Until... | Book 3 | Until The End

by Hamill, Ike

  Amber tried to take in a deep breath. When it reached the bottom of her lungs, she started coughing again and her vision swirled. She had to brace her hands on the ground to steady herself until the vertigo passed.

  “Better,” she managed to say.

  “We’re getting out of here,” he said.

  Amber scooped water one more time to rinse her eyes. She felt him grab her foot and clip the straps of the snowshoes. A moment later, he was pulling her to her feet. He helped her with her gloves and took her hand to guide her.

  “We’ll go slow until you catch your breath. You let me know when you can go faster.”

  “Faster,” she said right away.

  They walked.

  Amber lifted her feet high, stepping blindly. The air hurt her eyes too much. She couldn’t keep them open.

  “Faster,” she said again.

  “We’re almost at the top of the hill.”

  “Hold up,” Amber said. She turned back and forced her eyes open. When they cleared, she saw all the tracks they had left to and from the cabin. “Burn it.”

  “What?”

  “Burn it down. You saw it too, right? Burn it down and there will be one less of those things in the world.”

  “No,” Alan said. He urged her forward, nearly pulling her off her feet when she resisted.

  “Alan, I’m serious.”

  “So am I, Amber.”

  She had no choice but to start walking again. The effort made her start coughing.

  When she finished, he explained.

  “We didn’t come up here to find and kill one of them. It’s good that we figured out a potential hiding place, but we came up here to get all of them. We’re not going to do anything to jeopardize that until we have a plan. It’s bad enough that you woke it up when you sprayed it. What if it has a way to warn the others?”

  Amber didn’t have a response.

  It felt like they walked forever. She had no way to know how long they had been walking. She opened her eyes at one point and saw them tracing their tracks down the hill. There was no snowmobile in the distance. It was just stinging eyes, burning lungs, and an endless line of footprints in dirty snow. Next to her, Alan was huffing and puffing as he struggled to support her.

  “Let go of me,” she said. “I can follow you by the sound.”

  He seemed reluctant to obey. When he did let her go, she only made it a few steps before she stumbled.

  “I’m okay,” she said before he could lay his hands on her again. “I’m fine.”

  Amber tried to open her eyes again. It felt fine to squint. She couldn’t make out details, but she could see enough to follow Alan.

  Amber appreciated that he didn’t slow down much. The pace forced her to push herself and soon the snowmobile grew from a black and yellow dot into something that she could touch. Blinking, she realized that she was going to be okay.

  “How many more places do you want to check today?” Amber asked.

  Alan paused. She could almost read his mind at that moment. He had been about to say that she was crazy—they had been through enough for one day. Instead, he reassessed and said, “Four more. We’re not getting that close again though. If they do have some way of communicating, I don’t want to find out how they defend themselves.”

  “Agreed.”

  # # #

  “How was your day?” Mary asked over her shoulder when Amber knocked and then let herself in.

  “Good. Productive.”

  “I see you’re back on a daytime schedule,” Mary said as she turned. As soon as she got a look at Amber’s face, her tone changed. “Jeezum! What happened to your face?”

  “It’s nothing. I caught the wrong end of pepper spray.”

  “Sit down. I have just the thing.”

  Amber sat down at the table and let Ricky’s mom fuss over her. She could tell that there would be no use in trying to fight it. Mary hurried to a closet and came back with supplies. To the puffy skin around Amber’s eyes, she applied some kind of ointment, and then made Amber tilt her head back so she could squirt something into her eyes.

  Amber swallowed and tasted whatever it was in the back of her throat.

  “Try to keep them shut as much as you can. Why don’t you park yourself in the living room and you can listen to the radio.”

  “Thanks, but if you don’t mind, I would like to lay down upstairs.”

  “Of course,” Mary said. “Tucker, you go with her. If you need anything at all, tell Tucker and he’ll come down and get me.”

  Amber smiled at that. The dog followed her up the stairs and jumped up on the bed to stretch out next to her. For the first time that day, Amber felt at ease.

  She woke to a light knock on the door. Tucker was already gone.

  “Come in.”

  Ricky pulled up a chair. “Hey.”

  Aside from some crust in the corner of her eyes, they felt fine.

  “Mom said you got hit with pepper spray? What happened?”

  Amber swung her legs over the side of the bed and then stretched out her back.

  “We found one of them, Ricky. Alan was right—he figured out where they would be hiding just from looking at maps.”

  Ricky slumped back in the chair with a long exhale.

  “One of them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not good news.”

  Amber frowned.

  “I mean, if they’re not together, then it’s going to be nearly impossible to wipe them out. There have to be dozens or more, right? We don’t have a chance at tracking every single one of them down.”

  “It’s better than not having any clue at all,” Amber said.

  Ricky didn’t seem to hear. “I read this thing about coyotes. When they howl, it’s like they’re doing a local census to find out how many of them there are in the area, you know? If you kill some of the coyotes and their howl isn’t heard, it can actually cause the females in the area to have increased litter sizes. You can’t wipe them out because they produce more offspring when their numbers are threatened.”

