House Of Dragons Read online

  All that was clear was that women were now exceedingly rare, and women of childbearing age rarer still. This made all women, regardless of age, size, and level of attractiveness, extremely valuable and sought-after as intimate partners and permanent life companions. Women of childbearing age were even more valuable and sought-after. We were wanted not only to be intimate partners and wives, but also because it would be up to us to repopulate the world, as well.

  At present, becoming an intimate partner wasn't even remotely on my radar, nor was repopulating the world. I was on a mission. One day at a time and one step at a time, I was heading south, to Nashville. I was going to find my sisters, Jessica and Ebony. They weren't my biological sisters, but they may as well have been.

  All of us only children, the three of us had grown up together, skating at the same rink in suburban Detroit since kindergarten. We'd gone on to compete for nationals together and train for the Olympics together. Jess and Eb had become my heart sisters and the best friends I'd ever had. And I was going to find them. Though first, I had to outrun the group of men behind me. When I heard the same man shouting again, he sounded a little closer.

  "I'm warning you, bitch! Stop or we'll shoot you dead!"

  I doubted it. Though if he and his friends caught up to me, I was certain that rape and other horrific abuse was in my future.

  "We'll shift on your ass, too! We're bears! We'll claw your guts out even after we shoot ya!"

  That I seriously doubted. Not that bear shifters were not a real thing, but that the men behind me were actually bear shifters. If they were, it seemed like they would have shifted right away to chase me instead of running behind on foot.

  Animal shifters had happened, if happened was even the right word, shortly after the virus had hit. The Husk People, who were also referred to as Huskies, Huskers, Bloodsuckers, The Undead, and Zombies, had also happened shortly after the virus had hit.

  During the outbreak, televisions and radios had blared with one message in a computerized, monotone, recorded male voice. Level twelve. Repeat. Level twelve. Midnight. Repeat. Midnight. All level twelve government employees, please report. All military personnel, please report to your posts. This message had played on a loop, over and over without ceasing, on every single television channel and radio station for days before suddenly stopping.

  No one knew what the hell "level twelve" was, or what "midnight" meant. Some people thought it meant that some kind of germ warfare had started the virus. Some people thought that the military would soon come rolling in to clear away the quickly-piling bodies and prevent further spread of the virus somehow, but they never did. And on the fifth day after the outbreak, when the stench coming from the streets was becoming nearly unbearable, the bodies started clearing away themselves.

  Locked in my apartment, where I'd been since the second day of the virus, I'd been looking out the French doors of my balcony late at night, sobbing, trying to get phone calls to Jess and Eb to go through when I'd seen it. It being the corpses in the street rising, staggering off with halting, jerky steps, hissing and moaning, their rotting bodies glinting silver in the moonlight.

  I'd watched for a minute or two, now completely silent, before backing away from the glass doors and into my living room, dropping my phone and collapsing to my rear. Probably the perfect picture of terror, I just sat hugging my knees to my chest, rocking slightly and praying, for at least an hour. Even then, I was only spurred into getting up by the sound of one of my neighbors pounding on my apartment door, begging for help, saying that her little girl had a high fever, which was the first sign of the virus.

  Together, we bathed the two-year-old girl in cool water, fed her crushed acetaminophen tablets in applesauce, and held washcloths dampened with witch hazel and cooling peppermint extract to her forehead. But by dawn, it became clear that our efforts were in vain. Screaming that she hurt, the burning-hot toddler began to seize, and she soon fell silent, not breathing. Wailing, her now-feverish mother snatched up the little girl and made a beeline for my balcony before I could even take two steps.

  She'd somehow managed to hoist herself up to sit on the railing before I could even get close, despite the fact that she had her limp little girl in one arm, and when she jumped, my grasping hands met nothing but air. The yelled word no got stuck in my throat as I looked over the railing and saw both mom and toddler hit the sidewalk a second later.

  Neither of them moved after impact. Several hours later, I watched while they both rose to their feet almost simultaneously and slowly staggered down the street in different directions, joining hundreds of other corpses rising from the body piles.

  I spent the rest of the day crying, rocking, sleeping fitfully, and once again trying to get calls through to Jess and Eb. However, every time I placed a call, a message saying all circuits busy popped up on my phone. All text messages were returned as failed to send. The internet was down as well, not allowing me to connect from phone or laptop.

  Early that evening, sounds that sounded something like roaring made me tiptoe over to the French doors of the balcony, shaking like a leaf, terrified that it was all the dead people, or undead people, or whatever they were, making the ferocious noises.

  However, to my surprise, most of the remaining undead people were clearing the street, being chased away by lions, bears, and tigers. Blinking, I pressed my forehead to the glass, wondering if I was finally coming down with the fever myself and was now hallucinating. I didn't feel at all warm, though. In fact, I'd felt chilled to the bone all day, despite the fact that it was nearly June and muggy.

  My air conditioning had suddenly shut off along with the power earlier that day. From what it looked like, no one in the neighborhood had power anymore, with all apartment buildings and businesses completely dark in the dimness of early evening.

