The Zombie Queen's Vengeance

When the world ended, a freak accident left my sister, Flora, and me with the cure in our veins. It gave us something else, too. The power to command the dead.

Flora couldn't let go of her humanity. She blew her own cover to save Julian, a scavenger captain with an infected bite rotting his flesh. Julian dragged her back to his compound.

He paraded her as the Savior, gave her the penthouse treatment, and swore his absolute loyalty to her. I kept a horde of the infected pacing the perimeter for three days.

Once I knew she was safe behind those walls, I walked away. Three years later, I slipped back toward the settlement for her wedding.

Instead of a celebration, I found a slaughterhouse. They were stringing up live human bait outside the barricades to draw out the herds.

The bait dangling from the iron post was barely human anymore. Limbs hacked off. Nose and lips carved away. A flayed, breathing corpse subjected to a slow death by a thousand cuts.

I stepped closer. My lungs seized. Through the dried blood and ruined flesh, I recognized that face. Flora. My nails dug into my palms until wet heat dripped onto the dirt. Julian.

I warned him. I told him exactly what would happen if he ever failed my sister. Now, I was going to bring the apocalypse down on his head all over again.

Chapter 1 The bait dangling from the compound wall had no face. Just a ruined mass of flesh. The stumps where her arms and legs used to be were black with rot.

A barbed whip cracked through the air. Skin split open on impact. Crimson dripped steadily into the dirt below.

I kept my infected horde pinned down in the ruins just outside the perimeter. The heavy stench of copper made them restless.

A few strays broke formation, sprinting toward the gates.

Arrows punched cleanly through the backs of their skulls, dropping them for the second time. "Man, these biters are so stupid!" a voice drifted down from the wall. "A few more rounds and this whole sector will be clear!" The guards up there were laughing, shoving each other playfully.

The grim caution from three years ago was entirely gone. I tightened my mental grip, forcing another layer of control over my horde. "That's barely a handful!

Not even worth the arrows!" The whip stopped. Someone else stepped up, spinning a blade with a sick grin. A dull knife sawing through flesh, utter brutality.

A few of the weakerstomached guards looked away, shielding their eyes. Through it all, the woman on the rope kept her jaw locked tight. Not a single sound.

I couldn't tell if she was already dead or just mute. A cold knot formed in my stomach. How the hell did the compound allow this?

Even the worst criminals still had basic rights. "Hey! Did you skip breakfast? Make her scream! Doesn't she claim she can command the dead?" The blood drained from my face.

My fingertips went numb. In this entire world, only two people could command the infected: me and Flora.

And Flora had willingly stepped into that compound to work as a toptier researcher for the survival of humanity. She was untouchable.

Not to mention she had her fiancé, Julian, guarding her. How could a random piece of human bait know about that power, let alone possess it? I whipped my head back to the woman.

I hadn't looked closely enough before. Now, the details burned into my retinas. Hair like dead weeds, plastered to her skull with dried blood.

The stumps of her limbs, a dark, weeping red. Her nose and lips—carved away. But the bone structure beneath the ruin. It looked exactly like Flora. No.

I slapped myself across the face, hard enough to leave my ear ringing. My jaw ached. Stop it. It was a diseased, insane thought. Flora was safe. She had a specialized immune system.

She was VIP. She couldn't possibly be a flayed piece of meat strung up for target practice. Her vaccine research must have hit a breakthrough. Right.

My hands shook as I pulled out my comms device and fired off a message to Flora. Every passing second felt like glass grinding against my nerves.

I kept my eyes locked on the woman on the wall, searching for anything to prove me wrong. The comms buzzed. [I'm doing great at the compound, sister!

You should visit if you have time.] Below the text was a photo. Flora, standing in a bridal boutique, trying on a stunning wedding gown. Her smile was radiant, pure and untouched.

That was my sister. Three months ago, she called me, breathless with excitement. Julian had proposed. She begged me to come to the compound for the wedding.

I told her I was too far out in the dead zones to make it. A lie. For three solid months, I had been marching day and night to get here. I finally reached the perimeter today.

Just in time to watch them use a live human to fish for monsters. A flash of steel caught the sunlight. A hunting knife plunged deep into the bait's side.

