Valarie cuts the legs off of zombies!

I am putting together the "bonus material" for the Special Edition versions of the DEAD series. Currently I am scouring books 4, 5, & 6. Valarie becomes part of Kevin's tale (The Geeks), but what about BEFORE Kevin and Shari discover her? Yep...that seems like a good place to beef up my DEAD: Vignettes (Vol. II) Special Edition.

Here is a sneak peek...

“I am a princess,” Valarie said as she looked in the mirror.

Outside, she could hear some of the sick people pounding on the walls. The last time she had looked, they were not faces that she knew. These were strangers and Valarie knew not to talk to strangers. Still, she would need to take care of these poor people. For some reason, the sick people liked to bite.

She glanced down at the mostly healed rip on her left arm. That had hurt. It was even more upsetting that the person who had bitten her was Father Drieson. Priests were supposed to be people you could trust.

Valarie adjusted her tiara and then put on her gloves just like her mee-maw had taught her. There was work to be done.

Grabbing the leather straps and the saw, Valarie peeked outside. Today there were only three of the sick people. That wasn’t going to be too bad.

The girl paused for a moment. An observer would think that she had perhaps suddenly forgotten something and was trying to remember. That was not the case.

“I know, Mee-maw,” Valarie said, her voice almost totally flat and monotone. “Do the surgery below the knee.”

She cocked her head as if hearing something. And in some cases, she actually was. Her mind was replaying the memory of the day that her grandmother had explained to her how and why she needed to cut the legs off of the sick people.

Eventually, almost as if she had been frozen and was now slowly unthawing, Valarie began to move once more. She walked to the door, her tongue sticking just slightly out of the corner of her mouth as she focused all of her attention on the task at hand.

Opening the door, Valarie reached out with one hand and quickly grabbed the zombie (sick person) that had just been pounding on her door. Yanking the sick person inside, she just as quickly slammed the door.

Turning, she used one foot to sweep the legs out from the young woman just as she was about to rise to her unsteady feet. She used to actually wince just a bit the first times she had done such a thing, but the sick people did not seem to notice. Most of them didn’t even cry. And the ones that did were usually already crying when she got to them.

Taking the long piece of leather thing, Valarie bound the hands first. The sick people didn’t kick much, but if they grabbed you, that usually meant they could get in a nasty bite before she could tie them up properly.

Once the hands were secure, Valarie grabbed one ankle and dragged the lady down the hallway and to the room where her mee-maw had closed her eyes before opening them as one of the poor sick people. This was the room where she had taken off the legs of every single sick person in the Sage Farms area.

She wrinkled her nose at the smell. Not even the pine tree juice was helping with the stinkiness that was now a permanent part of this room. A swarm of flies buzzed around the room, but they were thickest at the open window. Valarie paused for just a second. She would need to go outside and push some of those leg pieces away. The pile was stacked so high that she could see them without having to actually go over to the window and look outside.

“I promise to go very fast,” Valarie said as she pulled the sick woman to her feet and then shoved her onto her back on the long table. Using the same straps that her mee-maw had helped her put in place, she secured the sick woman in place and grabbed the saw.

As promised, it only took a few minutes to saw off each leg just below the knee. There was hardly any blood, but what there was sure didn’t look right. Valarie was pretty sure that blood was not supposed to be black.

“Now, let’s put on some more prettier clothes,” Valarie said with a broad smile as she patted the sick woman on the cheek. She seemed not to notice as teeth clacked together loudly as her hand moved away. “I think the orange tee shirt will fit.”

Valarie went to work changing the sick woman’s top. The she pulled out a brush. “You need a ponytail…”