She opened the door and let out a sob. It was a cry of gratitude, followed by tears of relief as Noah was placed in her arms. She covered him in kisses and then pulled Paula into their hug, and the two women held each other, sobbing, pouring out their shared relief and grief.
Only when Noah started to cry with them did they pull apart and compose themselves. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Sissy’s got you.”
“I knew something wasn’t right when I heard the buzzer sound,” said Paula. “You know, the one that sounded that time we all got locked in our cells? And then that awful lady vampire’s voice came over the speakers, and I didn’t even listen to what she said. I just took the baby and hid.”
“You did the right thing.”
“But I heard...” Her voice caught, and she covered her mouth. She swallowed. “I heard screaming. So much screaming.” She looked at Hannah, her eyes full of fear and resignation. “How bad is it?”
“It’s bad. It’s... everyone. All the humans. They’re all dead.”
Paula sank onto the cot and buried her face in her hands. Hannah let her cry, alternating back and forth between soothing Noah and patting Paula on the back.
When she finished, Hannah sat next to her. “The hybrids are still alive, mostly. Esme locked them up. Do you know where the control room is?”
She nodded.
“I need you to go there and release the locks. Can you do that?”
Again she nodded and got to her feet. Hannah stood as well. “And then get on the radio and see if you can raise Chris and the others. Tell them they need to get back here.”
Paula choked out another sob, and her hand flew to her mouth. “I’m so glad he wasn’t here for this. Does that make me awful?”
Hannah gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “It makes you a mother.”
Paula nodded gratefully and then went to carry out her mission. Hannah went the other direction, to the other side of the cell block. The added weight of carrying Noah exacerbated the pain in her leg, but she didn’t care. She’d endure a hundred stab wounds if it would keep him alive.
She limped along the corridor until she reached the occupied cells. Esme had crammed all fifty of them into only five cells, standing room only. They crowded toward her when she reached them.
“Hang tight, guys.” Her voice sounded as exhausted as she felt. “We’ll have you out of there in a minute.”
Burell made his way to the front of the cell. “Glad to see you made it.”
“Barely. What about Alek? Have you seen him?”
Grimly, he shook his head. “I heard Esme giving orders before she locked us up. Apparently the Council told her to arrest him and bring him to their headquarters.”
So he had been on one of those helicopters. “I don’t suppose they mentioned where that is?”
“No. Sorry.”
She shifted Noah to her other arm. The solid weight of him felt reassuring. At least she hadn’t failed him. Yet.
“Julia would know,” she said. “I asked Paula to radio them and bring them back.”
Just then, the buzzer sounded, and the locks clanked open. Hannah stood back as her compatriots filed out of the cramped cells.
Burell started barking orders. “Strip their beds of the linens. We’ll use those to cover them.” He turned back to Hannah, his well-worn face a mask of resigned grief and weariness. “We’ll cover the bodies for now, but we’ll need to decide what to do with them.”
Before she could reply, Paula’s voice came over the PA system. “I hope that worked right. But they did something to the radio. I can’t call out on it.”
Hannah swore, then she noticed Burell still wore his walkie. She nodded to it and held out her hand. “Can I see that?”
He unclipped it and handed it to her. “This is Hannah,” she said, pressing the button. “Chris, are you there? Come in.” When he didn’t answer, she tried again. “Celine? Julia? Anybody? This is an emergency.”
Burell shook his head. “They won’t hear you. That’s a shortwave radio. They’d be too far out of range by now.”
Defeated, she handed it back. Burell gave her a sympathetic look as he returned it to his belt. “We should move the bodies into the infirmary for now. It will take time to dig the graves.”
“Time we don’t have. We can’t stay.”
“Where else can we go? Esme told the other vampires to disable any vehicles they weren’t taking. Unless we all hoof it out of here—”
“We have a bus,” she said, cutting him off. “It will hold everybody. And it has enough gas to get us far enough to find more.”