The man holding the hilt was Julian, Flora's fiancé. The woman tore her mouth open. Her first real scream ripped through the air. The sound hit me like a physical blow to the chest.

It was Flora's voice. My lungs stopped working. My gaze dropped. Past the bloody stumps. Past the knife. Her stomach.

The rest of her body was starved to the bone, but her belly was swollen. Bulging unnaturally. She was pregnant. Chapter 2 Flora was exactly five months along. Coincidence.

It had to be a coincidence. My chest tightened so hard it felt like my ribs were cracking.

The woman on the rope had taken the whip and the slicing in dead silence, but this… this broke her. She was protecting her baby. She was screaming for her unborn child.

The panic hit me a second later. That scream—it had torn straight through my mental barricade. A handful of lowtier infected broke my hold and flooded out of the ruins.

Arrows punched through their skulls a heartbeat later. The blood froze in my veins. I fumbled my comms, my fingers slick with cold sweat. She wasn't just screaming.

She was commanding the dead. I abandoned my cover. I darted through the concrete rubble, closing the distance to the main gates. I needed to see that ruined face up close.

As if sensing the shift in the air, the woman's head snapped up. Her gaze locked dead onto mine through the shadows. One look. That was all it took. Her mutilated body convulsed.

She thrashed against the ropes like a live wire, tearing at her own restraints until the massive crane holding her began to sway.

Over a dozen guards scrambled to weigh down the rigging. "Is this bitch insane? Hold her down! She's gonna tip the crane!" "Captain Julian's strike hit the sweet spot!

I thought we needed more bait!" "Who cares? If this isn't enough, we'll carve the brat out of her belly and hang it up next!" The woman's jaw unhinged.

A hollow, grating wail tore from her throat. Thick tears of blood spilled over her bottom lashes.

I stared into those eyes—eyes that shared my exact shape—and read everything she couldn't say. Relief. Nostalgia. Guilt. And a crushing, absolute regret. My throat closed up.

I couldn't drag in a single breath. I stumbled backward, retreating hundreds of yards into the ruins before my knees gave out.

My thumb slipped twice before I managed to dial Flora's video feed. It rang for a full minute before the connection clicked.

Flora's pristine, beautiful face filled the screen. "Flora," I forced the words out. "Do you know about the live bait operations at the front gates?" "Harlow?

Are… are you outside the compound?" I ignored the question. "Where are you right now?" "I'm at the boutique, trying on dresses. You're acting so weird, Harlow.

Are you outside the walls?" She pushed the same question. Again. I hit the end call button. My gaze snapped back to the top of the barricade, tracking every microscopic movement.

Up on the wall, the female soldier standing next to Julian—Genevieve—slipped a phone into her pocket. She leaned in, whispering directly into his ear.

Their shoulders brushed, way past the line of professional distance. Strike one, Julian. A second later, Julian ripped the hunting knife out of the bait's stomach.

He drove it back in. Harder. He didn't stop there. He twisted the hilt. The wet, tearing sound of rupturing organs echoed down the wall, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

Blood burst from the wound in a dark spray. The bait jerked downward violently. A fresh wave of copper hit the back of my throat, triggering my gag reflex.

Her ruined mouth was overflowing with blood. She fixed those desperate eyes on me and gave the faintest, almost imperceptible shake of her head.

Don't come out. "Hit her with adrenaline. Don't let her die yet," Julian ordered. The sky was bleeding into a bruised purple.

The slaughter hadn't drawn the numbers he wanted, and a dark scowl hardened his features. I clamped a hand over my mouth, swallowing down the bile.

I pulled up the video call on my device. I had recorded it. I scrubbed through the footage, frame by excruciating frame. The fingers gripping the phone on Flora's end were thicker.

Longer. The hair length didn't match the bridal photo she had sent me earlier. In fact, it looked exactly like the hair on Genevieve, the woman standing beside Julian.

And her stomach… it was completely flat. A violent ringing started in my ears. The realization slammed into me with the force of a freight train.

I had to get to the woman on the rope. I had to know exactly who she was. Chapter 3 Up on the wall, a blade flashed. The single rope tethering her snapped. Gravity took over.

She hit the ground with a sickening crack, a starburst of crimson exploding across the dirt. A guttural, tearing shriek ripped from her throat as her broken body convulsed.

