Afterglow: An Apocalypse Romance Read online

  AFTERGLOW

  by Maria Monroe

  Also by Maria Monroe

  Julian & Lia

  (Book 1 in the Julian Series)

  Love (Literally)

  (Book 2 in the Julian Series)

  The Rescue

  Her Millionaire Master

  (published by Stormy Night Publications)

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, dialogue, and actions are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is completely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Maria Monroe

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Cassy Roop of Pink Ink Designs

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  A Message from Maria

  About the Author

  Sample of Julian & Lia

  CHAPTER ONE

  –Nina–

  Nina needed a motorcycle. The knowledge hit her hard, like a punch to the stomach, the second she reached the expressway in her ‘88 Acura, a hand-me-down from her dad, and saw that the roads were completely blocked.

  Dammit! Hadn’t she watched The Walking Dead? Apparently every apocalypse movie and show ever created had gotten one thing right: people would abandon cars—or die in them—leaving roadways that were impossible to use. On the smaller streets in her parents’ subdivision she’d been able to navigate around stalled vehicles, but the highways were jam-packed. There was no way a car could get through.

  “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!” she shouted, banging her fist on the steering wheel in frustration until it hurt. She could try side roads to get to her grandmother’s house, but navigating six hundred miles with just a map, on roads that were likely as un-drivable as this, didn’t sound like a great plan.

  As she drove her car back to the house, she considered her options. She dismissed the idea of walking almost as quickly as she thought of it. Untold dangers lurked everywhere, and she had a long way to go, so only as a last-ditch plan would she consider it. A bicycle might work, but it would be hard to carry much gear, and even though she’d be able to weave in and out of stopped cars she wouldn’t make good time. Or a quick getaway if she needed it.

  A motorcycle seemed like the perfect solution. Able to fit through smaller spaces than a car, but faster than a bike. And, if it had those side bag thingies—saddlebags—she’d even be able to carry some supplies. So yes, there was the small issue of not knowing how to drive one. And the other issue of not actually having one. But Nina was nothing if not resourceful and tough, and she could figure it out. One step at a time.

  Pulling into her parents’ driveway, she remembered the guy. The big, muscular, tattooed guy. He lived just a few blocks away, and over the summer, when she was house-sitting her parents’ house while they travelled, she’d seen him out a lot, working on motorcycles in his garage. The door was always open, like he was showing off, and inevitably he’d be topless. Again, showing off.

  She had to admit, though, that without a shirt he was impressive. Bulging muscles flexed as he worked, sweat glistening on his six-pack stomach and giving a sheen to the mass of tangled and colorful tattoos that decorated his upper arms and shoulders.

  Normally Nina didn’t go for bulky guys, and tattoos weren’t really her thing. But his were fascinating, and from afar looked like works of art. And honestly, she’d be lying if she said she’d never had the urge to get closer, just to see the details of his tattoos, of course. Not because she was interested in him, because he definitely wasn’t her type. Too big and arrogant; she didn’t even have to talk to him to know he exuded an attitude of not-giving-a-single-fuck.

  He looked like the kind of guy who banged a different girl every night, and anyway, she went for more intelligent guys, ones who cared more about education than working out. She didn’t want to admit the real reason he intimidated her was that she was fairly certain, with his sculpted body and smoking good looks, he wouldn’t even look twice at her. Probably not even once. And who needed an ego-crusher like that?

  The back seat of the Acura was stuffed with supplies, so she checked twice that it was locked, then pocketed the car key. She glanced around, making sure the streets were clear, though she was getting used to the unnatural silence that had descended since the virus hit. And then the solar flare or bomb, or whatever it was that turned the sky bright for two full days and nights at the same time all the power went out and electronics suddenly stopped working. The same time she saw, in the far distance where downtown Chicago lay, flames and smoke and wavy heat lines rising up into the sky.

  Since then she’d stayed indoors, keeping watch from the window for any signs of danger, hand hovering over her revolver whenever people walked past. Mostly small groups had shuffled past, huddled together and grimy. Some carried weapons. Some struggled under the weight of huge packs and bags, though she wasn’t sure where they were headed. All of them scared her—they could be dangerous or diseased—and she ducked down below the windowsill if their heads turned her way.

  The day before, two bulky guys lurked around the house across the street. They shattered the front window to unlock the door, and a woman’s scream pierced the air. Seconds later one of the men dragged the dead body of the old woman who’d lived there out onto the sidewalk.

  Nina had waited, heart pounding in her ears, for them to come out again, and as soon as they did she fired a warning shot that sent them running down the street until they disappeared into the dusk. “When you pick up a gun, you aim to kill, not injure,” Nina’s grandmother had always said. But Nina wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. And it had worked. The guys had disappeared, and she hadn’t seen them since. It had been a warning, though. A sign that it wasn’t safe to stay any longer.

