Jack turned back to the internet. “Probably,” he said. “Do you know how to buy syringes?”
“No,” I said. “Vance provided those, too.”
“He really did this to you on purpose. Left you without the skills you’d need to survive in the real world.”
“That’s how he keeps us under control,” I said.
“Well, I can try a pharmacy,” Jack said, poking at his phone. “Looks like Nevada law requires a reason, but not a prescription, necessarily. Maybe if I try a pharmacy that’s not part of a major chain, they’d be less likely to check.”
I needed to start thinking like this. Jack had known about corpses for less than eight hours, but already he had better ideas for my survival than I did.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.”
“You need to get some sleep, don’t you?”
“Sure. You, too, yeah? I’ll take the floor.” He looked at me. “Unless you don’t sleep.”
“Not a wink in six months,” I said. “Take the couch.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “And you’re going to, what? Stare at me?”
Creepily. Like a stalker. I pointed to the game system. “Mind if I play?”
“Not at all,” Jack said. Jack grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and stretched out on one of them. I turned out the lights, so the room was lit only by the game. I dimmed the screen on the television so it wouldn’t be glaring in his eyes while he slept.
“April?” Jack said.
I looked over at him. Light from the TV screen flickered across his face, and for a moment, I wished he was sitting next to me. “Yeah?”
He looked at me in the dark. “I’m sorry all of this is happening to you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry I dragged you into it.”
“I’m not,” Jack said.
I wondered how much longer Jack would have the luxury of believing that. Zeke took me in so I wouldn’t be alone, and look what happened to him.
But for tonight, I couldn’t help but be glad that I wasn’t alone.
Nine
Around six-thirty light started to creep in through the curtains. I took a blanket off the back of the couch and hung it over the curtain rod to block more of the light. I was going to avoid the sunburn if I possibly could. By the time the sun was fully up, the ambient light in the room was minimal. I sat low in my chair, avoiding it.
I spent some time with my eyes closed, trying to sense corpses in the surrounding neighborhood. I couldn’t feel any. That made sense—this was a residential neighborhood, so probably not a hot spot for undead activity. Most of the corpses in Vegas probably centered on the strip. Lots of anonymity there, and lots of drunk victims.
Footsteps headed down the hallway toward me. I looked up to see a tall guy standing in the doorway, sandy blond hair sticking up in all directions. He looked over at Jack on the couch and smiled at me.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m Leo.”
“April,” I said.
“Rock on.”
I felt like I should explain to him why we’d come so far in the middle of the night, but he didn’t ask.
Leo motioned to the blanket I’d hung over his curtains. “The sun bothering you?”
“There was a glare,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “The angle’s really good in the evenings, but not so much in the morning.”
I rolled my shoulders back, loosening up.
Jack rolled over on the couch and looked up at Leo. “Hey,” he said, his voice raspy. “You have work today?”
“Yeah,” Leo said, scratching behind his ear. “I don’t have to be in until two, though. Got switched to swing.”
“Do you mind if April and I hang around here today?” Jack asked. “We don’t have anywhere to be until tonight.”
“No problem,” Leo said. “You guys got in pretty early, yeah?”
Jack yawned. “Yeah. How long did I sleep?”
“Five hours,” I said.
Leo ambled back down the hallway. “I’m going to take a shower,” he yelled back. “You can eat whatever you find.”
“I expected you to sleep later,” I said to Jack.
“I probably will,” he said, sitting up. “But first we both need to eat.”
He had a point. I had a couple more hours, but it might take us that long to figure out the logistics. “You’re going to go out?”
“We passed a corner supermarket on the way in. They had a pharmacy. I figure I’ll start there.”
Jack running off without me made me nervous. But he hadn’t brought me all the way here to ditch me now, and we hadn’t seen any signs of Vance.
“Hurry, okay?” I said.
“Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll be back soon.” He hesitated, like he wanted to say something else, but instead he rolled off the couch and left before I could object again.
“Don’t get yourself in trouble,” I said. But the door had already closed, so he probably hadn’t heard me. I could hear Leo’s shower starting up toward the back of the apartment. The white noise from the water was actually soothing.
I sat back on the couch, turning to the video game. This game didn’t have much in the way of plot, but the mechanics worked seamlessly—the perfect game for passing time. I went back to crouching in my sniper position, taking out zombies, while the AI I was playing with took point.
A few minutes later, I felt the nudging of a corpse at the edge of my senses. He was folded into a sitting position, but gliding along toward me. His foot pressed down toward the ground, and he stopped briefly.
He was driving a car. I got up, moving into the kitchen, which shared walls with other apartments, and therefore had no windows. The sun was fully up, so I had nowhere to run. And if he could drive a car during the day, that meant he had one of those special tinted cars, like Vance’s limo. Only Vance’s men had the resources for vehicles like those.
I sat on the counter in the kitchen, folding myself into the corner farthest from the corpse.
But the corpse lifted his foot, pressed it down again, and kept moving. He slid past the apartment building, stopping only for a moment—probably at a stop sign. And then he was gone.