A low, feral sound scraped its way up my throat. The horde waiting in the ruins snapped. They surged forward, a tidal wave of rotting flesh accelerating toward the gates. "Got it!

The bitch really can control them. Shame…" Genevieve cursed under her breath. The guards fell into formation. Rifles raised. Gunfire erupted.

But the infected weren't attacking the wall. They were piling up. Shoulder to shoulder, crawling over each other's backs, building a massive, writhing ladder of bodies.

The sheer volume rendered the buckshot useless. Confusion rippled across the barricade. "What the hell are they doing?" "Shit!

They're going for her!" Julian lunged for the crane's controls, slamming the winch into reverse. Too late.

The horde reached the bait, thousands of dead hands anchoring her down, fighting the mechanical pull. The steel boom snapped. "Kill her!

Don't let her turn!" Genevieve's voice cracked. An arrow hissed through the air. It buried itself dead center in the bait's skull. Genevieve hadn't just killed her.

She was silencing her. Blood roared in my ears. I broke cover and sprinted into the open.

My vision narrowed to a single, violent focal point: scale the wall and rip Genevieve apart. But with the bait dead, the hunt was over. The guards retreated from the edge.

The battlefield was a slaughterhouse. My horde was decimated. And right in the center of the carnage, the woman lay motionless.

A ruined, withered core surrounded by a blooming crater of gore. No. Please. Don't let it be her. I stumbled through the sea of corpses, dropping to my knees.

I pulled her mutilated body into my chest. My fingers shook as I brushed the bloodmatted hair away from her face. Her features were locked in a mask of absolute agony.

The exact face I had memorized since childhood. "No… please…" Tears cut through the grime on my face.

My hand trembled as I traced the line of her unblinking eyes, moving my fingertips behind her ear. Right over a scabbed scar. There was a tiny, distinct bump in the cartilage.

A highpitched ringing pierced my skull, drowning out the wind.

The world went dead silent except for the frantic hammering against my ribs and the ragged wheezing clawing up my own throat. The last thread of denial snapped.

It was a genetic marker. A family trait. My dad had it. I had it. Flora had it. "How… it can't be…" My lungs forgot how to pull oxygen. I gasped, suffocating on dry air.

I clawed at her clothes, desperate to find another birthmark, another scar to prove me wrong. But there were no arms left to check. No legs.

A raw, inhuman sound tore out of me, echoing over the rotting flesh. I collapsed backward into the pile of corpses. It was a lie. This had to be one of Julian's sick mind games.

I needed to get inside that compound. I needed to see Flora breathing with my own two eyes. Muffled cheers and heavy bass thumped from behind the reinforced walls.

A victory celebration. Brilliantly colored floodlights swept across the compound's airspace, painting the night sky. Outside, the earth was soaked in blood and scattered limbs.

I stripped a relatively clean flannel off a dead infected and swapped it for my bloodsoaked shirt. The entire settlement was distracted by the festival.

The perimeter patrol was nonexistent. I pulled out my comms device and loaded my digital ID. I pressed the screen against the scanner at the access terminal.

A harsh red light flashed. [Access Denied.] I swiped it again. Red light. Flora had personally registered this ID for me. It was hardcoded with her toptier executive clearance.

I know you hate the crowds, Harlow, she had told me, but you'd never hurt anyone. I'm linking my master access to your biosignature.

You can walk through these gates anytime you want. Chapter 4 But now, it locked me out. I stood at the gates for a long time.

The heavy thud of my own heartbeat drowned out the festival bass vibrating through the steel. Operating on blind, desperate hope, I texted Flora.

Against all odds, the screen lit up almost instantly. A new access code flashed across the display. [Information Security is doing a systemwide credential purge, Harlow.

Your old ID got caught in the wipe. Use this override for now.] The text hit me like a shot of oxygen. I dragged in a massive breath. The static in my brain finally cleared.

Flora was alive. She always replied. She always fixed things for me. The streets inside the compound were packed with bodies.

No one noticed the heavy perimeter gate crack open just wide enough for a person to slip through, before sliding shut. I wasn't alone.

A single infected, draped in oversized human clothes, shadowed my steps.

I navigated purely on the compound blueprints Flora had sent me months ago, making a beeline for the research labs.

