Blooded: Dead Things

by A. D. Key

  Cole pried his now oversized eyeballs from the horrible display of strung up bodies. “They are meals and practice.”

  The revolted girl counted seventeen torso’s jagged together with railroad spikes. Lana shined the light on the dead but still bleeding gray-haired man nailed to the rest of the bodies. “If he’s bleeding how did she, or anyone get him?” It is unlikely the Old Lady Vampire kept him over night and late into the afternoon, not the style of their inimical opponents.

  “Do you want to get backup?”

  “No,” the Shadow sighed and moved farther into the darkness. “Kronos first. Then we will decide where the burials are going.” Lana hated that; the fact that those people would always be classified as “missing”. Their families would worry themselves to their own graves.

  Cole didn’t know if or what he should say. Should he comfort her with words or be quiet in a place where Vampires reside? Instead of vocalizing, he placed his fingertips in between her short, skinny fingers.

  Pretending to take interest in the holes created in the rocks over time by falling water drops, Lana lightly squeezed their palms together; grateful for the reassurance.

  The once orphaned boy held his breath, afraid she would let go too soon.

  RAVEN

  THERE are other ways for me to get to my house in Kansas, but I wanted to fly. It was nice to have the clouds underneath me. Even the sun was different up here; its perfect circle now replaced by a bright blur.

  What I loved most about this experience wasn’t just the view. But the silence.

  When would I have the time to shoot across the sky like this? While the walking dead are feasting on everyone? Including the two I eavesdropped on? My friends? Olsen?

  Distracting my mind, the same undesirable smell I experienced only momentarily ago caused me to terminate respiration. The smell had a resemblance of fresh vomit mixed with warm cat urine. Unbuckling the safety belt and rising to my feet, I knew exactly where the stench fled from and was not surprised that the other passengers didn’t notice. I have always been tuned into what members of society either refuse or simply do not know.

  Leaving the first row, the two horny teenagers—one with a mole on his face—gawk while I glided calmly down the aisle to the restroom.

  I was inches away from the opening lavatory door.

  With sweat on his face and purple bags underneath his eye sockets, a man with a great toupee, he had to have paid a fortune for it, jumped at the unexpected sight of me. I kept my voice low. “What happened to you?”

  “N-N-Nothing,” he stuttered, trying to move forward but I blocked him. “Why?”

  “I’m inquisitive. Now, who bit you?”

  “Um…” he hesitated, pulling on the cufflinks of his pressed suit. “A cop that was on the side of the road. Someone pulled him from a green wagon.”

  “Hastings, Nebraska?”

  The distressed man nodded, and I quickly jabbed my fist against the side of his neck. His eyes closed. I gently shut the restroom door. The Captain’s voice boomed over the intercom. We were landing shortly.

  The unconscious man… I snapped his fragile vertebrae…

  LANA & COLE

  THE COURSE OF THE TUNNEL CHANGED, no longer curving downward. It leveled out to a straight path. The temperature had drastically cooled as soon as they had gone a few yards, but now it was cold. “I didn’t think to bring a jacket,” Lana whispered, shivering underneath her clothes. If she were a normal girl she would be well beyond her first chattering of the teeth. Lana gripped the Shadow’s hand tightly and hoped that stealing his body heat would warm more than her skinny fingers. She didn’t want to be the reason their voyage ended prematurely.

  Even with his battery operated light, Cole could barely see what lied ahead of them. He knew the further underground they proceeded that eventually their sources that pierce the darkness won’t be significant. Is that…water? He wondered having been distracted. Water is generally good and one needs it to survive. But at this moment it extinguished the fireworks in their joyous candid eyes.

  Lana’s tears hurt him like hundreds of paper cuts sliced around his mouth.

  Where the cave floor should be up ahead, Lana’s light casted out into a huge dropoff. Cole’s flashlight showed a rock wall on the other side. Their man-made objects searched the abyss. And Lana let go of the bitter air she has been concealing; the sound lost in the violent torrent. To determine how deep it is would be a futile effort; it does not matter how far down the bottom is for Kronos has surely slipped into the abysmal water.

  “Kronos could be as far as the Gulf of Mexico by now. Or right below our feet for we all know,” Cold said. “Either way we lose.” The hand he had been holding onto so dearly pulled away from him.

  “He’s gone,” Lana admitted in defeat. The heartless stalker had left, taking her hopes for a better future without him with him. Misery. “As always.”

  A new hatred for Kronos penetrated Cole’s yearning soul.

  LUCAS

  OUTSIDE OF Rush Cemetery, I opened the trunk of the car. Spread out over a spare tire and mechanical tools are numerous materials used for hunting; stakes, crossbows, a rope, and a big wooden cross that takes up most of the trunk. Leon carefully placed pointed light brown stakes of wood to the right while I uncaringly tossed the necessities.

  “I had a gun and I didn’t use it.” Bearing the onus of the murder of little Devin, I flipped up a corner of the fuzzy interior. Leon picked up a loaded shotgun and a single box of shells from the hidden section. I took the bullets to my pistol. “Brighton,” I said, pushing down the trunk’s lid, “the longer this waiting thing takes the more creepier this place gets.”

