We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford, a heart-wrenching spin on the zombie mythos publishing with Gallery Books on July 15th.
How far would you go to avoid wasting your marriage? For British scientist Kesta Shelley, there isn’t a restrict.
Having at all times most popular the corporate of microbes, Kesta has spent her life wanting down the barrel of a microscope slightly than cultivating private relationships. However that modified when Kesta met Tim—her cheerleader, her finest good friend, her absolute every thing. So, when he was one of many final folks in London to be contaminated with a perplexing virus that left town ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.
Although the federal government has rounded up and disposed of all of the contaminated, Kesta is ready to preserve her husband (un)alive—and hidden—with assets from the hospital the place she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, however he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts have gotten extra frequent. As Kesta races towards the clock, her colleagues begin noticing adjustments in her conduct and look. She is withering away, self-medicating with alcohol, and has stopped attending her mandated ZARG (Zombie Apocalypse Restoration Group) conferences. Her look after Tim has spiraled into absolute obsession.
There are whispers of a top-secret lab engaged on a treatment, and Kesta clings to the potential for being recruited like a lifeline. However can she save her husband earlier than he’s found? Or worse… will they set off one other outbreak?
London lay susceptible, a cadaver dredged from a riverbed, below a sheet of cloud, resigned and uncovered. It was now not town Kesta had grown up in. This metropolis was terminal, its life draining away by way of mile after mile of historical drains, out into the Thames Estuary and the North Sea. As she walked towards the Barbican, previous its abandoned tube station, heading east, she may slice by way of the lane dividers all the best way down Aldersgate Avenue with no single automotive to trouble her. The pink Z indicators spray painted onto doorways and home windows of buildings the place the virus had struck demarcated her journey. Authorities posters clung to their partitions shredded and defaced. Big billboards lit up the roundabout warning folks to remain indoors. Leaflets and playing cards, printed and handwritten, clogged up the gutters alongside the pavements. Church buildings providing sanctuary. Directions from the military on self-defense. Selfmade posters for individuals who have been lacking, their expectant faces now dirtied by different folks’s footprints, staring up at Kesta from the bottom, nonetheless hoping to be discovered. Evangelical fliers proclaiming the tip of occasions and all of the solutions you wanted on the finish of a hotline for £6.99 a minute. The streets have been suffering from relics of the disaster that lay the place that they had fallen, within the doorways of shuttered retailers and cafes the place as soon as the homeless may need slept. Kesta handed by an previous pub, nonetheless boarded up, a single mild on within the again someplace, shining for nobody. There have been no homeless folks dwelling in London now. That they had been amongst the primary to die.
Coming dwelling to nobody was the toughest a part of all. Earlier than turning the important thing within the lock, there was a break up second of hope, that he’d nonetheless be there as she remembered him. The flat was so lonely with out his infinite chatter, at all times delivered in his out of doors, faculty bar baritone. Indoor voice, for God’s sake she used to say to him, the neighbors will hear you. Tim would give her that smile, her solely weak point, and keep on as loudly as earlier than. She had the indoor voice. And with out him it was barely a whisper. What she wouldn’t give to be embarrassed by the sheer quantity of him now.
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The blinds in the lounge remained closed, had been for 5 months. Gentle would appeal to them, they have been advised at first, so everybody had drawn their curtains and waited obediently for it to be over. She had grown accustomed to shutting out the world as a result of performing for it like a monkey—at work, at remedy, as folks tried to have interaction her on the grocery store or the park—it exhausted her.
She went to the fridge and eliminated a bottle of white wine from the evening earlier than, together with a cardboard field from the center shelf. Other than a pint of milk and a bag of floor espresso, the fridge was as abandoned because the flat. Kesta didn’t prepare dinner, that had been Tim’s pleasure. She struggled to eat at dwelling now.
Anyway, the fridge was largely occupied by blood luggage. O+. Kesta’s personal. And a regiment of tiny glass vials the place the eggs ought to have been. She poured herself a glass of wine and lifted a round lemon sponge from the cardboard field, depositing it on a dinner plate and rummaged within the kitchen’s junk draw for one thing she wasn’t positive she nonetheless had. However there they have been, the little pink candles, stuffed on the very again, in between a torch, a plug adaptor and a few crayons, and she or he was relieved to see that they had solely been lit as soon as earlier than. Kesta slid the nicest tea tray she owned, which had belonged to Tim’s mom—art-deco, strong silver handles—out from beneath the drinks trolley in the lounge. She organized her sorry celebration throughout it.
Kesta laid the tray to relaxation on the desk within the hallway and started the arduous means of opening the 4 black deadlocks on the spare bed room door.
The room was in whole darkness save for the first colours of the vitals monitor casting an eerie rainbow throughout the mattress like a nursery mild. Sporadic bleeps and whirs from the machine reassured Kesta that some life remained. She recorded these readings within the pocket book she saved on the nightstand, coronary heart fee, oxygen ranges, physique temperature. All irregular however at the very least unchanged. Kesta returned to the hallway for the tray, sliding it throughout the nightstand.
One yellow eye watched her. It noticed however didn’t see and it by no means, ever blinked. A graying arm upheaved into the restraints earlier than falling with a defeated puff. Violence had fought its means out of that physique and now it was a scene of nice struggling. It was unnaturally positioned, a marionette with its strings minimize. A spider’s internet of ruptured vessels, scaly pores and skin stretched taut and furious. Each inch of it was screaming. However there was no ache, no sound, no progress within the affected person that Kesta may decide.
She lit the candles on the cake, and she or he confirmed the cake to Tim.
“Completely happy Birthday, darling.”
Excerpted from One Yellow Eye, copyright © 2025 by Leigh Radford.
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