Chapter 1

The warmth of the morning sun caressing my face, arms, and legs while it competed with the cool morning breeze for dominance felt absolutely marvelous on my skin and soothing to my tense muscles.  I’d been up all night studying both ancient and modern texts to help me to understand and possibly find a cure for zombism.

After multiple lengthy conversations with my lover and fellow doctor, Peter, and my very good friend, Megan, - who was a wickedly knowledgeable witch and zombie hunter - I’d concluded that, like vampirism, zombism was caused by a virus.  My belief was reinforced by the fact that Peter had secretly given me an inoculation to prevent zombism – in a very sly and naughty way, I might add - before he felt comfortable and confident enough to share the facts about the world I was living in with me.

The inoculation consisted of a low dose of the vampire virus.  It wasn’t enough to turn me into a vampire – unless I died – but it was enough to provide my body with the immunity that vampires had to zombism. 

After serious and intense contemplation, Peter and I decided that, if a virus could be cured, then the zombie – or even the vampire virus, for that matter- had a cure out there somewhere.  We just had to find it.

Peter and I were alike in many ways.  We could be like a dog with a fresh and meaty bone once we sank our teeth into an idea.   Where we differed was with our opinion of which virus took priority.

Peter was determined to return to Africa and find a cure for vampirism, while I felt that zombism was a far more important virus to attack first. I believed in it so much so that I’d spent the entire night pouring through websites about Haitian Voodoo and zombie-creating technologies and doing my best to filter out the “ridiculous and bazaar” from the “makes sense” information.

Since I had patients that morning, I decided to refresh myself with a little morning glory and then go to bed early that night to compensate for the first all-nighter that I’d pulled since college.

I could hear Peter’s slippered feet padding out onto the back patio long before he said in a soft and sexy tone, “You never came to bed last night.”

“Time got away from me,” I said while I continued to revel in Mother Nature’s nurturing.

He grabbed a camp chair that was leaning against the side of the house and set it up next to me.  “Did you come up with anything good?”

“Nothing concrete, but I feel like I might be heading in the right direction.”

“I wish you’d reconsider your focus,” he sighed.

“If you’d stay here and help me, then we could both go to Africa and tackle vampirism.  We’d have the zombie cure with us as well,” I pleaded.  “We’d be able to tackle both, then.”

“The core of the vampire virus lies in Africa.  I need to get back there and get started.  I’m sick over the fact that it never entered my head to look for a cure until you brought it up.  I can’t even begin to understand why I was such a bubble brain and I can’t forgive myself,” he insisted in a soft and sexy tone that always gave me chills.  I probably would have initiated some lovemaking as a result of those chills if the topic hadn’t been such a serious one.

“Vampires are worldwide, are they not?” I asked.  “For heaven sakes, there are three of you in this very house.  I don’t see why you need to go to Africa.”

He leaned forward and took my hand.  I kept my eyes closed to hide the tears of frustration that were building up in them.  I hated the thought of being separated from him for so long.  The research could take years on both of our ends.

“I’m convinced that Africa is where vampirism originated.  I need to get to the heart of the disease and stop it.  Besides, I left some people back there to run my non-profit who are at risk of being infected; if they aren’t already.”  He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “Come with me, my love.  We’ll do our research there, together.”

“What happens when we get back in a year?  Two years?  Five years?  I’d be abandoning my practice and my responsibilities.  I still have outstanding loans,” I whined.

He sat back and heaved a sigh. “Why can’t I be like the vampires in the romance novels?  They’re all stinking rich.  Then I’d pay off those damned loans and you wouldn’t have to worry about working unless you wanted to.”

“I’m surprised that you don’t still have a few loans hanging over your head.  Doctors Without Borders certainly didn’t pay enough to cover them and I can’t imagine your non-profit gives much better,” I mused and then gasped at my boldness in speaking something that I’d been thinking for months.

“My non-profit pays me less,” he smirked.  Then, with hesitancy, he added, “My family has money.  They paid for my education.” He chuckled wryly.  “Of course, they didn’t expect me to become a non-profit physician.  I was intended to become an oncologist and get rich off people’s cancer.”

“How pissed were they?”

“You mean, are they,” he corrected me.  “They’re still not speaking to me and have cut me off financially as a means of proving a point,” he said with a sad tone. “Of course, now that I’m afflicted with vampirism, I’ve stopped making overtures for their forgiveness.  I wouldn’t dare go to visit them.  My father would recognize something different about me within minutes.”

“I didn’t,” I said, “but, then, I hadn’t seen you in years and, when we did meet all those years ago, it was only briefly.”

“My father works in government.  He’s suspicious of everyone and anyone.  He’d scrutinize me from head to toe simply because I was out of the country doing – to quote him - “God knows what with God knows who”.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I sat up and raised my face to the sun.

“You’re really enjoying the morning’s glory, aren’t you?”

“I’m hoping to soak up enough sun to energize myself through the day.  I plan on hitting the bed early tonight.”

“Ha… not as resilient these days, eh doc?” he laughed.

I slapped his shoulder as I stood up and stretched in a cat-like manner.   “Do you want some breakfast?” I asked, after kissing him on the forehead and heading into the house.