“Okay. Let’s give everyone a night to rest and grieve, and we’ll—”
“You don’t get it. They’re coming. Do you think they let you all live so you could carry on with camp life? As soon as Esme gets to HQ, they’ll send a vampire army to deal with the rest of us, if they’re not already on their way. We have to go now.”
Burell stared at her as this seemed to sink in. Then he nodded. “We’ll need provisions.”
“Get them.”
He unclipped the walkie and radioed another member of the team to convey the change in plans. He turned back to Hannah. “Where do you propose we go? Back to the Army base?”
“No. That will be the next place they’ll look.”
“Where, then? Because wherever we go, we’ll run into more shamblers.”
“We can handle shamblers.” She jiggled Noah while she thought it over. “We follow Chris and the others. Take the same route they were planning to take. Sooner or later we’ll catch up with them.”
“Why? What for?”
She looked at him as though it should have been obvious. “Because Julia will know where they’re taking my husband.”
THIRTY- SIX
WITHIN THE HOUR, ALL the survivors piled onto the bus and left the prison for what Hannah hoped would be the last time. She’d had time for a quick change into her own clothes, and to clean and dress her wound. She’d also taken the maximum recommended dosage of ibuprofen and stuffed the rest of the bottle in her pocket.
Burell drove the bus. Hannah sat behind him, next to Paula. Noah lay between them, playing with his feet.
“Once we find Chris and the others, then what?” Paula asked.
“Then we figure out something more long term for the rest of you.”
“The rest of us? What about you?”
“I’ll be going after Alek.”
“All by yourself?”
“No. I’ll take Julia. She’ll know the way.”
Paula was silent a moment. Everyone was silent, staring out at the deserted landscape as it went by, processing the horrific events of the day.
“Do you really think you can do that? Just storm into vampire central and rescue the doc?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah leaned her head against the glass. “But I have to try.”
She looked out at the passing fields and farms, the bright September afternoon a stark contrast to the darkness she felt. From a distance, it almost looked like the houses they passed could be filled with people, carrying on with their lives. She could almost imagine that the world still belonged to them, and not to the dead, and to those who wanted them dead.
Hannah closed her eyes, not because she was tired, but because she didn’t want to see anymore. Although she was tired. She wished she could stop, could hole up somewhere, curl into a ball and sleep for days.
But as much as grief and weariness weighed her down, they were nothing compared to the white hot intensity of her anger. She held onto it, stoked it, fanned the flames until they burned bright. That’s what would fuel her. It’s what would give her the strength to keep going.
To find Alek, and to make them all pay.
Beside her, Paula pulled Noah into her lap and hummed a lullaby. The swaying of the bus as it sped down the highway matched the slow, steady rhythm of her song. Hannah breathed deeply, letting the tension ease out of her, letting herself drift into blissful, fo
rgetful sleep.
EPILOGUE
THEY WERE MAKING GOOD time. They’d only encountered two places so far where the road was clogged with abandoned vehicles, but someone had already pushed most of them off the road, and Chris maneuvered the truck through them with no problems.
Celine and Reynolds both rode in the back with Stephens. Chris would have preferred for Celine to ride shotgun, but Julia had climbed into the seat as though it belonged to her, and no one had wanted to argue. Julia didn’t talk much, which suited Chris fine. Although, for someone who claimed not to know how to drive, she sure had a lot of opinions on how he did it.
“Slow down,” she blurted, proving once again to be an excellent backseat driver. She pointed. “What’s that?”
Chris slowed to a halt. Up ahead, an Army semi with a long trailer stretched all the way across the road, which was edged by guardrails on each side. Beyond those, the ground sloped down in a steep embankment. There was no way to go around.
Celine’s voice came through the small window connecting the cab to the back of the truck. “Why are we stopping?”
“Road block.” Chris turned to Julia. “We should be able to move that thing.”
