The Road to Wolfe (The Sanctuary #4) - Nikita Slater

Prologue

You know that that old motto, life is a bitch and then you die? Yeah, that about sums it up. This is my life, in my words… and sometimes Wolfe’s words. If you don’t like it, you can walk away now. If you think you can handle my most-of-the-time bad attitude, then stick around, because this is going to be a wild ride.

I was born on August 15th, 2045. Twenty-three years after the Great Fall. I lived a happy life in Old Canada with my family until I was eleven. Then mom, dad and my little brother died from the flu. Not Necrotitis Primeval but something else. Something just as deadly but with less zombification. After the death of my parents, our home was no longer viable and I travelled with my sister, Taran, and my grandparents to the Nevada Sanctuary. We tried to build a new life, but flu and the fucking zombies killed that idea. When Nevada fell, I was unfortunately still inside. I got separated from my family and had to find my own way in the world.

Fast forward about twelve years and I finally set eyes on my sister again. Life was much different. She was married to a Warlord and I was living in a harem, married to my own reclusive Warlord. I got to live in a palace, eat until my belly was full, wear beautiful clothes and bend the ear of the most powerful man in the city. Things should’ve been awesome, right?

Wrong.

Awesome turned to ashes when the fucking zombies figured out how to make nuclear meltdowns happen. I mean, how much shit needs to go wrong before we all just give up, lie down and die? I was forced to flee my Sanctuary and my husband by our head of security, the badass warrior and zombie hunter known as Wolfe. A man who terrorizes anyone and anything that comes near him. Except me. He took me back to my sister, where we would have had a joyful reunion if it weren’t for the massive horde of Primitives that followed us into the Tucson Sanctuary.

If you think more shit couldn’t possibly go down, you’d be wrong. Again.

We fought that horde for months, pushing them back over and over, only to be confronted with even more waves of them coming in from the east, chasing and picking off survivors searching for Sanctuary. Eventually we were able to come up with a solution; use my sister’s and my magic virus-immune blood to kill the horde and vaccinate the survivors.

It worked!

The year is now 2075. Wolfe left, and I continued to live in the Tucson Sanctuary. Along with a group of warriors, I’ve been deployed to distribute the vaccine as far and as wide as we can get it, in an effort to eventually eradicate the disease that brought our civilization to the brink of destruction.

And we lived happily ever after….

Ha! Kidding.

Buckle up babes, this story is just getting started.

One

Skye

Year: 2068, 7 years earlier

Location: Somewhere in the Mojave Desert

Boom!

I flinch as a gun goes off over my head. Adrenaline surges through me and I have to fight the urge to climb out of the hole where I’m hiding and help. I’ve been tasked with keeping the children safe. I curl as tightly as I can, wrap my arms around the four terrified, clinging children and pray for the attack to be over.

I’m hidden beneath the floorboards of an old farmhouse we’d been using as a temporary shelter on our way to Sanctuary. I’ve been travelling with the same group of people for the past several months. There is a war happening above me, human versus zombie. The same fight we’ve been engaged in since the dawn of a virus that turns people into Primitives, terrifying zombie-like creatures. I long to sink my own blade into the enemy, to take my revenge for every loss I’ve been forced to endure, but I don’t have the skills necessary to fight like a warrior.

As I hear the screams above me, I wonder if anyone is skilled enough to fight them off. Zombies move fast and attack without thought. No one is immune.

Except me.

Six years ago, when I was living in the Las Vegas Sanctuary I discovered that I was in fact immune. I found out in the worst possible way, at sixteen years of age, with a zombie’s teeth buried deep in my throat. I’d closed my eyes, relaxed my muscles and waited for death. When I finally opened them