Bad Timing

by Nicky Peacock

  I closed my eyes. I felt him sob then tasted a chaste kiss on my lips. I heard the axe drag a little as he lifted it…

  All those daydreams that had fueled me, all those self-made promises of a simpler life; in the end, they had summed up to diddly squat. Philippe had ended up a cruel shell of his former self. I had seen my friend destroyed, I didn’t want the people I loved to see that happen to me.

  Centuries of life; so many missed opportunities. They say your whole life flashes in front of you when you die, mine didn’t. Instead only one thought found its way through all the others. ‘I can’t believe Nicholas is going to end me. That bastard got to kill me twice!’

  Chapter Ten

  I guess being dead was kind of like sleeping, because I had that dream again…Long green blades of grass tickled my skin and the sun soothed my limbs. I was lying down in a wide field, the sounds of nature all around me and the smell of wild flowers caressing my nose. Usually I’d smell blood; humans were everywhere and it was hard to go anywhere without their salty scent invading my calm thoughts. But not here, here right now I was comforted by nature, no hunger, no revenge, no need to protect. Here I was just Brianna. I took in a breath that filled my lungs. I felt both relaxed and energized. And although the contrast should have been uncomfortable, it wasn’t. This was death. Calm. Soft. Safe. I ran my hand over the grass. Perhaps this is where they buried me. My friends had hauled my infected carcass all the way to Ireland. I was home after all…

  A noise in the distance stirred me. I gently lifted my chest up to take a better look around. There was no pain. I saw a figure slowly moving through the trees. It was Philippe.

  “My dear,” he said reaching me. He bent down and pulled me to my feet.

  I lurched forward and hugged him. He smelled of fresh apples and woodland. I felt his arms around my body and the palm of his hand caress my back.

  “I’m so sorry I killed you,” I whimpered into his shoulder.

  He pulled back to stare into my eyes, “You didn’t kill me, you set me free. Being a zombie really wasn’t my thing, oh and the smell!”

  I laughed and he gave me one of those smiles that makes you want to widen it with another joke. I was just about to attempt one when I heard another voice.

  “Brit!” I stared in horror as my Jack came bounding out of the forest toward us. No, he couldn’t be dead, not yet, he’d barely lived as either human or vampire.

  He threw himself into me, forcing Philippe to move aside. I held him steady. “You died? It’s all my fault, I should have been there for you, protected you.”

  “I’m not dead!” he yelled at me, then grabbed my hand and pulled me through the trees to where he had come from. Philippe smiled and slowly followed behind us. Every now and then I would look back at him and I’d see a foreign sadness in his eyes.

  Jack dragged me into a clearing, where there was a long table filled with people. Everyone seemed to be dressed in flowing white outfits and laughing, clinking glasses, eating perfect, almost glossy food from banquet trays lining the center of the table.

  I saw Lyle and Tate, and also recognized many of the humans I’d saved along the way. They all cheered when they saw me. Everyone is dead! Good grief, was it all for nothing? Had this whole infinitely horrible journey been redundant?

  Lyle got up and waved at me. He looked just as I remembered, all freckles and sandy blond hair scooped into a messy pony tail. He’d been the same age as me when Philippe had turned him. An unfortunate duel had sped up Philippe’s immortal plans for his child somewhat. Tate looked solemn, but managed a half smile in my direction.

  I moved to speak with them, but was stopped by a young boy, the one I had saved from Ichabod and the truck turbulence. He lifted a wine glass and gave it to me, “You need to drink, Britannia. Please drink.”

  It had been centuries since I’d tasted wine. I put the surprisingly warm glass to my lips and took a swig. It tasted salty, like blood. It was thick and made me cough and splutter. Red splatters sprayed across the boy’s T-shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind. Ryan’s father Tony then stepped forward with a glass in his hand, then Laura. Each gave me a glass of rather delicious wine. And I drank them all, although each glass was hard to drain; the liquid was too thick to comfortably swallow, but the more I drank the easier it became. When I looked behind me, Philippe hadn’t walked to the table, but instead was lingering by the forest line. The more I drank the fainter he seemed to become.