  She was well prepared, with a small arsenal and plenty of canned food, thanks to the survivalist tendencies of her Grandma Lottie, who’d also sent her and her brother Logan to target practice and hand-to-hand combat classes when they stayed with her during the summers. But part of being prepared was knowing when to lay low and when to move on, and it was time to hit the road.

  Already dressed in her black leather jacket, boots, and dark blue jeans, she ducked into the house to find a lightweight wool beanie, pulling it over her head and stuffing her long red curls into it. She felt like a thief this way, but her hair always attracted attention, and that was exactly not what she wanted at the moment.

  Hiding behind cars as she peered around, looking for any signs of life, almost felt like a game. It was familiar, like playing hide-and-seek as a child. Except for the adrenaline coursing through her body. Except for the fact that this was real. Except for the fact that a wrong move could mean certain death. Not to mention the pillars of smoke rising in the distance, evidence of fires started either intentionally or after that flash of brightness that had signaled the end of all the electricity.

  But she wasn’t going to panic. Creeping down the sidewalk, she stayed close to the parked cars. The houses scared her, because she had no idea what was inside them. Dead bodies. Marauders. Sickness.

  When the motorcycle guy’s house was in sight, she stopped and watched it for a few minutes. The house itself was small, probably a two-bedroom. In the side yard, a swing moved gently in the breeze as though
a ghost were riding on it. Nina shivered, then remembered seeing a woman and child here before, a little girl, maybe around five or six. So the muscle guy had a wife and kid.

  Oh god, she thought. Trying to survive alone was bad enough. Imagine trying to keep your family alive!

  Guilt flooded her for even thinking about stealing from this family, but she took a deep breath. They were, in all likelihood, dead. The last report she’d heard on CNN before the power went out more than a week ago was that over twenty million people were infected, and the death rate was hovering at 95%. The mystery virus was quick and deadly.

  And even if they had survived, there was no way all three of them could escape together on a motorcycle. It was justification, she knew. Denial. But it was all she had, and rules changed—didn’t they?—when it was the end of the world, or close to it, at least.

  Nina ran, quickly and low, to the detached garage of the tattoo guy’s house. Both the big door that opened to the driveway and the side door were closed. She tried the handle. Locked. Damn. But of course she hadn’t expected this to be easy.

  One skill she didn’t have was picking locks, so she studied the door carefully, trying to determine how strong it was. The paint on it was fairly fresh, but she could feel that the wood underneath was damp and old. The door might be locked, but one solid kick and she could get it open. Glancing around once to make sure nobody was around, she took a step back and, with the force of her body behind her leg, drove her foot hard into the door.

  Shock and pain assaulted her as she bounced off the door, landing on her ass. Oh god, she groaned, both from hurt and from embarrassment. Not that there was anyone around to see, but still. She stood up and shook herself off, then remembered she’d read somewhere that old doors are usually weakest around the hinges, so this time she aimed the kick there. Immediately it gave with a satisfying crack, and she kicked it three more times, breaking apart the wood enough so she could enter.

  Furtively, she glanced around. Had the noise alerted someone to her presence? But nothing moved. Everything remained still.

  She entered quietly, her revolver held solidly in her right hand while she swirled the beam of her flashlight into all the corners. She was alone. And there was the bike. She took a step closer to see it better. It was leaning on a kickstand, gleaming under the light from her flashlight.

  She knew nothing about motorcycles, but this one was shiny and appeared, at least, to have all its pieces, unlike the three other bikes lined against one wall of the garage. On either side of the motorcycle were saddlebags, and an excitement grin broke out on her face. Perfect. OK, so they weren’t huge. But she could fill them with supplies and carry the rest in her BOB, the bug-out bag that she’d had packed even before the disaster struck.

  Her parents and her brother all used to laugh about her grandma, about her insistence that they be prepared for some random catastrophe. About the fact that when Grandma Lottie moved from the house Nina’s parents lived in now, she left behind a basement shelter that she wouldn’t let them take apart, even when Logan begged to turn it into a rec room with a pool table. Now he was twenty, and Nina was twenty-four, and they had their own jobs and apartments.

  It was fortuitous, though, how often they’d made good-humored fun of their grandma. Nina remembered Logan singing, “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s bomb shelter we go!” It was funny at the time, but now? She knew exactly where her family would meet up: at her grandmother’s brand new super duper bunker shelter in the country. And for the past few weeks she’d been living off the supplies her grandmother had stocked in her parents’ house long ago. So who was laughing now?

  She just needed the motorcycle key. And to learn how to ride. One step at a time, Neens, she whispered, scanning the bike’s ignition and checking in the leather saddlebags. No key. The garage was well organized, and she checked the hooks on the wall by the door and the storage cabinet along one wall. Nothing. So maybe the key was in the house. Not ideal, but not insurmountable.

  Sighing, she headed to the back door of the house to see if she could get in.

