by L. M. Justus
Darkness Reigns
Darkness Trilogy Book Two
L. M. Justus
Taurpio Publishing
Darkness Reigns © 2014 by Lisa Justus. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Edition
First Printing, 2014
Cover design by Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Print ISBN: 978-0-9919368-3-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9919368-4-7
Other books by L. M. Justus:
WELCOME TO THE DARKNESS
HUNTER BORN (short story)
EMILY AND THE ATTIC FAIRIES
THE MASTERY OF MIND OVER MATTER
Taurpio Publishing
Ottawa, ON
Printed in the United States of America
For my husband Chris, always
Reed
Zombies milled about at the base of the apartment building. I was slumped against a wall inside an abandoned twelfth-floor unit and dying of thirst. If I didn’t feed soon, I would lose control and attack one of the three humans in the room: Sarah, my amazing girlfriend, her younger sister Sophie, and former vampire hunter Trudy. The vampire who had become a father figure to me, Nathaniel, was there too; the five of us were the only ones left of our group after the New York City vampire lair was destroyed and the zombie apocalypse had hit.
‘Zombie apocalypse’ might have been an exaggeration because we didn’t know if the zombie-like, vampire-human hybrids were a localized problem, or whether the problem had spread worldwide. The power was out and phone service was down, so we had a lot of unanswered questions. In any case, we’d spent the last several hours raiding the apartment building where we were holed up for supplies. The sound of explosions from the air raids grew closer by the hour, and we needed to get the hell out of there before we were blown up.
“We must depart in due haste,” Nathaniel said.
“He doesn’t look so good,” Sophie said, pointing at me.
I wanted to argue, but I didn’t have the energy and my throat was parched. I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the tingling in my gums.
Sophie narrowed her gaze in my direction and put her hands on her hips. “You’d better not chomp on me.”
Sarah glared at her sister. “Could you have a little more compassion, Soph? He’s obviously starving.” She walked over and knelt next to me, tucking a wayward lock of her honey-brown hair behind her ear. “Reed, you have to feed from me. We need you to be strong. Please.”
I shook my head. “Can’t.”
She sighed. “We can’t keep arguing about this. Nathaniel explained that I didn’t lose much blood the three times I’ve been fed from over the last month. The first two times were quick emergency feeds when you were hurt and when Nathaniel was burned, and the last time when you and I . . .”
Her face reddened. “Anyway, I can spare more blood, and you need it. Now.”
I hoped Nathaniel would have a better solution. “Didn’t you find someone to feed from?” I asked him. My voice sounded raw and my jaw felt so dry I thought it might crack and fall off.
“I found a large dog,” he said, his gaze dropping to the floor.
Sophie’s lip curled. “Seriously? What was that like?”
Nathaniel frowned and crossed his arms. “Furry.”
I wanted to laugh. Or cry. Maybe both. “All right. I’ll do it. Give me your wrist.”
Sarah didn’t hesitate, and held out her arm.
“Sorry,” I said. I felt my fangs rip out of my gums and I bit down. Sarah flinched, but didn’t pull away. As I fell into a haze of ecstasy, I wished it were possible to mesmerize her so it wouldn’t hurt. I finished quickly and licked the puncture wounds closed. The fresh infusion of blood coursed through my veins, and just as I was starting to feel like I was coming alive again, I keeled over and died.
I opened my eyes. Sarah smiled. “Hey, sleepyhead. We’re ready to head out,” she said.
I sat up and realized everyone was looking at me. The horrible ache throughout my body was gone, but I worried about what I was going to do in another twenty-four hours when I needed to feed again.
I stood up, rolling my shoulders and stretching to loosen up. I checked the samurai sword strapped to my back, and picked up my pack, which was so full the zipper barely closed. Vampire strength had its advantages, and the pack felt light.
I walked to the windows and peeked down at the street below. At least a hundred zombies–or “revenants” as the vampire hunters called them–shuffled around the base of the apartment building.
The revenants were the result of the late vampire King of New York’s virus. He’d had a grand plan to turn all the humans on earth into vampires by infecting them with vampire DNA, but he hadn’t perfected the virus before releasing it into the city’s water supply. The revenants had a vampire’s thirst for blood, but none of our speed or strength. They also seemed to be completely mindless and unfortunately, immune to sunlight.
“What are we planning to do about them?” I asked. “How do they even know we’re in here?”
“The same way you knew they were there before you looked,” Nathaniel answered, tapping his nose.
Of course, our heightened sense of smell, which the revenants must have had too.
“There are several buildings around us similar in size to this one,” Nathaniel continued, “so we shall carry Sarah, Sophie, and Trudy, transporting them from rooftop to rooftop until we are a few blocks from our current position. Then we will proceed to street level where Trudy will procure a vehicle for us to take out of the city.”
“You can hotwire a car?” I asked. She looked about my mom’s age, and I couldn’t imagine anyone like my parents doing cool stuff like hotwiring cars.
Trudy nodded.
