I Am the Zombie Queen, and My Lover Is the One Sent to Kill Me Chapter 10

I Am the Zombie Queen, and My Lover Is the One Sent to Kill Me Chapter 10

Time felt thin out in the ruins.

I didn’t know how long had passed. Months, maybe. Years. Maybe longer.

All that time, I kept wandering with the endless procession of the dead following in my wake.

They didn’t need food.

They didn’t need sleep. But every time they caught the scent of living people, that blood-deep hunger rose in them like a physical ache.

The only thing I could do was keep leading them farther away from the last flickering embers of humanity.

As far away as possible.

At some point, I stopped thinking about Nolan as often.

I wasn’t heartbroken for very long.

It was more like everything in the past had started fading into grey, like an old photograph left in the sun.

One evening at dusk, I stood on an abandoned overpass, looking down at the dense mass of infected below.

Then, from far away, I heard the long-forgotten roar of engines.

Two or three modified SUVs came tearing through the ruins, barrel-mounted guns bristling from their frames.

They saw us too and slammed to a stop about a hundred yards away.

I recognized one of the vehicles.

It was the same SUV Nolan had driven when he took me to the refuge camp.

The next second, the passenger door flew open and someone jumped out.

It was Nolan.

He had gotten so much thinner.

His cheekbones stood out sharply, his jaw had hollowed, and there were deep dark shadows under his eyes.

There were streaks of blood on his clothes, too many to tell whether they belonged to the infected or to him.

I looked at him.

He didn’t raise his gun.

He just stood there beside the SUV, head tilted back, staring up at me.

From that far away, I couldn’t make out his expression.

I lifted one hand.

Behind me, the infected all raised their heads at once, low snarls rumbling out of their throats.

“Open fire!” someone shouted.

Gunfire erupted in a storm.

The frontline fell like wheat before a scythe, but it didn’t matter.

There were too many of them. The horde kept surging forward like a tide.

The infected around me started to grow restless too.

The people in the SUVs panicked and scrambled to start the engines, motors roaring back to life.

“Nolan! Get in the car!”

Someone leaned out from one of the vehicles and shouted at him.

I recognized the voice.

It was Maddox.

But Nolan didn’t move.

An infected lunged at him, and he dispatched it with a clinical pull of the trigger.

His eyes, though, never left me.

Then he started walking, one step at a time, straight toward me.

The chat went into a meltdown:

[What the hell is wrong with the male lead?! Does he seriously have to kill the villainess no matter what?]

[Wait, I just remembered something! The Alpha was ridiculously overpowered in the original story, so how did the male lead kill her alone in the end? Don’t tell me the villainess still had feelings for him and let him do it on purpose?]

[So the whole plot really is following the original script… and that means the ending is still the same? The villainess still gets taken out by the male lead?]

[Whoever wrote this has no heart. I’m ready to riot. What kind of ending is this?!]

I couldn’t spare those comments a second glance.

All I saw was Nolan reaching the base of the overpass and starting to climb.

The infected around us shifted restlessly, but I forced them back down.

One step.

Two.

Three…

He got closer and closer, until he was almost in front of me.

The bloodlust inside me surged wildly, like my whole body had caught fire.

“You need to go…” I backed away, my voice a jagged, inhuman rasp.

I didn’t want to die.

And I didn’t want to hurt him either.

But to my shock, when he finally reached me, he didn’t pull out his gun.

He just wrapped his arms around me and held me tight.

So tight it felt like he was trying to fuse our souls together.

His face buried itself in my hair.

His chest was burning hot against me, and every beat of his heart slammed hard into mine, thundering with a desperate rhythm.

I froze.

Meanwhile the bloodlust inside me only flared hotter.

His neck was right there by my mouth.

Under the skin, I could feel the steady thrum of his jugular.

It was unbearable.

I fought it with everything I had, my teeth already starting to shake.

“Go… just go… I can’t control it…”

But he didn’t let go.

“Then bite me.”

My breathing stopped.

He lifted his head and looked at me.

There was a reckless kind of finality in his eyes, but also a tenderness so deep it hurt to look at.

I could barely understand what he was saying.

Had he lost his mind?

And then, while I was still stunned, a little gecko poked its head out of his pocket, tiny claws hooked over the edge, bead-bright eyes darting around.

Pickles.

He was still carrying it with him.

And in that instant, my heart sank all over again.