Warmth

By Sumiko Saulson

"I hate the dead. They have no self-control" - Sera. She is ghula - one of the extremely long-lived though not immortal flesh eaters whose lives can end in only one way - in resurrection as a hungry, ambulatory corpse who will spend the short days of its unlife rotting, eating, and infecting as many as possible. Sera compares her life to a dark comedy - trapped with an unwanted pregnancy for the past 600 years, constantly afraid that the fetus will die and go zombie in-utero, always cold and constantly running a fever like every other ghoul on the planet. Luckily, two things in life sustain her: her joy in hunting and destroying the Dead, and the constant seeking of comfort in warmth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iconoclast Productions
• Release date: Aug 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311210760

Sumiko Saulson

Sumiko Saulson is a science-fiction, fantasy and horror writer and graphic novelist. She was the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writer Association's "Scholarship from Hell." She is best known for her non-fiction reference guide "60 Black Women in Horror Fiction." Her novels include "Solitude"," The Moon Cried Blood, "Happiness and Other Diseases", "Somnalia", "Insatiable" and the Amazon bestselling horror comedy “Warmth." She has written several short stories for collections and anthologies, including the Carry the Light award winning science-fiction story "Agrippa." She writes for the Oakland Art Scene for the Examiner.com, SEARCH Magazine and horror blogs HorrorAddicts.net and SumikoSaulson.com, which featured a 2013 Women in Horror Month interview series. The child of African American and Russian-Jewish American parents, she is a native Californian who grew up in Los Angeles and Hawaii. She is an Oakland resident who has spent most of her adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Praise for Warmth

A great book with a good balance of grotesque and intellect. Not only indulges our present intrigue of zombies and vampires, but brings to life the possibilities & disasters that would come from an actual virus outbreak. The one thing that really drew me in was all the micro climax or suspense scenes, but there are a few twists & turns. A great grasp on many global cultures, predicting in intensely realistic detail every country's reaction to an outbreak. This book is as much about the world's economic breakdown as it is blood & guts. It reminds us the importance of surpassing petty differences & coming together as one. Whether you're a zombie freak or not, this book gives you something to think about.

—Melody Taylor

A Unique take on Zombies, Vampires, and Ghouls, with each being a different expression of a parasite living in either the living or the dead human body. As long as the human is alive, they live like vampires-ghouls, however upon their bodies’ death they become zombies, mindless killing machines, driven by the virus need to find a new host.

Sounds like an all zombie read, right? But there is far more to this story than zombies! Imagine living for hundreds of years. Imagine all the people you'd meet? All the enemies you'd make?

—Tammy K

A book I had trouble putting down, I stayed up until dawn totally blown away by all the interesting twists in the story. The characters are compelling, well thought out and unique. Not everything is what it seems and no matter how much you try to hide, reality has a way of catching up with you in sometimes thoroughly gruesome ways. It was one hell of a ride, sad to see it end. If you have a sick sense of humor, add this to your must read list!"

—M. E. Valenzuela

Copyright Notices

Author: Sumiko Saulson

Title: Warmth

Edition: Third Edition (2015)

© 2012, Sumiko Saulson California

(Second Edition 2013, Third Edition 2015)

Iconoclast Productions

www.SumikoSaulson.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead, or undead is entirely coincidental.

© 2012 Sumiko Saulson California

Dedication

I dedicate this third edition in loving memory of my father, Robert Saulson. I finished three novels and a book of short stories while my dad was alive, but Warmth was probably his favorite. He was most engaged with it, waiting eagerly for the villain's comeuppance.

I would like to thank the many friends, teachers, and colleagues who encouraged me and listened to my effusive babbling over plot points under construction, particularly Michael Totten, Desdemona Gare-Frantisek and Andres Wemiz. I also dedicate this to my nieces Franchesca and Elisabetta Saulson, my fiancé Greg Hug, my brother Scott Saulson, and my mother Carolyn Saulson.

But particularly to my calico, Marla, whose sharp claws and sharper teeth remind me that rubbed the wrong way even the smallest of creatures will bite.