  * * *

  This would be her second official break-in, her first being the garage door she’d kicked in only moments before. It occurred to her that she’d completely thrown away any sense of ethics, but then again, things were different now. She still thought it was wrong to steal, but if the people you were stealing from were most likely dead, maybe it was a little less wrong? Or was she justifying again?

  Whatever, she whispered, shaking her head. She didn’t have time to debate the moral implications of her actions right now. What she needed was the key to the motorcycle in the garage, and she needed to check the house to see if it was there. The problem, of course, was that there might be people in the house, and that scared her. They could be sick. Or dangerous. Should she knock first? And then break in if nobody answered? And what if someone did answer?

  Dammit! She hesitated for a second before grasping her revolver in her right hand and knocking twice, firmly, with her left. She held her breath as she waited and listened for any movement inside. Nothing. She glanced around at the ground, then picked up a large rock, heavy and round. She focused on the window next to the back door and hurled the rock at it as hard as she could, turning away at the last second in case any stray glass flew toward her. Most of the glass would fall inside the window, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  She crouched down low just under the broken window, a few shards crunching under her boots, and waited, listening. The sound of the window shattering had certainly been loud enough to get the attention of anyone inside. But still, aside from her nervous breathing, the world around her was silent.

  Like she’d seen in countless TV shows and movies, she kicked the window frame clean of hanging shards of glass that could cut her as she snaked her arm into the window and fumbled around until she felt the lock of the door between her fingers. One simple twist and it was unlocked. She was in!

  Carefully and slowly, she took her time turning the knob and pushing the door open, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness inside. Fortunately there was no smell of decay, so at least she wouldn’t find any dead bodies, though live bodies, especially armed with weapons or germs, would be infinitely worse. Tiptoeing inside, she held her gun out in front of her with her right hand while she scanned the kitchen for any signs of movement.

  Near the counter was a set of hooks with various keys dangling from them. Yes! she whispered. Found it!

  Could it really be this simple? A grin spread across her face at this small victory. Finally something was going right! She’d grab them all, bring them out to the garage to figure out which one worked. Hurrying across the kitchen, she was almost at the keys when out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow, a shape leaping out at her.

  There wasn’t enough time, though, to react. A hard blow to her right hand forced her fingers open, her gun flying across the room. And then, even before she could see her assailant, something heavy and solid rammed into the side of her head. And she was out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  –Creed–

  Fuck, uttered Creed, for at least the millionth time that day. The nausea and cough were almost gone, but he still had to force himself to eat, his appetite completely nonexistent. The only way he’d get back the energy and strength to figure things out, though, was if he took care of himself. So he took another bite of beef stew straight from the can, then chugged as much water from the gallon next to him as he could stomach. He swore as soon as he was back to feeling normal again he’d have a beer. It’d be warm, but it wouldn’t matter.

  And as soon as he was feeling normal again he’d need a plan. Unless sitting at the window scouring the streets for signs of danger counted as a plan. As the days passed, he saw fewer and fewer people, though. His best guess was that deaths from the virus were still occurring, dead bodies still piling up—wherever they were being taken.

  At first, ambulances had come to r
emove the sick. Then the hospitals filled up, and people had been instructed to leave dead bodies outside in the street for the CDC to pick up. He’d seen huge vans drive through, hazmat-suited individuals coming out and loading the bodies into the back. He imagined the vans filled with dead people. Where were they brought? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. But he was glad he’d taken care of his family, burying his sister and niece in the back yard when they died so they didn’t end up in a pile with all the discarded, rotting corpses.

  He still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to dig the holes, sick himself too, weak and sweaty and shaking. But he’d done it, then resumed his position by the front window to keep watch as he rolled in and out of delirium. He was lucky nobody tried to break in. He was lucky he didn’t accidentally shoot himself. Mostly, he was damn lucky he hadn’t died from the sickness like everyone else he knew.

  He still couldn’t get his mind around how quickly things had gone south, how fast the world had gone from... well, from the world he knew to this. This place where everyone he loved was dead from the virus, and he was alone defending his sister’s house.

  And for what? What was the point? He needed a plan, he thought again. One that involved more than keeping watch over a mostly vacant street, eating beef jerky all day long, and, though he was still too weak to do them properly, forcing his body through sets of sit-ups and pushups so he could at least stay strong. For whatever happened next. It killed him, though, that he didn’t know what that was. He hated not knowing what was coming next.

  A noise. Out by the garage. The sound of wood splintering. Goddammit. He pushed himself off the chair and moved silently to the bathroom, which had a small window overlooking the side yard and the garage. A figure dressed in all black was creeping inside the garage. Small. A kid, probably, some teenager out scavenging. Well, there was nothing in the garage worth stealing, except his bike, and he’d shoot whoever tried to leave with that. His guess was the person would leave with nothing, and Creed could go back to sitting in the chair and trying to will himself to get better quicker.