  My head suddenly felt light and the world danced before my eyes. Smells came back, human and vampires. My vision clouded and the green of the surrounding trees became black with spinning red swirls. I fell down, but instead of my fingers finding the soft grass, they found cold stone. I blinked, shook my head and opened my eyes. As my vision adjusted back to darkness, I found I was in a small stone room, and the only color around me was coming from a blinking red light of a camera.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was alive. But what was I? I still felt like me. I looked normal, well as normal as I ever looked as a vampire. I wasn’t decaying or craving brains, innards or flesh; in fact I was fed, I wasn’t even craving blood. Just as my mind was rolling this new information round like a tumbleweed, the door opened and light blinded me.

  “How are you feeling, gorgeous?” asked the shape in the doorway, framed by light. If I hadn’t recognized the voice, I’d have said it was an angel.

  “Hello, Lyle,” I muttered.

  He walked into the room, leaving the door open behind him.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” Lyle smiled at me, then pulled me into a hug.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “You were infected, but we fixed you.”

  “We? We, who?”

  “Me and my super team of survivors.” He smiled at me then winked.

  “You cured me? Completely?”

  “Umm, well, not exactly.”

  “Holy crap! Do you have a cure? This whole zombie nightmare is officially over!” I jumped up and down like a fool, but stopped when I saw the sheepish look on Lyle’s face.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “There’s some people you need to meet.”

  Lyle took my hand and led me through a long twisted tunnel. We came out into a massive basement filled with wine bottles. It smelled old and new at the same time.

  “Your collection?” I motioned at the bottles.

  “I don’t drink…wine,” he replied, then chuckled at his predictable Dracula joke.

  We made our way up another level and then out into the ground floor of a commercial warehouse.

  “Are we in Ireland?”

  “Yes. I call it Lyle Land. Welcome.”

  “The rest of us call it Hope and Glory,” said a familiar woman in a white coat. I hadn’t even noticed where she’d appeared from. She smelt human. My eyes focused; it was Dr. Watts.

  “How do you do, Doctor?” I said.

  “The more poignant question, is how are you doing?” she asked, her eyebrow raised.

  I took a moment to really look at her. She looked good. That frightened glare in her eyes that had pretty much been there since I met her in the hospital, was replaced with the cold concern that only a doctor can show a patient.

  “I thought the good doctor here could help your assimilation.” Lyle smiled at me.

  I wasn’t keen on his choice of words: ‘assimilation’?

  Dr. Watts stared at me for a moment. “Please, follow me.”

  She led us into a cobbled together laboratory then flipped over a clean white board to reveal writing on the other side. “It would appear, Britannia, that you are immune to the zombie virus.”

  “Huh?”

  She pointed to almost illegible scribbles on the board, like they meant something crucial. I assumed the look on my face showed her that I knew nothing of medical science. I was a creature of magic after all.

  “Okay, the zombie virus was actually made from your blood. This means that, although you took
on some strange and nifty abilities back in Blackpool, you’re still a vampire, not a Vambie. You still drink blood, you could get bitten into oblivion but not turn. You’re immune, but you’re still you.”

  “You’re still you,” Lyle sang to me in his best Josh Groban impression. Josh.

  “Where is everyone? Are they safe?” I grabbed Lyle’s shoulders and shook him, hoping the answers I wanted would simply spill out.

  “Everyone is safe,” Lyle lied. I could tell.

  “Jack?”

  “He’s fine, he’s with Nicholas and Tate.” Truth.

  “Satan?”

  “The dog is fine.” Truth.

  “Josh?”

  “He’s okay.” Lie.

  “What happened to Josh?” I squared up to Lyle. Although broader and taller than me, he seemed to shrink ten inches. Dr. Watts muttered something and then began to move away anything breakable from around us.

  “Um, okay. Promise you won’t get mad.”

  “I promise nothing.”

  “He’s here.”

  “Not what I asked, Lyle.”