Introduction

WARMTH: An Unforgettable Journey

By Valjeanne Jeffers

In her third novel, Warmth, horror writer extraordinaire Sumiko Saulson weaves a supernatural labyrinth peopled with Afflicted beings or ghulah: Creatures who live by drinking the blood and eating the flesh of humans. The ghulah are intelligent meta-humans who go about their unusual lives … loving, eating, and always seeking warmth. For their transformation has rendered them unable to sustaining body heat. And then there’s the second breed of preternatural creatures. The Dead: Lethal walking, breathing corpses with no other desire than to kill and eat.

The heroine of Warmth, Leilana or, as she prefers to be called Sera (her birth name) is one of the Afflicted: A ghulah. Like all of her kind she is not immortal, but has an extraordinarily long life span. Sera was transformed, and lost an eye when she was attacked by one of the Dead. And she takes great joy in hunting and killing these creatures... well aware of the dangers they pose for the world of the living.

She looks like a young runaway, yet she is in reality centuries old; and she’s been pregnant since the Spanish Inquisition with a fetus that is also Afflicted. Yet, Sera has no desire to be a mother, and feels no maternal stirrings towards her unborn fetus— a child that will take centuries to grow to adulthood.

The reader is first introduced to Leilana in Spain, before Columbus’s voyage, as she is thrust into the role of both rescuer and hunter. When a zombie attacks one of the men who has offered her shelter, thinking her to be an old woman, Sera quickly reveals herself to be a deadly supernatural being.

She flew into the front door of the cottage, where the cause of Adolfo’s suffering became immediately apparent. The original Lazaro… the old gravedigger, had him pinned against the wall, and had bitten deeply into the flesh of his cheek, chewing it… eating it. Rotted clothes hung from the rail-thin frame of the Old Lazaro, and in places, purplish, bruised flesh showed through. The whites of his eyes had gone the cloudy yellow color of mucous. The ends of his fingers were caked with thick, wet grave dirt.

I hate the Dead, she hissed under her breath, running toward it. She shoved the sharpened end of her pike through the creature’ s eye with such force that it went through the back of its skull, pinning it to the wall. A gelatinous mixture of curdled blood, vitreous humor and purulence issued from the ruptured visage, first slowly oozing, then gushing toward the floor.

Lifting the robe and the long skirts below it, she revealed her leg up to the knee—a small ax was strapped to the outside of her calf in a leather holster. She removed the weapon with a single graceful motion and shortly had it level to the creature’s neck.

Six hundred years later, Sera is still living, still hunting... and still cold. But now she lives in a modern world: Full of new and lethal dangers. She has enemies. The most dangerous one is a psychopathic ghulah, whom she crossed paths with long ago. This maniac is convinced that Sera has stolen her baby from her womb, and is determined to reclaim the infant.

Thus Warmth is a story that challenges the notions of womanhood and beauty. When Sera has the opportunity to have her scared face repaired, she decides to keep her visage as it is— scared though it may be. She cherishes her ruined face because it is the only to way to preserve her cherished memories.

When she looked in the mirror and saw her face, Sera remembered so many friends she’d had in her long past who were no longer with her. Perhaps even more so, she liked it because it was the only thing left in the world to remind her of the life she had before her Affliction—a short life, and difficult. It was gone now, faded into the pages of history.

Her marked face and her birth name were all she had left of it.

Yet throughout her journey we are reminded of just how beautiful Sera really is … once one looks beyond her face. This is a novel about becoming: Growing, and reinventing oneself when it’s necessary for survival.

Saulson has spun a rich, multi-layered tale of both dark humor and nail-biting suspense. Along with the tough survivor Sera, we become acquainted with an entourage of characters; some human, some ghulah, and each with their own complicated, twisted lives. Among this cast is Sweet Melana, the brooding Larenzo, and S&M Master Fadrique … allies, foes. And all preparing for a war which may consume both the Afflicted and humankind alike.

Saulson is a consummate horror writer, and in Warmth she has given us a horror novel that we will never forget.

—Valjeanne Jeffers, 2015

Biography of Valjeanne Jeffers

Valjeanne Jeffers is a graduate of Spelman College, and a member of the Carolina African American Writer’s Collective. She is the author of Voyage of Dreams; Immortal; Immortal II: The Time of Legend; Immortal III: Stealer of Souls; The Switch II: Clockwork; Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds; Mona Livelong: Paranormal Detective; and Colony: Ascension.

