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  Blood Soaked and Invaded (Blood Soaked Book 2)

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About the Author

  JAMES CRAWFORD

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  published at Smashwords.

  ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-108-9

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-109-6

  Blood Soaked and Invaded copyright © 2011, 2013

  by James Crawford.

  All Rights Reserved.

  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.

  Version 3.30.13.1.

  Chapter 1

  Someone was singing, but I couldn’t understand the words. To me, it was just melody and music without any context. Don’t get me wrong: the emotional content wasn’t lost on me. It was loving, but sad, and somehow gave me the feeling I wanted to be near whatever it was the song was about.

  I opened my eyes, and she was there. Her voice was making the music, and the emotions behind it were carved into her face and posture as surely as a sculptor hacks shapes out of marble. Of course, at the time, I would never have been able to describe it, mostly due to having taken a bullet to the forehead the day before. All I could do in the moment of recognizing her, with those high and sad emotions, was lift myself off the floor and put my head in her lap.

  Salty water dripped on the side of my nose from somewhere above me and the words and images for “rain” and “tears” slid around inside my mind, but couldn’t connect to one another. I wanted to make a noise, so I opened my mouth and inhaled. The salty water went up my nostril, and I sneezed instead.

  This upset the singer deeply, because she gave a little scream and shifted position.

  “Oh God! Frank, are you okay?”

  It was pretty clear that she was talking to me, even if I didn’t understand the words. I didn’t know what the fuss was about, because the water in my nose was gone, along with some kind of blockage I hadn’t been aware of. The only drawback was that my face and her knee were wet. When I reached up to wipe my face, my hands came away pink and sticky.

  Sticky doesn’t feel good.

  “Shit! Honey, sit up. Please? Ok. Let me wipe your face off, so just sit still.” She sat me up, and not having anything else to react to, I just sat and looked at the colors on my hands. “All right, let Charlie see what’s going on.” I let her lift my face and run a cool cloth under my nose.

  The cloth was now pink, moist and sticky, too. It seemed as though cloth shouldn’t look like that, but no ideas condensed into words I could use. Instead of making wry commentary, or even issuing a statement in the form of a resounding grunt, I simply sat and let her wipe my hands off.

  “Baby, I hope you didn’t just sneeze brains.” She held my face still and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were bloodshot and moist, which didn’t indicate anything particularly positive from where I was sitting. “I really don’t know what to do. Omura says that you’re going to recover and that I should keep interacting with you, but he didn’t say anything about sticky pink snot. We should go see Jayashri,” she said, standing up and holding her hand down for me to grab onto. “Come on, Frank. Let’s go see the doctor. Hmm? That’s it.”

  I took her hand, and we left the room that we’d been sleeping in.

  Stairs made sense to me, because we’d gone up them and it seemed appropriate that one should go down them after having gone up. No reason to complain there. I did notice something while we were descending, and I knew that I needed to take care of it before we went anywhere. There was a room here specifically used for such things, and I was pleased that I remembered it.

  “What?” She asked me as I took off toward the magical room, towing her behind me. When we got to the room, I slipped the cloth off my lower half and sat down on the white chair with a hole in the seat. It was precisely where I wanted to be. “Oh. You remember how to use a toilet. That’s really great, Frank! Can you let my hand go before you wipe?”

  While I can understand, in retrospect, what was going on, the noises she made while I sat on the commode didn’t make any sense. I was aware of three things that were the sole and complete content of my mind at that moment. First of all, I was sitting on the white chair and the pressures in my lower abdomen were being taken care of. Second, my person was with me. I could deal with noises that didn’t make any sense, as long as my person of choice was all right and nearby. The third thing was a baseline need and awareness equal to #1.

  I was hungry.

  In time, the hind end of my digestive system gurgled to a halt, and we learned that I still remembered the required hygiene procedures for the Water Closet. Charlie made positive sounding noises at me, and everything was right with my world. She led me out of the hardware store while she provided positive reinforcement for my potty performance.

  The morning sunlight outside the store was bright, and I squinted up at the big ball of luminescent annoyance. As I looked up, something in the back of my head told me that something was about to be wrong. Something “not right” was nearby, and coming closer with every heartbeat.

  Looking at Charlie, I understood she didn’t know what I knew. I didn’t have any reasonable way to communicate with her, so I growled a warning. Standing there with her, growling, and facing Route 29, I must have seemed like a sinister Irish setter.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” I spared her a glance, and I watched the knowledge dawn on her face. Now she knew what I knew. “Shit. Frank, stay right here. Here. Okay? I’m gonna run back inside for just a minute. Don’t move. Stay right here!”

  For all I knew, she could have been reciting from the collected works of John Donne, but I stayed put when she let go of my hand and disappeared back into the building. Eight heartbeats later, I was a Bad Frank, because I saw the intruder across the street, bellowed a warning at him, and then took off to defend my territory.

