Beyond Death: Origins, Book 1 by Silas Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

their blankets. An even match for all three of them, they jerked with each step. Sherri screamed once and struggled to keep up her end of the deal. Jayda fought with all her might to keep the man’s head in her lock. She felt Stan’s hand hit her good leg, and she stumbled back into the wall.
    Her breath knocked from her a second, she managed to keep her hold. In the moment’s pause of their journey, Sherri managed to get her husband’s arm secured again.  After the winded quick count of one, the three of them pushed on two. As Richard slammed the door closed, Sherri fell to the floor in tears. Jayda sat beside her, gathering the woman in her arms. Each wrenching sob that tore from her chest vibrated through Jayda.
    “I love him,” she cried. “I need to see him one last time!”
    Sherri jumped from Jayda’s grasp. In seconds, she tore from the room. Richard froze, but Jayda yelled at him to follow her as she got herself back to standing. She found Richard holding Sherri as she looked through the window. When Jayda got to them, Stan had gotten out of the blankets and raged around the room.
    “Sherri, you need to do the kind thing and let us put him out of his misery,” Jayda said.
    As something crashed inside the room and an animalistic cry rang out, Sherri nodded her head. As Richard moved to leave, she grabbed his arm.
    “There’s a gun in the drawer by our bed. The lock to the drawer is hanging in the kitchen cabinet closet to the refrigerator. Please, use that. It’s quicker,” Sherri asked in a barely audible tone.
    “I’ll do it,” Jayda said. “I’m an excellent marksman. It seems that the strike to the head seems the key. We saw on TV, in the background of one shot, a guy get shot multiple times and still attack a man. By the time the reporter realized, the live feed had gone too long to live edit it. I can make the shot. Richard, take her back to the house.”
    He shook his head.
    “Richard, I fought in a damn war. I can do this. Go. Take her now,” Jayda demanded and then stormed off.
    By the time the horrible deed was over, she found her husband glaring at her with love in his eyes, sitting on the couch holding a sobbing Sherri. After telling him she just needed a minute, she walked upstairs to wash her hands and face.
    Walking through her bedroom, she saw her cell phone light up. Someone was calling her. By the time she grabbed it, the call had gone to voicemail. Walking into the bathroom, she swiped the screen. She gasped to see Chase’s name come up. He’d called each year on the anniversary of the day she lost her leg. Today wasn’t that day. It had to be bad news.
    Shutting the bathroom door, with a deep breath, she clicked the button to return the call. 

Chapter Nine
    “Again, there is a certain irony to the fact that we are attempting to exploit these cells against cancer. It’s like fighting fire with fire. Given the profound uncertainty of the stem cells and the narrow parameters within which they interact with the immune system, we are nothing more than two little boys playing with matches here,” Lucas exclaimed.
    Chase watched him push his hand through his hair. His face red and his breaths in short pants, he knew he had to stop what he was doing and talk the kid down from his scientific failure ledge. His research on the living dead had brought about nothing but questions so far anyway.
    “Now, you know that the history of biomedical research has shown frustrated scientists time and again that the most amazing breakthroughs, the most triumphant discoveries, have often come from half-baked ideas considered not in any way promising by most researchers,” Chase reminded.
    “Sure. You’ve said so many times. But I don’t think that’s going to happen here, not in this lab, not with this mouse, no matter how special we keep claiming he is,” Lucas retorted.
    “It is a useful exercise, still, to dissect the specific effects of stem cells and to determine how beneficial