Blood Run – The Complete Trilogy – First Promise, Two Riders, Last Chance

by Dougherty, Christine

  “Come on, come on, let’s–” Miller stopped abruptly, her eyes widening. She dropped to her knee and rolled once, putting herself in the middle of the hall. As the door began to close, Lu appeared to hold it open.

  Miller gained her knees and brought up the crossbow. Promise paused, shaking, the vials chattering like an extension of her strung nerves. She was aiming it right at her! Before she could gasp out a ‘no!’, the arrow sliced the air next to her ear, and then a gibbering hiss came from behind her. Promise turned to look just as the vampire–an old one: dirty, thin, and used-looking, not recently changed–dropped to her knees, screeching as her fingers scrabbled madly at the inch and a half of arrow that stuck out just over her left breast. Then it pitched forward, a thick rope of black blood shooting across the hall and landing with a wet slap.

  “Go, go, go!” Lu said, his arm pinwheeling, motioning them into the office. Evans brushed past him, but Promise stood, transfixed, her eyes wide with horror. Another vampire…this one recently changed…was racing down the hall toward them. Its eyes were red, and it screamed and wailed with triumphant rage as it closed on her.

  Miller grabbed Promise’s shoulder and shoved roughly. “Move, Promise! Move your ass!” The slim vials of cure rattled sharply; that more than the shove woke Promise from her paralysis. She and Miller tumbled into the office, and Lu shoved the door closed behind them. He dropped a series of boards into place, securing it. The vampire battered itself against the door, squealing and hissing in frustration, but the door was solid and heavy; it rattled in its frame, but didn’t give.

  “It will go away when it realizes it can’t get in here,” Lu said. Still, he kept an eye on the shaking door. A Coleman in the corner provided a steady glow. The soft light was such a change from the nightmare emergency red that filled the rest of the building that Promise felt instantly more at ease. She took a deep, steadying breath.

  The room was a small, utilitarian office, about ten by ten, and a desk had been shoved against the back wall. Evans dropped Doctor Edwards gently onto the desk. Edwards groaned. “That was…a rough trip,” he said. “Not my recommended…mode of transport.”

  Evans grinned down at him. “Better than being dragged, though, right?”

  Edwards coughed out a weak laugh. “Yes. I suppose,” he said. He tried to look past Evans. “Is Promise here? Is Peter?”

  Promise’s heart wrenched. She took the doctor’s cold hand in hers. “I’m here, and Peter is…he’s on his way,” she said, her voice hitching slightly around the half-truth she desperately hoped would become whole. “We have the case with the vials. The cure. We have that with us, too. It’s safe.”

  He squeezed her hand. “That’s wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Promise.”

  “Not me…Ev deserves the thanks,” she said and smiled at Evans. Then she looked back at Doctor Edwards. “What can I do for you, Doctor? Are you going to be okay with just that pill?”

  He rolled his head side-to-side and sighed. His skin was gray even in the warm glow of the lantern, and his eyes were deeply ringed with unhealthy black. The skin on his neck sagged in fragile laps. “No, I’m afraid I need more help than the nitro. I most likely need a surgery. A bypass. But it will all have to wait, won’t it? The best we can do is hope for no more muscle death. If I can make it through to morning, then Doctor Patel–he’s our surgeon–he can help me, I think,” he said, and his voice was trailed off to a whisper as his eyes closed. “I hope.”

  “Just rest, then,” Promise said and squeezed his fingers. “Morning can’t be far away. Then we’ll get you taken care of.” She brushed her lips across his forehead, and he sighed into sleep.

  She turned to the Guard soldiers. Miller gave her a short smile. “I didn’t think we’d be seeing you this soon. But it’s still nice to see you, Promise,” Miller said. Behind her, Lu gave a short nod, and Promise smiled at them as she sank onto the floor, leaning against the wall.

  “It’s nice to see you guys, too. Seems like we can’t…can’t get away from–” She raised her hand in a weary circle, indicating the base, the vampires, the panic…everything.

  Miller opened her mouth to reply, but Evans cut her off.

