ALIVE: The Aftermath Chronicles (Book 1)

Chapter 3 - F*cking Tea

Ana's hand shoots through the bars to grab Hannah's shirt, pulling her forward violently against the bars to meet her nose to nose.

Hannah reaches and before the cop knows what hit her, she's staring down the barrel of her own gun. Not often does Officer Perez get caught off-guard, nor does she underestimate anyone, but she certainly did with pretty-little-Hannah.

"Open it, or someone will be cleaning up Sheriff brains off the cellblock today," Hannah demands with steady eyes.

"You're not gonna shoot me you stupid cunt," Ana Maria stares back. She saw a deadness in Hannah too, just like she saw it in herself each morning in the mirror. Yet, the girl wasn't quite there—not on Ana's level for cold-blood. In seeing that, she found the younger female easy to challenge.

How wrong Ana was in this moment about pretty Hannah.

One shot, although not where originally aimed at her face, was all it took to drop the street cop. Clutching onto her shoulder, Ana grit out a scream of agony, as Hannah shouted unheard demands mere feet from her cell.

Hannah's hand stretches through the bars, reaching toward the fallen Sheriff, while she demands the keys clipped to her belt loop. She'd shoot again, or so she threatens, and this time Ana didn't care to take another bullet from the psycho girl.

"FUUUUCK!" Ana cursed out after messily throwing over the keys and with the action blood pooled down from her shoulder to join the ring of red on the floor.

The tiny metal keys hit one another as Hannah frantically opened her cell and they clink against the metal like some warning bell for all the proverbial shit that aimed to hit the fan with what she just pulled.

Ana Maria crawled toward the desk and to the walkie standing upright in a taunting unheard call for help. The beacon dims as Hannah walked past her in a few short strides and swiped the walkie-talkie before Ana Maria could grab it.

"You're dead you stupid bitch!" Ana yelled after her, turning onto her back and focusing on stopping the bleeding from her shoulder. She squeezes against the biting wound, then attempts the painful task of pulling the bullet out from her blown-apart flesh.

After the retreating Hannah, the scream of the Sheriff chases after her alone.

***

Hannah Louviere is the last surviving member of her family. Parents ripped to shreds by one another, in front of her, after her father got bit by a straggling infected in their barn. Their death was the last time Hannah gave two shits about anything from her past, other than her brother.
Brother: Hamish Louviere, murdered a month ago—or so Hannah suspected as of late—by Russell Wolfe and his team of personal police. Ana Maria was certainly top of the suspect list of Hannah's. A list, that grew every day in this forsaken colony.

Outside these high-rise walls the dead waited for her, but inside—inside—the living plotted to destroy her slowly. They'd kill her when she least expected it, or exile her as they did with Isaac and the others.

In her sleep, she imagined the worst: poisoned, shot dead in her own house, or even thrown to the zombies off the wall. Hannah had seen more of the dark Russell Wolfe—their leader—than most. She alone, alongside Ethan, had been here since the beginning on the rational side of his uncle's madness. She knew Russell to be a sociopath and although Ethan hated to admit it, he saw it too. He'd even agreed with her that something wasn't right with her brother's death and though Ethan brought Hannah closer to the enemy, she believed Ethan was all that remained in protecting her.

Hamish, her brother, came to her in a panic, having seen something that night when the moon was nearly full. Something forbidden, there in the medical center in the upstairs wing that was off-limits. Like his sister, Hamish had an insatiable curiosity and the taunting weight that came with hearing the word "no" or "forbidden".