  “Yeah, but weren’t they nearly wiped out? At least in some places.”

  Ricky nodded. “I just wonder—if we take out half of them, are they just going to infect even more people when they come out of hibernation.”

  “Stop it.”

  His eyes finally met hers. “Sorry?”

  “Stop trying to throw in the towel before we even start. Remember, this is not some independent species. They have to feed on people. They can only increase their numbers through people. The one we found today was hiding under a manmade structure. We can wipe them out because we know where they have to be.”

  “Around people,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “We hope. I mean, how do we know for sure?”

  “Stop it.”

  Ricky sat up straight. “Yes. I will. Sorry. It has been a long day. I came up to ask if you want to go out with us to get dinner.”

  Amber shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I feel up to a whole restaurant thing.”

  “No—sorry—not to go to a restaurant. We’re going to get dinner and bring it back.”

  “Can I go like this?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then yes.”

  # # #

  It was just getting dark as they pulled out onto the main road and Vernon took a left. Ricky’s parents were sitting in the front seats. Tucker was between Amber and Ricky in back.

  Vernon kept looking at her in the rearview mirror. Amber met his stare and held it.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  Mary backhanded his arm. “Leave her alone. She’s fine.”

  “That’s from pepper spray?”

  “Bear spray, actually,” Amber said. “And my eyes feel fine now.”

  “Okay.”

  They pulled into the parking lot with a food truck parked at the far end.

  “Are you sure they’re open?” Mary as
ked.

  “This is the place with the good fries, right?” Amber asked.

  Ricky nodded, but his mother said, “Not as good as Fred’s. Vernon—who told you this place was open?”

  “The truck’s here, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t look open,” Ricky said.

  “They’re never open until May at the earliest,” Mary said. She got out as soon as Vernon stopped the car. Ricky got out on the other side and Tucker went after him.

  Amber and Vernon both stayed in the car while mother and son investigated. There was a little light leaking from around the door of the food truck, but it was all closed up. The sign outside had lights mounted to it, but they weren’t on.

  “If they’re looking for business, they’re going about it all wrong,” Vernon said.

  Tucker approached the food truck first. Ricky called him back when he attempted to pee on the side of the place. Mary walked up, read a sign and then knocked on the shuttered window.

  “How long has this place been here?” Amber asked.

  “With these owners, just a couple of years. The food is much better now. They were talking about extending the season, so I wasn’t that surprised when Leo told me they were already open.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Amber leaned forward between the seats and watched as Mary pressed her ear to the side of the food truck.

  “I don’t know about this,” Amber said.

  “Yeah,” Vernon said. He gave the car’s horn two quick taps. Ricky looked back to them, but his mother didn’t flinch at all. Instead, she straightened up and then waved, like they should all come to her.

  “Stay put,” Vernon said.

  He put the car in gear and made a wide turn to pull up alongside the food truck as he lowered the window on Mary’s side.

  “Get in the car, Mary.”

  On the other side, Ricky was already commanding Tucker inside and he climbed in after the dog.

  “There’s someone in there, Vernon,” Mary said. “And the sign says to knock for service.”

  “Get in the car,” Vernon said again.

  “Mom? Get in, okay?”

  “Honestly,” Mary said, opening the door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people.”

  Vernon was using his switch to put her window up. He had the car in reverse and started rolling back from the food truck before she even shut the door.

  “It’s just a food truck, for heaven’s sake. You guys all have your hackles up for no reason.”

  “Wait, Dad,” Ricky whispered.

  Vernon put the car in park and they watched the food truck, lit up by the headlights. Vernon reached forward and shut off the car’s lights so they could see the light coming out from around the door. Slowly, the door began to slide open and light spilled from the interior of the place. It stopped moving with about a four-inch gap between the door and the frame.

  “I’m going to go look to see who’s inside,” Mary said.

  The rest of them spoke all at the same time.

  “No!”

  “We still have that frozen pizza at home,” Mary said.

  “Sold,” Vernon said as he put the car in drive.

  # # #

  Amber pulled off to the side in the Harpers’ driveway, just as Alan was coming out of the shed. She got out.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Instead of following you, do you think it’s okay if we take one car?”

  She could tell by his expression that he wanted to immediately reject the idea. He was just pretending to contemplate it so she would feel heard.

  “I looked it up,” Amber said. “From your map, the farthest we will be from a tow truck is forty miles. I get free AAA with my rental, and that’s priority service. The rental place has a strong interest in keeping this vehicle going. It has been serviced regularly. It couldn’t be more safe.”

  “We need to tow the…”

  “It has a tow hitch, and I checked to find out if it could tow your trailer. It can do two-thousand pounds. That should be more than enough, right?”

  Alan thought about it and nodded.

  “Why though?” he asked.

  “It’s my eyes. They’re still pretty raw from yesterday. I didn’t want to call off the expedition, but I would rather not have to focus on the road all the way up there. If you could drive this car then I’ll have a chance to rest them.”

  “Ah,” Alan said. “Maybe it’s just best we call it off.”

