Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory by Daniel Cotton

dumps her on the bed and she lands with
her face buried in one of the pillows. Clothes rustles as he sheds
his remaining garments, and his belt jingles as he removes it. His
breathing is heavy with anticipation and she’s powerless to fight
back.
    Brad was angry when Vida rejected him last
night, although she was polite about it. He stayed up drinking and
remembering boot camp. The instructors had the recruits sleep with
their rifles out in the field, as if the weapons were their
girlfriends. Now he looks at Vida on the bed. Her slender waist and
raised backside give her an almost feline posture. Sleek and sexy.
Sitting next to his new girlfriend, sliding a hand up her shirt, he
favors warm flesh over the cold steel of his rifle.
    Still drunk and running on very little sleep,
he had bound her limbs together, limbs that he must now part. Plus
she still has her clothes on. Before he begins, he must untie the
shoelaces that bind her ankles tightly. So he sits on her left leg
to undo the knots he had so stealthily made in the dark. Once he
has her legs free, he must extend his body to the corner so he can
tie her right leg to the bedpost. While he does this, his knee
keeps her other leg pinned painfully to the mattress.
    Brad doesn’t care what position he takes her
in. He just wants to take her. With the one leg lashed to the bed,
he moves to the next. As far as her clothing, he figures he can
just cut it away with his knife.
    He eases off of her unsecured leg, his
excitement building. The back of his neck tingles with tension he
can’t wait to release, again and again. The possibilities of their
situation are boundless, and he doubts he’ll ever return to base
now that he has Vida as his new toy.
    Vida feels the weight lift off of her leg.
She has but a moment to snatch it back. With speed and flexibility
that surprises them both, she reclaims her limb and rears it back.
Lunging for the headboard, she grabs on to it for support and kicks
out at the naked soldier with all the adrenaline fueled might she
can muster.
    Brad lands hard on the floor after catching
his back on the recliner. Vida slides off the bed as fast as she
can before he can regain his control. Not having enough time to
work the knots, she simply slips out of her shoe and runs blindly
from the dim room.
    Sunlight sears her eyes, and she’s instantly
blinded in her desperate escape from the rapist. She doesn’t let
that stop her, however. Vida guides herself along the stair railing
by memory and is on the ground floor by the time her vision fully
recovers.
    She runs full speed, despite her lopsided,
one-shoe gait. She heads around the building to where the jeep is
parked. Thankfully she needn’t be concerned with keys since she saw
Brad start it with just a push of a button.
    The quick pace makes it hard to stop, but
Vida manages to do so when she hears the roar of a large engine on
the street. She almost made it to the corner that would take her to
the back of the motel, but instead she must drop down below tall
hedges. Bare feet plod after her, making her torn between which is
the greater threat: her would-be captor or the large black truck
she sees through the shrubs.
    Gunshots ring out as the person driving the
truck fires on some zombies. Vida had been so distressed and
hell-bent on escaping, she had forgotten all about the walking
dead. The sound makes Brad take cover as well, for she doesn’t hear
his shoeless strides on the concrete walk anymore. She hopes this
will buy her some time.
    The black truck slowly cruises the street
like a trolling fishing boat, and as soon as its taillights are out
of sight she moves. Vida squeezes through the hedges, heading
toward the street since Larsen is nearly to her hiding spot.
Cautiously side-stepping left, she comes to a short brick wall that
separates the motel’s frontage from the parking lot of a
neighboring pawn shop. She follows the divider to the street while
a second truck joins the black one as it