I cleared the halls, sweeping room by room, until I hit the quarantine wing. And there, sealed behind reinforced glass, was Flora. "Harlow!

You actually came!" She bounded over, pressing herself against the glass with a massive, beaming smile. My eyes instantly dropped to her hands. Clear palm prints.

Ten perfect fingers. I tracked lower. Beneath the white fabric of her sundress, there was a soft, distinct curve to her stomach. My knees went weak.

I grabbed the edge of the console to stay upright. Flora. This was the real Flora. "Why are you locked in quarantine?" I asked.

Before she could open her mouth, Julian shoved through the lab doors. "Harlow. Flora's immune system is highly specialized, and the pregnancy makes her vulnerable.

She caught a slight chill outside this afternoon.

It's just protocol isolation." He stepped closer, his boots clicking sharply against the tile. "I thought you said you were too far out in the dead zones to make it?" I didn't look at him.

I kept my eyes on the glass. "Idiot," I said softly to the girl inside. "Did you really forget what Mom used to say?

No matter who gets married first, the other has to be the maid of honor." I raised my hand, pressing my palm flat against the cold pane, aligning it with hers. "I knew you were the best!" Flora tilted her head, her eyes crinkling as if picturing the wedding day. "I already picked out your dress.

You're going to be the second most beautiful girl there!" The muscles in my face went numb. Our mother died when we were four.

She never said a damn word about weddings or bridesmaids. The reinforced glass sapped the heat from my skin. My fingers were icecold.

But the hand pressed against the other side of the glass—Flora's hand—was flushed red. Flawless blood circulation. "Harlow, stay here this time.

Don't leave," Flora pouted, tracing a tiny circle against the glass over the center of my palm. "Just destroy those disgusting infected and stay with us." I stared at the circling finger.

It was her signature nervous habit.

She didn't catch the lie about our mother, but the physical tic was a perfect match. "The horde is my insurance policy," I said, keeping my voice dead even. "If anyone ever hurts you, I'll need them to exact a pound of flesh." "They're monsters, Harlow!

Even with your control, they could snap at any second!" "Flora." I locked onto her eyes, scanning every millimeter of her face. "Did you know they used live human bait to draw out the infected at the gates today?" She blinked.

A halfsecond of blank processing before her bright smile snapped back into place. "Of course I know! They wiped out a huge chunk of the horde, right?

That's why everyone's celebrating!" My jaw locked tight. I let my hand drop from the glass. Chapter 5 Flora and I stood on opposite sides of this war, but we respected the line.

I never stopped her from walking into this compound to play savior, and she never begged me to execute my horde and kneel to humanity.

My sister was the bleeding heart of the wasteland. She volunteered as a lab rat to synthesize a vaccine.

A girl like that wouldn't just shrug off a pregnant woman being butchered for bait. A violent tremor started in my fingers.

My ribs ached from the force of my heartbeat, but I pushed one last time. "Flora. Leave with me." The girl behind the glass frowned. "Harlow, what are you talking about?

It's crawling with the infected out there. Why would I leave?" "I have endless wardrobes here. Fresh vegetables. Real meat…" Julian chimed in right on cue. "She's right, Harlow.

Flora is pregnant, and the wedding is coming up—" "Do you not want to leave, or are you physically incapable of walking out that door?" The temperature in the room plummeted.

I whipped my hand up. A throwing knife hissed through the air, severing the primary power cable on the ceiling. Sparks showered the tiles. The sterile white lights died.

And the sister I had just been talking to vanished into thin air. In the upper corner of the quarantine room, a small black projector blinked a frantic red warning light.

I pointed at the empty glass box. I didn't blink. "Julian. Is this how you took care of my sister?" Dead silence stretched between us.

I slid my hand behind my back, wrapping my fingers around the leather hilt of my whip. The rigid tension in Julian's face cracked into a sudden, easy laugh. "Come on, Harlow.

Flora and I were just messing with you. You didn't actually fall for it, did you?" He clapped his hands twice. Footsteps echoed down the hall.

Another woman—wearing Flora's exact face—jogged into the lab. "Harlow! Did we scare you?" she chirped. "It's the compound's newest tech.

