Free A Little Undead by Laira Evans

black. I was a predator.
Every movement of my hand in the lightless bathroom was caught with
utmost clarity, but the unmoving wall behind me was painted in shades
of gray to my unholy eyes. I knew what it meant: I was a creature
built to kill.
    Hysteria gripped me as I finally
caught sight of it, that small splash of blood in my hair from when I
had broken his nose. I turned the shower on full blast, as hot as it
would go. My scalp burned as I scrubbed viciously, nails cutting at
my skin in my haste. Fear of my own transforming self was all that
allowed me to resist the temptation of consuming his spilled blood
rather than washing it away. I stripped out of my soaked uniform and
resolved to wash it twice before wearing it. The last thing I needed
was for some leftover drop of blood to set me off in the middle of
the police office.
    'Is this all it takes? A few
drops of blood to turn me into a monster?' I turned off the
water, slumping to the ground with my back against the toilet bowl. 'This isn't a game anymore. What if this time I don't turn back?
Maybe the transformation has gone too far and I'll be stuck as this thing forever.' Water from my sodden hair trickled down my face, blurring further my
already teary eyes. I wanted to call Mom but something like this...
she'd never believe me. Besides, what could she do even if she did?
    “ Why can't I remember!”
I pounded the floor, a tile cracking from the force. It was
infuriatingly difficult to remember anything before Haven. Every
time I felt a memory coming back it slipped out of my grasp like a
squirming eel. But there had to be something behind the fog in my
mind, something dark. They said I lost my memory in an accident, but
what if it was because I looked like this? It would have been no
surprise that they attacked me, only learning later that my heart
still beat. How much would they have rationalized away about my
appearance as a trick of the light if I reverted to normal after
being struck unconscious? ' Who am I? What am I? Was I ever even
human at all, or was I born as this abomination?' One
thing was clear: no ordinary little girl walks out of a red zone with
a feverish little sister in tow singing Christmas carols. What kind
of monster might I have become to survive out there in the
zombie-infested wilderness?
    'I'm stronger than this.' At this point I had to be. Life certainly hadn't been all sunshine
and daisies up until now but my mood was dark enough to believe that
things would get worse before they got better. Despite my pessimism,
I felt a small glimmer of relief as I felt my jaw finally relaxed. I
was changing back to normal, however slowly. Dragging myself to my
feet as if I didn't feel strong enough to lift a car I stared into
the mirror. It wasn't my physical strength that was lacking, only my
will.
    I didn't really look all that
different from my normal self. And now that my mouth wasn't hinged
open I looked less like a man-eating savage or mutant piranha-snake.
My skin wasn't green, I didn't have antennae coming out of my
forehead, and – at least so far – there had only ever
been two people I'd felt like drinking blood from. The taxi-cab
driver didn't count. I wasn't planning on ever getting stuck in a
confined space with someone ever again, or at least not without the
windows open. There was no reason to believe this condition wasn't
manageable.
    'I wonder if I should get
checked for anemia. List of symptoms: Rapid physical transformation
and an incredible thirst for blood. Yeah, that would go over well.
They probably don’t hand out snack-packs of blood to just
anyone who walks in off the street.' I
wasn't even entirely certain that they even did blood transfusions
anymore, considering organ transplants were forbidden due to the
Animator virus. The closest thing to open surgery that happened
these days was an appendectomy.
    The water from the shower felt
itchy against my skin, even after toweling off. Though I regretted
the time wasted I