  “Maybe. But then I was looking at your map.”

  Amber pulled out her copy and unfolded it. He joined her as she pressed it against the rear windshield of her rented car.

  “This one,” she said, stabbing the map with her finger. Right on the perimeter of one of Alan’s circles was a large rectangle indicating the footprint of a building. “I looked it up. I think it’s an old mill. It’s very close to where Ricky thinks the creatures originated, and it’s overgrown now. It has two floors that are subterranean, it’s abandoned, and it would probably be full of rats, assuming these things snack on other mammals.”

  “From yesterday, I was thinking that these things hibernate alone.”

  “Yeah,” Amber said, nodding. “It’s possible. But I looked up bats. I was thinking about how movies used to say that vampires could turn into bats, and I wondered if there might be… Anyway, there are some bats that hibernate in colonies, and some that hibernate alone. Just because we found one alone doesn’t mean that there isn’t a colony out there.”

  Alan studied the map for a minute, tracing his finger over the lines of the roads that were near the structure she had highlighted.

  “How far is the nearest tow truck to this one?”

  “Twenty-five miles, and they’re open all day.”

  “Okay.”

  Amber folded the map and headed for the passenger’s seat.

  Alan leaned against the back of the car and pulled out his phone.

  Amber opened the car door and paused to watch Alan. “Have to get permission?”

  He shook his head. “Not permission, no. But I’m not going anywhere unless Liz…”

  He turned when his wife picked up. Amber got in the car. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on his conversation. Leaning back in her seat, she let her eyes wander over the house, shed, and connected barn. The Harpers had their own little compound. In the winter, the house would be a self-contained world, like a spaceship but surrounded by snow instead of a vacuum. Their son, Joe, would always carry with him the memory of that safe place. He could return there in his mind whenever he felt frightened or exposed.

  The driver’s door opened.

  “What did Liz say?”

  “She told me not to stand too close to you if you have bear spray in your hand.”

  Amber laughed.

  “Does this thing have a backup camera? I have to line up with the trailer.”

  They figured it out together and then Alan got out to hook everything up. Amber watched so she would know how to do it too. It turned out to be dead simple—an electric connection, two chains, and a pin to lock the hitch. When they had checked to make sure that the directional and brake lights worked, they were finally ready to go.

  Amber settled in and closed her eyes.

  Behind them, the trailer bounced and rattled when they hit a bad part of the road.

  “I’m glad we’re bringing it, but I doubt we’ll even use the snowmobile today,” Alan said. “Based on the map, I think we’ll be able to see that mill from the road.”

  “What’s left of it,” Amber said.

  “Right. You think these things have a digestive system?”

  “Huh?”

  “They consume, right? They drink blood. You don’t have big barn spiders down in North Carolina, do you?”

  Amber opened an eye and glanced at him. “What are you talking about, Alan?”

  “Sorry, I’m jumping around. I was thinking about spiders. I mentioned it yesterday under the cabin. That place shou
ld have been filled with spiderwebs. We get these enormous spiders up here that, I swear, are as big as a golfball. They weave giant webs in the barn and when we glanced under that cabin I couldn’t believe how clean it was. All I could think last night was that something had cleared out all the spiders.”

  “Okay?”

  “Anyway, that got me thinking about the spiders in the barn. Beneath the spiderwebs you always find these little black dots on the floor. I assume that the spiders wrap up bugs in little cocoons, drink their liquified bodies, and then, you know, excrete waste that lands on the floor as those little dots.”

  “Okay?” Amber leaned her head against the glass. The road was too bouncy for that. She reclined her seat a little instead.

  “It’s the same thing with bats. The floor of a bat cave will be covered in guano. It’s harvested to use as a fertilizer. So, if these things eat then they must excrete, unless their digestion is one-hundred percent perfect. If that’s true, then maybe we should be looking down, not up.”

  “For guano?”

  “Or whatever the vampire equivalent is. The creatures are camouflaged, sure, but I bet their guano isn’t.”

  “Huh,” Amber said.

  “In fact, I wonder if that spray the police use would light it up.”

  “Spray?”

  “They have that stuff they use to make blood show up under an ultra-violet light.”

  “Oh. Right,” Amber said.

  “Their excretion would be organic, so maybe it’s possible to hunt it down with that spray and a special light.”

  “Don’t the police turn off all the lights so they can use a black light? If we suspect that we’re in the presence of those things, I’m not turning off all the lights.”

  “Yeah. Good point. That raises another question though—would it be better if we were carrying UV lights instead of regular flashlights? I wonder if those would work even better.”

  “I’m not experimenting.”

  “Yeah,” Alan said.

  “And if you’re looking for something organic,” Amber said, “wouldn’t it be better to use one of those dogs trained to…”

  She trailed off.

  Amber opened her eyes and looked at Alan.

  “We should be using a dog,” he said. “I bet they would smell these things a mile away.”

  Amber thought of Tucker and then quickly dismissed the idea. She couldn’t put Ricky’s dog in jeopardy, even if he agreed to it. If something happened, she would never forgive herself.