“I do if it’s you,” he said, flirtatiously, as I dramatically swung my hips and giggled my way up the porch steps.

I didn’t expect to see his luggage resting, neatly, by the front door.  The shock of it made me stop in my tracks.  My heart throttled the back of my eyeballs as I turned to look at him.   He was leaning forward in his chair with his elbows resting on his knees and his eyes focused on his feet.

“There’s a cab on its way,” he said in a soft, dejected tone.

“You’re leaving already?” I gasped.

He lept up from the chair and walked steadily toward me. “I’ve never been good at long good-byes.  Besides, the sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll be back.”

“You let me stay up all night knowing that you were leaving this morning,” I said, incredulously.

“I didn’t realize that you’d do that.  I was waiting for you to come to bed and I fell asleep.  Stress does that to me,” he explained as he stood up and walked toward me.

“Damnit!  If you’re stressed, then why are you going?” I wailed as I flung myself into his arms and slapped his shoulders with the flat of my hands.  I wanted to beat some sense into him.

“I don’t want to go, but I must.  I can’t explain it.  I have people there who are dear to me.  I left them thinking that being away from them was for the best because I’d been infected, and I was afraid my being there would lure more to them.  I feel a panic inside of me that my actions might have been the wrong thing to do.  I should have stayed and protected them.  I should have stayed and found a cure.”

“Then, we’d never have connected,” I said.

“Yes,” he said as he kissed the side of my head.  “I can’t imagine life without you in it, my love.  You are my heartbeat, my breath, my very essence.”

“Then, stay,” I pouted against his throat.

“Please don’t make me feel any worse than I already do.  If you know nothing about me by now, you must know that it’s not in me to ignore the underdog.  I was with Doctors Without Borders until I started my own foundation.  I can’t not go.  You have to see that.”

“I do, and I hate it,” I said as he kissed me hard.

I knew that my boarders, Angela, and Evan, were home and could come downstairs at any moment, but I didn’t care. The love of my life was waiting for a cab to take him across the ocean for an indefinite period of time and I’d wasted my last night with him researching zombies.

The risk of getting caught in the throes of lovemaking might not have bothered me, but it did him.  He carried me up the stairs to the privacy of my bedroom and set me down on the unmade bed.  Our hands worked frantically to disrobe each other.  We needed to feel flesh against flesh.

His lips felt feverish with desire as they roamed my body, they stopped at my breasts and he suckled them possessively while his hands reached down to caress and explore my womanhood.  He teased me with his hot lips and his well-manicured fingers until I was beyond myself with desire before nestling his head in the apex of my thighs. The pleasure he expertly gave me took my mind off the fact that we’d soon be parted for a brief while.

When he finally entered me, he took me in a way that said so much more than words ever could.

Peter Thomason loved me, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t return to the people he’d left behind to run his non-profit health organization in Africa and do what he could to save them from vampirism. 

Admittedly, if I was in his position, I’d leave too.

Even so, that didn’t mean that I was happy about it.

As he lay next to my satiated nakedness and lightly stroked my flesh with the tip of his long, slender fingers, he professed his love over and over again. “I’ll be back soon, my love.  Don’t give up on me.”

“How backwards is this place that you’re going to? Do you have internet?”  I asked; thinking that we could at least talk over the web.

“I can access it in a nearby town,” he smiled. “Great minds think alike.  I was just going to suggest that we talk once a week.”

“Only once a week?” I said with surprise.

“Things are different there, my love.”

“I suppose,” I sighed.  Then, with a smirk, I leaned on one elbow so that my abundant breast fell onto his shoulder.  He rolled onto his side and, playfully, took my nipple into his mouth as I spoke. “Let’s make a contest of it.  Winner gets to control when and how we have sex for a month.”

He chuckled while he continued to suckle.  “I’m listening.”

“Your cure for vampirism against my cure for zombism,” I said as I pulled my nipple from his mouth and inserted the other one in its place.

“It seems to me like you already think you’ve won,” he said with a grin as he took his hands and cradled the breast I’d just presented to him before suckling it.

“Is it a bet?” I asked, breathlessly, as I rapidly lost focus on anything but my need to have him again.

“Deal,” he said with a deep throated voice as he tossed me on my back and took me with a gentle fervor that we both knew would have to last us for a very, very long time.

“You know,” I said in a sultry voice as we lay, satiated, in each other’s arms.  I lightly stroked his body and heaved a heavy sigh. “I never even thought of sex before I got with you.  Now, it’s all I think about.  What am I supposed to do when your gone?”

“You didn’t think of sex because you were an innocent virgin who hadn’t experienced and didn’t understand the ecstasy and pleasures of it,” he said with a smile as he slipped from my embrace and got out of bed.  “When we talk on the net, I’ll teach you things to do to hold you over until my return.”

I was still tingling from our lovemaking when the cab pulled up the drive and honked its horn.  I could barely see him slipping back into his clothes through the tears that I shamelessly let pour forth.  He kissed me long and hard, stood for a moment and looked at me as if he just might change his mind, and then rushed down the stairs to where his luggage awaited.

I silently sobbed while I listened to the trunk and doors of the cab slam shut before it carried the love of my life away from me.