by Tim Greaton
Her Yearning
for Blood
From “Maine’s Other Author”TM
Tim Greaton
ALSO BY TIM GREATON
From Focus House Publishing
The Santa Shop
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Her Yearning
for Blood
from
“Maine’s Other Author”TM
Tim Greaton
Copyright 2012 by Tim Greaton.
Published by Focus House Publishing on Kindle
This is a work of fiction. The names and the characters are fictional. Any resemblance to living or dead individuals is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, including digital or audio sampling, internet display or download, or any other form of digital or physical display or transfer, excepting only brief excerpts for use in a literary review, without expressed written permission from the author.
Published by Focus House Publishing
Her Yearning for Blood
Cover graphics by Wizards Prism Art & Media
Her Yearning
for Blood
From “Maine’s Other Author”TM
Tim Greaton
Focus House Publishing
Wilton, Maine
Her Yearning for Blood
Episode One
1
Three loud explosions sent dust spewing up like a sooty volcanic plume above the abandoned military base. I gritted my teeth and rushed as fast as my leg brace and crutches would allow across the endless, cracked expanse of concrete. The acres of hard, bleached concrete was all that remained of the military buildings that had been torn down and hauled off when the town council had forced the US Army out of town fourteen years earlier. Far ahead, the distant tree line towered over sparkles of afternoon sunlight that reflected off the windshields of several parked cars at the overgrown entrance. Glancing back, I saw a dark haze filling the sky. Another explosion vibrated the ground beneath my feet and sent something whizzing past my head. Ducking and twisting sideways, I caught one of my crutches on the rough concrete. For one terrifying second, I thought I might fall and re-shatter my right knee. Fortunately, fate and my instinct to shift my weight to the opposite crutch kept me upright even as the padded aluminum stabbed into my left armpit.
I gasped with pain and drew in a shuddered breath.
The air smelled like a mixture of burnt rubber and diesel exhaust. I coughed, pulled myself upright and rubbed under my arm and along sore left ribs as I tried to get my bearings. I was no longer sure I faced the cars, and the filthy cloud had already filled the sky making it impossible to see the treetops ahead. Tiny specks of black began to fall like ash from a nuclear winter.
It terrified me to think what the boys might have done.
A dozen teenage girls screamed somewhere behind me. Their male counterparts yelled from someplace further off. I couldn’t believe that I had willingly let myself become part of this catastrophe.
“Rachel, Amanda!” I called out.
When neither friend responded, I hobbled toward what I hoped was Amanda’s car. The screaming faded as I swung through the flat, murky landscape. Soon, the only sounds I heard were the soft thud of my crutches touching down and the swish of cloth as I swung forward again.
Thud, swish. Thud, swish.
I had only been to the base a few times but had noticed that concrete-sealed manholes dotted the edge of the military base every few hundred feet. I always assumed they were old wells or maybe vents to the soldiers’ septic system, but the boys at school had been convinced they were entrances to all manner of underground military secrets. When I heard they had planned to find their way in to those vertical tunnels, I imagined pry bars and sledge hammers, certainly not explosives! Any fool should have known better, especially if the rumors of secret laboratory catacombs and stockpiles of weapons were true. Exposing them to explosives should have been the last thing anyone wanted to do.
I never should have come.
Thud, swish.
I stopped to massage my aching side and felt pretty certain I had cracked a rib. At this rate, I would be in a wheelchair before senior year even started.
“Rachel, Amanda!”
It was getting hard to breathe and the smog burned the inside of my nose and throat. Covering my mouth with my blouse collar, I inhaled several semi-clean breaths. The cloud of grit continued to drift and swirl downward, making it impossible to see. How had I let Amanda talk me into this?
But even as I asked the question, I knew the answer: I had hoped Evan would be here.
Stupid!
I’d already crippled myself for him, and still he didn’t—
No. I would not allow myself to complete the thought.
Idiot!
“Rachel, Amanda!” I yelled. I waited thirty seconds and yelled again.
The last I knew, Amanda had been flirting with a football player near one of the concrete manholes and Rachel had been with the new boy who had moved into the low-income apartment complex where she and her grandmother lived. That left me alone to wander in hopes of finding Evan who, of course, would never have come here. He hadn’t hung out with any of us since third grade, the year his father died. I remembered the event clearly because my grandfather had also been found dead in the woods that same day. The police claimed it was a passing serial killer, but no one in Groacherville had ever believed that.