Everyone grabbed their stuff and we headed up the stairwell to the roof. It was a crisp November night, but a funky odor was in the air; the revenants smelled like rotting fruit. Darkness draped the city, but the light of the half-moon was enough for me to see our surroundings clearly.
Without any warning, Nathaniel picked Trudy up and slung her over one shoulder, threw Sophie over the other, and leapt to the neighboring roof.
Sarah looked at me and shrugged. “That doesn’t look natural at all, does it?” she said. “I trust you though. You can do it.”
Nathaniel made it look easy, but my heart was in my throat as I imagined crashing to the ground twelve stories below.
I took a deep breath and pictured making it over successfully. Then I scooped Sarah up, ran and jumped. The cool air whipped across my skin and we landed with surprising lightness on the roof of the next building. It was exhilarating and I couldn’t help breaking into a grin. Then we continued north–rooftop to rooftop–for four or five more blocks.
The streets below appeared free of revenants, although we couldn’t escape their smell completely. We went down the building’s stairwell until we reached the main floor. Nathaniel left the building first, and we followed behind him.
In a blur of movement, Nathaniel turned and sprung at something behind me. A flash of silver whipped through the air and a round object flew outward, bouncing across the ground in front of me. The object–a freshly decapitated revenant’s head–made disgusting squishy noises as it bumped along the road. It rolled to a stop and I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I cringed.
“You must overco
me your squeamishness, Reed,” Nathaniel said. He had found a machete in someone’s closet during our search for supplies, but I hadn’t expected it to come in handy so soon. Blood dripped from the machete onto the pavement.
“I’m not squeamish. A head just rolled past my feet,” I said.
The revenant’s headless body lay on the ground behind Nathaniel. I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t even noticed the creature until after Nathaniel took care of it. Some protector I was. I scoped out the rest of the area, but didn’t see any other revenants. Yet.
Nathaniel wrenched open the front door of a green mini-van. “Let us try this one,” he said to Trudy.
Trudy stepped around me and climbed onto the driver’s seat. She straightened her glasses, pulled out a few tools from her pack and set to work hotwiring the van. Within minutes, she had it idling at a low rumble. We clambered in and she drove us toward the Lincoln Tunnel out of Manhattan.
As we continued west, the occasional revenant spotted our van and turned to chase us. They were way too slow to catch up, even though we had to swerve around abandoned taxis all over the place.
We barely missed driving over yet another bloody pile, which was all that remained of some poor person; the only part left that was recognizable was the bottom part of a leg with a sock and shoe still on it. Sophie gagged and covered her mouth as she turned away from the window. Sarah gave her sister’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
We’d worried the tunnel might be blocked up, but there was no sign of a mass exodus. When the virus was released, the initial symptoms were flu-like, so people had probably stayed home thinking they were sick with a common illness. By the time things started going to hell, it was too late to escape. At least, that’s what we assumed.
The farther we got from the city’s core, the more I relaxed. If we could make it to the countryside, there would be fewer revenants to worry about and maybe we’d find a cow to use as a source of blood. I hated to admit it, but the idea of drinking cow’s blood was not very appealing now that I’d gotten used to human blood.
Sarah gave me a look, as if she knew what I was thinking. Of course, in her case, she literally knew what I was thinking because she could read minds.
“Anyone feeling hungry?” Trudy asked, as she continued to drive west after crossing the Hackensack River. “I could go for one of those sandwiches we packed.”
Nathaniel and I didn’t eat real food, and Sophie still looked kind of green, so I waited for Sarah to say something. She leaned over and unzipped the duffle bag at her feet. After rooting around for a minute in the dark, she pulled out a small pile of plastic-wrapped sandwiches.
“Peanut butter, or . . . peanut butter?” she asked, passing one of the sandwiches to the front. Trudy took the sandwich and then Sarah tried to pass one to her sister.
Sophie pushed Sarah’s hand away. “No, thanks. Not unless you want to stop the van so I can puke.”
“You should try to eat something,” Sarah insisted. At twenty-one, she was only a year older than her sister, but she seemed to watch out for Sophie in a motherly way.
“Maybe later.” Sophie turned to look back out the window.
Nathaniel shifted in the passenger seat and looked back, his gaze drifting across Sophie to Sarah and then me. His dark hair had grown noticeably longer since we’d first met several weeks ago, softening his severe look. His normally deep brown eyes were a light golden color, which was a sure sign he needed to feed soon. If the color faded to a light gray, we were really in trouble because the girls would start looking a lot like food.
He turned to face forward again as Sarah unwrapped her sandwich. The sound of the crinkling plastic wrap seemed deafening in the quiet interior of the van, and the smell of peanut butter filled the air.
As we crested the rise of a steep hill, I immediately detected two distinct odors. In the distance, a complex of slate-gray buildings rose from behind a concrete wall, with a barbed-wire-topped fence encircling the entire compound. At least two hundred revenants surrounded the fence, trying to get inside, which explained the first of the two smells.
