I boarded with an elderly couple who’d lost their live-in nurse and declared that my medical experience was good enough for them.
It was four months later when we heard the first report of a yellow sun turning into a vampire.
No one panicked. The story came from California, which might only have been across the country but was now as foreign to us as Venezuela had been. The reports kept coming though. Yellow suns waking in the night and murdering their families. Then rumors from those who worked in the nearest black-star facility, that they’d had only a few occurrences of the dormant vampires turning. Finally, the horrible admission that the testing had failed, that the stars seemed to indicate only a slightly higher likelihood of turning.
That’s when the world exploded, like a powder keg that’d been kept tamped down by reassurances and faith. People had been willing to trust the government, because it seemed they were honestly trying their best. And you know what? I think they were. As much as my early life had taught me to trust no one, to question every motive, I look back and I think the authorities really did try. They simply failed, and then everyone turned on them.
I lived with the elderly couple for almost a year before their daughter came and kicked me out. She said I was taking advantage of them, pretending to be a nurse without credentials. The fact that her town had been taken over by militants had nothing to do with her decision to move home. No, her parents—whom she’d not contacted in years—needed her, so she’d be their nurse now.
The old couple argued. They cried. They begged me to stay. Their daughter put a gun in my face and told me to leave.
A month later, after living with some former classmates in a bombed-out building, I went back to try to check up on the old couple. I heard the daughter had turned. She’d killed her parents. Killed their neighbors too, because these days, no one was watching. Unless someone reported them, the vampires just kept killing, night after night. Some committed suicide. Some surrendered. Some ran off into the wilderness, hoping to survive where they’d be a danger to no one. The old couple’s daughter just kept living in their house while her parents’ bodies rotted and a growing swath of neighbors died.
I thought about that a lot. The choices we made. What it said about us. What I’d do if I woke covered in blood. I decided if that happened I’d head for the wilderness. Try to survive and wait for a cure. Or just survive, because by that point, no one really expected a cure. No one even knew if the government was still trying. Or if there still was a government.
I spent the next year on the streets, sometimes with others, but increasingly alone. I was lucky—none of my companions turned on me in the night. I hadn’t even seen a vampire. That wasn’t unusual. Unless you spotted one being dragged from a house to be murdered in the streets, you didn’t see them. And even those who were hauled into the street? Well, sometimes they weren’t vampires at all. No one asked for proof. If you wanted shelter, you could cut yourself, smear the blood on some poor soul, drag him out, let the mob take care of him, and move into his house. Two of the groups I was with discussed doing exactly that. I left both before that thought turned into action.
I’d been walking for six months. That was really all there was left to do: walk. Wander from place to place, seeking shelter where you could find it. The cities and towns weren’t safe, as people reverted to their most basic animal selves, concerned only with finding a place to spend the night and food to get them through the day.
It was better in the countryside. No one could be trusted for long, but that was the curse of the vampirism. That kindly old woman who offered you a warm bed might rise in the night, kill you, and go right on being sweet and gentle when she woke up. Until she saw the blood.
In the country, there were plenty of empty homes to sleep in and flora and fauna to eat. I met a guy who taught me to trap and dress game. I returned the favor with sex. It wasn’t a hardship. He didn’t demand it, and in another life, it might even have turned into something more. It lasted six weeks. We would meet at our designated place to spend the day together, walking and hunting, and talking and having sex. Then we’d separate to our secret spots for the night, for safety. One morning, he didn’t show up. I went back twice before I accepted he was gone. Maybe he turned, or he met someone who had. Or maybe someone had fancied his bow and his knife and his combat boots and murdered him for them. He was gone, and I grieved for him more than I’d done for anyone since Katie. Then I picked up and moved on. It was all you could do.
I found a house a few days after that. Not just any house—there were plenty of those. The trick was to find exactly the right one, hidden from the road, so you wouldn’t need to worry about vampires or fellow squatters. Even better if it was a nice house. “Nice” meant something different these days, as in not ransacked, not vandalized, not bloodied. The last was the hardest criterion to fill. There’d been so many deaths that after a point, no one bothered cleaning up the mess. You’d find drained bodies left in beds, lumps of desiccated flesh and tattered cloth. But other times, you’d just find smears of old blood on the sheets and on the floor, where some squatter before you had been too tired to find other lodgings and simply dragged the rotting corpses to the basement and settled in.
But that house? It was damned near perfect. Out in the middle of nowhere, hidden by trees, so clean it seemed the family had left voluntarily and no one had found it since. The pantry was stuffed with canned and dry goods, as if they’d stocked up when things started going bad.
I lived there for three weeks. Read half the books in the house. Even taught myself to use the loom in the sitting room. Damned near paradise. But one day I must have been sloppy, let someone see me return from hunting. I woke with a knife at my throat and a man on top of me. There was a moment, looking up at that filthy, bearded face, when I thought, Just don’t fight. Let him have what he wanted and let him leave. Just lie still and take it and he’d go and I’d have my house back.
