Bedlam (Zombie Bedtime Stories #4)

By Thea Gregory

Corporal Samantha Henderson is a member of the Peacemakers—an organization devoted to putting down the riots that plague their nation’s cities. When what starts out as routine guard duty at an elementary school quickly turns bizarre and bloody, Samantha finds that her life is turned upside down.

Citizens have gone into a berserk killing frenzy, dismembering her comrades with ease. Samantha is the only soldier who makes it back to base alive. With her friends missing and only Captain Remus McIntyre for guidance, can Samantha survive the zombie apocalypse? More importantly, can she protect the weak from their enemies—human or otherwise?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thea Gregory
• Release date: Aug 19, 2013

Thea Gregory

Born and raised in rural western Quebec, Thea Gregory moved to the big city at 17 to attend college. She has had an eclectic career ever since, and has studied computer networking and physics and worked in technical support, sales, and teaching. She presently lives in Montreal, Quebec. Thea enjoys zombies, cycling, reading, walking, cooking and dreaming up twisted scenarios for future projects.

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Bedlam (Zombie Bedtime Stories, #4)

Thea Gregory

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Thea Gregory

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1

I want my Mommy. The girl clinging to Corporal Samantha Henderson’s hand choked back sobs, and looked up at her. She couldn’t be more than seven, and her pale blue eyes were bloodshot and brimming with tears. Samantha had been part of a squad assigned to evacuate this large inner city elementary school. She didn’t know if they were going to escape before the rioters closed in, but Samantha was determined to do her duty and get as many kids out as possible. The school was a decaying, squalid building—a leftover relic of the baby boom nearly a century before. The grey hallway dragged on ahead of them, only punctuated by the shadows of closed classroom doors and the occasional splash of children’s art projects. Samantha sucked in a deep breath as she enjoyed hearing the pounding of her boots on the cold granite floor. The echoes gave her the illusion of power and control, when in reality her stomach gnawed around the chill of uncertainty.

We’ll find her, but we need to get somewhere safe, Samantha said in her best impersonation of a soothing voice. She clenched her jaw as her free hand corralled a loose little boy. He recoiled at the sight of her, but she could understand why a small child might find her appearance shocking. She was a tall woman, standing at well over six feet, and dressed in the same imposing grey camouflage as the rest of the paramilitary compliance squad. She wore her dark brown hair cropped short, and her full nose and thin lips were almost comical in their discordance. Her barred teeth gleamed with artificial perfection—a gift from the recruiters when she enlisted two years ago.

Are you going to fight the bad guys? the boy asked in a hushed voice. His wide eyes scanned her face for an instant before falling to the empty hallway behind them. She squinted against the flickers of dying fluorescent lights. Her throat constricted for an instant, but Samantha grit her teeth and forced down a deep breath.

Samantha cracked the boy a wicked smile, exposing more of her straight white teeth. You bet. They’ll never know what hit them! She wore the bravado like it was a second skin. With it, she made her strength into her beauty, an art that didn’t come easily to most. In truth, she didn’t want to go out there. Although kids were certainly not her strong point, what little she knew of the situation made her grateful to have been assigned to searching the lower levels of the building. Summer school and various camps were in session, thus class sizes were small, meaning that the school was only operating at a fraction of its capacity. This job was better than digging in, and waiting for the rioters to come. She didn’t relish spending yet another afternoon begging an indifferent higher power to make the dissidents listen to reason. Secretly, she hoped that she wouldn’t need to face down a mob like the one that had swallowed her parents alive over a decade ago.

What are they doing? the girl asked as they walked by a classroom door that hung slightly ajar. The question snapped Samantha away from the dark place, and back into the present crisis. Memories of the Second Revolt could wait. She chewed on the inside of her lip as she sucked in another cleansing breath. The hallway was very well soundproofed, but a nightmarish blend of ghoulish screams, gunfire and shouting trickled through the open door.

Samantha gazed out the window, and her heart sank. They looked to be setting up another barrier, with more equipment being dropped off from the helicopters they were using to evacuate the elementary school to their base. She’d spent the better part of the morning helping to keep the kids calm, and making sure none of them ran off into the blades of a helicopter. She wasn’t sure how Captain McIntyre intended to get all those people off the roof or the kids back to their parents, but she knew he would find a way. He inspired her—no natural disaster was too much for him, and no riot was enough to make him question his allegiance to the State. She considered him to be the essential avatar of a patriot. On the other hand she found herself cynical of the policies she saw enacted around her, but she viewed Captain Remus McIntyre as the embodiment of the perfect soldier—an ideal she strove to emulate. He expressed no doubts, and exuded an aura of tangible confidence in his decisions and the policies they protected. They’re keeping us safe, so we can hide until Captain McIntyre makes the bad people leave us alone, she told the girl, her own faith bolstered by the knowledge that he would know what to do. That certainty always warmed her, and never failed to guide Samantha’s resolve in difficult situations. The nagging voice in the back of her head taunted her—he didn’t save her parents—but she ignored it. The captain had saved countless thousands more that day.

The answer calmed the young girl’s breathing, and Samantha made a mental note to close and secure the remaining classroom doors before she made her next run. She’d been with the Peacemakers for two years—long enough to know that innocent children shouldn’t have to see what happened when a dangerous and frightening riot required expert intervention. Her own memories could attest to that.

They rounded the corner to the staircase and Samantha held the red door open for her two young charges. Rusted steel poked through its flaking paint. Okay, let’s run as fast as we can to the top! She’d found that making the required tactical maneuvers into a game was the easiest way to coax kids into running up the fire escape and overcome their natural resistance to breaking the no going on the roof rule. The two children bounded up the stairs, and she followed behind, careful not to trample them. She could take the stairs two or three at a time if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to lose sight of them. The blandness of the stairwell seemed to keep the kids calm, and the challenge of running to the top burned off their nervous energy. She wished she could be as easily distracted from the reality of the situation, and the haunting memories of the boarding schools she’d grown up in. She’d helped put down enough riots to know that this was a bad one—officers and service people had already