Valjeanne was featured in 60 Black Women in Horror Fiction, and her stories have been published in Reflections Literary and Arts Magazine; Steamfunk!; Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology; Genesis Science Fiction Magazine; PurpleMag; Griots II: Sisters of the Spear; Possibilities; and The City (in press). Book I of The Switch II: Clockwork was nominated for the best ebook novella of 2013 (eFestival of Words); and her short story Awakening was published as a podcast by Far Fetched Fables. Preview or purchase Valjeanne’s novels at: www.vjeffersandqveal.com

Credits

Editing: Valjeanne Jeffers

Proofreading: Amy Bellino, Elisabeth Delana Rosa

Beta-Reading: Michael Totten, Desdemona Gare-Frantisek and Andres Wemiz.

Artwork: Josh Bisher

Prologue

Adolfo and Lazaro

By all outward appearances, she seemed a girl… a very young woman, really. She had lived in the ruins of an old cemetery a substantial distance from town for what seemed to her a very long time. She was beginning to think it was about time to move on.

The poorly lit spot, distant from cities and towns afforded her ample cover, and ever the more so under tonight's slim-mooned sky. The only problem was the climate was not nearly warm enough in this part of the world. The cemetery, surrounded by a forest rife with soggy moss and dewy trees was always too damp for her, too cold.

She did not like it one bit.

Her name was Sera, and she was cold all the time. It wasn't the loneliness of the place that bothered her, as in fact she enjoyed her solitude, and even if she hadn't, the further away from town she stayed the safer she'd be. They were rounding up people who looked like her lately, and when they disappeared out of their homes, or off the street, often they were never seen again. Best to be unseen to begin with, she thought.

She disguised herself as a monk. The ankle-length, shapeless brown woolen hooded robe she wore, cinched at the waist with a rope, obscured her appearance entirely, including her gender. It was also very warm, and she wore a long woman's dress beneath it. She often leaned against a gnarled walking stick she did not require for walking because it made her seem ancient, and served as a weapon.

Still, she shivered.

Sera propped herself up against a tall tree with a single hand, and bent over to vomit. She took care to miss her clothing. It already smelled gamy. She slept in it, and she rarely bathed. Debris from a pile of fall leaves she'd slept under the night before still stuck to the parts she hadn't seen, or felt while brushing herself off after rising that morning. No one ever saw her anyway, so she wondered why she was even concerned?

Usually no one saw her… but at that very moment, she heard the sound of hooves beating off in the distance, still too far away to see. She inhaled deeply… then doubled over coughing. She did not know why she was so perpetually sickly, and had no time to care. She scampered up the tree before they could spot her and hid.

She’d grown adept at disguising herself over the years. An unwelcome memory surfaced… of fleeing a crowd of angry men in the desert.

The one at the front of the pack shouted, Ghūl! as he struck her. She could not risk being cornered, being identified. She held stock still waiting for them to pass below.

Overhearing the conversation, she was able to learn that they were brothers, Spanish Moors, Moriscos from Valencia. The younger was calling himself Lazaro, and the older Adolfo, although she heard Lazaro allude to the fact that these were not their given names. Like Sera, they left to escape the Spanish Inquisitors. It sounded as though in her absence, things had gotten worse.

Lazaro was the name of the old gravedigger; a man Sera knew was dead. Whatever the younger men's names were originally they'd given them away for a chance at freedom. Sera had left Valencia a few years back, but the brothers' conversation told her they'd stayed, believing the best of the Spanish monarchy. She thought it was because they were young and naïve, perhaps twenty or at the most thirty years old. She already knew much of humanity and could conceive of the many ways in which things could go terribly wrong.

She understood things they could not because she was very old.

She was not older than the wizened tree whose branches concealed her, but she was older than the wizened monk whose robes she'd acquired in Valencia. That made her old enough to remember the Medieval Inquisitions. She was also older than Fadrique, the traveling phlebotomist who during their dalliances provided her with life-sustaining blood. He provided bits of gossip from a patient or two of his in high enough social standing to gain an invitation to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Patient was a bit of a misnomer: He drained their blood and drank it, and they paid him for the privilege of being his milk cows. From this clever teller of tales she learned early of the royal couple's plans to unite Spain under Catholicism.