  “Look, don’t decapitate the messenger, okay?”

  “What happened?”

  “Nicholas said that Josh had been injured.”

  “What!” I spun and round-housed the white board. It crumped into a pile of shiny plastic.

  “Oh, it’s a good job I took a picture of that,” Dr. Watts said, pulling out her cell and checking she was right.

  “Where is Josh now?” I demanded.

  “I’ll show you, just keep that temper of yours under wraps for a bit, okay.” Lyle held up his hands and I nodded. It was a good job he couldn’t tell when I was lying.

  Chapter Twelve

  Josh was crouched in the corner of small room, his eyes closed. I edged toward him and put my hand out to gently rest on his shoulder. He whirled round quicker than I’d expected and I was suddenly crushed into his chest.

  “Brit, you’re alive.” His lips found mine and I felt a surge of urgency flow through his hard body. His hands ran through my hair, down to the small of my back. His tongue was soft and cold...too cold.

  I pushed him back and he staggered then grabbed at me again. This time hugging me, like a drunk with his last friend.

  “What happened to you?” I pulled up his face between my hands.

  “I’m like you now, we can be together.” He reached to kiss me again but I pulled away from him, “what’s wrong, Brit?”

  “Nicholas.”

  “You love him?” The look on Josh’s face was devastating.

  I hesitated. “You smell like him now.” Nicholas had turned him. Damn that conniving bastard.

  “Is that bad? I can’t help how I smell. Surely it’s better than how I was before, smelling like dinner.”

  “You don’t understand. I’ve spent my whole undead life hunting those who smell just like you. I vowed to kill his progeny, all of them.”

  Josh held his hand to his forehead and turned away from me, “He knew that, didn’t he? He planned this.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me he wanted to make everything right. That for us to be together I’d have to change.”

  “He told everyone else you’d been injured!” Red started to cloud my vision and Josh’s voice became distant and soft. I’m going to kill him now. His time is up. Nicholas was going feel the edge of my new anger severing his lying vocal cords, stopping the synapses of his evil brain. I was going to end him, end it all. Zombie invasion be damned.

  My fangs pierced my bottom lip. Blood dribbled over my skin and I felt it creep into my pores.

  “Britannia!” I focused to see Josh in front of me. He kissed the trail of blood along my chin, “please don’t kill him.”

  I closed my eyes and balled my fists. I punched Josh square in the face, knocking him across the room. I turned away from him and ran out of the room and back through the corridor. I passed Tate in a blur. He reached out to catch my elbow but I shook him free. He yelled something at me too. I didn’t hear it, or more accurately I simply didn’t listen. I bowled straight toward where I could smell Nicholas lurking. He was hiding like a dog that’d peed on the carpet.

  I saw him recognize the look on my face. I thought he’d smirk and stand his ground; but he didn’t. He widened his eyes then ran.

  The problem with a gated community is, you can only run so far. Nicholas found this out three minutes later as his escape was impeded by a giant wall. Desperately, he tried to scale it. He jumped and didn’t quite make it over and dripped down the bricks. He turned to see how far I was behind him; it gave me just enough time to catch up. I leapt at him, grabbed his shoulders and threw him back into the wall. I heard a bone break and saw blood streaming from his scalp.

  I dropped my hand to my belt to find I’d forgotten my axe. Never mind, I could still rip his head off with my bare hands.

  “Britannia, please stop and think.” He struggled to his feet and put his hands up in surrender.

  I grabbed one of his hands and ducked beneath his arm, twisting it behind his back. I pulled hard, dislocating his shoulder. He screamed and tried to yank himself free. I dropped to the ground and swiped my leg out, knocking him over. I stomped on his stomach, winding him long enough to forward roll over him and enclose him in a headlock. I started to squeeze.

  “Please...” he gasped.

  I pulled at his head, my legs curling round his body, pulling in the opposite direction.

  “No!” Tate screamed at me. I stared blankly up at him, but kept pulling. Was that another bone cracking?

  “Brit, honey you need to stop,” Tate whispered. He crouched in front of me, his face barely containing his horror.