  There was just enough light left in the day, though, that I could see that my eyes weren't deceiving me. The street beneath my apartment was filled with bears, lions, and tigers. Actual wild animals. In Detroit.

  Opening the French doors and stepping out onto the balcony so I could see better, the only thing I could think of was that they must have all escaped from the zoo. Maybe the power outage was citywide, and maybe cage locks at the zoo operated on a power source. And maybe a generator hadn't kicked on or something.

  However, an absolutely bizarre, astonishing sight soon told me that this idea was nowhere near the mark. The wild animals in the street weren't from the zoo. Seeming to suddenly catch sight of me on my balcony, a large black bear just transformed, which was the only way I could think of it, into the form of a man within the blink of an eye. The man was even fully dressed, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, as if his clothes had somehow transformed right along with him. While I stood with my mouth hanging open, the tall, red-haired man then shouted up to me.

  "Stay indoors! The sick people aren't alive anymore! They're just shells...just husks of people! They want blood, and anyone they drink from gets the fever and becomes a husk as well! If you see any in your building and you can't escape them, try to kill them!"

  As the wild animals chased more undead people down the street, I just stared down at the man for a long moment before shouting myself. "But...how? How do I kill them?"

  "They go down and stay down if you get them through the eye or heart with something sharp! But stabbing anywhere else, including their heads, doesn't work! You can also take their heads right off, if need be...that's how I and my fellow shifters are doing it!"

  As if to prove this point, a tiger some distance behind the man pounced on an undead person, severing its head with a snap of his mighty jaws.

  Feeling as if I were in some sort of waking nightmare far beyond my wildest imagination, I just stared down at the man before speaking again. "What are 'shifters'? How are all these animals...how did you...what's happened?"

  As the noise of fighting behind him grew louder, the man cupped his hands around his mouth to shout up to me. "I don't have much time to
explain, but whatever the virus is, it turned some of us men into part-animals after the fever instead of killing us! No one knows a lot right now. We're just trying to keep everyone safe and clear all the Husk People from the city.

  “Some of us are getting bitten and turning into Husks ourselves, so I need to go help. Those of us who survive the city-clearing will be back for you survivors. Just stay put! Don't leave your building! Don't leave your own apartment, even, unless you need emergency food or medicine! We'll be back!"

  With that, the man turned, shifted back into the form of a bear, and headed up the street, where a lion was being swarmed by a group – at least a dozen – moaning Husk People. I never saw the red-haired man again, or any of his fellow animal shifters, either, at least not in Detroit. After a few days, I assumed that they'd all been turned to Husk People themselves during the fighting, or had been run out of the city.

  That had all been nearly two years earlier, and I'd survived by my own wits and strength since then. I wasn't about to let a group of men with rape surely on their minds take me down now. They were gaining on me, though, and their apparent leader was shouting again.

  "We're gonna get you, bitch, and now we're gonna make it harder on ya!"

  His voice told me that he, and maybe the entire group of four, was only twenty or thirty feet behind me now. I knew I had to ditch my heavy duffel bag, even though it contained nearly my entire precious food supply, and also weapons and first-aid supplies that I needed to survive.

  I could re-gather those things, however, if I could survive long enough to do so. On the other hand, if captured, I knew I probably wouldn't be able to escape. Ultimately, the decision was easy.

  Still running, I just let my duffel bag fall from my shoulder, and soon I was speeding across the fields, feet absolutely flying through the tall bluegrass. I could have laughed for joy. I could have let loose with peals of laughter. I was going to outrun the four dirty bastards behind me, and easily, too. Once I got into the forest, they'd never catch my dust.

  My internal celebration suddenly came to a grinding, screeching halt, however. Not sixty or seventy feet ahead of me, a large group of at least eight or nine men stood on the crest of a gently sloping hill not far from the treeline. Having just been clearing a gently-sloping hill near the edge of the grassland myself, I'd gasped when they'd come into view, and now I couldn't breathe,

  couldn't draw even a single breath even though my lungs were burning from exertion. The fact that I'd immediately slowed, losing ground, allowed me to hear the voice of the leader of the smaller group still behind me in the distance.

  "Just stop now, honey! Our friends got ya blocked! Might as well save your energy for what's about to happen!"

  I would just dart around. I would just dart right around the larger group of men and head right into the forest where I could lose them. But now I saw two additional men jogging in from the east. To the west, two more were sprinting at me.

  It was over. I knew it. At the very least, I was going to be taken captive and surely gang-raped. At the very worst, I knew I might lose my life in an attack by sixteen or seventeen men. I would never see Jessica and Ebony again. My journey of nearly two years would be for nothing.

  I wasn't about to just lie down and accept this, though. After coming to a dead stop, I frantically shrugged off my backpack and pulled my well-used Phillips head screwdriver from my jeans pocket.

  Brandishing it at the men racing toward me from all directions, I shouted at the top of my lungs. "Come on, then! Meet Phillip. He's going to kill at least one of you before you can do what you want." Breath coming in ragged gasps, I tightened my grip on Phillip's handle. "Come find out which one of you it's going to be!"

