get to know her while she lived amongst them, the residents, friends, and acquaintances formed a line to the river. Each stepped forward to utter a prayer for her. Some threw dried flowers into the dark water. Stiffened petals and stems gathered on the surface, some overlapping the others until they became heavy and sank together to the river bed. All two-hundred thirty-seven residents prayed that my sister would die swiftly. That was what they prayed for: mercy. But my thoughts were unmerciful and it was eating away at me slowly. I was the only one who asked her to hang on, who willed her to keep trying, to live, for me.
It was selfish. I was selfish.
But I didn’t care. I couldn’t bring myself to wish for death, however merciful, to find someone I loved.
I knew that I should stand with Ford, but he was lost somewhere in the crowd. Mother and Father were, too. They didn’t need me and I didn’t need them either. It had been a long time since I fit in with my family, if I ever did. Now, none of it mattered anyway.
