Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

me. Even if I do say so myself, I’m a pretty fucking good driver at high speed. My abhorrent lack of fear made me try things no sane child of that age would even consider. Yes, I crashed a few times, of course I did. Looking back, I’m just thankful that nobody got hurt as that guilt would royally mess me up now.

I did get in a bit of cat and mouse with one copper who almost caught me a few times. He knew me by sight after some escapes from wrecked vehicles he’d chased me from, but have you ever seen a police officer able to follow a fifteen-year old girl with some serious gymnastic parkour skills when she’s on the run? Nope. The meathead had no chance of catching me once I scampered up the side of a building Spiderman style and vanished into the night.

All good things had to come to an end though.

One night, I fucked up, racing around town in the dark, and I lost control, smacking into a parked van. Lo and behold, just as I wrecked my current joyride and was trying to get my wits about me, that same copper’s patrol car turned the corner in front of me and I was bang to rights.

He opened the door, checked I was okay—I was, just a bit frazzled—and then he gave me the biggest shit eating grin I’ve ever seen anyone express. He was like the Cheshire Cat post blowjob.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” he said.

“Well, I got here as fast as I could,” I retorted, puffing out my cheeks.

He was still chuckling as he put the cuffs on me.

Officer Dean Williams saved me that day. I don’t know what he saw in me, what possessed him to take a special interest in me, but he did. He kept me out of juvenile detention when it went to court once he learned my background. He took me home himself, cast his eyes around the group home I was in, and I think he unravelled my story in that singular moment.

Right until I was eighteen and a legal adult, when the foster homes spit you out to fend for yourself, Officer Williams was my guardian angel. I finished school with decent exam results because he was always on my back, driving me to be better, and he was responsible for sticking the first David Gemmell novel I ever read into my hand.

If you’ve never read him, do so. Waylander, it was called. A good man once, torn by tragedy with the murder of his family, embraces the darkness and becomes a killer for hire after avenging his family’s murder. He falls so far and becomes so good at it, he ends up killing the king of his nation for coin, plunging the land into war.

A chance meeting with a priest, a woman, and three children, sets him on a path to redemption. He seeks to atone, falls in love, becomes the nation’s greatest hero when it needs him the most. He rose above the darkness of his life to become something else.

Something better.

Officer Williams knew what he was doing with that book and it lit a fire under my ass. I devoured every one of those books I could get my hands on and those themes sang to me. Honour, redemption, friendship, love; good themes. I wanted to be better, like one of those characters in his books. Yes, I was flawed as all hell and I’d done some pretty shitty things (never killed a king though, so there’s that), but those books taught me that redemption and a chance to be better was always within my grasp. All I had to do was reach for it.

Deano—as I lovingly called him as we were now BFF’s—and his wife, Maria, became like an aunt and uncle to me. Maria would forever feed me, send me off to the shower with clean towels and clothes, let me sleep in their spare room for a night or two if I needed it. They treated me like family, the first people to ever make me feel like someone really had my back, and they set my path on the straight and narrow. They made me want to be better, to step out of the shadow my asshole parents loomed over me with their fucked up choices and neglect. They set me on the road to being cuffed by Deano, but it was that copper and his wife that showed me there was a better way, if I had the courage to take a road less travelled.

I fucking love that couple. They’re the very definition of honest, decent, hard-working people. He’s a police officer, and she a nurse. Their entire lives are dedicated to helping others and they do those jobs above and beyond any call of duty, simply because they care. I always felt bad for them because they couldn’t have kids of their own and had finally come to accept it as they both knocked mid-thirties. They’ll both be mid-forties now, no doubt holding senior roles in their chosen professions.

I really hope they’re okay.

After witnessing how fast shit goes west yesterday, when we went from ten living people to nine murderous undead in less than two minutes, I worry for them both, Maria especially. I mean, fucking hell, just consider how chaotic a hospital would become in two minutes.

I’m feeling a bit raw now after spilling that out. I don’t like going over the past; I’m more of a live-for-the-moment type of girl and trudging through all that old dirt just ruins my mood. I might come back to it eventually and fill in what I did from becoming an “adult” at some other point.

Particles is also looking at me like I’m the worst person since Hitler because I haven’t fed him yet, so I should go do that.

17th Entry

TAKING STOCK

So, we’ve spent the day just recovering. Nate