Not Dead Enough by Mina Carter

Blurb:

There is life after death, unfortunately for them, it's the same one...

Brett Perkins was a soldier, until the Project killed him. Now he's finding that life after death isn't so hot. With the Project base destroyed, he and his team have been tasked with running down and destroying a group of rogue Bloods. Unfortunately the vampires always seem to be one step ahead. Then they start kidnapping women...

Thanks to her soon-to-be ex-husband, Julia Collier is despised and reviled in the small town of Greenwood. His stories have painted her as everything from an air-headed gold-digger to a nymphomaniac serial killer. She can't even shop in the local store without suffering abuse from her fellow townsfolk, and that's before the late night calls or her ex's bully-boys following her.

When her home is broken into, Julia assumes it's her husband making good on his threats to 'deal with her for good'. She never dreams that it will lead a descent into another, terrifying world. One inhabited by werewolves, vampires...and zombies. Or that zombies could be so damn hot. Espeically one certain example who makes her heart pound and all her common sense disappear over the horizon. After all, what woman in her right mind would fall for the undead?

Unless the undead aren't dead at all, but something more than human, from a world she'll need all her wits and new abilities to survive the battle between the undead...and the dead.

Project Rebellion: They're not heroes, they're something else... They're SARAs and they're about to kick ass.

Buy Link:

Amazon

Excerpt:

Brett Perkins had always believed in life after death. He’d just never thought it would be the same one.

It was a question he’d thought about a lot. Occupational hazard. Up to a few months ago he and the three others in the room with him had been soldiers. An assignment to a base in the ass-end of beyond had seemed like a dead-end move for his career. Until he’d realized that he’d been sent to a top-secret project. One so classified that he’d been told most of the higher-ups didn’t even know about it. That knowledge had puffed his chest out until he’d figured out the truth. The Project was top-secret for a reason. Genetic experiments on soldiers didn’t go down so well with anyone who had a conscience.

Trouble was, no one left the Project. Not alive. Definitely not human.

Now he was neither human nor alive.

And life after death sucked hairy-ass donkey balls. Gigantic ones.

“Would you hold still?” he demanded. He squinted, trying to match up the torn flesh on the arm of the man sitting in front of him so he could staple it shut.

“Sorry. How’s this?” Evan Fredericks, their section leader, altered his position so Brett had better access. For some reason Brett had found himself designated the team medic. Which, given their newly dead-but-not-dead state, meant he got to get busy with the office supplies.

“Perfect, thanks.”

Ignoring the white of the bone deep in the wound, if he could even call it a wound since it didn’t bother Fredericks at all, Brett pulled the ragged edges together and pressed down quickly with the stapler. Stolen from the desk behind him, it was bright pink, with a happy face and some chick’s name on it. Sophie. He grunted. Nice name.

Wrapping a length of stretchy bandage around his handiwork, he tapped Fredericks on the shoulder. “Okay, good to go,” he said. “But you’re gonna need to eat something soon, to seal that up.”

A grimace crossed Fredericks face momentarily. Brett ignored it as he moved to root through the drawer of a nearby desk for more staples. Some elements of their new natures were taking more time to adjust to than others, but the need to eat was one Brett suspected none of them would ever get used to.

Because they weren't talking about hitting up the local diner and chowing down on a burger. In fact, just the thought of cooked meat made his stomach churn, even if his brain told him he wanted it.

No, their new bodies needed something else to power and repair them. To stop their dead flesh falling into rot and decay.

Warm meat. Hot blood. Something that only moments before had a heartbeat. Something with a heartbeat if the need got bad enough. Either way, they only had a small window of opportunity. As soon as the flesh cooled, their bodies rejected it and they couldn't eat.

In a sick twist of irony, their dead bodies needed food nearer to alive than they were. And they couldn’t avoid the need. If they refused to eat, wounds didn’t close, and their flesh began to look wrong. Like they were starting to decay. None of them wanted that.

Dying wasn’t the worst of it. Decaying in your own dead body with no way to end it all? That was a nightmare Brett didn’t want to contemplate. With the Project always on their tails, looking to recover their wayward creations, they had enough problems without adding to the burden.

Methodically, he searched the small office they’d holed up in for anything useful. They’d torch the place before they left to cover their tracks and remove any genetic material, just in case, but he had to do something to occupy his hands. Keep busy. Anything to avoid thinking.

He cast a surreptitious glance around the room. Dominic Fletcher sat at a desk by the door, and Kelwood was across the room, rocking to himself. Brett caught Fletcher’s eye and shared a look of worry. Jared had been that way since they’d been infected, his only conversation about his wife and child. A wife and child he wouldn't be able to see again. He was dead to them now; he had to be dead to them. There was no way back to their old life. Not with what they were now.

Fredericks stood by the window, rolling his shoulder as he tested the range of motion in the injured limb. Despite the fact that the cut had opened his arm to the bone, no pain registered in his expression. Wounds didn’t bother them. No physical damage did.

Brett looked down, opening and closing his hand. He could still feel…touch, sense. But it was like their pain responses had been turned off the instant the Project had pumped whatever crap they had into their veins.

He didn’t remember their infection. All he remembered was being brought in injured and wondering if the pitted ceiling of the temporary med-bay would be the last thing he’d ever see. Then he’d woken up in a cage with the others, and it had all gone downhill from there.

The project had thrown everything it had to offer at them. Bloods, Lycans…even Reanimates. Brett shivered at the memory. Zombies powered by nothing more than the need to eat, their dead,

empty eyes had always given him the creeps. And they’d killed them all. Nothing thrown into the cage stood a chance. Bloods, Lycans, Reanimates… Nothing stood a chance against what they were.

S.A.R.A.

The initials hung in his mind like a shimmering jewel. Self-Aware Re-Animate.

They’d turned him into a fucking zombie.

Author Bio:

Mina was born and raised in the East Farthing of Middle Earth (otherwise known as the Midlands, England) and spend her childhood learning all the sorts of things generally required of a professional adventurer. Able to ride, box, shoot, make and read maps, make chainmail and use a broadsword (with varying degrees of efficiency) she was disgusted to find that adventuring is not considered a suitable occupation these days.

So, instead of slaying dragons and hunting vampires and the like, Mina spends her days writing about hot shifters, government conspiracies and vampire lords with more than their fair share of RAWR. Turns out wanna-be adventurers have quite the turn of imagination after all...

(But she keeps that sword sharp, just in case the writing career is just a dream and she really *is* an adventurer.)

The boring part: A full time author and cover artist, Mina can usually be found hunched over a keyboard or graphics tablet, frantically trying to get the images and words in her head out and onto the screen before they drive her mad. She's addicted to coffee and would like to be addicted to chocolate, but unfortunately chocolate dislikes her.