Dusty Mile Duet

By Isabella Jordan

In a world where humans are prey, new rules for love are still evolving…

Charmer: Caroline McGrath is thrilled to find another survivor of the zombie apocalypse -- until she realizes he’s Robbie Huston, the only guy she ever had a one-night stand with. Now they’re depending on each other for their very survival. When they find Tyler, another survivor, everything gets more complicated. Now Caroline’s now got twice as much to lose… Will she be able to hold on to both her men once they reach Robbie’s uncle at Dusty Mile?

Dusty Mile Survival Guide: Against all odds, Caroline and Robbie have made it safely to Uncle Larry’s Dusty Mile Camp. Uncle Larry wants his new camp members to start a garden in an effort to reestablish a food supply, but Caroline can kill a plant by looking at it. Robbie decides Caroline’s just not properly motivated. Some plowing of a different kind might be just the thing to get this project growing!

Publisher's Note: Charmer and Dusty Mile Survivor Guide were previously published individually by Changeling Press.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Jul 11, 2020

Book preview

Mile?

Chapter One

Robbie

Caroline McGrath’s heart lurched in her chest at the sound of pounding on her apartment door. She didn’t dare answer. If those things that were taking over the world heard her, they wouldn’t stop until they broke into her place. That wouldn’t be cool. She was on the fourth floor so she didn’t have much of an alternate escape route.

But the pounding persisted.

Caroline? Are you in there? Hello?

Whoever he was, he’d talked. Talked. Those things couldn’t talk according to the news reports she’d watched before all of the television channels went off the air.

And he knew her name.

Caroline ran to the door and opened it just enough to see who was there. When she saw who it was, her racing heart went into overdrive. Oh, she knew him too. He was gorgeous and sexy, the lead guitarist in a local band she liked. Well, had liked. She’d had a one-nighter with him last fall, a drunken mistake that she wouldn’t make again, and hadn’t seen or heard from him since that night.

And now, now that the world was clearly coming to an end, here he was at her door. It figured.

He watched over his shoulder as if someone, something, were after him. He was wild-eyed when he spun around to meet her gaze. Can I come in? I trapped one of those things in the stairwell but I don’t know how long it will hold him, he explained in a panicked voice.

Caroline opened the door to allow him into her apartment and hurriedly locked it behind him. He checked the deadbolt after she did, just to make sure before he blew out a long exhale. Thank you, he said.

Ashamed as she was to admit it, she had slept with him but realized she knew next to nothing about him. She just hoped that she hadn’t made a stupid choice in letting him into her apartment.

How did you find me? Caroline had to ask, her brain trying to catch up to her actions.

I live here.

You live here in the building? Okay, she hadn’t been that drunk. She would’ve remembered going back to his place if he lived in her building.

He must have read the confusion on her face. Very recently. Sixth floor. Six sixteen.

That’s a lot of sixes. Caroline swallowed, trying to calm down. Should I check behind your left ear or something?

Just a hint of a smile formed on his lips. And they were attractive lips. His entire face was very nice. He had high cheekbones, a straight perfect nose, and the smallest cleft in his chin. His eyes, however, were the most striking feature. They were fringed with dark lashes and were a shade of green that reminded her of jade.

I’m Robbie Huston, he introduced himself.

I remember. She knew that much. She didn’t remember a lot else, but his name she had.

His smile widened. I know. I just wanted to… do it right this time. Robbie held out his hand and she just stared at it. Caroline? he prompted.

Taking his hand, she shook it. It felt weird. Was this his way of letting her know she was acceptable company now that there was no one else? Caroline McGrath. Still her brain was catching up. Their hands dropped. Wait. How did you know I was here? Where I was? she asked. "Why are you here?"

I saw you yesterday, he explained. You were trying to make it out of the building, weren’t you?

Caroline nodded. Most of the television and radio reports had come to a complete stop over the last week and that was less than a month following the beginning of the outbreak. With no word on what was going on outside her apartment door, any hope she had that things would eventually be okay evaporated. The lack of knowing was unnerving.

And yesterday she’d even gone so far as to think she could make it out of the building. But it had been a moment of panic fueled by fear and the fact that she was running out of food. What would she have done if she’d made it to her Jeep? No clue. It wasn’t like she had a plan. She’d been running on pure anxiety. "Trying being the pathetic word in that sentence."

Robbie shook his head. Not pathetic at all. I think we’re the only ones… not infected… left in the building. Have you seen anyone else?

That was an easy answer. No.

And it’s not like we can stay here. I don’t know about you but my food supply is getting low.

Yeah, I’m down to saltine crackers and cheese slices. And water. She’d have given anything for a soda. She’d run out of those the first week and the headaches the first few days had been horrible.

Both apartments on either side of me were abandoned so I grabbed what I could out of them. Even that’s running low, he explained.

You broke in?

Robbie shrugged a shoulder. One left their door unlocked. The other one? I picked the lock.

Caroline realized that they still stood in front of her door. She walked to the windows on the other side of her living room, looking out on the ruined world. Cars sat abandoned in the parking lot with doors left open, the remnants of human bodies hanging out or littering the pavement with pools of old blood and gore. She was grateful to be on the fourth floor just now. The view was hideous enough from that distance.

The outbreak began as reports of food poisoning in Ohio. A plant was closed because it was initially believed that people had gotten E. coli bacteria from ground beef packaged there. It started out as a normal news report that made one pause and feel bad momentarily for the victims. It was also the sort of story that went out of your head five minutes later because it had no effect on you. It was a sad story for someone somewhere else in the world.

But the story didn’t go away. More people got ill in other places and other plants were closed and targeted. Yet it was all too coincidental to have happened on the scale it did. In a single week, over thirty cases of alleged foodborne illness sprang up across the country from meat products packaged in unrelated plants? It defied belief.

Real fear spread when reports from the Europe proved that it wasn’t just an American problem. People were becoming ill at an alarming rate all over the world. Many people died from whatever it was the CDC couldn’t identify. Those who didn’t die immediately spread the illness through sex or biting, before being driven mad by violent fever according to reports the second week.

The last time she’d ventured out of her apartment building, she hadn’t seen anyone who’d been infected but she’d seen firsthand the chaos, fear, and panic that had taken over on the streets. It had been the quickest trip she’d ever made into the grocery store with the sounds of guns being fired nearby. She remembered handing the checkout girl money without waiting for change. She’d grabbed her bags and ran. She’d taken a week of vacation from her job. When she called the last day of that, no one answered the phone at the veterinary clinic.

That hadn’t been the worst of it. The reporters explained that infected subjects were violent, feverish, and rendered speechless by whatever they had. They left out the part about the cannibalism. Caroline found that out one day when she saw a man trying to make it into his car and she watched him get eaten by two of the infected ones. The man’s skeletal arm still hung out the door…

The Internet told horrible stories that she hadn’t wanted to read but hadn’t been able to stop reading -- until the connection to the net went down in the building as it did on occasion. Only now there was no one to fix it. No one answered the phone.

Hell, they were lucky they still had electricity at this point.

Caroline heard Robbie’s footsteps behind her. You almost made it, he said, referring to her attempt to escape the building yesterday. Do you have a car?

Yeah, my Jeep is out there, she explained.

Do you have the keys on you?

Yes. Thank God.

Any gas in it?

I never let it get below half a tank, she informed