The Blood Bargain (Book 1)

by Macaela Reeves

  The

  Blood

  Bargain

  MACAELA REEVES

  Copyright © 2012 Macaela Reeves

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1479346640

  ISBN-13: 978-1479346646

  DEDICATION

  This one is for Key who demanded it, and Mace my little

  zombie boy.

  “Over recorded time there have been five primary events that signaled the end of a species or more accurately a collection of species; The Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction, Late Devonian mass extinction, Permian mass extinction, Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction, and the

  Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction. In 2012 A.D. a sixth event occurred, the Quaternary mass extinction.”

  -Junction Hall of Records

  “Nature in her unpredictability interjected a curveball, not subjecting the species to the climate changes afore rather than a horror to ghastly to put to pen.

  It was one none could have anticipated, therefore upon the event we were horribly unprepared.”

  -From the desk of Dr. Albert Tommen, 2022

  Chapter 1

  "We've got three at the south marker!" A voice called to me from the walkie at my hip. Pivoting in the grass I booked it towards the lookouts location, my crossbow a thick weight bouncing against my back as I ran.

  The perimeter fence surrounded the colony on all sides five miles out. Took two years to build the thing.

  There were a lot of scares in the beginning before its construction was finished; thicker patrols, homes still boarded up, someone on watch in every house at all times.

  After the wall was done, markers were placed a mile from the exterior of the fence. This became what we considered to be the warning zone. After all our hard work we didn't want those deadheads snuggling up to our barrier. Enough bodily force smacking against it would damage over time.

  With the marker placement and the general speed of most of them, we figured we could buy ourselves a good half hour to eliminate any threats before they got close enough to knock on our doors. So far none had even made it halfway.

  When the lookout tower was within range I caught sight of Adam waving down to me. Bits of sunlight bounced off his sandy brown hair, an oversized grin on his boyish face. A guard like Adam sat about every four miles around the fence.

  Working surveillance was considered a cake job to most that lived here, causing a lot of resentment from those who tended livestock or other dredging jobs. A few years younger than me, I got to know this one as I worked patrols. At first I was curt with him like most others are to

  lookouts, but in time I learned to cut the kid a break. He was asthmatic, had stomach issues and seemed to lack the muscle tone for firearms. Not to mention the kid had lost his whole family during the outbreak.

  Since then, he’d kind of become one of my best friends. As I got closer to the wooden tower I returned the wave then shifted my attention to the wall.

  It was constructed mostly of wood; 2x4.s, 2x6, even doubled up 1x4.s. Whatever we could get our hands on, even used steel sheets in some places. Just no chain link, too many of us had learned firsthand the flimsy fences built to keep Fido at bay did nothing against this kind of onslaught.

  "Be safe." He called down as I climbed up and over the barrier.

  "Always am." Over the fence I went into the wilds. Wilds definitely being the best word in our vocabulary to describe it; out here nature ran untamed and every blade of grass could conceal a threat that could end

  your life in a moment. It was both beautiful and horrifying.

  The latter was currently on my agenda. Within range I got a good look at the source of the reported problem. Three deadheads were shambling within the tall prairie grasses haphazardly.

  The first one was in advanced stages of decay, its head flopped to the side of its heavily chewed on neck. Male, thankfully still with his plaid pajama bottoms. Second was also male and missing his left arm. The third was female guessing by the long strings of hair desperately clinging to the scalp on one side of its mostly exposed skull. She was moving slower than the others, must have had some sort of leg damage from the lean in her posture.

  Quickly and quietly, I pulled my bow around from my back and readied my sights. When the first one was in the center it was time to make noise.

  Like clockwork they responded when I let out a loud whistle. All three turned 30 degrees to the left, towards my position.

  Exactly where I wanted them.

  I pulled the trigger before the first one got a moan out. The ghoul crumpled to the ground, an arrow sticking out of its right eye socket.

  Now was the time to work fast. The sight of the living drove them into a frenzy like rabid dogs. I set my center on the other male who had picked up the pace.

  With another click of my forefinger it was done.

  The last one, even in the throes of hunger was slow moving due to whatever was going on with her leg. Moaning, her jaws open as far as it could spread she tried desperately to reach me.

  The sound used to bother me. That desperate, pitiful cry of the damned. In my younger days I would freeze when I heard that sound. Foolish I know, but that's how the young react, waiting for someone to save them, to protect them. Not anymore. I was the protector and the sound no longer sent me into a spiral of fear. I saw it for what it was; merely the indication of a compounding problem, the official countdown to a holy crap moment. It carried on the wind, drawing others like a dinner bell. One became three, three became five and death followed

  soon after.

  My aim failed me on the woman. I missed my mark, puncturing her throat.

  So much for quick and clean.

  At least with the neck shot I had done myself a small favor. Its ability to wail at me had been removed. With no brazen announcement of my position I could take my time. With a curse, I pulled my short knife off my belt. It wasn.t worth the fourth arrow at this point. It gurgled,

  spitting black blood from the puncture in its throat, shambling towards me at a turtle's pace. I waited, shifting my footing for a strike position.

