Blood Dawn (Blood Trilogy Book 3)

by Jason Bovberg

  “There,” says Felicia, startling everyone in the Hummer. Joel jerks the wheel.

  “Where?” Rachel asks, straightening up.

  But Felicia is already gesturing to the northbound lanes. There’s a big station wagon there, sandwiched between a silver Subaru WRX and a green, late-model BMW sedan. Rachel isn’t sure she would have noticed the faint, telltale red glow unless Felicia had said something, but now she can see it in the darkness. It’s throbbing, barely, in time with the red throb from the heavens.

  Joel crosses the center line and moves toward the station wagon. The high headlamps light up the station wagon like the sun, and shortly it’s clear there’s a body slumped in the driver’s seat. The Hummer comes to a jolting stop. Joel signals through his open window for Pete to fall in line.

  “Felicia, are you—” Joel begins, but Rachel stops him.

  Felicia appears catatonic in her seat, her eyes nearly rolled up in their sockets. She is fainting away.

  Rachel touches the young woman’s leg—no response. “Wake up, Felicia! What’s wrong?” She touches her face as her head lolls gently against the seat. “She’s unconscious.”

  “We’ll have to use the blood,” Joel says, frustrated.

  One aspect of his plan is falling apart. Felicia’s energy is still bottomed-out.

  Behind them, Pete maneuvers his truck so that its headlamps face due north, in the direction of any potential followers. The light disappears in the far distance—no bodies have tracked them. Rachel can’t see any movement of any kind.

  “Can we reach it?” Scott asks, leaning forward from the back.

  “I think so, if we approach from the front. See that gap?”

  “Yep.”

  “Careful everybody,” he says. “Scott, you follow me in with the blood, all right?”

  “What if that damn thing explodes?”

  “I don’t think it will.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “Remember, the first woman didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Frankly, I think it’s because she was on the verge of death. These bodies are stuck. No energy, no food or water of any kind. They’re dying. Weak.”

  “But to be clear—”

  “Right, take all precautions. Don’t leave yourself in plain sight. Don’t give it an opportunity.”

  “Let’s do it then.”

  “All right, we’ll do this quick and easy.”

  The Hummer idling roughly, Joel and Scott open their doors and jump down to the asphalt. Rachel sees Pete racing over from the truck. Behind her, she can make out the twins poking their weapons out their respective windows, watching the homes and yards around them for any movement. These battle-tested young women are a far cry from the scared, whining teens she remembers picking up from the side of the road less than a week ago. They’re warriors.

  The three men are a study of efficiency, impressing Rachel with their speed and strategy—particularly considering Joel and Scott were practically mortal enemies not forty-eight hours ago. Joel carefully peers into the interior while Scott shines his flashlight in, illuminating areas where the Hummer’s headlamps can’t reach. Immediately, Joel backs away and gives a thumbs up. Then he points to the passenger side of the vehicle. The men hustle around. Joel grabs the door handle and gives it a try. He shakes his head, moves to the rear door, tries the handle. No dice. He mimics smashing the window, and the other two men give a nod in the darkness.

  Kayla has crawled away from tending to Felicia to the center console to watch. Rachel can hear the girl’s breathing—rapid, a bit fearful.

  Rachel’s eyes keep flicking from home to home, from vehicle to vehicle, watching for movement. There are perhaps thirty cars and trucks along this section of Taft Hill, angled into lawns, crushed against the facades of homes, and one is even overturned on its back—a red Toyota whose passenger door is flung open, its driver long gone. But behind any of those vehicles might be bodies poised to attack. In the darkness, she can’t see the telltale glow, but that doesn’t mean anything. It could be hidden behind—

  Crash!

  Joel has smashed the passenger-side window and is scrabbling for the door lock. In moments he has opened the door and swung it open. Rachel can’t see much from her vantage point, but she watches the men huddle there, yanking at something. Then she realizes that they have pulled the seat forward to reach into the back seats, which is where the body must be. Finally, Scott rears back and fires his tranq rifle, and there’s a flurry of activity. The vehicle rocks and jolts. The men wait for the blood’s effect, reaching in to wrestle with the newly animated body. Then Rachel hears the distinct gasp—that hoarse, alien groan, almost as if the body is fighting to preserve its invader and not give way to humanity’s return.