Trudy stopped the van. “West Nelson Correctional Facility,” she read as our headlights shone on the sign at the side of the road.
“It’s a prison,” Sophie said.
Nathaniel turned to us and his nostrils flared. The tips of his fangs peeked from behind his upper lip. “There are many humans inside.”
That explained the second smell. “Oh, goody. Dinner,” I said.
Nathaniel
A crowd of revenants marched mindlessly into the fence surrounding the prison. Trudy turned off the van’s headlights. Nathaniel was relieved that the zombie-like creatures hadn’t noticed their presence yet.
“Please, wait here,” he said. “I will clear the way of revenants and talk to the people inside to gain us access to the facility.”
“Hang on,” Reed said. “Why bother talking to them? Can’t you jump over the fence and take what you need? Then we can get the hell out of here.”
“This is the perfect location for us to gain our bearings,” Nathaniel said. “It is well fortified and full of humans from which we can feed. The air raids are focused on the city center; therefore, we should be safe here at the city’s outer limits. If these human-vampire hybrids fail to survive more than a few days–as Trudy mentioned was the case with the most recent version of the virus–then we can remain here until they have expired. However, if the revenants do not die in the near future, we can devise a long-term plan safe within the confines of the prison walls.”
“But . . . how do we know the criminals inside the prison aren’t even worse than what’s out here?” Sophie asked.
“Good question,” Sarah said. “I’ve seen how much havoc a single prisoner in a local jail cell can create; if there’s any chance the prison population has gained control of the facility, we could be marching into a deathtrap.”
Nathaniel opened the passenger door and climbed out of the van. “I am confident in our ability to handle the situation.” He opened Reed’s door and waited for him to exit the vehicle.
“How is it possible there are humans in there at all? I mean, how were they not infected by the tainted water?” Reed asked.
“I suppose the prison is far enough from the city center it could be on a separate water supply,” Nathaniel said. “Any staff members living in the city may have been infected though. We will not know until we go inside.”
“All right. I guess,” Reed said, looking at the others with a worried frown. “You’re the boss.” He stepped out and stood next to Nathaniel.
“Stay alert and protect the women,” Nathaniel instructed.
Sophie snorted. “Notice how he talks about us like we’re completely helpless?”
“He was born in a different era,” Sarah said.
Trudy looked taken aback at Sarah’s statement, and she turned to Nathaniel, her eyebrows lifting. In all likelihood, Trudy was still unaware that he had been born over two hundred years ago. Even though she was easily twice the age of everyone else in the group, she was still far younger than he. Nathaniel wondered if it made her uncomfortable, forced into such close confines with him and Reed, given her animosity toward vampires. If so, this was not the ideal moment to draw attention to his unnaturally long lifetime.
“I shall return shortly,” he said, and sped off, his machete glinting in the moonlight.
When he reached the pack of thirty or so revenants, he wasted no time destroying them where they stood. He moved in a dance of death; the sound of the machete shattered the silence, slicing through the creatures’ flesh and bones, and the stench of their blood permeated the air. The slow-moving creatures were no challenge at all for his vampiric abilities, and although capable of moving significantly faster, Nathaniel reined in his speed so as not to alarm any onlookers. In a matter of minutes, not one revenant in the immediate vicinity remained mobile, and Nathaniel could not detect any more as far as he could see in the distance.
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br /> Stepping nimbly over the bodies, Nathaniel made his way to the front entrance. A stocky, dark-haired man stood gaping at him from behind the thick metal bars of the gate. The man’s face was lined with stubble and he wore a standard-issue prison jumpsuit. He was also armed with a rifle.
Interesting, Nathaniel thought. “Good evening,” he said.
“How’d you move so fast like that?” the man said.
Nathaniel tried not to stare at the man’s neck. It took a concerted effort to keep his fangs retracted, but he wanted to gain access to the prison in a civilized manner if possible.
“I would be happy to explain, if you would be so kind as to allow me and my party of four others to enter your facility.”
“Can the other four guys move like you?” the man asked, his eyes darting around to look past Nathaniel into the darkness.
“One of the others can,” Nathaniel answered. “The other three are women.”
“Women?” His eyes widened and his mouth stretched into a leer. “Let me go talk to the chief. I’ll be right back.”
Nathaniel remained stock still, as older vampires tended to do when movement was unnecessary, while the man abandoned his sentry point to speak with his leader. After a few minutes, he returned with another man. The newcomer was large and balding, and he wore a suit that was at least two sizes too small. The man took in the carnage that lay in a wide swath around Nathaniel, and nodded in approval.
“You did all that, huh?” the man said. “My name’s Benny, and I’m in charge of this place. If you want to go get the rest of your crew, we’ll wait here and open the gate for you when you get back. Maybe you can show us how to do that.” He pointed to the dead revenants.
“Of course,” Nathaniel replied with a slight nod. “My name is Nathaniel, and I shall return momentarily.” He turned and jogged back to the van.