  “I have bad news,” he said. “It’s Billet.”

  Miller’s mouth closed with a snap, and Lu stepped toward Evans, his hands fisted at his sides. “You saw him? Where is he? We have to go get him. We have to–”

  Evans crossed his arms over his chest and dropped his head.

  “Dead? He’s dead?” Lu asked, his voice rising with incredulity.

  Evans seemed unwilling to answer, tucked into his own grief.

  “He’s dead, yes,” Promise said. “In the lab.”

  Miller turned to her. “A vampire killed him?”

  Promise hesitated, unsure what to say next. How to tell them that Peter most likely killed Billet? That he had to?

  “Promise? Tell us. Did a vampire kill Billet?” Miller asked. Her voice vibrated slightly as she tried to control her obvious and growing frustration.

  Promise looked to Evans, deferred to him.

  He looked up, and his eyes were shadowed with grief and anger. “He’d been changed. He was killing people…at least three in the lab, that I know of; that Promise saw,” he said. “I think it was Peter that killed him, but he was protecting Promise and the Doctor.”

  Miller put her hands on her hips, head down as she processed the information. Then she looked at Promise. “Where is Peter now? Why isn’t he with you?”

  Promise shook her head, not trusting her voice. Her throat tightened. Miller put a hand on her shoulder. “Promise, is Peter dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Promise said. Tears spilled onto her cheeks, but she brushed them away with impatience. “But somehow I don’t think so.” She blinked at Miller. “I think he’s still alive, but…”

  “But what?” Miller asked, her voice soft.

  Promise looked at Evans and then back to Miller. Her eyes were bright with tears.

  “I think he might be worse now. Maybe changed all the way. That’s why he didn’t…why he didn’t come back for me.”

  Miller drew Promise against her shoulder as the girl dissolved into tears. She patted Promise’s back and told her it would be okay…they’d find Peter, and he would be fine, and everything would be okay.

  But over Promise’s head, her eyes locked grimly with Evans’.

  Chapter 10

  Lu checked his watch. “It’s morning,” he said. Nothing in the room had indicated the passing of time, save for the trapped air becoming warmer, denser, through the night.

  Promise stirred from her spot near the desk as the soldiers began to confer, putting together a plan. She scrubbed her hands over her face and wondered if she looked as tired as them. She had not really slept so much as drifted in and out of a shallow unconsciousness where hands reached abruptly from darkness and delicate glass vials fell through the air, slipping through her fingers one by one. Although exhausted, she was glad to put the night behind her.

  “Are we going to find Ash and Snow?” Promise asked, breaking into their conversation.

  Miller and Lu exchanged a glance. Alarmed, Promise looked to Evans. He, at least, knew how much the horses meant to her.

  “We’ll look for them,” he said. His eyes were grim, and his voice was filled with reluctance. “But they…they aren’t our priority. The people have to come first. Can you understand that?”

  Promise chewed her lower lip, determined not to cry again. She looked at her hands twisted together near her waist, unable to trust her voice. She felt the weight of Evans’ eyes but couldn’t meet his gaze. She knew it was ridiculous to feel let down–but it was still how she felt. She nodded.

  The soldiers turned back to each other.

  “We still have to be careful until we get near the center atriums,” Miller said. “It’s not as though the vampires just shrivel up and die at six a.m., you know. Most of them will have found hiding spots, but there mi
ght still be the half-immunes to watch out for.”

  Her eyes slid from Lu’s to Evans’ with special emphasis. Her gaze said that there was a particular half-and-half that they needed to watch out for now. Especially with Promise in their care. Both men nodded their understanding.

  “I’m not sure who’s left so I’m not sure who’s going to be in charge. This base, obviously, will have to be abandoned. Too many hiding places. We have to get a headcount once–”

  “Oh no,” Promise said, her voice quiet but filled with a distress that caused the soldiers to turn to where she stood. Her hand was on Doctor Edwards’ face. Her eyes were enormous with dismay. “He’s dead. Doctor Edwards is dead.”