I needed to relax. Badly. Not every corpse that passed by would be out to get me. At least Leo was still in his shower. There were no witnesses to my panic.
Good as his word, Jack came back forty minutes later with a needle, a box of gauze, and a can of beef liver.
“Yuck,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But it’s good for blood replacement. Be glad you don’t have to eat it.”
“So you didn’t have any trouble at the pharmacy?”
“I did. Had to try three different places. But I finally found one that only wanted to see my ID.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Jack set about cooking the liver, and I lay down on the couch in the living room. Hunger was just beginning to lurk at the base of my skull. I could let Jack take his time.
He didn’t, though. He downed that liver in about three bites. The way it must have tasted, I couldn’t blame him.
He spread the needle and a syringe out onto the table. “Can you help me get it in?” he asked. “I don’t know if I can stand to stick myself.”
I grabbed a glass from Leo’s cabinet to catch the blood, then inserted the needle into the syringe. This was another of the skills Zeke made me learn—how to extract blood with a needle. Of course, I’d only practiced on Zeke’s arm, and he couldn’t really bleed, or feel pain. Jack winced and swore as I slid the needle into his flesh.
“Sorry,” I said. But I hit the vein on the first try, and the tube began to fill with fresh, red blood.
I tried not to salivate over it. I focused instead on pulling the stopper from the syringe, and siphoning the blood down the tube and into the glass. The needle must have been a smaller gauge than the ones they used at the hospital, because the cup took a long t
ime to fill.
“I hope Leo doesn’t walk in on this,” I said. “Just a little bit more.”
“Hey,” Jack said, “is the shower still running? How long has Leo been in there?”
I listened. Sure enough, the water in the bathroom was still going. The noise was so soothing, I’d tuned it out.
“It’s been like an hour,” I said.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “That’s a long time. I guess I’d better check on him.”
I pulled the needle out of his arm and pressed gauze to it, which Jack held while I stashed the blood in the fridge behind a clear plastic container filled with mold. I should have drunk it right away, but something about that corpse that drove by made me nervous to leave Jack alone.
Or maybe it was that I didn’t want him to leave me.
As he walked down the hallway, I was half afraid that he was going to fall over from the blood loss, but he stayed steady on his feet, and I kept right behind him as he walked up to the bathroom door and knocked on it.
“Leo?” he yelled.
The water kept running.
“Hey, Leo! You all right?”
No answer. No footsteps. No creaking of the floor. Nothing.
Puffs of steam wafted up from under the door. As the vapor reached my nose, I smelled blood in it.
I checked the door, but it was locked. “Get back,” I said. I pushed Jack aside and kicked the door right next to the door handle.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked. But he didn’t try to stop me.
It took a couple of blows, but the cheap door frame gave way, and the door swung inward.
Steam poured out of the room. It reeked of blood, like someone had boiled a bucket of it. The shower kept running, but against the white curtain I could see the outline of blood streaks. A red-tinged puddle collected in the middle of the floor. Jack’s breath caught in his throat, and he doubled over coughing.
I stood frozen in the doorway. If I didn’t go in, if I didn’t look, this wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. I’d sensed a corpse drive by, sure, but no one had approached the apartment.
No one I could sense, anyway.
The only other entrance to the room was the smoke-glassed window opposite the door. It was closed. Closed, but not latched.
Jack leaned against the wall behind me. His cough rattled deeper in his chest.
I couldn’t make him do this. I had to look.
I stepped forward and pushed back the curtain in one quick motion.
Leo lay naked and slumped in the bottom of the tub, his head lolling back at an awkward angle. A dark hole gaped in his jugular and blood oozed out of it, running in little rivulets down the shower drain.
I pulled the curtain back, so I wouldn’t have to see. It wasn’t that the sight was too horrible. My skull throbbed, the monster angered by the spoiled blood, as if her ice cream had fallen in the dirt.
As I turned back to Jack, lines drawn on the mirror caught my eye. Someone had run their finger over the glass, writing a message. The clouds of steam had nearly obscured them, but there the words were, streaked with lines from water drops that had run down the glass and into the sink.
You can’t hide from me.
The sight of Leo hadn’t done it, but that message was enough. My diaphragm heaved, and my tongue caught in my throat. Nothing came up, of course, but I leaned over the sink out of habit.
Vance had been in the house. I’d dragged Jack and Leo into this, and now we were all going to die.
How had he gotten in? I looked toward the tiny window. Vance must have opened it and shot Leo as he looked out of the shower to see what was happening. If he used a suppressor, would I have heard the shot over the sound of the shower? He’d shot Leo through the throat before Leo could as much as shout, and then shut it again.
But the mirror was a good four feet from the window—far enough that it couldn’t be reached. Had Vance scrambled through, sunsuit and all? I could probably have climbed through, but for someone of Vance’s frame, it’d be a tight fit.
The phone rang.