  “More creepier is not the right—”

  “—I know, Leon. I know. And I realize you’re trying to distract me.” I leaned over the polished roof and looked my best friend in the eyes. “But Brighton…there will never be a distraction from this day.”

  “The verity of your words… it’s settling like blood-sucking worms slowly being wrenched off of my future baby-maker.”

  COLE & LANA

  SPRINTING through tapered groups of trees, Lana stopped short beside the light gray wall of August Cemetery. Cole, having passed her, backtracked.

  “Leave me,” she said coldly.

  Her attentive friend sensed the bitterness in her words. What she feels does not please him. “I want you to go my house. Yours. Whatever,” he said.

  The warm light from the now cloudless sky shined all around them. Gazing down at her oval face, Cole realized, It’s gone; the soul that once radiated optimism to the world through apple green eyes. Cole demurred, “I don’t think you should be alone—”

  “Leave me,” she interrupted, staring intensely at the wall.

  Blood instantly rushed to his face. Her words were an order. She pulled rank on the lesser experienced Shadow. He only had one option. To depart.

  But never before in his life has he ever felt such…dismissal.

  “I don’t care. I don’t care what he thinks of me giving him orders. I’m the leader,” Lana said aloud.

  The leader in running around and staking nothing, the emotionally wounded girl thought. She jumped over the hindrance and landed with a mad thud on the butchered grass. A mild breeze circled through the clearing, ruffling the arms of the willow tree. Wishing she could do the same to her enemy’s heart, she slammed the red flashlight down and it cracked against the lifeless wall and the batteries bounced out.

  Her shoes pounded onerously up the hill.

  “I can’t believe she did that!”

  Lana’s words have infuriated Cole. The two of them usually coincide on choices of action. Giving one of her friends a directive is rare, and he resented her for doing so when she needs consolation instead of solitude.

  But today she doesn’t want a friend. She wants HIM—Kronos.

  Cole not only loathed the Vampire, but he despised everything right now. He despised the way the trees never mo
ve from their fixed roots, but yet, as he darts past their picturesque colors they are forced behind him. He despised the two-legged winged animals that are perched pompously on the dark thick branches singing merrily.

  “Stupid birds!”

  She wants him more than she wants me.

  That fact, he truly despised.

  PART THREE

  7: Dreams and Visions

  Concordia, Kansas

  ON FOOT, I steadily paced through the expiring rush hour traffic; the shadows casting off from poles and buildings onto the sidewalk helped me calculate the time of day. A metallic black super car with dark tinted windows stopped at the red light in front of me. The doors opened by rising up in the air; butterfly style. Energetically, I skipped over and hopped in on the left side of the three seat coupe; the driver in the center with two rear passenger seats to the left and right. The vehicle, only one waiting, accelerated underneath the changed light; now green.

  “Jet—”

  “I know. I don’t listen,” he admitted smiling, sitting in the driver’s in the middle of the McLaren F1. I had told him and my other friends, Sheba and Cricket (not here), that picking me up at the airport wasn’t necessary; Ganesha had dropped me off at the airport in Nebraska so she didn’t have the option of picking me up here. Jet was the only one of my friend’s not submitting to my wishes.

  Out of all the vehicles Jet has owned, this was his favorite, and he rarely missed an opportunity to put it on exhibition. Even though it was built in 1994 it reached a top speed of two-hundred-and-forty miles per hour. Everything, except me in my blue shirt, was black: black velvet seats, black carpet, ceiling, and even Jet’s hair and the clothes on his massively thick muscled body.

  I rested my head against the headrest, letting the dim atmosphere relax me.

  “Do you know your plan yet?” he asked.

  “Are Sheba and Cricket still sleeping?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We will get firearms. When Cricket and Sheba wake up, and Ganesha when she arrives, can help us finish the downstairs.”

  Jet raised his eyebrows. “We’re not saving anyone else?”

  “I told Olsen. Our friends can deal with their families the way they see fit.”

  “I get it. Who else can we tell that would believe in the walking dead?” He abandoned the view straight ahead to look at me. “They don’t believe in Vampires and—”

  “—They have existed since The Blending.”

  The side of his lip turned up at the corner. “How is it that you always finish my sentences?”

  “Silly, we have been together—” Taking the words from my mouth, Jet exultantly said, “Practically forever.”

  I smiled faintly. “Watch the road.”

  “What’s going to happen if I don’t?” he teased.

  “Shut up,” I playfully scoffed, and rested my hazel eyes. My thoughts on Leon Carmany and Lucas Kale.

  Meanwhile…

  Hastings, Nebraska

  NOT SPEAKING A WORD, WE SAT WITH THE windows up just in case we got an unwelcoming surprise. Leon glanced around the back, looking for strange things; zombies, green and white flames, anything really. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, he turned back around. That’s when we spotted a guy possibly our age or younger hurrying out of the small woodland next to the creepy graveyard. He had a death grip on his flashlight.

  “Suspicious,” Leon said, planting his hands on the shotgun lying across his lap. As if the stranger heard him, the guy casted an uninviting look and stalked toward our sitting chunk of metal.