  He raised his weapon and fired at me as I propelled myself across the road, leaping the bodies that were still piled around from the days before. I was hit three times, but didn’t care or slow down. He dropped the gun when I closed the distance, screamed unintelligible things at me, and raked my face with his oversize fingernails. The stench of his breath made my nose close up shop and move to Alaska.

  Feeling claws shred my cheek didn’t add anything delightful to the experience, but that’s the price you pay for being up close and personal. Even without my usual excess of brainpower, I managed to pay him back for the discomfort with my fists and was grimly satisfied when his right eye socket crumbled underneath my knuckles. I don’t think he was as pleased about that turn of events as I was.

  “You fucking bastard!” He yelled at me, groping for something on his belt. I didn’t quite know wh
at the knife was when he drew it, yet something about the gleam of steel in sunlight communicated the potential menace with astounding clarity.

  I snarled and found my body moving, blending with his attack. My arms locked his, forcing the blade back toward his neck and sinking it in to the hilt. He made nasty, thick noises as his mouth filled up with carmine sludge. His desire to kill me gave way to panic in the face of dying a second time. The only response it drew from me was a very satisfied, predatory smile.

  When his body went limp, I pulled the blade out of his neck, having learned that knives cut, and severed his head. With intense satisfaction, I bashed it against the curb. The cracking sounds made me giggle.

  Whatever else I knew or didn’t know, it was clear that I’d retained my toilet skills and the proper method to dispatch the undead. Not bad. Not bad.

  My opponent’s skull finally gave up. Chuckling, I unzipped my pants and pissed on his naked brain.

  “Frank, taking a wee on your enemies isn’t nice!”

  When I finished my victory deposit, I turned around to find Charlie watching from the other side of the street. Her tone of voice and facial expressions didn’t match, and I stood there with my happy bits akimbo, wondering what she was attempting to communicate.

  I didn’t wait too long. Charlie came over and took me by the hand and led me back across the street, muttering something about men not being able to wait to get their groove on and fools rushing in where others fear to tread. As for me, I was still grinning about successfully ruining my opponent and establishing my dominance by voiding my bladder on the still-warm corpse of my conquest.

  Funny how a bullet in the noggin can release such primal things!

  A huge man was waiting on the other side of the street for us. He had a ball cap on his head, brim pointing backward, and it didn’t do a single thing to keep the long blond hair from blowing around his face in the morning breeze. His scent was very similar to Charlie’s in some way. I think that made me less inclined to defend my territory.

  “Sis, I don’t mean to pry, but why is our boy walkin’ around with his junk dangling out his pants?” You could barely see his single raised eyebrow behind the hair, arching dramatically over a sour expression.

  She squeaked and tried to pantomime to me that I should concern myself with reassembling my couture. I wasn’t having anything of it, and walked right up to Shawn’s barrel chest instead. He looked down at me, face full of questions.

  “He has a really strange look on his face, Charlie.”

  “You think I know what he’s gonna do? He had a hunk of his brain blown out yesterday and it doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot going on in what he’s got left!”

  “Shit!” Shawn’s face softened, looking down at me. “This nanotech stuff is scary as hell. I mean–he’s unpredictable enough when he’s got all his brains. What’s he gonna do next?”

  “Yeah.” She scratched her head with a free finger. “You know, he probably doesn’t remember you, and is trying to figure out who you are.”

  Grunting, Shawn pointed a finger at my nose. “You, Frank.” The sausage of a finger changed direction, pointing at his nose. “Me, Shawn. Right?”

  “I can’t figure out if he understands language or not. He does get emotions, and does show some of his own. Omura says that he’ll probably come back, but he might be more like Buttons.”

  “Frank really would hate to come back like that asshole.” Glancing down at me, several emotions flew back and forth across his face. One of them might have been pity. “I think he’d rather not come back if he had to be that way.”

  “Shawn, if I don’t have something to hold on to, I’m gonna go nuts.” I could hear the stress in her voice, but I didn’t turn around. Something about Shawn had my full attention. “I don’t want to think I had someone and then lost him in less than a week.”

  “One of these days, I want to sit down with you so you can explain to me how you fell so hard for a guy you’d never met before. It doesn’t make sense to me,” Shawn said, looking over my shoulder.

  That’s when I wrapped my arms around him and stuffed my nose in his armpit.

  “FUCK!” Shawn convulsed in my grip like a super-sized tuna on the deck of a fishing scow. “He’s huggin’ me and sniffin’ my pit!”

  “Just relax. At least he isn’t humpin’ your leg.”

  “What do I do if he starts?”

  Chapter 2

  It was a good question, now that I think about it. Had I been functional at the time, Shawn’s terrified squeak would have dissolved me into a goopy puddle of guffaws and I would have given his thigh the old “What fer!” just for the fun of it. At the time, all I did was let him go, step back and grin at him.