The explosions seemed to have s
topped but rather than thinning, the molecules in the air grew denser, black and clotting like an airborne cancer. I could barely see my outstretched hand in front of me. Anxious to get free of the smoke before I suffocated, I took several more inhalations through my collar then held my breath and swung forward as quickly as my crutches would allow until I had to stop and suck air through my blouse again. A healthy person might have crawled across the ground where the air was probably better, but I couldn’t even bend my knee forget crawl on it.
Several panicked voices surged toward me from the right.
“This is the wrong way, Sherrie!” one girl squealed. “We should have seen the cars by now!”
“It’s not my fault,” another female snapped. “It’s not like I’m a ranger or anything.” She coughed. “Let’s go right.” Cough. “The cars must be that way!”
I probably should have called out, but I recognized the voice of our head football cheerleader. Sherrie Tepper would have been more likely to steal my crutches than wait for me. Besides, she and her gaggle sounded as lost as I was. I drew more tainted air through my shirt. Suddenly, fear of dying on a concrete pad at the end of a dead end road seemed entirely too possible. Shaking the thought from my mind, I pressed forward. I had only moved a dozen steps when the faint sobs from Sherrie’s group faded completely into the cloying smog behind me. Feeling as though a death shroud had been thrown over the abandoned military site, I fought my rising panic and forced myself to keep going.
Thud, swish. Thud swish.
My rhythm faltered when the tip of one crutch slid forward on a loose patch of sand. I gasped and managed to stop the slipping rubber before something terrible happened, but as I pulled my crutch back into position I silently cursed the murky air. Even in clear conditions, the sand, cracks and loose chunks of concrete made using crutches tricky. In the black smog, they were downright treacherous.
I sucked air through my collar and tried to calm the dread that had been rising inside of me since the first explosion hit. I knew that once I reached the edge of the concrete, I would be able to follow the border to Amanda’s car. Unfortunately, the growing pain in my side and the feeling that I might not be going in a straight line made me doubt I would ever get there. I breathed in several lungfuls of acrid air then, praying the smoke would settle soon, set out once again in the dark haze. After stopping several more times, my side ached and my lungs burned. My world had become a nightmare of pain and fear. But each time I wanted to give up, I convinced myself that it wouldn’t be much further, that the cars and my friends were just ahead.
Thud, swish.
Suddenly, one of my crutches sank and twisted out of my hand, spilling me onto the rock-strewn sand. A thousand spikes of pain rocketed from my kneecap straight to my brain. A week earlier, when my doctor removed my cast and replaced it with a plastic and foam brace, he had warned me that my knee would be fragile for several more months.
Just one more price I had paid for trying to impress Evan Groacher.
I sucked in a ragged breath. That’s what I got for thinking he might actually see me as something other than the grease-monkey who made out his bills whenever he stopped for an oil change or tire rotations at my father’s garage. The worst part about my soccer accident was that he had not even been coaching that day.
Knowing I was either the unluckiest or dumbest person in Groacherville, possibly both, I struggled to get up, but agony shot like lightning bolts from my knee. I had definitely fractured it again.
Fighting back the nausea, I focused on the one positive point in my plight: I had at least reached the edge of the concrete. Coughing, I peered out into the gloom but could see no sign of Amanda’s gold convertible or any other cars for that matter. I also couldn’t hear anything but my own hitched breathing. My head swooned but I forced myself to stay conscious. I took a dozen deep breaths through my collar. The air wasn’t much better down here.
“Help!” I screamed, not bothering to disguise my terror. “I’m over here!”
My bad luck held. No one answered.
Chattering and screeching sounds came from the murk beyond my feet. Though Maine wasn’t known for dangerous animals, fear clawed up my spine. I grabbed the nearest aluminum crutch and made ready to defend myself.
“Amanda. Rachel. Anyone!”
Sucking breath through my collar like a trapped fire-victim, I tried to understand why the smoke had not yet cleared. Instead, the brownish haze hung like polluted swamp fog. My eyes had long since started to sting. Wincing, I tried to pull myself up by my crutches but the pain struck me like a fist. I shook the white spots from my vision. My knee couldn’t be moved.
Deep growling sounds came from my left.
You’re imagining it, I told myself but the deep noise came again.
