Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)
Madeline Sheehan
About the Book
Leisel and Evelyn lost everything. Husbands. Families. Friends. Lives that made sense. All they had left was each other, and a friendship that could withstand anything…
Even an apocalypse.
Until one fateful night, the marginal safety they’d come to rely on comes to a vicious and brutal end. With the help of Alex and Jami, both unlikely allies, Leisel and Evelyn are able to escape their shattered sanctuary only to find themselves face-to-face with a much altered, much crueler life where they have to find the way—and the will—to stay alive in a world they no longer recognize.
Traveling across a broken and infection-ridden country, the road-weary group is pitted against endless violence, improbable circumstances, and the ultimate loss.
Everything comes at a price, especially safety, the cost of which could very well strip them of the one thing they’ve tried so hard to cling to—their humanity.
Yet along with all the trials they’re forced to endure, there’s also hope in the form of love. Having loved Leisel from afar, Alex attempts to put the pieces of her fractured heart back together.
But in such a savage world, is there room for love?
In a place of nightmares-made-reality, where the living should be feared far more than the dead, an unbreakable friendship and a love against all odds can mean the difference between life and death.
There are friends…
and then there are Leisel and Evelyn.
Dedication
To always having someone to rely on, a person in your corner to fight for you no matter the reason, no matter the cost.
To having more than a friend, more than a sister, but a soul mate.
To the hope they give us, the strength they provide us, and the unconditional love they empower us with.
To best friends.
Prologue
The zombie apocalypse didn’t happen like it does in the movies.
Disaster didn’t strike when we weren’t looking. No, we were all looking. We were all waiting. It was a slow trickle that began with a nightly news broadcast. Yet another disease, another epidemic, was sweeping through the third world with crippling effects, decimating entire villages within mere days. The Vaal Fever they’d called it, and it took no mercy on its victims. Men, women, and children alike were ravaged by the disease, and most perished as a result.
Only, they didn’t stay dead.
They awoke and attacked the survivors, spreading the virus through both their saliva and blood. And what could we do? Like all the other pandemics we’d lived through, we could do nothing but hope that the Centers for Disease Control could put a stop to it, or that the armed forces would protect us and ensure it wouldn’t spread. So we hoped and we waited, trying not to worry.
We went about our daily lives. Like usual, we woke up every morning, we went to work and to school, we continued talking, laughing, living. But in the back of our minds, we were waiting. Seven billion people were all waiting.
That slow trickle grew, becoming a flood as more reports streamed in from all over the world. As a nation, we stayed glued to our radios, to our televisions, to the Internet, watching helplessly as the pandemic continued to spread. After that, governments worldwide took aggressive action to stop the disease from entering their countries. Airports shut down, shipping companies refused to sail, importing and exporting were no more.
Then the floodgates broke, and we learned the truth.
There was no treatment. There was no cure.
Africa was the first to succumb, then China, and Russia quickly followed. Suddenly our usually busy, bustling lives came to a standstill. Supermarkets and drug stores began limiting bulk purchases, generators were suddenly in great demand, and people had begun wearing face masks. Others stopped going to work altogether, refusing to leave their homes in order to avoid any sort of contact with other people.
When we got word that the disease had found its way to Europe and South America, panic—birthed from fear and helplessness—turned to violence. The American army wasn’t big enough, wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t prepared enough for the sheer magnitude of the public outcry. Because of their lack of planning, a civil war broke out between the army and the citizens they were meant to protect.
As a result, entire cities went down in flames before the disease had even reached American soil. But when it did, when the first American fell to his knees, the government was ill prepared for the fallout and the sickness spread like wildfire. Indiscriminate, it took the weak, the strong, the young, and the old.
Before long, news reports and radio broadcasts were no more. The airwaves were filled with nothing but static. Our neighborhoods, our cities and states, the entire country, the whole world—all went silent.
When the world awoke again, it awoke with a rattling groan that promised only misery and loss.
And eventually death.
Chapter One
Leisel
There was blood everywhere—on the bed, on the walls, on the floor. Some had even managed to find its way to the ceiling.
I looked down at my red-stained hands, at my naked body. It was all over me, coating the pale freckled skin on my arms, torso, legs, and feet. It was everywhere.
I hadn’t seen so much blood in one place in…well, not in the past four years since I’d been living in this sanctuary from the outside world.