  Kayla watches, fascinated and horrified.

  “It worked,” she says softly.

  “Yeah.”

  Rachel feels movement behind Kayla and glances over at Felicia, who has awakened abruptly, her back arching against the seat. The young woman’s eyes are now wide open, staring in the direction of the three men at the car.

  “Hey!” Rachel calls. “What’s the matter?”

  Felicia doesn’t register the question.

  “She knows what’s happening,” Kayla says. “She can feel it.”

  Felicia appears to be hyperventilating, but gradually it slows down.

  The men outside are still struggling with the new body, but then the struggle is over, and Rachel assumes the body has gone unconscious. At the same moment, Felicia falls back to her seat and lets out a tumultuous sigh.

  “Her name—is—Linda,” she says in a clipped tone, stunned. “She couldn’t get out, either. She was trapped. She—she—” She stops for a moment, hyperventilating. “So much pain.” She brings her hands to her ears as if to shut out the sounds of the woman gasping, but Rachel is sure the worst sounds are coming from within. Such a strange thing.

  The men begin dragging the body toward the truck, directly in front of the idling Hummer, and that’s when Zoe begins shouting.

  “Over there!”

  Zoe is pointing north, to Rachel’s left, where two bodies are lurching toward them, hideous fleshy crabs, their glows pinpointed at their stretched throats. There are two others behind them, but they are more tentative—at least, that’s Rachel’s first thought. More likely, they’re injured or hobbled in some way.

  The men drop the body, which falls limp on the asphalt. Rachel can see the woman now, dark-haired, gaunt, agonized in unconsciousness, her limbs angled in wrong directions.

  Thirty feet away, the animated bodies become vivid in the light of the truck’s headlamps, ghastly and quick now. They’ve launched into a full-on assault. How have they become so fast? It’s as if one more day has made them all too comfortable inside their human shells. Rachel feels herself leaning heavily backward into her seat.

  “Kayla,” she says automatically, protectively, and she reaches back for the girl’s hand. “Don’t watch.”

  Kayla takes her hand but makes no sound.

  Joel’s shotgun booms, and the body in front—that of a housewife, cotton gown mostly shredded around her naked body, bloody sap pasted down her long neck, her mouth gaping but destroyed—blooms into a flower of blood, spraying the front of the Hummer and dotting the asphalt with crimson chunks. The corpse falls away in a heap.

  Pete fires his AR-15 madly at the second body, which has closed half the distance.

  “Fuck you!” the big man yells, rushing forward into the fray. “Drop, you motherfucker!”

  The bullets hit their target, but they fail to slow the body enough. Pete leaps forward, defiantly, still firing, rage across his features.

  “Pete!” Joel yells, grabbing at the big man’s shirt. “PETE!”

  “Oh no,” Rachel whispers.

  “Get down,” Felicia says, almost matter-of-factly.

  Rachel presses herself down into her seat, ducking and shutting her eyes. �
�Get down!” she repeats, loud, and feels Kayla drop behind her.

  There’s a hideous boom—fleshy, muffled—and the windshield blows in with the force of a grenade. Rachel feels coated with wet warmth.

  “Shit!” Her ears are muffled again, and she’s yelling. “Are you okay!? Kayla, are you okay? Felicia!?”

  She works her jaw, hearing nothing. She risks a look back. Felicia and Kayla are there, aware and awake, crouched on the seat. Felicia’s expression is one of extreme distress.

  “Rachel!” Kayla screeches. “Your hair!”

  Rachel reaches up to touch her hair and finds it slick with blood. It’s not her own. She feels no wound.

  She sits up, retches, peers carefully through the open maw of the destroyed windshield. The safety glass is melted in like a gooey web, and the hood beyond it is dark with blood and gore. A beefy dismembered arm rests squarely in the middle of the big yellow expanse, and Rachel is sure it’s Pete’s. She covers her mouth with a trembling hand.