  One thing my Dad taught me early on; keep calm and collected. When you rush into something you don’t evaluate the situation. Getting yourself killed from some unknown variable you could have gotten around was an absolute waste.

  When the ghoul was an arm’s length away I made my move. Crouching low and thrusting up I drove my knife into the soft flesh under its chin, penetrating through the brain. With a twist I pulled my long knife free, careful not to get too much of its sickly blood on me.

  I hated getting this close to them; at this range you saw their signs of humanity. A beaded bracelet on her wrist that read best sister ever. A tattered t-shirt which was from a city wide cancer fundraiser the year before the outbreak.

  That's the other thing you can’t do. Dwell on who they were. My Dad served three tours during the Vietnam War; he had seen a lot of death before the plague. He told me I had to let it go, if I didn.t it would drive me insane. These aren.t people, he said. They were once, but now they were only the enemy. Sympathy for them will get you killed. Make no mistake; your death is their goal.

  His words thick in my mind, I didn.t look at the others when I retrieved my ammunition. Picturing watermelons, cantaloupe, hell even practice cans.

  It took an extra strong tug to retrieve my last arrow. With a sickening suction sound it pulled free.

  Cleaning the things was disgusting, but going through the pains of making more arrows made washing a little tainted blood off tolerable.

  I didn’t waste any time heading back. The grass was tall out here, always a risk of a crawler the lookout didn’t spot. Even though I sported the thi
ckest, steel toed combat boots I could find, it was a looming danger. A problem that could strike in a fraction of a second and cost

  you your life.

  One of our first patrols had lost a man that way, foot hanging by a tendon after a legless freak got a hold of him. They had to put him down within a week after the infection took hold.

  “Everything alright?” Adam asked me in that big brother tone as I climbed up and over the wall. Pegs had been placed into the wood to allow short folks like me the ability to come and go. A disaster in ancient fort design but useful as all get out now. Plus they were harmless; ghouls didn.t have the dexterity to swing from peg to peg.

  “Yep.”

  “Saw what you did out there, you know how your dad feels about the up close and personal.” I glared up at him. Like he needed to tell me that.

  “Going to rat me out?”

  “No. Just don’t be stupid okay?” I laughed. Stupid was not in my vocabulary.

  “I promise I will always be two steps ahead.”

  "Thanks Liv." He seemed relieved I didn.t rip him a new one. Adam King never did like confrontation. He was more of a keep everyone happy kind of guy. A rare find these days.

  "Anytime Adam, call me if you need me." With a stretch I headed back north towards my usual route. Charles Darwin once said it wasn't the strong who survived, but those that adapted. Well, we were still around so I guess that makes us pretty damned flexible.

  It’s been ten years since the world fell into hell. It wasn't a slow seeping decline; it was an all-encompassing holy shit moment. I had been at in class listening to a teacher drone on about the intricacies of great depression era American literature; smiling and nodding the whole way, twirling my ridiculously long reddish brown hair while I took notes with my free hand.

  That was my style though, first row seat in the room, highest grade in the class. I was bred to achieve. At the time I was a freshman in high school. A year early too. My parents had been so proud of that.

  Parent I should say, my mother had died of cancer two years earlier. In a way, I'm grateful. She didn't have to live through everything that came next.

  Sirens. They weren't uncommon for the Midwest this time of year. We got our fair share of tornado scares. Figured it was the typical duck and cover, place your textbook over your neck and face the wall scenario. Yet, while we were assembling against the windowless wall Mrs. Peterson from Spanish down the hall popped her frantic little head in and demanded to speak with Mrs. Simmons. Not that this was a warning yet. Mrs. Peterson was always frantic. We figured it was part of being a Spanish instructor.

  Moments later Mrs. Simmons was back, in her collected manner she explained to us our parents would be picking us up shortly. A Red Alert for a possible terrorist attack had been announced on the News.

  At that point we filed out and life resumed. Texting my friends on Friday night planning, whether or not Steve Tisland cheated on Jessica with Karen at the last football game. My three best friends wanted to come over later that night and watch a bunch of amateurs try to sing into the big leagues on cable, I couldn't wait.

  Little did I know I wouldn't see them that night. Or ever again for that matter. Dad picked me up in his red SUV at the circle drive out front. He looked stressed with all those extra wrinkle lines in his forehead, but Dad had always looked stressed so I didn’t think much of it. He’d been that way since Mom died. Dad had a busy job, being a Fed and all. I wasn’t really sure what that meant or what he really did. I just knew that he worked for the government and it was always weird hours. When he wasn’t out doing whatever, he was tending to my every whim. New clothes, dinners out, and so on. I can admit it now; I was very spoiled back then.

  I remember thinking when I got in the car I’d ask him if we could hit the mall, summer was coming up and I wanted a tenth pair of sandals. However, when I got in my dog Spike was in the back seat. I asked him if we were going home when he turned the wrong way. He just shook his head, turned up the radio on the oldies station and kept driving.

