Affliction

  A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-299-6

  Affliction

  The Withered Book 3

  © 2016 by Amy Miles All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by Christian Bentulan

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Permuted Press, LLC

  109 International Drive, Suite 300

  Franklin, TN 37067

  Published in the United States of America

  AFFLICTION

  A cause of mental or bodily pain, as sickness, loss, calamity, or persecution.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  The stench of death and decay grows stronger with each step that I take down the empty stairwell. The hand railings are speckled with blood and gore, coating the palm of my hand with sticky warmth. The steps are slippery underfoot as I spiral down to the hidden depths of the Opryland hotel.

  Small emergency generators have been cranked and placed in those places not lit by the rising sun as soldiers and survivors work to clear each floor above, but down here in the underbelly there is no light to be found. My eyes adjust to the darkness within seconds of entering the stairwell and as I open the basement door the hallway brightens before me with a greenish hue.

  Fresh human blood glistens in wide streaks across the wall, evidence of an arterial wound that bled out the victim that lies at my feet just out of reach of the stairwell door. He was among the lucky ones that died quickly. Beside him lies another unfortunate victim who did not fare so well. This man’s face has been beaten to a bloody pulp. His features are completely unrecognizable and his torso has been caved in, crushed under the weight of a foot, by the looks of the bloody toe prints left on his shirt. His lower half is shattered from pelvis to toes.

  This man was not eaten by a Withered but trampled under their swift escape after Cable sounded the retreat a short time ago. Their trail of carnage was easy to follow, even without my heightened sense of smell of ability to see in the dark. I fear that once my absence is discovered Nox will try to follow me. I can’t allow that to happen.

  It is only a matter of time before someone notices that I am missing. Though I was a stranger to most during my time here, my face and name have spread among the survivors, whispered in reverence. They know I am the reason they survived. What they don’t know is that I’m also the reason for their suffering.

  With Cap and his most loyal soldiers gone, Nox became the unanimously nominated leader of the survivors. I wish that I could stay and see him rise to the challenge. I can think of no one better to lead them because in the time that I have known him, he has proven to be both a good and honorable man. A person I would be happy to follow if fate had chosen a different path for me.

  I hate that he will not understand why I am leaving without saying goodbye. Perhaps it is the coward’s way out, but I can’t bear to lose another person that I care about. Watching Cable’s final fleeting moments nearly destroyed me. Saying goodbye to Nox now would finish the job.

  “In time he will understand,” I whisper to myself as I step over the squashed man.

  Chunks of torn flesh squish beneath my boots as I move down the long corridor. The air feels heavy and stale as I pause to search an open doorway and find the room empty. It has been nearly an hour since Cable and his minions fled the hotel. They will have a head start on me, but I know that I will find them.

  There is nowhere that I can go that Cable will not be able to feel me. The connecting bond that I now share with him is both a blessing and a curse. Already I can feel his mounting rage and his hatred for how I turned against him at the last moment. It’s beginning to fade with the distance he puts between us, but there was no other way to save the lives of Nox’s people and myself. He managed to track me across state lines, but I fear that I would lose him within just a couple of miles.

  I need to learn to control my abilities if I stand any chance of surviving in the days to come.

  Had I gone with Cable I fear how quickly I would have lost myself to his poisonous words. He gloated that I would soon enough become like him, a thing both unmerciful and filled with hatred. A monster bent on creating a new world where humans no longer have a place. I can’t fathom such a world, and yet I can feel stirrings deep within me already starting to take hold. They are distortions within my soul, altering my thoughts and tainting them with evil intent.

  Some of what Cable said spoke to me...and to the monster writhing just beneath the surface.

  Nox would tell me that I can fight this, that I can choose to remain myself, but I can’t take the risk of him being wrong. I can’t become a thing for him to fear or the enemy that might end his life.

  I can’t let his death or anyone else’s be on my hands. There has already been enough blood spilled because of me. No more innocents will have to suffer. I will make sure of that.

  Sweat stings my eyes as I wipe my forehead, feeling my pulse increase with every step that I take. There is something about this place that sets me on edge. Maybe my senses are still heightened from the attack on the hotel or maybe exhaustion has made me overly wary? I wish either one of those was the real reason, but I suspect that the truth of the matter is that I feel ill at ease because the scent of human blood surrounding me isn’t nearly as repulsive as it should be.

  It is yet another blatant reminder that I am no longer entirely human.

  After waking from a coma less than 48 hours ago to discover that I am immune to a Withered bite, my body has adapted the human engineered rabies virus that spread decimated our world and I somehow mutated it into something new. Instead of becoming one of them, I have become something more. Something possessing great strength, speed, night vision and an intense ability to smell. I have become a killer, capable of intelligent thought and the capacity to feel and hear the Withered whenever they are near.