  “Fucking hell!” Joel shouts, rising into view from their right. “Goddammit!”

  He reaches up and angrily swipes the dismembered arm from the hood.

  “What happened?” Rachel calls, her eyes on the bodies—thirty feet away—that still hesitate on the periphery of the headlamps’ light.

  “Scott?” Joel calls. “You okay?”

  “I think so,” comes Scott’s miserable voice.

  “What happened?” Rachel says again, louder.

  “Pete is dead,” Joel says.

  “No!” cry the twins in ragged chorus.

  “We have to leave,” Felicia says from behind her.

  Rachel is about to repeat the words to the two men outside, but she’s interrupted by the clamor of Chloe and Zoe exiting the truck and appearing brightly ahead of her in the Hummer’s light. Both of them have readied their weapons and are staring down the ratcheted-back bodies, which have stuttered to a stop.

  They’re watching the girls, Rachel marvels. They’re judging the threat.

  Collective memory.

  Of course this makes sense, considering what Rachel has seen up to now. But she wonders if this is evidence of a general fear of the survivors, or a fear of the weapons—more specifically, the blood—or a combination of everything, not to mention the presence of Felicia and the other bodies that have changed back.

  Joel is still cursing, but Rachel sees that he has noticed the showdown in front of the Hummer.

  “Let’s go, Scott, now! Let’s get this body in the truck. Can you handle it?”

  Wordlessly, Scott lifts the woman by the shoulders and follows Joel past the Hummer and toward Pete’s truck. They toss the body into the back somewhat unceremoniously, then scramble back for the Hummer.

  “Help!” Zoe calls out, and Rachel sees other bodies massing at the north end of the headlamps’ light.

  “Oh shit,” Joel says, “let’s go.” He’s grabbing at the twins’ arms.

  They whip around to face him, and Rachel sees that their faces are wet and red with savage tears.

  The bodies aren’t moving. Even in growing numbers, they exhibit fear. They’re still tentative.

  Joel yells something at Scott, and Scott nods, corraling the twins back to the truck, and the three of them climb in. The Hummer’s door swings heavily open, and Joel shoves himself inside, cursing repeatedly. He hands his weapon over to Rachel, and she takes it wordlessly. He shoves the vehicle into gear, and they lurch forward.

  “Take this, you asshole!” he cries, intending to send the closest bodies under their wheels.

  “Joel, don’t!”

  “Oh, I’ve heard enough of that!” Joel yells. “They aren’t human!”

  “No, not that—you saw what they did!” she responds loudly. “They get under us, they might detonate!”

  Joel breaks and pivots the Hummer away from the growing horde, teeth gnashing. “Shit!” he brays, acknowledging that she’s right.

  Rachel watches the gathering bodies through the melted windshield. They have backed away from the Hummer—fearful of the occupant in the rear-left seat?—but they haven’t fled, either.

  The sight takes her breath away. There are perhaps twenty bodies out there now, all bent back upon themselves like huge, fleshy insects. For the first time, the word swarm occurs to her—not only because of the insect connotation but more because of how quickly the bodies massed, like wasps to a threat. She got a similar sense during the library attack, but that was different. During that siege, the monsters attacked as one strategic force, the bodies interlocked and attacking relentlessly as if they comprised a single, malevolent entity. Now, they’re individuals, tentative and even fearful, but still defined by that collective consciousness.

  “Holy shit,” Joel whispers.

  “Turn around and get us out of here,” she says.

  “Workin’ on it, sweetheart,” he says, tearing his own gaze away from the bodies.

  Scott maneuvers the truck into a U-turn, beginning to turn south again, and the vehicle’s lights flash across more tentative monsters, poised and watching. They’re keeping their distance, but they’re watching.

  Joel cranks the Hummer’s wheel then, backing away from the cluster of vehicles and straightening up to follow Scott and the twins. He punches the gas, and Rachel watches behind them as the bodies simply remain standing in the middle of the street, watching after them as if curious.

  “Jesus Christ,” Joel says, barely hiding the sneer from his trembling mouth.

