DREAD (BOOK 1 OF THE DREAD TRILOGY)

Chapter 1

© 2017 by Chelsea Vaughan. All rights reserved.

Dread.

My body aches all over as an unknown anger floods in, urging me to let the beast within come pouncing out. My blue eyes, threatening to turn into silver balls of poison.

I stumble over to the sink, as the tap runs I concentrate on the peaceful sound of running water while I stare at the person in the mirror. I'm standing in the mirror but except for the pale faced red head with freckles and ocean blue eyes there is someone else, she looks like me but she is unrecognisable. The eyes are mostly unfamiliar as well as the red cheeks and the sweat dripping down her face. But the person in the mirror is me, I almost forgot. There is a flicker of silver in my eyes but not enough to make me lose my mind, just enough to warn me. I let the running water fall into my hands before I bring them up to my face. The ache in my body starts to fade when the cool water touches my burning skin.

'My Name is Alexandra Ductor, I am sixteen years old, I am not a monster' I tell myself voicelessly. I slowly start to bring myself back into my own state of mind. I know this feeling too well, there was a time when I couldn't control it. I'd sense them everywhere I went and because of that my body wanted to turn into a killing machine, a science project gone wrong, a monster. I am what people are afraid of, not the Zombies that walk and crawl the streets eating any human flesh they can get their rotting hands on. Me. A Dread. Before I became one I feared them too, you can't tell that someone is a dread unless their eyes turn silver or their eyes glow in the dark. It scared me when I first saw myself in the dark but I'm over it now.

It's morning, the sound of many footsteps are heard on the outside of my room. Our leaders, the twelve are supposed to be awake and here I am recovering from another dread outburst. The twelve are the leaders of this place and I am one of them.

The door creaks open, this use to be a small shop in a shopping centre but it became my room once the zombie apocalypse started. "Alexandra, you have a meeting in fifteen minutes" my brother, Luke says to me. He then notices the look on my face, it's obvious that he knows what just happened. He moves forward into the room. "It happened again, didn't it?" It was less of a question and more of a statement. "I can tell them to call off the meeting Ali" He says, using my nickname. I shake my head and move towards my clothing rack.

"No, don't do that... this is a perfect reason to have one" I say. I take a pair of black pants and a black shirt off the rack. "Now get out twerp, I need to get dressed" I say. He rolls his eyes and walks out of the room, closing the door behind him. I get changed quickly and almost trip over onto my face in the process. I'm late to the meeting but they don't care. They never really do unless it's extremely important. Usually they just chat amongst each other while they are waiting for everyone to turn up. It doesn't matter how late anyone is these days, we have all the time in the world and there hasn't been an attack in months. I am the youngest person in the room but they don't care much for age when I'm a dread. They call me their super power because I can detect when a Zombie is near.

"Alexandra, nice to see you made it" Rick says with a smile. He pats the seat next to me and I take it. Rick is an older man, probably in his forties, he was my employer before the Zombie apocalypse. I have known him since I was fourteen when he gave me a job as a cleaner at this very shopping centre. The meetings are held in the leader's row of the shopping centre, it's in the same place as our rooms. Our families, what's left of them live in that section too. It's practically a row of shops in the shopping centre that only leaders live in. The meeting is held in one of the rooms also. So theoretically I shouldn't be late to the meeting seeing as it is practically ten feet from my room.

A girl named Fidelis stands up, she is a year older than me and she became a leader by saving about twenty lives. Her name also means loyalty in Latin, that's why we trusted her. That's why I trusted her at first because I am fluent in Latin and as soon as she introduced herself I trusted her. She has a scar going down the side of her cheek but she got it before the apocalypse in a motorbike accident, other than that she has a beautiful face that I am jealous of. She's not the main leader though, No one is. But Fidelis plans a lot of the meetings because she always has new ideas and things to say. "I planned this meeting because we need to discuss the security of this place" She says, did I mention that Fidelis doesn't like me? "We have a dread for one of our leaders, I think we must address that" She states. I really should have mentioned that she doesn't like me.