Remnant (Called Through Time: Highlander Brides #1)

Chapter One

Village of Apple Creek, Ohio

She had to survive. The apocalypse had all

but decimated humanity, yet giving up was not an option. If she

couldn’t continue on for herself then she’d do it for her brother.

Victor needed her as absolutely as she needed him. He might be the

family genius, but she was the family badass.

Ever since childhood she’d looked out for

her younger sibling, fighting the bullies who liked to pick on

intellectually gifted little boys. Victor had finished high school

by age ten, college by twelve, and his Ph.D. by sixteen, so she’d

defended him from ignorant tormenters all of his life. Victor was

presently a man of twenty-eight to her twenty-nine, but she knew in

her gut that he needed her if he was to endure.

It was that knowledge, that implicit

understanding, that kept her going these past four years, kept her

on the move from Los Angeles to rural Ohio even when she’d wanted

to give up and just die already. She had to protect her

brother. It’s what she’d always done. It’s what she believed she

was born to do.

Starved, dehydrated, and exhausted, Veronica

Banks slid down against the inside wall of an abandoned Amish barn.

She landed on her ass with a slight thud. Out of breath and

panting, she realized she couldn’t allow herself to rest for very

long. Darkness was coming. Infrared goggles worked to a point, but

the eaters possessed better night vision than the goggles did.

Besides, she only had to walk for another half hour or so and she’d

be at her sole sibling’s survivalist compound just before dusk.

Everyone who’d known Victor before the

plague managed to strip the earth of most human life had thought

him to be nothing more than a Doomsday-believing, paranoid,

reclusive, Artificial Intelligence scientist. Unfortunately, he’d

proven those people wrong. Victor had turned out to be one of the

few sane people left in an insane world. Now if she could just get

to his compound and to him, perhaps they’d both be all right.

She briefly closed her eyes as her breathing

returned to normal. Victor’s underground fortress would be stocked

full of food, water, medicine, weapons, and safety. The weapons,

she knew, were for her. Victor had no clue how to use them. While

he understood what “point and shoot” meant on a cerebral level,

practically speaking was another matter altogether. For whatever

reason, fighting just wasn’t in his DNA. Her brother was a carbon

copy of their dearly departed researcher of a mother, just as

Veronica was their dead father’s Navy Seal mini-me. She missed her

parents. Both had been lost to the plague early on, before humanity

understood what the novel DR-71 virus was and what it did to

people.

What began as a virulent flu that claimed

the lives of the majority of its victims mutated when confronted

with medicines meant to combat it. The result was DR-71, or

Deceased Reanimation 71. “Deceased Reanimation” needed no

clarification and “71” simply stood for the year the virus was

discovered. That year felt like generations ago, though only four

had passed.

Zombies. That’s what the humans of

yesteryear into the science fiction postulations of their era would

have called today’s infected. Of course, those same people would

have mostly been right. Once the infected died their cells

reanimated, just like in the old books, films, and television

shows. Their sole motivation once they woke back up was to eat

non-infected human flesh, thereby spreading the mutated DR-71 virus

through their bites. That’s what the old-timers had gotten right.

There was a litany of things they’d gotten wrong though.

For starters, zombies could be killed in the

same ways humans died, starvation included. It wasn’t just a matter

of shooting them in the head. A death blow to the heart, lungs, and

other vital organs did just as well, though a wound to the brain

was the most efficient, quick method for disposing of them

instantaneously. It kept them from getting back up and biting more

victims before they bled out and met their final deaths.

The old-timers had also hypothesized that

zombies would feed on their victims’ organs rather than just on

their flesh. In reality, eaters had no interest in human innards,

likely because ingesting their preys’ vital organs would simply

kill them, thereby failing to turn them into one of their own kind.

Eating and populating remained the only motivations of the

undead.

Another thing the old-timers got wrong was

in hypothesizing that the eaters would be stupid. On the contrary,

they moved faster than humans, possessed keener senses than their

prey, and were capable of rudimentary thinking. Like a great white

shark scanning the waters, they thought only of hunting down their

next meal and promulgating their species. An eater’s thinking was

primitive, but it was there. How long until their mental processes

evolved even more? That thought gave her the shivers. Lately, they

were definitely showing signs that their evolution was

progressing.

Veronica took in a deep, sustaining breath

and slowly exhaled. It was best not to think on their rapid

learning—not now. She had bigger worries at the moment. Namely, her

body needed sustenance. She had to make it to Victor’s compound

before nightfall.

Pulling herself up to her full five feet and

five inches, she stifled a groan as she did so. She only had a

couple miles left. After all these years, after all the squirmishes

and setbacks that had slowed her down, Veronica and Victor Banks

would soon be reunited. That knowledge gave her a much needed burst

of adrenaline. She was too close to succumb to death now.

“I’m coming, little brother,” she murmured.

She wound her long, amber curls into a makeshift bun atop her head.

“Don’t count me out just yet.”

*****

He watched her every movement through the AI

scanner he’d claimed from Victor. He observed as she walked, sword

in hand, through the hilly terrain of a place called Apple Creek.

He watched her weak body drag itself forward, worried for her as

she was set upon by inhuman creatures, and grunted his approval

when she made quick work of them despite her enfeebled state.

Other than their shared light hair and green

eyes, she was nothing like her brother. Victor’s person had grown

on him to be sure, yet he was not one who could protect himself,

much less fight for the survival of another.

The contraption he’d confiscated from

Victor, this thing called an AI scanner, had fascinated him from

the moment he’d first seen the wonders it could show to him. That

had been months ago. He’d only permitted his two most trusted

warriors to know of the device and view it with him. Even so, he

shouted them out of his chambers whenever the woman came into

view—a fact that humored his men to no end.

She intrigued him, captivated him even. Some

might say he was obsessed with her. They could be right.

All he knew with certainty was he was

rooting for this lass named Veronica. He wanted her alive and well.

He wanted her to make it to her brother’s dwelling unscathed.

And then he wanted her to come to

him.

*****

Deep in the forest, ever so close now to her

brother and safety, Veronica hacked away at the overgrown woods

with the machete she carried along with her sword. Sound drew the

eaters—a fact the old-timers had actually gotten right—so she

rapidly chopped at the forest floor with all the might she could

muster. The quicker she finished, she reasoned, the faster silence

would return to the woods. She hacked at the overgrown weeds and

brush until her fingers ached, until they were raw and looked ready

to bleed. A small smile momentarily found her lips when the trap

door came into view.

“I found you,” she whispered to the

underground entrance. She searched her camouflage fatigues for the

key to the trap door. “I’m finally here.”

She fished the key out of her pocket and

sank it into the lock. It twisted with a little doing, rust having

corroded it somewhat. It gave way with a slight clicking sound. She

sighed in relief as she opened the door, jumped inside the

entryway, and closed it. Relocking it behind her, the action caused

the lights inside the tunnel to flicker on.

Veronica let her typical hypervigilance

relax a little for the first time in four long years. She had gone

through hell and back, but she’d made it. Food, water, medicine,

Victor—all of it was close by now. She was finally at his home,

finally here to protect her little brother from the monstrous world

above.

Her breathing still ragged, she weakly

followed the tunnel down the ramp. She prayed her brother hadn’t

erected too many more barriers between her and the compound proper.

At this point she needed food and water as much as she needed air

to breathe. At least everything she required to keep surviving was

finally within reach. She’d experienced a lot of close calls and

countless setbacks in a trek that should have taken no more than

six months on foot. Evading hordes of the dead and ill-intentioned

gangs amongst the living had been an everyday occurrence.

It didn’t matter anymore. She was here.

Veronica was, she prayed, safe at last.