  CHAPTER 21

  Five minutes later, they’re approaching Elizabeth Street, and they can no longer see the bodies behind them. Although some began to give uneasy chase, most appeared to recede back into the night as the survivors pulled away.

  The radio squawks.

  “Joel, are you there?” comes Scott’s tinny voice, breaking up slightly over the speaker. “Have we had enough? I’m—uhm—asking that honestly. We don’t seem to be quite as safe as you thought we’d be, do we?” The radio cuts out briefly. “Over.”

  Joel stares at the handset resting on the dash, then finally picks it up and stabs the transmitter button. “Look, obviously—obviously they strike when we’re vulnerable, when we’re away from the vehicles. Hold on, let me think.”

  He releases the button. Rachel can see that his hands are shaking, and he’s slightly slumped over the wheel. A far cry from the memory of him commanding a bloody war zone inside the library, racing down corridors while firing his rifle mercilessly at the windows, where gasping corpses were slithering through melted glass. That memory shifts to her dad, surging forward into the mass of bodies, vomiting and injecting blood wherever his own body could reach, and she angrily shakes it away.

  “They came out of nowhere,” Joel says to her now.

  “Which they’ll probably do whenever we stop.”

  Rachel can sense his growing frustration. He knows this nighttime journey isn’t what he anticipated—but she also knows he left a lot to chance when he started.

  He sighs loudly through his teeth.

  “You didn’t expect them to attack?” Rachel asks him.

  “Well, you saw how they were, back there on your street.”

  “We let you get too far from the truck, from Felicia,” Rachel says. “Don’t you think?”

  Joel considers that. “I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know.”

  Rachel watches Joel for a moment, then takes the radio into her hand. “Scott, we’re going ahead with the plan. We do have to be more careful about leaving the safety of the vehicles. They’re still scared of us, we have to remember that. Over.”

  A pause. Rachel glances back at Felicia, who nods at her almost imperceptibly. There’s something different about the woman’s eyes now, she realizes. It’s as if Felicia can communicate through them, through the power of non-verbal suggestion. Rachel feels an urging there, almost as if Felicia is swaying her—Rachel’s—actions. It’s subtle, but it’s undeniable. Rachel watches her curiously. />
  “Roger that.” Scott’s voice sounds resigned, with only a slight edge to it. “Out.”

  Rachel drops the radio on the dash, then turns fully to check on Kayla. The girl has curled into a ball directly behind Rachel and has fallen into a kind of desperate, shock-induced sleep. Rachel extends her arm to delicately brush the hair from her face and pet her cheek.

  Next to the girl, Felicia has leaned forward to stare through the broken windshield at the rattling truck, which Scott is winding laboriously around collisions.

  “I need to be with them.” Felicia’s voice is so soft, Rachel barely registers the words.

  “What?”

  “I can help them,” she says. “And—”

  Her face twists into some kind of understanding. There are tears there, but then again, there have been tears in her eyes since she re-woke to humanity.

  “And what?” Joel says.

  “I can help better if … if we’re all together.”

  “Help those things or help us?” Joel asks, knee-jerk.

  Felicia doesn’t respond to that, merely stares at the truck. Rachel can’t see the bodies in the flatbed, but she knows they’re there, and she also knows they’re suffering unimaginably.

  Rachel asks, “Are you sure?”

  “I need to be there.”

  “Joel, can we make it happen?”

  “But we need her in here, Rachel. You just suggested we’re safer with her in here. We drop her in that truck, and we—”

  “Then they tailgate us like crazy, and we stay as close to Felicia as we can.” She studies Felicia’s face. “She can nurse them to help faster, and that way they’re more of an asset to us.”

  Joel gives her a glance, then flashes his lights at Scott ahead of them. Scott’s brake lights appear immediately, and Joel pulls to the right of the truck. Rachel glances all around, watching the lawns and homes that line Taft Hill. She can see the King Soopers grocery store up on the right and imagines all the water and food inside. No chance to run in and grab anything. Not now. There’s a supply in the back of the Hummer, but it won’t last.

  Joel leans out his window and talks to the twins. Rachel can see the bottom of Scott’s face as he scoots over to see Joel.