  Lu stepped forward and put his fingertips to Edwards’ neck, really pushing in, feeling for a pulse. He laid his head on Edwards’ chest, listening. Then he rose and shook his head. “He’s gone. Most likely another heart attack; that would be my guess.”

  “What about CPR or…?” Miller asked without much hope.

  Lu shook his head and shrugged, turning his palms up at his sides. “He’s been dead a while. Too long. There’s already some degree of…” He glanced at Promise. “Some degree of rigor. Sorry, Promise.”

  “We have to find out who’s left of the lab people, but Edwards was the driving force behind the cure,” Miller said. “He was the smartest man we had here. The only one with a strong background in communicable diseases.”

  “At least we have the vials so they won’t be starting over from scratch. They should be able to do some reverse engineering and…”

  Promise felt herself tuning out of the soldiers’ conversation. A depression bigger than any wave she’d ever seen at Lake Ontario seemed to be rushing at her with crushing intention. Peter was gone, Ash was unaccounted for, Wereburg–and Chance–seemed almost like something she’d dreamed; something made up and unbelievable, her memories of them too diaphanous to grip onto. Had it really been less than two weeks since she’d left there, buoyant with hope and new love? Would she ever see Chance, Lea, Mark, or Wereburg again?

  She was beginning to think that she wouldn’t.

  This was all the change and more she’d ever wished for as a girl, and now the wish made her want to scream. The innocent musings of a middle-schooler shouldn’t have such far-reaching consequences. She wanted to reach back to her younger self and shake her, wake her up to the fact that sometimes boring was good; that change could be a monster with enormous teeth determined to eat up everything you loved.

  Then the wave was upon her, and she felt almost relieved, comforted by the idea of just…giving…up.

  “…back to Wereburg, and then Mr. West can…”

  Miller’s words penetrated the heavy, cloying velvet of her thoughts. Wereburg? Mr. West?

  “What about Mr. West?” she asked, cutting Miller off.

  Miller glanced at her. “We have to get the vials and any remaining lab people up to Wereburg. So they can–” She stopped abruptly, smiling. “You don’t know, do you? About Mr. West?”

  Promise shook her head in confusion. She knew Mr. West was smart, of course she knew that much…but what was Miller talking about? “He’s our science teacher,” she said. “In the high school.”

  Miller nodded. “He’s also the person with the most experience with communicable diseases, now that Dr. Edwards is gone. Mr. West has a background in it…I think he and Edwards even worked together at some point in the past. But Mr. West refused to come to the base because he wouldn’t leave the kids he’d taken charge of in Wereburg. In the past, that was okay as we had Edwards, but now all the research will have to move up north. So Mr. West can continue the work.”

  “We’re going to Wereburg? Right now we’re going?” Promise asked, and Miller shrugged. Then she smiled at the dawning hope in Promise’s face.

  “Well, probably tomorrow. We’ve got a few things to organize first,” Miller said. “What’s wrong? Did you think you were doomed to spend the rest of your life with us? Or that we’d turn you out on your own?”

  Promise glanced at Evans. “No, I didn’t think you’d turn me out,” she said. “But it did seem like Wereburg was getting farther and farther away from me. And that…well…it was a tough thought to take.” She hugged herself for reassurance and smiled inwardly as the soldiers continued planning.

  She was going back to Wereburg. With the cure. Chance was going to have that chance after all.

  ~ ~ ~

  Promise stood at the passenger-side door of the Humvee and took a last look back at the base and the woods surrounding it. The sun was about a quarter of the way up, just beginning to sparkle through the tops of the pines. They’d get at least eight hours of travel time today, and since they didn’t have to accommodate a horse and rider, they’d be able to get a lot of miles behind them.

  In their brief search, they’d found no sign of Ash or Snow, and she hoped that they’d escaped into the woods and safety. The vampires would not have killed them for their blood, but who knew what had gone on during that violent night. They could easily have been collateral damage. But if that had been the case–if they had been killed–it certainly hadn’t occurred in the building. They’d have seen signs of it. Horses are big animals, full of blood.