That’s when I saw the others. Three of them, surrounding the bed, waiting their turn. And it was as if a pair of scales in my head tipped. I fought then. It didn’t do any good, and deep inside, I knew it wouldn’t. I don’t even think I was fighting to escape. I was just fighting to say, I object, and in the end, lying there, bloodied and beaten, I took comfort in that, when every part of me screamed in pain. I fought back. No matter what had ultimately happened, I’d fought back.
It was a week before the leader—Ray—decided he’d broken me and I could be allowed out of that room. It took another week to build their confidence to the point where they left me alone long enough for me to escape that place, because of course they hadn’t broken me. As a child, I’d been inoculated against far more than mumps and measles. They did what they would do, and I acted my part: the cowed victim who comes to love the hand raised against her. An old role that I reprised easily.
Which is not to say that those two weeks didn’t leave their mark, and not simply physical ones. But I survived, and not for one moment did I consider not surviving, consider taking Katie’s way out. I respected her choice, but it was not mine. It never would be.
As I walked along a deserted country road a day after my escape, I remembered an old TV show about a zombie apocalypse. I’d been too young to watch it, but since those hours in front of the TV were the best times I had with my family, I took them, even if it meant watching something that gave me nightmares.
That show had endless scenes just like this one, a lost soul trudging along an empty road. While I didn’t need to worry about the undead lurching from the ditches, at least in that world you knew who the monsters were. In ours, the existence of vampires was almost inconsequential. In the last year, I’d had a gun to my head twice, a knife to my throat three times, and been beaten and raped repeatedly. And I had yet to meet an actual vampire.
When I heard the little girl singing, I thought I was imagining it. Any parent worth the title had taken their children and fled long ago. There were fortified communit
ies of families run by the last vestiges of the military, sanctuaries you couldn’t enter unless you had a kid. That’s another reason parents kept them hidden—so no one stole their children to gain entry.
But this really was a girl. No more than eight or nine, she sang as she picked wild strawberries along the road. The woman with her took off her wide-brimmed straw hat and waved it, calling “Hello!” and I cautiously approached.
“You’re alone,” the woman said. She was about thirty. Not much older than me, I reflected.
I shook my head. “I have friends. They’re—”
“If you’re not alone, you should be,” she said, waving at my black eye and split lip.
I said nothing.
“Do you need a place to stay?” she asked. “Somewhere safe?”
“No, I—”
“I can offer you a room and a properly cooked meal.” The woman managed a tired smile. “I was an apprentice chef once upon a time, and I haven’t quite lost the touch.”
“Why?” I asked.
She frowned. “Why do I still cook?”
“Why give me a bed and a meal?”
She shrugged. “Because I can. I have beds and I have food, and as much as I’d love to share them with whoever comes along this road, most times I grab my daughter and hide in the ditch until they pass.”
“And I’m different?”
“Aren’t you?”
The little girl ran over and held out a handful of strawberries. I took one and she grinned up at me. “We have Scrabble.”
“Do you?” I said.
“And Monopoly. But I like Scrabble better.”
“So do I,” I said, and followed her to the strawberry patch to continue picking.
If I thought the last house was heaven, that only proves how low my standards had fallen. With this one, even before the vampires, I’d have been both charmed and impressed. And maybe a little envious of the girl who got to grow up in this cozy sanctuary, like something from an old-timey English novel, the ones where children lived charmed lives in the countryside, spending their days with bosom friends and loyal dogs and kindly grown-ups, getting into trouble that really wasn’t trouble at all.
The house itself was as hidden by trees as the one I’d left. The woman had seeded the lane with weeds and rubble, so it looked as if nothing lay at the other end. There was a greenhouse filled with vegetables, fruit trees in the yard, a chicken coop, even goats for milk. The pantry was overflowing with home-canned goods.
“Keeps me busy,” the woman said as she took out a jar of peaches for afternoon tea.
For dinner, we had a meal beyond any I’d dared dream of in years. Then we played board games until the little girl was too tired to continue. After that, her mother and I read for an hour or so. Finally, we headed off to bed, and I was shown how to lock myself in. There were two dead bolts, one fastened on either side of the door. As to be expected these days.
I said good night. Then I went inside, turned my lock, and climbed into bed.
I lay there, in that unbelievably comfortable bed, with sheets that smelled of lemons and fresh air. I lay, and I waited. Hours later, when I heard footsteps in the hall, I closed my eyes.
The woman rapped softly on my door and whispered, “Are you awake?”
I didn’t answer. She carefully unbolted the lock on her side. Then came a rattle as she used something to pop mine. The door opened. Eyes shut, I waited until I heard breathing beside my bed. When I pinpointed the sound, I leaped.
I caught the woman by the throat, both of us flying to the floor. I saw a blur of motion and heard a muffled snarl and turned to see the little girl with a canvas sack over her head. Her mother swung at me. I ducked the blow and slammed her against the wall. The girl was snarling and fighting against the sack. As I pinned her mother, the girl got free of the bag.