  “No, Tate, let’s see where she’s going with this.” Lyle, hands on hips, was now watching too.

  “Lyle, stop it.” Tate scolded his vampire brother without even taking his eyes off me.

  “Oh, let her kill him. She’s been through a lot recently, and she deserves to.”

  “Shut up, you’re not helping.”

  “Oh, come on Tate. He’s a royal bastard, we all know it. What he did to her. What he continues to do to her. This,” he pointed at me as I continued yanking off Nicholas’s head, “is kind of therapy.”

  “Honey,” Tate whispered. He put his hands over my arms.

  “In your own time,” Nicholas managed to push out.

  “This isn’t about you.” Tate smiled at me. “It’s all right. Please, he’s not worth it. For me.”

  My vision blurred tears and I released Nicholas, who scrambled to his feet then dramatically checked his head was still attached

  “You,” Lyle looked at Nicholas, “you owe Tate your life. If it had been up to me I’d have let her rip your head off and then throw you over the wall for the zombies.”

  I could feel my whole body shaking. A violent wave still threatened to crash over me at any moment and I didn’t want Tate and Lyle to get washed away in it.

  Tate reached out to touch me. I couldn’t hurt him, not Tate. I scrambled out of his reach then ran back at the wall. I leapt over it, easily clearing the top, and found myself on the other side circled by a horde of hungry hands headed by an unknown Vambie. He had a flop of blood smeared platinum blonde hair and a ring through his nose. “My, what do we have here?” he smirked.

  I didn’t know this vampire from Adam, but he must have been damn unlucky to piss off vampire/zombie-crazed me right at this moment. He didn’t stand a chance. I snarled at him and his smile slipped off his face. He turned to run, but I quickly jumped onto his back and rode him down to the ground.

  “Attack her!” He yelled at his zombies. Forty zombies descended on me and I rolled sideways from out of their grasps. I flipped upright and marched into them. I moved fast. I ripped out all the flesh munchers’ spines and dropped them into a sickly pile on the ground. My image was reflected back in the glassy wide eyes of the white haired Vambie. I was blood drenched, like Carr
ie at her Prom.

  “Okay, we got off on the wrong foot.” He put his hands up and started to back away from me.

  I closed the distance between us and lunged at him. I clutched his face in my palms and twisted till an ugly popping sound announced his demise. Chunky decayed vampire parts dripped down all over me.

  Finally I stood, panting, covered in bad blood. I heard a clapping sound. If I’d have looked up to see Nicholas I’d have launched myself back at him, but it was Lyle. He was stood astride the top of his wall.

  “God damn!” he yelled at me.

  I stared at him for a moment, trying to control my ragged, pointless breaths.

  “You know Brit, I was getting really worried about ol’ Billy Undead Idol,” he said pointing at the Vambie corpse. “He’d been hanging about for a while, looking for a crack in the wall to worm his way through; but you just handled him.”

  I looked down at the fresh corpse. “Billy Idol is cuter.”

  Lyle grinned at me, “It’s a nice day for an ass-kicking!” he sang whilst doing the best air-guitar I’d seen in two decades.

  A smile invaded my lips and I rolled my eyes.

  In one swift movement Lyle dropped down to sit, his legs dangling off the wall like a child on a high chair. He patted the space next to him. I leapt from my latest battlefield and landed in the spot he’d indicated. He recoiled a little at my sudden appearance then shook it off.

  “I’m so glad you decided not to kill me. I know you were told to, Brit.” You’d be forgiven for thinking he was referring to before, but his declaration was much older than that.

  The Elders had told me to get rid of Lyle many years ago. It was those orders that had stopped my employment with them. I wasn’t aware that he had known my decision, though.

  “If your attack on Nicholas just then was anything to go by, I’d have been in serious trouble,” he laughed nervously. The nerves dropped away when he saw me smiling at him. “I never did like him. If it had been up to me, I’d have let you pop his head clean off. I mean just that bloodshot look in his petrified eyes was hilarious. But you know Tate.”