  Someone would find them; take care of them. Horses were a much-loved commodity in this vampire-plagued world. Promise knew that well enough. Hadn’t she loved Ash? She had.

  Miller and Lu were in the lead Humvee and behind Evans’ Humvee sat a bus. Behind the bus were three more Humvees filled with the remaining soldiers. The bus was yellow and stubby, about half the length of a regular school bus. It’s sides were reinforced sheet-metal, and it had heavy screen mesh on the windows. Fifteen people, former lab workers and all that remained of the civilians of Fort Reagan, were crammed into it. Their faces at the windows were white and forlorn as they stared at the great, empty hospital that many of them had called home for the last two years.

  Promise knew how they felt.

  She scanned the woods once more, hoping to catch a glimpse of vibrant orange. But the woods were deep and still. She ran her hand over her face and under her eyes.

  “Time to go,” Evans said, appearing beside her. “You have the vials?”

  Promise nodded and pointed to the case tucked into the front wheel well, right next to where her feet would be. Where she could protect it. Evans gave her shoulder a brief squeeze and followed her gaze as it drifted once more to the woods.

  “Promise?” he said, and she turned to him with a small, false smile. He took her shoulders in his hands, and his face was calm but still somehow stamped with his trademark anger. “He’s okay. I still think that. Okay?”

  She nodded, and her smile became warmer, more genuine. Tears sparkled at her lower lids, but didn’t fall. “Okay,” she said.

  He dropped his hands and smiled and then started around the front of the Humvee. In front and behind them, engines rumbled to life, echoing off the building. It already looked as though it had been deserted for a decade, not just an hour.

  Evans leaned over from the driver’s seat and looked at Promise through the passenger-side window. The first vehicles in the caravan were beginning to roll out.

  “Ready to go?” he asked her.

  She looked across to the woods again. “I guess so,” she said, her shoulders slumping as her hand reached for the door. At the last second, she turned back, her heart skipping a beat. Had there been something…some movement or a flash of…?

  She couldn’t be sure if she’d seen anything, but the warm burst in her heart–a tingle across her arms and back–felt like hope.

  “Promise?” Evans said, a hint of anxiety in his voice. The Humvee directly in front of them was already fifteen feet away, now twenty. “Are you ready?”

  She scanned the woods one last time, a smile faint on her lips.

  “As I’ll ever be,” she whispered and opened the Humvee door.

  ~THE END~

  Book Three ~ Last
Chance

  Chapter 1

  Lea ran the small blade across the bare, yielding skin of Mark’s inner forearm, her face tense with an uneasy mix of reluctance and determination. He grunted and twitched involuntarily, then breathed out a long, shuddering sigh. He turned his eyes to the panoramic living room window and surveyed Willow’s End: the rows of houses with their identical mailboxes, dry yellow lawns and the same, stumpy black streetlights interspersed with winter-bare trees.

  It took his mind off the stinging.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lea said, her voice soft, her large blue eyes swimming with sympathetic tears. She touched his face briefly with her fingertips, caressing gentle warmth onto his chilled skin. At their feet, a small, tan terrier looked on with concern in her bright button eyes.

  Mark’s eyes met Lea’s. He smiled even though the pain was still tightening his features and darkening his eyes. “It’s okay. No biggie,” he said. He chuffed out a short laugh as Lea held the red, plastic cup under his steadily dripping arm. “Ugh, red?” he said with mock indignation. “Does the cup have to be red?”

  She smiled up at him but then turned her attention back to the filling cup; the heat of Mark’s blood through the thin plastic was making her feel slightly nauseous. She didn’t want to take too much. She glanced at the other lines on his arm, laddered almost like a design, like something tribal.

  Lea had the same two marks on her arm.

  They’d been feeding Chance every day for the last five.

  She could hear him stirring in his laundry room trap next to the family room, just off the kitchen where she and Mark sat. He mewled like a lost kitten as the scent of the blood began to waft in to him. Then he hissed and choked out a series of raging, nonsense syllables, and Lea shivered. The inhuman, frightening noises made every nerve in her body stand on end.