  I have become the next link in the evolutionary chain, but I am not alone.

  Cable is like me, though his transformation occurred months before mine. He has had the time to perfect his abilities to the point of being able to bend the Withered to his will while I struggle to even comprehend the changes in myself. Cable told me that there are others like me and I can sense a couple of them now among the bitten victims in the floors above that are being systematically put down. I could have told Nox to spare them, to give them a chance to live, but I remained silent as I slipped away unnoticed.

  I can’t let them become like me...or worse, like Cable.

  He came for me last night with the intent of making me his own, of creating a new hierarchy with me by his side, but he is no longer the man that I once knew and loved. He is now something cold, uncaring and obsessed. His
hatred for humanity and his thirst for domination has twisted him into something abominable and it is all because of the mutation.

  How long will it be before I lose myself to the mutation too? How long do I have before I turn on the very people that I have tried to protect? How much time do I have before I become the enemy that must be put down?

  I have only one choice—I have to leave.

  Once Nox realizes that I have left, he will scour the hotel, and when he does, he will locate this path through the basement and ensure that nothing will ever be able to gain access to the hotel again. Cable can’t be allowed to return so easily. We have barely survived this attack. The survivors will not survive a second.

  To give them a chance I have to do whatever it takes to shift Cable’s focus away from them and onto tracking me instead.

  I will miss Nox far more than I fear I even know. Despite my reservations against letting him through my walls, he found a way to not only become important to me, but to prove to me that I am capable of far more than I ever thought possible. All Cable wanted to do was to protect me. Nox only sought to back me up, to let me lead and find my own strength again. He gave me what I needed most, but now I need to prove to myself that I can let him go.

  As I move steadily down the hall, lifting my nose to the air to sniff out the Flesh Bags’ trail, I search for a hole or grate that leads underground. I know that Cable must have come up from below, most likely using an old sewer line that was abandoned after the flood that forced parts of the hotel to be renovated a few years back. Nox has his men searching the upper levels, but one whiff of the stairwell behind me told me that this was the path they took.

  Room after room passes by and the scent of the Withered grows stronger. I move along one hallway and enter another, following the exposed metal pipes overhead that show signs of rust and corrosion.

  Something moist and solid squishes beneath my boot as I turn the corner and I pause to lift my foot. A chunk of tanned flesh the size of my hand is caught in the tread of my boot and I instantly know that it does not belong to a Withered by the delicious scent of it.

  My stomach clenches with sudden need and I lean back against the wall, sucking in large gulps of air as I drag my boot against a door frame to clean the skin away. My heartbeat quickens and my hands begin to shake as the aroma surrounds me, invading my senses, and as I lift my eyes, I see that the hallway is piled with human corpses.

  Less than three feet ahead of me, I spy the first headless torso of a slightly overweight man. One of his severed legs is propped against a woman whose face has been chewed off. The man’s other leg is bent at a blunt angle toward his ears with the brilliant white of bone poking through his skin.

  Dozens more lie one on top of the other, intermingled and tossed aside without care. This hall is a mass grave, littered with dismembered body parts and blood so thick it rises above the soles of my boots. From somewhere within the mass I can see movement and hear chewing. One Withered has remained to continue its feast.

  “Oh, my God,” I moan as the hallway begins to compress in on me and I shrink back against the wall.

  The blood smells too sweet and the human flesh so fresh I can imagine that a bit of warmth still lingers in it. Saliva swells in my mouth at the thought of reaching out and taking a small taste.

  “No!” I back away, clinging to the wall as I flee down the hall in the direction that I just came. It is safer there. The scents are not so strong and I force myself to stop running.

  “It’s all in my head,” I whisper to the empty hallway as I gulp down the bile rapidly rising in my throat. My knees give way and I collapse to the floor, doubling over to press my forehead against the ground as I grip my stomach. “I’m stronger than this. I am not like that thing back there!”

  Minutes pass and melt into what feels like agonizing hours. With each cleansing breath that I take in, I feel a small portion of calm return. I count each breath, forcing myself not to taste the air or risk hyperventilating again. Slowly the panic attack begins to ease and the sensations of hunger subside to a manageable level.

  I wipe at my mouth, wishing that I had something close to hand that could conceal the taste of blood on the air. The hairs along my arms stand to attention as my heart continues to thrum loudly in my ears.

  “That’s it,” I whisper again, pushing my hair back from my face. “Slow breaths. You’re going to be fine.”

  But I don’t really believe that. Upstairs, with the newly dawning sun filling the glass atrium with brilliant light it would be easy to think that everything will be okay, but here in the dark, I feel like this is what my life is destined to become. Something meant only for the shadows, where depravity and hunger will rule. Where humanity will be lost to the vile urges of men turned monsters.