  *

  I owed it to Jessica and Ebony to not give up until the last. I knew they'd want me to fight just as hard as I'd fought to try to get to them.

  Several hours after the red-haired bear-shifter man had shouted up to me on my balcony, I'd finally been able to get through to Jess. After I'd stifled a near-scream of joy at hearing her voice, the conversation had been a very brief one before the line went dead. However, by that point, I'd heard all I needed to know.

  She and Ebony were okay. Neither of them had gotten the virus. They were in the same situation I was in, holed-up in Ebony's apartment, watching all the horror unfolding from the fifth floor. I told Jess that I was fine, too, then, with tears streaming down my face, told her that Sandor and Marta were gone. I went on to briefly tell her what the red-haired man had told me, and then told her to stay put with Ebony.

  "I'll come to Nashville. I'll find my way down to you guys, no matter what, and no matter how long it takes me. Just stay put, both of you."

  With both of their competitive figure skating careers over, the two of them had decided on a radical career change two years earlier, moving down to Nashville to pursue stardom as a country music duo. And before the world had gone to hell, they'd been well on their way to realizing their dream. After a year or so of struggle, they'd attracted the attention of a small record label, who'd just released their first full-length album a few months earlier.

  Two of the songs from it had made a national chart list called "Country's Hottest 100," with the second one climbing as high as number forty-four and holding steady there for two weeks before dropping, earning them a photo and a mention in the "Newcomers to Watch" section of the nation's best-selling country music magazine. The record label had already signed them on for another album, and a large-scale national tour was planned.

  My own voice wasn't half-bad at all, and in the early days of their endeavor, Jess and Eb had begged me to make their duo a trio, but I'd remained in Detroit. My own competitive figure skating career wasn't over yet, because I couldn't let it be. I felt like I still had something to prove. I was going for my third Olympics, and this time, I was determined to not return home with anything less than gold. Fate and random misfortune weren't going to snatch it from my hands this time.

  Besides, I still had my scholarship program in Detroit to run, and it had become as important to me as my dream of Olympic gold. Maybe even a bit more important. It had all started after my first Olympics, when I was seventeen. Along with a dozen other skaters, I'd done a national exhibition tour called "Champions on Ice," and our final stop had been an events center in suburban Detroit.

  A sold-out hometown crowd had come to see me and my Olympic teammates, and after the show, I'd made my way along the boards, signing autographs, collecting teddy bears and flowers, and letting people take pictures of me with my bronze medal around my neck. One little girl of about ten or eleven gave me a pink carnation, saying that when her mom could afford it, she was going to take figure skating lessons so that she could learn to skate like me.

  The comment kind of stopped me dead in my tracks, hurting and melting my heart at the same time, and I'd reached to take the little girl's hand to give it a squeeze, but the swelling, jostling crowd down by the boards had already pushed her along.

  For the next several weeks, I hadn't been able to stop thinking about the little girl, what she'd said, and the fact that I had enough money in the bank to pay for figure skating lessons for tens of thousands of kids who might never be able to afford them otherwise.

  At seventeen years old, I was a millionaire ten times over. The bulk of the money was from inheriting my parents' estate when they'd been killed. My dad had been a world-renowned neurosurgeon, and my mom a pediatric cancer specialist, and together they'd not only made a very good living, but had also made a few incredibly brilliant stock market investments.

  However, a good chunk of the money, at least two million, I'd earned myself, through post-Olympic appearances, skating shows, and product endorsements. I'd even done a TV commercial for a popular breakfast cereal and had my smiling face plastered all over millions of boxes. With old rules preventing pro athletes from participating in future Olympics having long since been abolished, I'd been free to earn as much money as I'd want
ed.

  I'd had many long talks with Sandor and Marta. I'd spent many nights researching nonprofits and different charity groups, and making plans, and I'd spent many more nights wondering if I was doing the right thing with my money and my parents' money, or if my plans were foolish and pointless and would all end in failure.

  I fired my business manager when he'd called my plans "absolute idiocy" right to my face. I fired my agent when I'd overheard her telling Sandor and Marta that I was a "very talented but very silly girl." I even fired my home-school high school tutor when she'd asked me if I couldn't think of anything better to do with my money than "give it to icky, grubby city kids." I'd spent a few weeks crying, off and on a lot. I'd had more talks with Sandor and Marta, and a few of my parents' friends.

  Ultimately, several months after my eighteenth birthday, I'd cut a red ribbon at the opening of Evangeline Blake's Figure Skating Academy, a massive facility with a double rink right smack in the heart of Detroit. Though the neighborhood was definitely a bit on the sketchy side, it wasn't the absolute worst by any means, and I'd insisted upon this location so that all kids in the city would at least have semi-easy access to the academy. Busing kids in and out of the suburbs had seemed too time-consuming and problematic to me, and besides, I wanted all kids who skated at the facility to have some kind of a sense of ownership of it, to feel that it was theirs.