  I've always meant to ask him if he knew more than the others because of his job, wondering if there was some way we could have saved Steph, Sarah, Crystal or even grumpy old Mr. Waterson from across the street. I never have though, shoulda woulda coulda's do not resurrect the dead.

  We ended up in Milo, Iowa. Population 817 according to the sign, the ridiculously small town was about an hour and a half south of where we had lived. Dad worked with a guy, Richard Mineral, who had a farm there, 56 acres of no man’s land. No cell service, no Internet. Aside from the cows, chickens and other smelly nonsense he raised Shetland ponies. I volunteered to help with them during those first days; they were beyond adorable and gave me something to keep my sanity.

  Well more voluntold than volunteered.

  At first I acted like a typical teenager stomping around screaming my life was over. That ended when we turned on the news. The first two days the reports called it rioting. Then a possible biological attack.

  Landlines quit working on the fourth day. Television was on EMS only by the sixth.

  My eye caught movement from the right, pulling me out of my memories. The steady fluid motions of someone who still breathed. As he came into view, I smiled.

  The arrival of Cole Marshal indicated the end of my shift. He was a few years older than me, 28 I think. He was in good shape, lean and muscular with an all American features. A 1950’s dream boat, if you could look past his armaments. I had my crossbow, Cole preferred katana. Plural. Crisscross straps across his broad chest gave him the look of some sort of anime character. I’m not sure why he always carried two; I’d only ever seen him use one. I guessed one was a backup of some sort, or perhaps it was just for that bad ass image. He told me once before the outbreak he was heavy into martial arts.

  Knowing those guys tended to fall into the picked on category in the old suburbia world; my guess on the weapons was for the image. Like a lot of the men in town they wore their hair as short as possible, worried a rogue deadhead would get a hand full and pull them to their demise.

  There was a lot of that in the beginning.

  He smiled back and gave me a little wave. In another life I probably would have swooned at the gesture, hoping he’d take me out to a movie. These days, there was no time for those thoughts, so I regarded him like all the others. Another survivor, a teammate against operation

  wipe out humanity.

  "Three today." I handed Cole the walkie for his shift. He clipped it onto his leather belt.

  "Three? Damn, those bloodsuckers ain't pullin their weight lately." I shrugged. No point in stirring Cole up more than he was currently. He, like many of the people in our community, detested the arrangement.

  "Yeah I know, but who's gonna tell them that? You?"

  "Hell to the no. Those creeps freak me out more than the living dead."

  "They are living dead." Cole punched me in the arm.

  "You know what I meant smart ass." I flipped him some playful insults and started back to town. He lucked out this time, with daylight waning in the autumn his shift was short. Cole would run his hours till nightfall, then they would take over. Vampires. As if the deadheads

  Weren’t enough to throw at us.

  Things got really bad a month into the outbreak. The military units had started going rogue. Ham radio told us they were executing everyone, dead or not. Bombing infested cities. Looting and Pillaging. They weren’t too far off from our position, neither was a hotbed of infestation.

  Dad and the other adults had a tough call to make.

  Stay and fortify or get the group moving. Of the 817 residents of Milo, roughly 500 stayed after the initial outbreak. We picked up 350 more refugees. Mostly children from neighboring towns. Couple of teachers

  from the elementary and preschools loaded up their entire student body into buses and hit the road, those brave souls will be forever heroes in my mind. However, after they arrived our folks realized planning an exodus had become
next to impossible.

  They debated anyway, weighing both scenarios; food rations, transportation. There were a lot of arguments, a lot of throwing things. Adults gathered around noon to come to a decision. The sun set and they

  were still heatedly at an impasse. It seemed half wanted to cut and run and half wanted to stay. I could hear my Dad’s voice through the floorboards booming that division was suicide. I finally got the courage to duck in the planning room at about 9pm that night, driven by fear that Dad had been gone too long.

  He ordered me to sit in the corner, which sounded a lot better than going back upstairs. That’s when they came.

  There was a quick knock on the front door; I had about jumped out of my seat. With guns drawn, one of the men answered it. When the door had opened, he sort of stood to the side at attention, like he was a door stop.

  In the doorway were three figures straight out of a Vogue magazine. Two men and a woman. As one they entered the hall and the air temperature had seemed to drop.

  The woman was blond, almost six feet tall and built lean like she owned the catwalk. Her blue eyes were haunting, her makeup heavy across her lids to increase the effect. She wore a little black dress and six inch red pumps. Not exactly the outfit I would pick for the end of the world. Her pale hair slicked back and pulled into a high pony tail which flipped as she walked.

  The men were equally spellbinding. One who was a cliché; long black hair, and a face that belonged on a romance book cover. His body was the only thing that broke the mold. He wasn’t lean and frail like most

  vampires are portrayed. He was a brick house that had been wrapped in an Armani suit. A suit that I could only assume was completely custom; his arms were easily wider than my waist. He towered over the female so I could only guess at his height.

  The third one was smaller than the other two, probably only five ten or so. I didn.t get a good look at him as he was hanging back from the others.