She nodded, and he climbed down, leaving the engine to idle. He knocked on the side of the truck, and soon the others joined him. They all started toward the semi. “If the keys aren’t in it, hopefully we won’t need them to put it in neutral,” Chris said as they went. “But if so, maybe we can just unhitch the trailer and move it. We only need to clear one lane.”
“I might be able to hot wire it,” said Celine. When Chris looked at her, she winked. “You don’t know all my skills.”
He grinned, looking forward to the prospect of finding them out.
Julia came to a sudden halt and ordered the rest of them to stop. “Something’s wrong.”
“What is it?” asked Stephens.
She held up her index finger on each hand, signalling for silence. After a moment, she shook her head. “This feels wrong. I think it’s a trap.”
Chris looked around. “But there’s not—”
Just then, people spilled out of the back of the trailer. People in military uniforms, with guns, all pointed at them. More soldier-types bounded up over the guardrails on each side. They were surrounded.
“Hands where we can see them!” someone barked, and Chris put his hands in the air. The others did the same.
“You are human,” Julia called out.
One of the soldiers stepped forward, a tall guy dressed head to toe in Army camouflage. “We know what we are. What the hell are you? You look like vampires, but...” He jerked the business end of his rifle skyward, as if to indicate the sun.
Julia grinned. “We’re something better.”
Chris stepped forward, ignoring the look she gave him. He’d grown up around these types. He knew how to speak their language. “Who’s the officer in charge?”
“We’re the ones asking the questions here. Where did you come from?”
“The state prison. It’s no longer under vampire control.”
“Then who is in control?”
“I am,” said Julia.
The soldier looked her up and down. “And just who the hell are you?”
Before she could answer, the radio he wore crackled to life. “I’ve heard enough,” said a staticy voice, sending a shock of recognition through Chris, although the static made it hard to be sure. “Bring them in.”
“You heard the sarge.” He pointed toward their vehicle with his gun. “Back in your truck.”
Slowly, hands still raised, they turned and walked back to the truck. Chris started to climb back in the driver’s seat, but the soldier stopped him. “In the back. All of you.”
They climbed into the back, where they were joined by half a dozen soldiers, all of whom kept rifles trained on them.
Celine slid next to him and leaned in. “Where do you think they’re taking us?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. Let’s just hope these are the good guys.”
“But what if they think we’re the bad guys?”
He hadn’t thought of that. He realized how they must look. Their eyes, their uniforms... only the sun proved they weren’t vampires.
Within minutes, they were back underway, but before long the smooth highway gave way to a bumpy gravel road. Dust kicked up behind them as they went. They followed that road for what felt like twenty minutes, if not longer, before coming to a stop.
The soldiers all hopped out of the back and motioned for them to do the same. They ushered them forward, toward a large tent in the middle of a field. “Look,” Chris said as they went, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. But I promise, you’ll want to hear what we have to tell you.”
“You can tell it to the sarge.”
“Gladly. Where is he?”
The soldier brought them to the mouth of the tent, pulled back the door flap, and motioned Chris inside. He stooped to enter without hitting his head, then straightened, and found himself face to face with a man in an army uniform. A man whose face lit up at the sight of him.
“Christopher?”
Chris’s hands fell limply to his sides as he stared at the sergeant.
“Dad?”
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Desolation
of the
Damned
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jean Marie Bauhaus is a ginger GenXer who speaks with a twang that underscores her Northeastern Oklahoma upbringing. She developed a passion for both good scares and good storytelling at an impressionable young age, and today channels that passion into her writing.
A freelance writer and book editor by trade, Jean is addicted to yarn and dark chocolate. She has a degree in social science with an emphasis on psychology, and someday she may do something with it besides psychologically profiling her characters.
A recent transplant to the Arkansas Ozarks, Jean lives in the woods with her husband Matt and their small crew of four-legged dependents. Connect with her on Twitter and on Instagram @jmbauhaus. Keep in touch and sign up for her newsletter at JeanMarieBauhaus.com.
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