Fadrique told her many things…he was a barber, not a surgeon; but he knew enough of medicine to disturb her with his particularly unpleasing notion of what might be causing her nausea, vomiting, and the bloating of her belly. She tried hard not to think of it.

He also told her of the planned voyage of Columbus. Judging by the chatter of the men below, it had been an unimaginable success: The Nina and the Pinta had returned from a new place they called Hispaniola. A second journey would leave soon with even more ships. They dreamed of stowing away, and escaping the horrible place Spain had become… and above in the trees. Sera dreamed with them.

She wouldn't leave for the Americas for several years. When she did it would only be because she finally found Fadrique again. A strange man with a strange profession, Fadrique had connections among the wealthy, but ill who were ever interested in a good bleeding.

The brothers, it turned out, were impersonating the nephews of the old gravedigger, who had no children. The name of the dead man was Lazaro, and he owned the graveyard, which had fallen into disarray when he passed on without an heir. No one wanted it. It was failing. No one claimed it, but the brothers knew of it through an actual nephew, Lazaro; who, for a small price, provided them with keys. He also provided them with papers in his name and that of his brother, so that they might escape the horrors that lay in store for them if they remained much longer in Spain.

The older brother, the one calling himself Adolfo now, produced the keys from a pouch and opened the old cottage the man lived in, while Lazaro went off to find wood for a fire. They intended to stay there and hide while they made plans to leave the country.

They did not use their real names, even in private conversation. Neither of them knew it then, but this very week was the last where either of them would hear their birth names spoken to them by anyone again.

She longed for the warm indoors. Seeing her chance, she leaped from the tree and began to walk casually toward the graveyard along the path the two men had just come along. Leaning into her stick, she walked very slowly, bowing her legs. She took her time, hoping to time her appearance in the graveyard with the young man's return. As it happened she did not have to wait that long: he had sharp ears and heard her approach. He walked up to her on the road.

Lazaro asked, What are you doing out here alone, old one?

She made soundless gestures. She could not speak and reveal herself as a woman. She hoped with this charade to convince him that the old man could not… or would not speak. Some monks took vows of silence. She decided to pretend she was one.

Lazaro frowned.

She stepped back a little, afraid.

He said much too loudly, No, no! You can write it. He handed her a paper and pen. Judging by his reaction, he'd decided the monk was deaf as well as mute; or at least very hard of hearing. She snatched it quickly and scrawled one word on the paper. He looked at it curiously. She had written in big block letters FRIO, the word cold in Spanish.

Come inside, follow me, he beckoned, waving her toward the cottage. It was all she could do not to pick up her artificially stunted pace just to get there faster. Her Kind had the ability to move much more quickly than ordinary humans.

She shivered.

Go there, he told her, pointing at the cabin, My brother is inside, and if he gives you any trouble write my name for him here: Lazaro. Show him and he will let you in. I’ll get some wood for a fire to warm us. With that, he left.

As soon as he was far away enough that she imagined he could not see her, she sprinted. Sera flew through past the window so fast that when Adolfo looked up, it seemed a sprawl of wind and darkness—some sort of sudden dust storm in the night.

Then, quickly, she stopped and stood beside the cabin, and inhaled deeply. Something was wrong. Something smelled wrong. And she knew that putrid, rotting stench.

Adolfo screamed…

She did not believe she’d frightened him. It wasn’t a cry of fear. It was the raw, involuntary throat-searing bellow of a man in unbelievable pain. He yowled so loud and hard that his throat would be sore from it… if he lived. And he began to swear, loudly.

You’re dead! He screamed, You’re dead, get off me, you’re dead! You’re dead!

Lazaro heard and came running to rescue his brother. What have you done to him, old man? What have you done? Sera ran up to him and punched him hard in the face. He crumpled to the ground. Stay there, she muttered, turning again toward the door. She lifted her walking stick from the ground and plucked a soiled wooden cap from its handle.

The once-covered tip of the staff was sharpened, as a pike.

She flew into the front door of the cottage, where the cause of Adolfo’s suffering became immediately apparent. The original Lazaro… the old gravedigger, had him pinned against the wall, and had bitten deeply into the flesh of his cheek, chewing it… eating it. Rotted clothes hung from the rail-thin frame of the Old Lazaro, and in places, purplish,