For a moment, he considered sitting back in the bowels of the castle and letting the world spin as it would. After all, why did it fall to him to save the dumb, lumbering, cruel beasts from themselves? They’d never done anything for him.
The world would be a much more beautiful place, the planet so healthy and green, if the talking apes who liked to play God were obliterated. No more hunts, no more fear, no more war. No more starving children. No more torture. No more oil spills, or whole species of animals wiped from the face of the planet that was meant to nurture them.
None except one, the parasite known as man.
But he couldn’t get the memory of little Elizabeth out of his head. The way she’d turned to him for safety and comfort without hesitation. Without fear.
She wasn’t a child anymore; she was a woman grown who made her own choices. She didn’t need a champion or a defender.
Goddamn it.
It was the small things that did him in. The helpless things. The pitiful things.
He sighed. Adam could never turn away a stray—and that’s what she was, a stray trying to make her way in a world of those who belonged.
Alone.
He knew what it was be alone. To be lost and searching for something.
The human race was lucky he was bound to this particular human. For her, he would save them. For her, he would change the tide.
All because of the kindness she’d shown him once, a very long time ago, when in her moment of grief, a child could’ve forced his hand. A child could’ve forced him to give his gift and raise the dead.
Instead, she hadn’t asked him for anything but the comfort of his arms around her while she cried.
Yes, for that, he’d save the goddamn world.
Lightning flashed and crackled, tearing through his body and bringing with it images of exactly where she was.
The island was beautiful, but the signage on the impossibly high stone walls, the electrified razor wire behind it was not.
Bureau 7.
He’d be walking into the lion’s den. They were chief on the list of those who hunted him, who wanted the secrets of his flesh. Who thought nothing of taking what they wanted. He’d killed more than one of their bounty hunters.
That extra sense told him she was on the isle of Kythnos. If the wind was with him, he’d make it in less than a day. That would be cutting it close.
If the wind was against him, it would take two.
Perhaps he’d leave it up to the great mother, if she wanted to shake off the human parasites like fleas?
Part of him still wanted to give this choice over to a higher power. He wished he believed in that, but he didn’t. He’d seen no evidence of the divine in all his long years. Only the earth beneath his feet, the sky overhead, and man, a talking ape throwing his own shit at the wall in the dark.
Adam needed to gather his supplies, mostly making the boat ready for human occupation. He didn’t need the creature comforts, but Elizabeth might. She’d need a new identity as well, because if this went down like he feared, she’d be number one on Bureau 7’s shitlist. He wasn’t going to go to all this trouble to stop the apocalypse just so they could decide she was a liability and take her out.
Adam put in a call to his employer, leaving a message that he would be gone for several days for a family emergency and proceeded to outfit the boat. The sooner he could set sail, the better. He wouldn’t wait for the tide.
As soon as he’d gathered what he needed aboard the No Stars, he started the engine on the oceanvolt, an electric and solar powered generator that harnessed the energy he created sailing—just enough to propel him out into the open sea and then he’d be using wind power all the way.
He wondered if she’d remember him, because it seemed through all these long years, he’d never stopped thinking about her.
Adam was sure, if she remembered him at all, it would be gray and fuzzy. Perhaps she’d already dismissed it as a dream.
Or a nightmare.
Those had a way of coming true.
Because it occurred to him that this was a ploy, a plot to get him to Kythnos. Polidori knew what 7 wanted from him and he could’ve filled Elizabeth’s head with all kinds of nonsense.
The monster Polidori spoke of in his ever so reassuring tones might not have even registered as the same one who’d held her hand as a child.
Not that it mattered.
He was going.
Soon, Bureau 7 would have more on their plate than they were prepared to manage, he was sure.
A zombie apocalypse would put a strain on anyone’s resources.
Chapter Three
Things that Dr. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft was prepared for while conducting an autopsy: strange sounds, strange smells, odd variations in what people think the human body should look like, and all the nitty gritty parts of being human—including bowel and bladder evacuation upon death.
Those things had never affected her.
The corpse on the table in front of her was something different, mainly because of the erection.