“Amanda, Rachel!”
Did they leave me?
No. Rachel never would have left–not unless she thought I had caught a ride with someone else. Amanda on the other hand wouldn’t have thought twice about hurrying away without me, especially since the police were sure to be on their way to investigate the explosions. The ex-cheerleader had lost her license two months earlier and wasn’t scheduled to get it back for another month. If her father had not been on one of his long business trips, Amanda never would have dared to drive to the military base at all.
The screeching came again, so close that I instinctively jerked my feet away from the sound. I nearly passed out from the pain. I held onto awareness and tried to make out the threat. Unfortunately, I could not even see my own shoes. The bizarre roiling smog surrounded me like a black dome.
Could the explosions have released a military toxin? Maybe the boys from school had been right. Maybe the Army had sealed off secret underground laboratories beneath the acres of concrete. My parents seldom discussed Fort Groacherville, but the few times they did it was only to express relief that the local disappearances had stopped once the base had been dismantled. That was fourteen years ago.
I still couldn’t believe I had allowed Amanda to talk me into this.
Something stung my finger.
“Ow!”
I yanked my arm away but dozens of other painful pricks exploded across my fingers and hand. More pain shot like a gasoline fire up both ankles and across my other hand.
Insects!
I screamed and tried to drag myself back to the concrete. Every movement was like a stabbing sword in my kneecap. I ignored the surges of white hot agony, however, and kept trying to push backwards. Finally, dizzy, unable to move any further, I stopped and held both painful hands up to see dozens of ants!
Large, red fire ants!
Disgusted, I tried to brush them from my fingers and palms, but the oversized insects might as well have been glued to my skin. I could feel hundreds of tiny pincers also embedding in both my legs. I must have fallen on an anthill. Knowing that I had to get away, I redoubled my efforts to pull myself back toward the concrete. My hands sank into the sand as I struggled to drag my lower body. My teeth ground together. It felt as though an engine was backfiring inside my knee, but I had to get free of the anthill. It took a half dozen more heaves before I finally felt concrete under my hands. My arms and shoulders trembled from the effort as I dragged my rear end over the hard foundation edge. Then I slumped, exhausted, the back of my head resting on the hard concrete surface.
My limbs were stiff, the muscles numb and tight. My body felt like an over-filled water balloon that might pop at any moment. Thousands of stinging signals came from all over my body. The ants had reached my scalp, neck and cheeks. In a final effort, using every last ounce of strength in my cramped arms, I lifted my torso and dragged myself backwards once, twice, three times. Fireworks exploded in my head as my foot struck the edge of the concrete.
I gasped and sucked in acrid smoke, sending my lungs into a coughing fit.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I could still feel thousands of tiny pincers digging into my flesh, stinging me everywhere imaginable. My l
ast dying effort had been for nothing. The ants had not returned to the sand. They continued feasting on me, their pincers like electric needles stabbing all over my body. I felt them but didn’t have the energy to rip them from my face.
I heard moaning and angry screeches. It took me several seconds to realize I was the one moaning. Close as coffin walls, the brown air swirled and clotted around me. My lungs longed for oxygen. Still the ants crawled around my nose, my ears. Their agonizing companionship would take me to my death.
The screeching came again, closer this time. I felt something on my chest.
Realizing my eyes had drifted closed, I forced them open to see gray fur, red eyes, and a tiny mouth filled with oversized fangs. A squirrel but not like any squirrel I had ever seen. The little creature screeched again, saliva dripping from its open maw. It leaned forward and I knew it was going to bite my neck. I fought to stay conscious but the pain and lack of oxygen were a potent mix. I had to get away, but how? All I could do was to lie on the hard concrete surface that was, apparently, to be my bloody altar.
The squirrel’s claws dug into my chest as it lunged.
I opened my mouth to scream–
Suddenly, a huge shadow surged out of the roiling black fog. I felt myself slipping away but not before a silver blade swooped out of the blackness and sliced neatly through the squirrel’s neck. Warm blood splattered my face.
“Hold still,” a familiar voice said as cloth wiped across my chin, cheeks and forehead. “They’re attracted to blood.”
My field of vision started to close as a masculine hand squeezed blood from the squirrel’s headless corpse…onto the floor of a dark crypt. I knew I had slipped into the land of dreams, but the thick clots of red liquid beside me seemed important somehow.
