Disarming by Alexia Purdy Page A

zompires killed. They only came out at night and lived in shadows during the long, hot days. They never came down far enough to breach Vida’s city boundaries in the underground. Hardly a threat, really. He avoided them easily above ground, so what was she getting at? What was her ulterior motive to this particular mission?
    He scratched at the growing stubble along his jaw. Katrina’s motives were never quite clear. Most times he didn’t care, but this had malice written all over it. His fingers smoothed down his beard; he needed to shave but had not made it a priority. More importantly, he needed to sleep for a good solid night. He was exhausted and tired of the drama that she usually pulled on him and his group. The searing stares, studying them like organisms and drawing their blood in endless rounds of testing got old fast. He didn’t know what she was looking for or why. For all he knew, they were guinea pigs in a sick experiment ran by her.
    So what if the twelve of them had superhuman strength and speed? They weren’t vampires. They did not crave blood like the zompires. But they weren’t human either, that much was obvious. What they were was something in the middle, the limbo of the aftereffects of the epidemic. Whatever it was, he regretted nothing. He rather liked being superhuman. It made him special in a way that he’d never been before it had all gone down the crap hole.
    What did that make April? It was curious that the young teenager had fought with him easily. He wondered briefly about her abnormal strength. Could she be one of them, too? He shook his head; he doubted it. She was just hyped up on adrenaline when he had twisted her arms behind her back. Still, she had been pretty fierce and determined to break free. It would definitely be better if she wasn’t like them. Yet there was something different, but he couldn’t figure it out, so he pushed it from his thoughts.
    Maybe that bat shit crazy woman Katrina will exterminate us next, when all the zompires are gone.
    It definitely had crossed his mind many a time. He wouldn’t put it beyond her. She was capable of ordering a lynch mob to shoot the twelve to death at any moment. But Elijah was going to be ready, watching and waiting to make sure it didn’t happen. The closer they got to exterminating all of the dead from the city, the closer he’d be to getting rid of her suffocating presence. He looked forward to sticking a knife in her throat.
    “Hey, Elijah, checking out for the night? We’re going to play some pool for a while in the rec side of the room. Want to join?” A redheaded Sarah sat down next to him, flipping her long luscious mane in a flirtatious fashion as she waited for his response. She pointed toward some of the other twelve warriors busy playing the game. They waved back to her from across the room, which she returned with a prize-winning smile. Her black cargo pants fitted snugly over her slender curves, and her black tank top did the same for her torso. Elijah noticed it, but shifted his eyes away to his plate. She was a couple of years younger than him, but he felt worlds apart from her lively demeanor. He tore off a piece of the dried-out pizza he’d chosen for dinner as he gave her a shake of his head.
    “Nope, not tonight, Scarlet.” He winked at her as he said the playful nickname he had for his second in command. The twelve had their own system of ranks that Katrina was not privy to. It gave him some satisfaction that she didn’t know everything that happened under their roof. What she didn’t know gave them strength.
    “Oh come on, you never join us anymore,” Sarah pouted, picking on one of her pink polished nails while intermittently glancing at him. She was pretty girly and attempted to keep her fashion sense in every little detail. From her polished, smooth hair to her multicolored toenails and milky soft skin, she kept up her beauty regimen even after the apocalypse. She was barely eighteen and had been