Julian had it developed just for me." She tilted her head, nuzzling affectionately against my shoulder. The hands gripping mine were warm. But they were trembling.

I gently tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I brought you a gift, too." A massive, towering figure stepped out of the shadows behind me, his face hidden behind heavy tactical gear. "I developed this just for you," I said smoothly. "If anyone ever wrongs you, he'll tear them apart on your behalf." I clapped my hands.

Brock followed the command. Ashgray, decaying fingers reached up and unbuckled the mask. "Ah! A biter!" The girl shrieked. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto the floor.

Beneath the tactical gear was the rotting, nightmarish face of a hightier infected. "Do you like your present, sister?" I looked down at her.

I fisted my hand in her hair, yanking her head back so she was forced to look at me. "You've gotten so timid.

You don't even recognize the boy you grew up with?" The woman convulsed in my grip. A sharp, acidic stench hit the air, and a dark puddle pooled rapidly beneath her thighs.

She had literally pissed herself in terror. I pulled my hunting knife.

The second the freezing steel kissed her skin, she broke down, snot and tears smearing her makeup. "Don't—please don't kill me! Harlow, it's me!

I'm your sister!" I pinned her flailing arm down and snapped the joint with a sickening pop. Then, meticulously, I dragged the blade across her cheek.

Carving away every feature that dared to mimic Flora. My voice dropped to a dead, mechanical whisper. "Three years behind these walls and you're suddenly terrified of the infected?

That's not my sister." The remaining color washed out of the woman's face. She knew. The game was over.

She thrashed wildly, twisting her bleeding face toward Julian. "Captain Julian! Help me! Please!" Julian's facade finally vanished.

The commanding, ruthless aura of a settlement leader slammed into place. "Harlow! Drop the knife!" His hand dropped to his sidearm. "This is a human compound.

I will not tolerate this kind of psychotic behavior in my territory!" Chapter 6 I drove the knife straight into the crying woman's shoulder.

Over her agonizing shriek, I looked up. "Julian. I'm going to ask you one last time. Where is my sister?" Julian's jaw worked, but no words came out.

Genevieve stepped out from the shadows behind him. "Why are you wasting your breath on her, Julian?" She sneered at me. "You want to see your sister, Harlow?

You'll see her when you're dead!" The bait at the gates. It was her. A dark, red haze crept into the edges of my vision.

I stared at the two of them, calculating exactly how to dismantle them piece by piece. Genevieve flicked her wrist.

Dozens of heavily armed guards poured out from the adjoining lab rooms, assault rifles raised and locked onto my chest. "Did you like my performance, Harlow?" Genevieve dragged out the vowels, savoring the moment. "You've been wandering the dead zones for so long, you completely forgot how human technology works." She gestured to the projector in the corner. "A little AI deepfake.

A basic hologram.

And you fell for it completely." She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Watching you coo over the video feed, calling out to her… it made my skin crawl." "You're so unbelievably stupid, Harlow.

I leave the gate access open, and you scurry right into the trap like a rat." They knew I was here the whole time. The updated ID code. The cracked gate. All of it.

I studied the arrogant woman standing in front of me. The features finally clicked into place. "I know you," I stated.

One of the guards beside her immediately puffed out his chest. "You're looking at the daughter of the former compound leader!

The true fiancée of our current leader!" The memory surfaced. Three years ago.

Flora and I had stumbled across a scavenger squad getting overrun by the infected in the middle of nowhere. That was when Flora saved a bitten, dying Julian.

Genevieve had been one of the squad members standing right next to him. I had wondered back then why a fully equipped team was so far out in a dead zone with zero supply value.

Why they just happened to cross our exact path. Genevieve's eyes narrowed with venom. "We couldn't figure out why the herds moved with such military precision around the perimeter.

Turns out, it was you two freaks." She let out a sharp laugh. "All it took was Julian playing the bleeding martyr, and your idiotic sister blew her own cover to save him." Our entire first meeting.

It had been a calculated ambush from day one. I locked my gaze on Julian. My voice was dead calm. "Julian. Do you remember what I told you?

If you ever failed her, I would make you pay it back a thousand times over." Genevieve snapped. "Julian never loved her!

He has always been my fiancé." "He was slated to take over my father's compound.

