Free The Apocalypse Crusade 2 by Peter Meredith

however the majority of the city lived in densely packed slums; a perfect breeding ground for a zombie army that would, before the day was out, rival the size of all the armies in the world combined.
    And that was just the first day.

Chapter 5
The Outlaw
6:55 a.m.
     
    A fundamental shift had occurred in Dr. Thuy Lee. It announced itself civilly; in a manner no one else would’ve ever noticed.
    She slept in.
    Not that six in the morning was sleeping in for a normal person, but for her it was and, regardless, she never slept in. Never. Thuy Lee always had too much to do.
    In middle school, on top of her regular studies, there had been violin practice two hours a day, and her language tutor. In high school there was her 5.0 grade point average that she maintained from the first day right up until she gave the valedictorian speech—and there was also piano and early placement college courses.
    At the university there had been the shock that it wasn’t the temple of knowledge she had expected. She had discovered there were three categories of students: the first were the partiers, who eked their way through classes, coming in with red eyes and smelling of dirty laundry. The second were the pseudo-intellectuals who went around all day using the very largest words in their vocabulary, spitting them out as though they were bullets of the gun. Later in life they were the ones most likely to mention their degree within the first two minutes of meeting someone new. The last category was made up of people who were genuinely excited at the idea of learning something new—like Thuy.
    Thuy carried twenty-six credit hours a semester and wished she could sleep even less than the six hours a night that she did. She had burned through her classes one after another, ingesting every new fact she could get her hands on.
    After that were her postgraduate studies and then there was her first real job: R&K Pharmaceuticals had grabbed her up as fast as they could. Even before she had tossed her mortar board in the air they had her signed on like a left-handed pitcher with a 98 mile an hour fastball. Even then she had not let up. For the last ten years she had worked eighteen hours a day trying to unravel the mystery of cancer.
    All her life she had been working her hardest, striving to be perfect and now she was clearly not. She had failed and failed huge.
    Strangely, it brought about not a sense of melancholy but a sense of relief. This was the first day of her life she had nothing to do. She had no job—or so she suspected. Her research, regardless that it had been sabotaged had been responsible for mass death. Her career was over. No one would touch her after this. And this meant that she had nothing to do with her morning.
    The authorities would want to talk to her, she was sure, but what could she say that would be at all helpful? Aim for the head?
    Next to her, Ryan Deckard was breathing lightly. He smelled of her shampoo and was bursting the seams of her pink silk robe. The night before, after each had showered, they kissed gently, neither had the strength to do more, then each fell so quickly into sleep that they slipped into unconsciousness intertwined like lovers. He had rolled over in the night and she had awakened wishing he would come back and then, she wished she had the courage to roll over and cuddle him.
    Her dreams had been of Von Braun and Riggs. Their faces kept crumbling off and they had chased her, relentlessly, first through a burning building and then out into woods that were deep and endless. When she woke in a sweat, she had wanted Deckard to hold her, to rescue her.
    She knew what most of her colleagues would say about that. They would cluck for sure. There were many feminists in the science community and, for the most part, Thuy had no need of them. To her the real feminists were the giants of the past who had freed women from what was, for all intents and purposes, cultural slavery. Those women were people to admire.