  What hope do I have of maintaining my humanity in a world where death is a daily occurrence? I can’t outrun it, nor can I avoid it. People will die. It is an inevitable fact and my greatest fear is that the next time I am put into a position of life or death, I might not be able to get control of myself in time to stop myself for giving in to the hunger.

  As I push up to my feet I pull my shirt up and over my arms to tie around my face. It will not seal out the scent of blood, but I pray that it will be just enough to help me escape this hellhole.

  With my legs trembling and my stomach clenched tightly, I move back toward the hallway of death, determined to strangle the life out of that zombie and then get the hell out of this place. I know now that I am not strong enough to be around people, living or otherwise. My plans have to change. I have to do far more than just leave Nashville for a while.

  I need to disappear and never return.

  ONE

  Fear and self-loathing follow me out of a cloud of concrete dust and into the filthy sewer tunnel that will give me access to the outside world. As I leave the collapsed passage behind me the scent of explosives is still strong in my nose. No one will be entering the hotel through that hole again. Nox and his people will not have to fear another attack from that access point at least.

  I slosh through knee height muck and rainwater for nearly six city blocks, stumbling from time to time before I find a manhole not covered with piles of debris. The stench lingers on my clothes as I pull myself up through the hole, but I welcome the odor. It helps to clog my senses and dull the memories of tearing the zombie’s head from its shoulders as it chewed on the calf muscle of a dead woman. After that I was forced to climb over a pile of bodies to the exit. I pray that I never have to go through anything like that again.

  My arms quiver under my weight as I pull myself along the ground, pushing with my feet to be free of the sewer. The sun is blinding overhead when I lay back and I am forced to roll onto my side to shield my eyes. Bits of broken glass and splintered wood from a blown out grocery shop bite into my arms and exposed stomach but I don’t care. I am free.

  Free of the hotel. Free of death and pools of blood. Free of people.

  I yank my shirt off my face and take in deep cleansing breaths of fresh air as I kick the rest of the way out of the manhole. My heart feels heavy and my body even more so as I press my cheek to the pavement, feeling the warmth of the sun beginning to heat the blacktop. The events of the previous night have left me nearly to the point of collapse but I can’t rest yet. I have something that I have to do before I skip town.

  Allowing only a scant few moments to rest, I drag myself to the curb and then rise slowly. I am clothed in blood, sewage and concrete dust from my feet to my chest. I pick a few bits of glass out of my stomach and wipe away the blood, amazed that I can barely feel more than a sting. I’ve never been good with blood before. Feels kinda ironic now.

  Looking up and down the street, I spy a clothing store half a block north of my current position and hurry toward it. Pausing outside the shattered glass door only long enough to sniff the air and determine that nothi
ng is inside, I climb through and into blissful darkness. I had seriously underestimated how painful daylight had become. This will make traveling far more challenging.

  I search through racks of clothing that have been torn free of their fixtures on the wall and left scattered across the floor. In another life I would never have been able to afford a single item in this shop. A small part of me feels bad for splattering filth onto the fine clothes as I search for something that fits but then I realize how silly that is. No one is left to care about fine things anymore. Now all that matters is food, shelter and weapons.

  I grab a black tank top and a pair of designer jeans up off the floor and then begin to rummage through the lingerie section to replace my blood-soaked underclothes. With a new wardrobe in hand, I head to the back of the store in search of a bathroom to clean up.

  Draping the clothes over the side of the sink, I lean in to stare at myself in the mirror but, see a complete stranger looking back at me.

  My eyes are sunken and ringed with purple. My cheeks look sallow and my lips are too thin and pale. Dried blood and streaks of God only knows what line my forehead and mat my hair to my head.

  “Wow. I really look like shit.”

  I poke at my cheeks and wonder if human food will even be enough to give me the strength I need to carry out my journey. There is so much that I just don’t understand about myself. I fear that these new hunger pangs for human flesh will drive me to distraction and eventually, if denied long enough, will make me slowly wither away.

  “And the one person who would know the answer to that just proved to be a psychotic bastard. Great mentor there, Avery.” I turn away from the mirror with a sigh.

  Lifting the lid to the toilet, I grab a handful of paper towels from the wall container and dip it into the water to clean my face with. Considering that I have just crawled over a pile of bodies and then through the sewers on my hands and knee this isn’t half as bad as I would have thought but there is no way in hell I’m drinking it. I use the remaining towels and hand soap to give myself the best wash I can manage and then kneel on the floor to dunk my hair into the toilet, ringing the blood and filth from my frizzy curls.