You think he'd ever actually settle for a lowborn freak like her?" Her face twisted into an ugly snarl. "She was just a tool. A biological asset for the vaccine.

But she didn't know her place." "She seduced him. She got pregnant with his bastard!

Did you really think I'd let her live?" Genevieve stepped closer, her eyes gleaming with sick delight. "You should have heard her, Harlow.

When I carved the flesh off her face, strip by strip." "When I shattered her joints, she screamed so beautifully.

But she was stubborn to the bitter end." "She refused to call for you to save her.

She'd rather die than drag you down with her!" Genevieve spit on the floor. "So I gave her exactly what she wanted. I sent her to hell!" "Restrain her!" Genevieve ordered.

The words barely left her mouth. Before a single guard could pull their trigger, I moved. I ghosted through their tactical formation. My hunting knife flashed.

Steel punched cleanly through the base of their skulls, severing the brain stem. Instant kills. They dropped before they even knew they were dead.

Chapter 7 Someone opened fire, the spray of bullets tearing into their own men. Brock stepped in front of me. Moving with inhuman speed, he snapped neck after neck.

He was already dead; the gunfire only caused momentary stutters in his momentum. In a matter of minutes, we had decimated half the security detail.

Genevieve scrambled backward, drawing her sidearm and firing blindly into the fray, ignoring her own guards.

I grabbed a living guard by his tactical vest, dragging him in front of me as a meat shield, closing the distance to her step by step.

Julian hung back in the shadows, waiting for his opening like a viper. Bang! A bullet shattered my kneecap. A grunt tore from my throat as my leg buckled. I hit the tile.

A dozen laser sights instantly painted my skull. Brock lunged to cover me, catching a concentrated barrage of gunfire. He collapsed against the wall, his body riddled with holes.

Genevieve rushed forward. Her palm cracked across my jaw. Then she leveled her gun and blew out my other knee.

She jammed the smoking barrel directly against my forehead, her finger twitching on the trigger. Julian stepped out of the shadows and clamped a hand over her wrist. "Stand down.

She's still useful." They dragged me to an interrogation cell. They wrapped me in heavy iron chains, anchoring me to a room lined with highvoltage cables.

For three days, they didn't ask a single question. Just pure, unadulterated butchery. Genevieve was terrified of me. She severed the tendons in my wrists and ankles.

She systematically shattered my bones with a steel pipe. They had hacked Brock's corpse in half and dumped the rotting pieces in the corner of the room.

Every time the pain pulled me under, a bucket of ice water shocked my ruined nervous system back awake.

I was teetering on the edge of a blackout when Julian finally walked in. "Harlow, do you know my ultimate goal?" He paced the length of the cell. "I'm going to build the largest human empire on this planet." "Your horde is the only obstacle in my blueprint.

No, it's you. Your very existence is a threat." He lifted his chin, lost in the grandeur of his own delusion. "Flora synthesized a vaccine, so what?

As long as the infected exist, humanity can never truly reclaim the world." "And?" I rasped. His head snapped toward me. "I don't just want to lead a single compound.

I want to rule the new world." He stepped closer. "Your abilities… they are invaluable.

It's a tragedy Flora didn't understand my vision." "She had all that power and refused to weaponize it. What a waste.

Anyone who can't be used by me has to be eliminated." My voice dropped to a dead whisper. "Julian. She saved your life.

She was carrying your unborn child." Julian burst out laughing, like I had just told a brilliant joke. "A child?

I can have a hundred children if I want them!" He leaned in. "You're smarter than her, Harlow.

Partner with me." I played along, letting the words drag past my cracked lips. "So… you don't want to eradicate the infected. You want to control them.

Use them as an army to conquer the remaining human settlements." A manic light flared in Julian's eyes. "Exactly! The path to the top is lonely, Harlow.

I'm inviting you to walk it with me." A bloody smile stretched across my face. "What about Genevieve?" Disgust rippled across his features. "She's just an ordinary human.

Arrogant and utterly useless.

If it wasn't for her father's position, I wouldn't have looked at her twice." He reached out, his fingers hovering inches from my ruined face. "You're different.

You see the board clearly. Accept reality, Harlow." "You have her exact face. Why don't you just stay with me?" A low, hollow laugh vibrated in my chest. Chapter 8