Once Bitten: The Taken 1
By Eve Hathaway
()
About this ebook
From the Publisher that brought you popular short story series Song of Teeth, Children of Time, Chains of Darkness, The Splicers, The Night Sculptor, Blood Waters, Requiem for a Dream, and now The Taken...
DEATH HAS TAKEN THEM ALIVE
CAN LOVE BRING THEM BACK?
In the near future, the human race has fallen into the throes of a horrific disease that transforms the infected into mindless shells of their former selves. We call them zombies, because in all honesty that's what they've become—the living dead. They call them something else.
"There's a cure for Everything..."
Known as the Taken, these diseased people become violent and driven to spread the infection by attacking and biting any living thing. A new branch of the Center for Disease Control is formed, called the Citizens’ Safety Agency, to control the outbreak. Agents, like the newly promoted Chloe Sooner, round up the Taken into isolated areas known as Sanctuaries.
Meanwhile, scientists at America’s top research center, Icarus Labs, have been working towards a cure. Miranda Miller and her parents are three such researchers. Miranda is determined to find a way to restore the memories of the Taken, especially her fiancé, Luke Oldfield. Despite a previous failed study, Miranda is certain that the key to a cure lies in reconnecting the Taken with mementos and loved ones from their pasts.
However, the Agency has forbidden personal contact between Taken and the uninfected. Will Miranda have the courage to follow her convictions, and do whatever it takes to find a cure for the man she loves?
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EXCERPT
The domineering hunger and sickening repulsion battled back and forth in his mind, so he stumbled away from the feasting crowd. Looking forward, he noticed much of the overwhelming smell was coming from enormous crates. The awakening part of his brain forced him to look past the crates, to focus on anything but his maddening appetite.
Beyond the crates, beyond the trees, was a shockingly clear sky, so bright that it made his eyes ache. Standing still and stark as trees themselves were dark figures—more humans. Not warped and insane like himself and the others around him, but calm and straight-limbed and quiet humans.
Seeing them strengthened his memory of himself. He had been like them once, he was sure. An image, vague as a fleeting dream, hovered in the back of his mind—it was himself, standing tall, running his fingers through his soft, dark hair.
He brought his now blood-clotted hand up to his head. His fingers felt distant and numb, but he could sense the muddy clots and sharp bits of twigs in his hair now.
As he stood in this moment of sheer confusion, a twinge of mysterious emotion tweaked his heart as one of the gray-clad figures suddenly lifted her helmet. For a brief second, the man glimpsed her face before she turned and started vomiting to the side. Her creamy skin and hazel bolts of eyes recalled another pair of beautiful eyes he had seen recently.
The word Miranda jolted into the forefront of his brain and this time it brought back not a slow trickle of memories, but a vivid flash that lit his entire being like a burning bolt of electricity...
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Once Bitten - Eve Hathaway
Once Bitten
By Eve Hathaway
Published by Publications Circulations LLC.
SmashWords Edition
All contents copyright (C) 2013 by Publications Circulations LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, companies and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter One
Luke
A GLOW IN the dusk. A perfect square that emanated light, warmth. Things that used to have meaning.
The creature felt compelled by it, drawn closer, head tingling with something that used to be a memory. Perhaps. A bright square glowing from within, set in the flat wall of a dark building surrounded by dark trees. All around the darkness deepened, cut by the rectangle of light.
The creature was surprised to realize the tingle of something like a feeling in its-no, his-head. Then he was surprised to recognize what the sensation of being surprised was like. He remembered having a head. Looking down, he noticed his hands, his elbows, his knees, and could suddenly feel them all again.
Mostly it was all a dull ache, a cold sting, but it was an actual feeling. Looking up again, he stared at the soft aura of the square until the burst of a word sparked through his brain like a delayed firework.
Window.
Following that was a parade of sporadic language, long unused. House. Lamp. Night. Forest. Remembering these words sent a spasm down the forgotten muscles of his cramped back.
As he marveled in a daze at his flood of memories, a hand appeared in the and tugged down the pane of glass until it clicked faintly in the still breath of sleeping trees.
A face appeared in the window, just for a fleeting moment. The word woman crackled across his brain. Eyes roasted dark against pale skin, hair moving like finely spun chestnut threads, the woman looked out.
Miranda.
When the other words had been small static shocks through his brain, this word stunned like a bolt of pure lightning.
Miranda.
Head aching, shoulders trembling, he realized he was not just any creature-he was a human.
A man.
A man with a name, and body, and memories of touching...
Pain stabbed the base of his skull with an intensity that called forth much less welcome memories. Memories of needles and thrashing. Shrieking, he clutched his head and pressed his grimy, cold fingers into the back of his neck as if trying to claw out whatever was jabbing his brain.
His mind started numbing again, retreating from the flow of awakened words and memories. As the dull haze scattered his thoughts, it also quieted the pain.
No! he screamed in his mind, trying to cling to the departing memories despite the horrific agony. But it was like trying to grab the thin light in his fingers. What little feeling there was ebbed from his limbs. Words escaped into the tidal flow.
He forgot who he was again, what he was.
As the last clinging word-Miranda-slowly dissolved into blankness, the creature looked back up at the square of light. Framed by dark wisps of hair and a faintly glowing face, a pair of burning stared directly at him.
The creature could feel a final, vague tinge that this might be important, but he could not remember why.
Miranda
MIRANDA?
With a slight jump, Miranda tilted her head partially towards