Free Emergence: Return of Magic book 1 by D. R. Rosier Page B

just fell to the ground like he had his strings cut. 
The others went wide eyed, and turned to run.  He was afraid they’d just
come back, or hurt someone else.  So he reached out and took the rest of
them long before they could escape, and then raised them.
    “Twenty-seven zombies and counting,” Cynthia said softly.
    He looked over at her in surprise, he hadn’t been thinking
that at all, which meant she was thinking independently.
    She smiled, and kissed him, “You don’t want me to be like
them baby.”
    It was true, he didn’t, he wanted her to be loyal, and obey
him, even love him, but he also hadn’t thought it was really possible, that it
would all be an illusion.  He knew he was self-deluded, and honestly
hadn’t really cared.  Now though, he wondered just how real she could
be?  She was undeniably having independent thoughts, within those
parameters.  She’d also defended him when he hadn’t even passed that
order, or thought of it.  He could admit to himself that guy had caught
him completely off guard by skipping the pre-fight insults. 
    She was also a lot stronger and faster than he’d thought she
was.  He checked and saw she had a lot more life energy in her than the
other zombies.
    He must have been feeding it to her when they… coupled.
    The six men got up, one with a regrown throat, and he sent them
straight to the shower, before they’d come right back outside to help establish
their crops.  After all, he hadn’t been joking at all about the soap
insult, they all reeked.
    He was even more bemused when they went back inside. 
He’d forgotten about the blood, and had stopped and waited, when Cynthia went
into the women’s bathroom to wash her hands.  He decided then that she
could do whatever she wanted, wear whatever she wanted, as long as she didn’t
betray him, or turn away from him, he wanted to see what she could
become.  She was already… magnificent.
    To his surprise, she stayed in the slutty outfit, and he
wondered what that meant, since she had a choice.  Did she want to dress
that way to please him, because she loved him, or… he shook his head.  Just
trying to work it all out in his head started to give him a headache, so he
decided to shrug it off, he certainly didn’t mind if she wanted to dress that
way.
    The next week passed quickly.  More people joined them,
on both sides.  Several people had taken note of his zombie activities in
town, and followed them back to the school at a distance, out of
curiously.  It had been a nice surprise for him when they opened a dialog,
and they were just looking for a safe place, that had food, and had a plan.
 There were also more troublemakers.
    By the end of that week he’d accumulated sixteen more
zombies, for a grand total of forty-three.  He also had several more
families living under his protection, including the fathers this time
around.  He thought there were close to fifty people now. 
    They didn’t seem scared really, but they were all a bit
tentative at first, and seemed respectful.  So it was all good to
him.  A couple of them even had some engineering know how.  So they’d
set up a tub, and a primitive hot water heater for it.  They even went out
and bought some PVC and hand pumps to pump water directly from the nearby
tributary for when the water failed.
    As far as Cynthia, she had stopped surprising him when she
did something rather independent.  She’d even seduced him a couple of
times, which wasn’t a big surprise normally, but since he hadn’t been at all
thinking of sex at those times, he thought it significant.  Not that she
ever had to try very hard to do so.
    He still wondered at times if he was deluding himself, but
he felt a lot less self-conscious about how he felt about her.  He loved
her, and couldn’t imagine going back to his life when he’d been alone.
    It was that night, at the end of that first week, when he
got another warning.  It was early morning, and he’d still