THE VALUE OF JADE (Mace of the Apocalypse #2)

  “I hope it’s a girl. Jade said she’d let me dress her up.”

  “I hope it’s a boy. I could teach him to stay away from girls.”

  Yvette smacked him as she laughed.

  Melissa sat under a tree fifty feet away reading Ernest Hemingway. She had become an avid reader and couldn’t get enough. She started working with the medical staff and wanted to become a compound nurse. To the utter surprise of everyone, she was breaking the mold of her parents.

  Working guard duty with a certain attractive blonde who kept laughing at his jokes, Shawn was beginning to think Kansas wasn’t so bad after all.

  Bo sat outside the bedroom next to Bill, who nervously glanced at the door. Sober for 31 days, Bill kept fumbling with a box of cigars, half with “It’s a girl!” wrappers and the other half with “It’s a boy!”

  Inside, they could hear the cries of exultation as the baby completed its journey into this world. As they waited anxiously for the door to open to find out the sex of the baby, Mace was staring in love and amazement at the small child that was now cradled in Jade’s arms. “Hello there, Jason,” he said, awed by the perfect infant before him.

  A soft and gentle voice whispered in his ear, even though no one was near him. He recognized the voice immediately. It was Father McCann. “Thank God he's got his mother's looks,” is all he said.

  Five days later, inside the industrial complex, a total of seventeen fully transformed monsters huddled together, barely containing their rage. Shrieks, hisses, and short burst of extreme violence were commonplace. Their bulging eyes had grown much more sensitive to light, with their optic nerves spastically twitching to every small noise or movement. The original three infected had viciously attacked anyone that had ventured near their complex, and now a small army craved release from the confines of their chamber. Night was fast approaching. A collective thought began spreading from one to the next. The gate. There is a gate.

  The End

  I hope you enjoyed The Value of Jade. Look for a continuation of the story in 2013, with Children of the Apocalypse.