  “What’s he doin’?” I asked, trying not to move my lips. “Coming over here.” Leon gave me the “duh attitude” through his pressed teeth.

  The heated pale-skinned guy gave us another nasty look before darting off to into the meadow.

  “What’s that freak’s problem?”

  Leon shrugged.

  COLE

  SHE’LL BE OKAY. And you’re being crazy. Why would someone be after Lana?

  When Cole left the vegetation he had seen on older model car parked a few yards down from the cemetery entrance, facing him. He recalled the car driving in the opposite direction not long ago. Cole had planned on confronting them, but then decided that if they were up to no good the chances of them telling the truth are the same as Lana telling him she likes him.

  Ugh! His mind yelled in frustration as he neared her home, gravel crunching underneath his worn out tennis shoes. Prairie grass growing on either side of him. He ran his fingers through his hair, scolding himself. You are crazy for thinking someone wouldn’t be after Lana; Kronos! Hello! Remember the beginning of senior year?

  Months ago graphic images of Lana had flashed in his mind—images that told him his best friend was in danger at the so called “Haunted House”. Although given the event that happened last year, passing by it (the increased housing on New Hope Road forced them to do so) doesn’t radiant relief and cheer. But a haunting memory.

  Receiving telepathic pictures is typical of his kind. But the lead Shadow told him she didn’t send him anything, and he believes her. Lana has spent years trying to send out an alert but so far she remains to be only a recipient. He has heard of inexplicable pictures mysteriously being sent, but Cole never put much thought to it until it happened to him that night for the first and last time—that he is aware of.

  Where do they come from?

  A heartbreaking memory surfaced—the girl he likes laid on the floor while acid ate her beautiful skin—immediately pushing the question to the back of his mind. He didn’t leave her side for the next two weeks except for the times she went to the bathroom, and his turns visiting the toilet and shower. But he would have busted out penis swinging if he had to.

  The seventeen year old wanted nothing but for Lana to say she has feelings for him. But why would she? I have never admitted to likely her. UGH! Frustrated, the dark-haired boy stomped up Lana’s steps and walked the length of the deck. Cole entered the house. The front door banged against the frame behind him.

  LANA QUEEN

  YEARS OF FIGHTING IN THE DARK HAVE GOTTEN ME what? A messed up face for people to gossip about. Relationships based on lies—the reason I only have two friends.

  The world comes back to Lana, unaware of how long she has been staring at her father’s grave in August Cemetery. Her cheeks are soaked, and a salty wetness slides over her grazed lips creating another path down her thin neck. Kronos may be gone for now, but ultimately her father’s killer will return to stalk the dejected girl.

  Is this what my life is going to be like forever? Always on guard? Stressed out? Few friends? Surrounded by judgmental gossipers? The same unintelligent humans I save from Vampires and the stalker that did this to me in the first place!?

  Lana snatched the flowers from their holder on the marble headstone. Blue petals ripped in between troubled fingertips before making their escape to friendlier elements. The soft blue petals suddenly triggering the night dreams that started two days ago—the soothing dreams of a female with extremely long blonde hair and electric blue in her eyes…

  LUCAS

  LEON ROLLED the window down, letting the hot air out of the smothering heat trap of a car. “I think”—he paused, collecting his thoughts— “I think he was headed for that house after we witnessed that Vampire die.”

  I looked at the white house off in the distance and then up at the scrambled white fluffy clouds where the fiery light had previously shone. “Maybe he is a tracker.”

  “Yeah, still that doesn’t explain why he looked pissed. We didn’t do anything.”

  “Teenagers. Being pissed is our whole identity. Well…some of us,” I looked at my calm and collected cousin.

  “That’s her!” he suddenly shrieked.

  I turned to the gate. A raven-haired girl squeezed her palms around the black bar and easily pulled it to the middle of Rush’s entryway. Doing the same to the matching right one, her troubles, whatever they were, seemed to drift slowl
y into the inanimate objects. She firmly grasped the bars and ran forward, forcing a loud CLANG from the old gate. Her anger turned into a new found happiness.

  “Leave it to you to save the issued ones though,” I said witnessing the girl’s stint of madness.

  “Whoa!”

  “Overly defensive?”

  “Look!” pointed Leon.

  The girl diagonally advancing to the double lines stopped abruptly and looked up from the road. She whirled around to the worn beaten path in the small woods. The path the dark-haired boy had previously emerged from.

  What we saw disturbed us all.

  The thing-slash-man unflatteringly expressing pain had a jawbone punctured through one of its cheeks.

  “Now I feel defensive.” I pulled the hammer back on my pistol. I unlocked my door and swung it open. Leon reached out to stop me. “Wait!”

  “Uh, okay. I haven’t seen enough organs today,” I sarcastically remarked.

  “Sh!”

  “Did you just tell me to—”

  “Get ready,” he cut in. The stumbling man closing in on the Potential we were sent to save.

  I shook my handgun, making the point of having been ready.

  “Um…um, stop.” I heard the girl choke out, trying to speak to the abnormal looking man. But he didn’t show any signs of deceleration. I think she wanted to help him, only she didn’t know how to handle this foreign situation.