Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford A brilliant scientist desperately searches for a cure after a devastating epidemic while also hiding a huge secret—her undead husband. By Leigh Radford | Published on June 24, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share 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 save your marriage? For British scientist Kesta Shelley, there is no limit.Having always preferred the company of microbes, Kesta has spent her life looking down the barrel of a microscope rather than cultivating personal relationships. But that changed when Kesta met Tim—her cheerleader, her best friend, her absolute everything. So, when he was one of the last people in London to be infected with a perplexing virus that left the city ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.Though the government has rounded up and disposed of all the infected, Kesta is able to keep her husband (un)alive—and hidden—with resources from the hospital where she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, but he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts are becoming more frequent. As Kesta races against the clock, her colleagues start noticing changes in her behavior and appearance. She is withering away, self-medicating with alcohol, and has stopped attending her mandated ZARG (Zombie Apocalypse Recovery Group) meetings. Her care for Tim has spiraled into absolute obsession.There are whispers of a top-secret lab working on a cure, and Kesta clings to the possibility of being recruited like a lifeline. But can she save her husband before he is discovered? Or worse… will they trigger another outbreak? London lay prone, a cadaver dredged from a riverbed, under a sheet of cloud, resigned and exposed. It was no longer the city Kesta had grown up in. This city was terminal, its life draining away through mile after mile of ancient drains, out into the Thames Estuary and the North Sea. As she walked toward the Barbican, past its deserted tube station, heading east, she could slice through the lane dividers all the way down Aldersgate Street without a single car to bother her. The red Z signs spray painted onto doors and windows of buildings where the virus had struck demarcated her journey. Government posters clung to their walls shredded and defaced. Huge billboards lit up the roundabout warning people to stay indoors. Leaflets and cards, printed and handwritten, clogged up the gutters along the pavements. Churches offering sanctuary. Instructions from the army on self-defense. Homemade posters for those who were missing, their expectant faces now dirtied by other people’s footprints, staring up at Kesta from the ground, still hoping to be found. Evangelical fliers proclaiming the end of times and all the answers you needed at the end of a hotline for £6.99 a minute. The streets were littered with relics of the crisis that lay where they had fallen, in the doorways of shuttered shops and cafes where once the homeless might have slept. Kesta passed by an old pub, still boarded up, a single light on in the back somewhere, shining for no one. There were no homeless people living in London now. They had been amongst the first to die. Coming home to no one was the hardest part of all. Before turning the key in the lock, there was a split second of hope, that he’d still be there as she remembered him. The flat was so lonely without his endless chatter, always delivered in his outdoor, college 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 only weakness, and carry on as loudly as before. She had the indoor voice. And without him it was barely a whisper. What she wouldn’t give to be embarrassed by the sheer volume of him now. Buy the Book One Yellow Eye Leigh Radford Buy Book One Yellow Eye Leigh Radford Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The blinds in the living room remained closed, had been for five months. Light would attract them, they were told at first, so everyone had drawn their curtains and waited obediently for it to be over. She had grown accustomed to shutting out the world because performing for it like a monkey—at work, at therapy, as people tried to engage her at the supermarket or the park—it exhausted her. She went to the fridge and removed a bottle of white wine from the night before, along with a cardboard box from the middle shelf. Aside from a pint of milk and a bag of ground coffee, the fridge was as deserted as the flat. Kesta did not cook, that had been Tim’s pleasure. She struggled to eat at home now. Anyway, the fridge was mostly occupied by blood bags. O+. Kesta’s own. And a regiment of tiny glass vials where the eggs should have been. She poured herself a glass of wine and lifted a circular lemon sponge from the cardboard box, depositing it on a dinner plate and rummaged in the kitchen’s junk draw for something she wasn’t sure she still had. But there they were, the little pink candles, stuffed at the very back, in between a torch, a plug adaptor and some crayons, and she was relieved to see they had only been lit once before. Kesta slid the nicest tea tray she owned, which had belonged to Tim’s mother—art-deco, solid silver handles—out from underneath the drinks trolley in the living room. She arranged her sorry celebration across it. Kesta laid the tray to rest on the table in the hallway and began the arduous process of opening the four black deadlocks on the spare bedroom door. The room was in total darkness save for the primary colors of the vitals monitor casting an eerie rainbow across the bed like a nursery light. Sporadic bleeps and whirs from the machine reassured Kesta that some life remained. She recorded these readings in the notebook she kept on the nightstand, heart rate, oxygen levels, body temperature. All abnormal but at least unchanged. Kesta returned to the hallway for the tray, sliding it across the nightstand. One yellow eye watched her. It saw but didn’t see and it never, ever blinked. A graying arm upheaved into the restraints before falling with a defeated puff. Violence had fought its way out of that body and now it was a scene of great suffering. It was unnaturally positioned, a marionette with its strings cut. A spider’s web of ruptured vessels, scaly skin stretched taut and livid. Every inch of it was screaming. But there was no pain, no sound, no progress in the patient that Kesta could determine. She lit the candles on the cake, and she showed the cake to Tim. “Happy Birthday, darling.” Excerpted from One Yellow Eye, copyright © 2025 by Leigh Radford. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>One Yellow Eye</i> by Leigh Radford appeared first on Reactor.