  With my nose, I’d officially acknowledged him as one of my people, related to my primary person and not anyone to arouse suspicion. I was content. Shawn and Charlie were mystified.

  Smiling, I stuffed my bits behind my zipper and secured the hatch. The Cooper siblings appeared greatly reassured.

  Charlie explained to her brother that we’d been heading over to Jayashri’s to get an opinion on my slimy mucus. He nodded, looking a little green, but didn’t say a thing. The three of us walked on, not saying anything, until we got to our neighbor’s front door.

  For once we actually had to knock. In all the time that I’d known the Sharmas, their ability to be right there before you even decide to rap on their door was as uncanny as it was subtly unsettling. People aren’t supposed to be that aware of their neighbors, or so attuned to an arrival that they could be waiting in advance. Then again, for all I knew they tuned the boards of their front porch to squeak when weight was placed on them. It was a question that I never thought to ask, so it remained a mystery.

  Bajali answered the door, looking haggard, as though he’d not slept a wink since we liberated him the day before.

  “Hi Baj,” Charlie said quietly, letting go of my hand and hugging him gently.

  “Good morning, Charlie. Shawn,” he said, looking at me over Charlie’ shoulder and it was the saddest expression that I can remember seeing. “Frank. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “We dropped by to ask Jaya if she could look up Frank’s nose.”

  “That is a very interesting request, Shawn.” If I’m not mistaken, Bajali’s eyes crossed ever so slightly. “I will fetch her for you. Please come in and be at home.”

  We settled ourselves in the living room and watched him disappear into the kitchen. Charlie turned to her brother and sighed heavily.

  “He doesn’t look good.”

  “Well, from what I got from Omura last night, he don’t have much reason to look perky. I mean, sure, y’all brought him home, but his stay with Frank’s daddy weren’t all that sociable.”

  “No. I’m guessing that it wasn’t.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and I certainly didn’t complain. “Did you notice that your accent’s gotten thicker? What’s bugging you?”

  “Is that my kid sis that’s askin’, or is it my kid sis, the Psych Major?”

  “Knocker, I’m both and you know it. I’m just worried about you.”

  “I fuckin’ hate that nickname.” The barrel chest expanded and propelled a giant sigh into the room. He popped the cap off and shook out his hair, suddenly looking like Cousin It. “It’s been a rough couple of days. We got pounded while y’all were out rescuin’ our science boy. When you guys come back, y’all tell us Frank got a chunk of his brains blown out, and Bajali got a ton of ass-sugar from Frank’s Mommy and her friends. Now, we’ve got a bunch of angry ‘Eaters’ out there and we don’t know when or if they’ll hit us back. It is freakin’ me out to hell and back.”

  Jayashri floated into the room on Shawn’s last words. “What are ‘Eaters’, Shawn?”

  “Hey J. Well, it’s what we started calling the zombies just yesterday. The boys and I decided that they’re not really ZOMBIES because they don’t wander around doing the whole…” he rolled his ey
es back in his head, stuck his arms straight out and intoned, “… ‘BRAAAAINNNS! Uhhhhhh! Braiiiins’, thing.”

  Jayashri shuddered, frowning. “Please do not ever make that face again, if you value my sanity. Not even if it is Halloween. It is much too disturbing!”

  My body stood up.

  The strangest thing about looking back at the memories from my… recuperation… is that I don’t have any rationale for anything that I did. There isn’t a mental record of my thought processes, and I find that it is a stark contrast to at least having some sort of general feel for why I did any particular thing. I guess that I was working on instinct as much as anything else that might have been sloshing around in there.

  The body that my conscious mind wasn’t using walked over to Jayashri, knelt down at her feet and wrapped its arms around her waist. I remember the feeling of her fingers in my hair, gently caressing my scalp, and it felt like the surface tension of my emotions broke. A salve to my conscience is that she was wearing jeans that day, not a silk sari, because I would hate, even in retrospect, to have wept on silk.

  “Oh my goodness, Frank!” Jaya put both her hands on my shaking head and tried to sink to the floor with me, but my grip on her waist was far too strong for her to do anything more than slouch. “Please show me how I can help you!”

  “He can’t,” Charlie told her, with a voice that began to crack with emotion. “He can’t talk. I don’t even know how much he can think or understand.”

  Jayashri reached down and forced me to look up at her, and I saw her tears through the blurriness created by the waterworks on either side of my nose. “Why are you crying? You brought my husband home to me, just as you said you would,” she stopped speaking, and seemed to realize something, “but your whole family is gone. Oh, I am so sorry!” Her gentle weeping gave way to something more brutal.

  I let her sink to the floor in front of me and we curled up, holding on to one another until the storm could pass.