The child’s eyes didn’t glow red. Her fingers weren’t twisted into talons. Her canines weren’t an inch long and sharpened. She looked exactly like the girl I’d just played Scrabble with for two hours. But the look in her eyes told me I’d guessed right. Yes, I’d hoped it was still possible for a stranger to be kind to me, to take me in and feed me and give me shelter because we were all in this hell together. I’d taken the chance, because I still dared to hope. But I’d known better.
If I was surprised at all, it was because I’d presumed the mother was the vampire, and she’d been locking her daughter in each night to keep her safe. But this made sense.
“She’s my daughter,” the woman said. “All I have left.”
I nodded. I understood. I really did. In her place, maybe I’d have done the same, as much as I’d like to think I wouldn’t.
I looked at the little girl. Then I threw her mother at her. The woman screamed and tried to scramble away. The girl pounced.
It was not over quickly. I’d heard stories of how the vampires killed. The rumor was they paralyzed their victims with a bite. But the girl kept biting and her mother kept struggling, at first only saying the girl’s name and fighting to control her. Then came the panic, the kicking and screaming and punching, any thought of harming her child consumed by her own survival instinct. The girl bit her mother, over and over, blood spurting and spraying, until finally the woman’s struggles faded, and the girl began to gorge on the blood while her mother lay there, still alive, still jerking, eyes wide, life slowly draining from them.
I walked out of the guest room and locked the door behind me.
The next morning, I hit the road, back the way I’d come. I walked all morning with the little girl skipping beside me, then racing off to pick wildflowers and strawberries. She’d woken in her own room, her nightgown and face clean.
I’d woken her at dawn, seemingly panicked because I couldn’t find her mother. Something must have happened, and we had to go find her.
The girl followed without question. Now she walked without question. I’d told her that her mother had vanished, and she still skipped and sang and gathered flowers. Proving maybe a little part of her was still that monster after all.
At nightfall we reached my old sanctuary, the horror I’d escaped two days ago. I led her right up to the porch and rang the bell.
One of the guys answered. Seeing me, he stumbled back, as if a vengeful spirit stood on the porch.
“I want to see Ray,” I said.
He looked at the little girl. “Wha . . . ?”
“I want to see—”
“Hey, girlie.” Ray appeared from the depths of the dark hall.
“I want to come back,” I said.
He threw back his head and laughed. “Realized it’s not so bad, compared to what’s out there, huh?”
“I brought a gift,” I said. “My apology for leaving.”
That’s when he saw the girl. He blinked.
“You can use her to get into a refugee camp,” I said. “We’ll say we’re her parents, and the guys are your brothers.”
“Huh.” He thought for a moment, but it didn’t take long before he smiled. “Not bad, girlie. Not bad at all.”
“I just want one thing,” I said.
He chuckled. “Of course you do. Gotta be a catch.”
“I’m with you,” I said. “Just you. None of the others.”
The smile broadened to a grin. “You like me the best, huh? Sure, okay. I accept your condition and your apology . . . and your gift. Come on in.”
After midnight, I slipped from under Ray’s arm and crept out. I tiptoed down the hall, unlocking doors as I went. It was an old house, the interior locks easily picked. The last one I opened was the little girl’s. Then I continued along the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door to begin the long walk back to the other house, my new home.
I got as far as the road before I heard the first scream. I smiled and kept walking.
MAY THE END BE GOOD
TIM LEBBON
Things went ever from bad to worse.
When God wills, may the end be good.
/> —UNKNOWN MONK, WORCESTER, ENGLAND, 1067
As dawn broke, it started snowing again, and Winfrid saw a body hanging from a tree.
He paused downhill from the grisly display, catching his breath and shrugging his habit and sheepskin in tighter. Nothing could hold back the shivers. They were mostly from the cold, but over the last ten days he had seen things that set a terror deep in his bones. Fear of God he had, as did any monk; a complex, rich emotion that seemed to both nurture and starve. But this fear was something new. He had yet to define it fully.
Perhaps the body in the tree would feed him another clue.
As he crunched through the freshly fallen snow, softly layered over the previous week’s falls, several birds took flight from the corpse. A rook he expected, but some of the smaller creatures—finches, a robin, several sparrows—were a surprise. With fields of crops burned, villages put to the torch, and the dead more numerous than ever before, perhaps these previously cautious birds were taking whatever they could get.
“Even the animals are against us,” he muttered as he moved cautiously uphill. He didn’t truly believe that, because the animals served only themselves. But if they had turned, it would have been the fault of the French. This brutality, this scourging of the land, was all their doing. William the Bastard and his mounted armies had not stopped when they defeated the English uprising in the north. They had carried on, shifting their attention from soldiers to farmers, peasants scraping a living from the land. The cattle fell beneath the sword first, then homes were put to the flame. Anyone who objected received the same—sword, flame, or sometimes both.
Winfrid had seen a child speared onto the side of a burning home. A man split from throat to crotch and seeded with the torched remnants of his stored harvest. Women tortured and raped, left as barren as the land. Whole villages destroyed, populations massacred or left to fend for themselves from a blasted landscape where nothing would grow, no livestock remained alive, and no building was left standing.
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