I stumbled out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. “We have to get out of here,” I said to Jack. But he was wheezing now, as if he couldn’t get enough air.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
Jack shook his head. He wrapped his arms around his throat, looking up at me with wide eyes. The coughing wasn’t just shock. He couldn’t breathe.
The ringing was coming from Jack’s pocket—his cell phone.
“Come on,” I said, hauling him up by his shoulders and pushing him toward the living room. He coughed and stumbled, but I managed to steer him to the couch. His phone fell out of his pocket just as it stopped ringing. He had one missed call, from a blocked number.
Away from the steam, Jack’s lungs seemed to be clearing. “What happened?” I asked him.
“The steam,” he said. His voice was hoarse, like he was just getting over a cold. “It burns.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. The steam didn’t bother me, but of course, I didn’t need to breathe.
The ringing began again. Neither Jack nor I made a move to answer.
I ran back into the bathroom on rubbery legs. I didn’t want to look at Leo’s body again. I didn’t want to smell the tangy-hot goodness of him, spoiling like rancid bacon. But I pushed the curtain aside anyway, taking a closer look.
A bottle lay in the water under the small of Leo’s back. I hadn’t looked closely enough to see it before—I sensed plenty of anatomically-correct corpses all the time, but it still felt wrong to stare at Leo’s naked body that way. But now I reached in and moved him aside at the waist, pulling the bottle out. It was the opaque white kind, like a pharmacist might fill with cough syrup.
It was empty now. I turned it over in my hand, but it was also unlabeled.
The ringing stopped. The phone must have gone to voicemail.
What had I expected? That Vance would give me some kind of instructions as to how to undo whatever he’d done?
What had he done? And where was he now?
I ran back out of the bathroom and into the living room. Jack lay collapsed on the couch, but it still made me feel better to be in the same room with him. Could Vance still be in the apartment? No, the bathroom door had never opened. I’d have heard that. He must have come and gone through the tiny window. He’d done it himself, so I wouldn’t notice a thing.
That meant he knew I could sense others, but not him. One more tool he could use to manipulate me.
Jack’s cell phone rang again. Jack looked down at it, breathing heavily, but he didn’t pick it up.
Blocked, the screen said. But I knew who it was. And he was just going to keep calling until I answered. Or worse, he might stop calling. And then I’d never know what it was he had planned for us.
I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hello, April,” Vance said back.
My throat closed up. I couldn’t speak. He just continued, as if a response wasn’t necessary.
“Why did you run?” Vance asked. “You can still come back. I’ll forgive you.”
I dropped the phone and the battery fell out. Vance would be calling from a cell phone. That meant he could be anywhere. In a cruel tribute to the urban legend, he might even be in the house. Would Vance reduce himself to that kind of cliché?
The phone rang again—this time from the kitchen. Leo’s cell, which he’d left on the counter.
I flattened myself against the wall. He had all the numbers. He must have tracked me out of town.
He had been lying in wait, and he’d had hours now to prepare.
“Who was that?” Jack asked between breaths. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t answer it,” I said.
Sweat had broken out all over Jack’s forehead, and his pupils looked wide and dark. Was that a reaction from the loss of blood? Or from whatever Vance had put into the water?
“Are
you okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I feel like I might pass out.”
I knew I shouldn’t have drunk from him twice. “You need to run,” I said. “Get to your car and drive away.”
Jack sat up, but doubled forward with his head in his hands. “I don’t think I can walk right now.”
The phone stopped ringing.
I couldn’t carry Jack to the car. We’d parked in the sun. Even if I wanted to give my life to save him, dragging him to the car would be like willingly walking into an inferno. I wouldn’t make it.
“You have to get out of here,” I said. “Quick, before Vance comes back.”
“I’m not just going to leave you here,” Jack said. Sweat dripped from his hairline now, and he curled into a fetal ball.
The phone in the kitchen rang again.
I couldn’t get Jack to leave, and I couldn’t drag him out of here. There wasn’t much left to do but answer.
I walked into the kitchen and picked up Leo’s cell phone, hitting the talk button. This time I didn’t speak.
“April,” Vance said. “I can hear you breathing.”
I stopped my breath.
“That’s better. How is Jack doing?”
He knew about Jack. Of course he did. He’d called from his cell phone. If he sensed me at Jack’s address, and then in his car, he could have pulled his public records, maybe even private ones. “He’s sick,” I said. “What did you do to him?”
“If he breathed in the vapor, he’s dying,” Vance said. “I’m sorry.”
Like hell. He’d done this to him. I looked back at Jack on the couch. He was still breathing, if more quickly than normal. Could Vance be lying?
But Vance didn’t bluff. He didn’t need to.
“Shame, really,” Vance said. “But I couldn’t let him take you away from me.”
I couldn’t let Jack die. Vance stayed quiet on the other end, waiting for me to ask him for help. He had me cornered. One way or another, he always did.
“What can I do for him?” I asked.
“You could take him to the hospital,” Vance said. “I could meet you there.”
I’d go, even to meet Vance, if it meant I could save Jack. But it would be a trap. With Vance, everything was a trap.
Long Dark Night Page 9
