Mary Brodigan paused for a second as she passed what was left of Jamie's body. She had loved him once, she thought. Then Viktoriya had taken her. Gifted her with immortality, whether she wanted that gift or not.
Now a mere shadow of her former herself, she was driven by an insatiable hunger that blocked out most of her memories of her life before. If there was any true recognition remaining, it was not apparent. The only thing she felt now was a burning desire for blood that needed to be sated.
That and the thrill of the upcoming chase.
* * *
“Oh, oh my God! Jamie…They-they killed him!” Jenna exclaimed, totally distraught at what her eyes had just seen happening below.
“That’s not all,” Paul added. “It looks like the rest of them are all headed this way! We need a plan. Fast. And we need to get the fuck out of here the quickest way possible!”
“I got my plan right here,” Barry said from the far corner of the room, still holding onto his neck but now with a gun sitting in his hand.
“Where the fuck did you get that?” Paul asked. “More importantly, how the hell did you get it past customs?”
“I’m a big Reality TV star,” Barry told them. From behind Paul, Lucy just snorted in derision. “Plus, I’m American. I never go anywhere without a gun. I pulled a few strings, got it sent over from a local guy I know. His cousin’s cousin once appeared on my show.”
“You know how to use it?” Lucy asked.
Barry pulled a face. “Pu-lease, I’ve been shooting guns since I was in diapers.”
“Regardless, we still need a plan,” Paul continued, “and someone should wake Angela. We should all probably stick together.
“While we’re at it, we could do with Stefania. She knows the town and might be able to help us all survive this.” He reached up, unhooked the chain after checking the coast was clear, and opened the bedroom door.
“I’m here,” Angela said, standing in the hall outside. “You lot really need to learn to talk quieter. I could hear every word you said, even out here.”
“How long were you there?” Paul asked.
“Long enough,” Angela replied, “You woke me. I was sleeping.”
“You always sleep fully clothed?” Barry asked.
“I’m a survivor,” she retorted, “and the first lesson of survival is ‘always be prepared.’ Stefania’s room is further down the hall. We should go. All of us, now!”
“What about us?” Lucy and Jenna both asked, still in their pajamas.
“I’ve got some clothes that will probably fit,” Paul answered and tossed them the smaller of his three bags.
The boys both turned away as the girls quickly got dressed. Even Barry showed propriety for once. He was still too concerned about the bite in his neck. Now it was really starting to throb.
“Let me look at that,” Lucy offered, “Maybe I can do something. I mean, it’s not my field, but...”
“No time,” Barry said. “Those things could be up here any moment.”
“He’s right,” Angela said. “We’ve really got to move!”
The group quickly left Paul and Barry’s hotel room and started moving down the hall.
* * *
Chief of Police, Anthony Forelli, looked out of the window of his apartment above the town Police station and reached for the phone sitting on his desk. Behind him, he heard his Mama entering his study. Damn her, he thought, I told her to stay away!
Tony had a bad feeling for a while now. It was why he sent his wife and two daughters away for an extended holiday, to keep them safe. He didn’t expect his elderly, ailing Mama to travel half-way across the country to see him. Otherwise, he would’ve sent her away, too.
Derosso was a bad place to be around right now.
Like her son, Mama Forelli sensed something was wrong. She thought it might have something to do with that club she had passed coming here. The club was new. It had not been there on her last visit.
“Mama, go back to bed,” Tony told her. “Please, lock your door, get your Bible out, light some candles, and say a prayer. Just please, go back to your bedroom, lock the door, and don’t open it to anyone. Not unless you’re absolutely sure it’s me!”
He could see dark, demonic shapes running all across the town square. Some of them he recognized as former fellow police officers, young lads who had visited that damn strip club despite his warnings for them to stay away. Others were local men he had once seen about town, before all this began. He thought he saw some of the girls from the club, too. They were pulling people out into the streets and…biting them? Could that be real?
“What’s happening?” his Mama asked. “What did you do? What dark forces have you let enter this town?”
“Go to bed!”
Hearing her shut herself away back in her room and praying she would be safe there, Tony reached for his phone once more and quickly dialed a number he’d never thought he’d have to use.
“Something’s gone wrong,” he told the person who promptly answered his call. “You need to do something about the girls you sent down here. You need to help. They’ve gone feral, attacking the town’s people, eating them…”
The local boss on the other end sounded almost apologetic in his reply. Almost. “I’m sorry,” he told Tony, from where he sat safely several hundred miles away. “There’s nothing I can do. If you think that it is I that control them, then you are sadly very mistaken. I answer to them. They do as they like. If you have pissed them off, that is no concern of mine. It is your mess. You clean it up.”
The boss cut the line before Tony could respond. Heaven help us, he thought. What did I let into my town?
It was too late now. The damage was done.
Everyone in Derosso was now on the menu.
* * *
“Stefania, wake up!” Paul and Angela both banged on their tour guide’s door.
Jenna counted ceiling tiles, looking for odd numbers, and tried to keep herself calm. Lucy held her, stroked her back, and tried to help her relax. Barry kept watch all around them, though it worried Lucy both how red and inflamed the skin around his bite looked and the way he swung his gun around.
Stefania opened the door. It looked like she’d been packing a bag and was preparing to leave. She shrank back as she saw Paul and Barry in the hall.
“What did you do?” she demanded. “What did you two assholes do? I told you to stay away from that club and those girls. I told you to stay away from their house!”
“You knew?” Angela asked, incredulous. “You knew what those things were?”
“I have known for a long time now that something about them was wrong. They took the men first. The rest of the town has been cowering ever since…like cattle awaiting slaughter, knowing that their time has come.”
She looked at the two men.
“I warned you,” she told them both again. “I fucking told you! I told you to stay away from those wretched girls.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for recriminations later,” Paul said, slightly resentful at all the blame being laid at his and Barry’s door. “But, first things first—right now I think all of us really need to stick together and think about a way of getting the fuck out of here. You got a car?”
“Downstairs,” Stefania told them. “In the hotel car park.”
“Then let’s go,” Paul said and started to lead them down the hall.
“Not that way,” Angela stopped him. “This way. Follow me. We’ll use the rear stair case—the one used by all the staff. The vamps won’t be expecting us to take the back way out.”
“How’d you know that was there?” Paul asked.
Angela grinned. “Like I told you, I’m a survivor. Rule number Two: Always know where your exits are in case you need to make a quick escape.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Barry demanded.
Now that they were together again, the group all began to move.
* * *
Outside, on the str
eets, cars exploded as they were set alight and rendered unusable by the girls from Feral Hearts. Likewise, buildings were set aflame as the vampyre and their revenant army pulled the local people out onto the streets to feast upon.
Thick, acrid smoke rent the air and rose above the town. It blocked out the moon and made the night seem even darker. No one would be escaping here tonight if the girls and their followers had their way.
No one.
* * *
The group reached the rear staircase. Barry slumped to the floor of the corridor and refused to move any further.
“Go without me,” he told them. “I’m infected. The bite that bitch gave me, it did something to me. I’m changing, becoming something else, like them. I can feel it inside of me, working through my body.”
“Don’t be stupid, man,” Paul argued. “We’re a group. We need to stick together. Safety in numbers and all that happy, crappy bullshit.”
“I have this,” Barry held up his gun. “If they come after you, maybe I can hold them off a bit. I killed one of them bastards. Maybe I can kill some more. Besides, you know what they say: the best offense is a good defense. Let me do this. It’s all my fault this happened anyway.”
“If he wants to stay, let him stay.” Angela told them all. “We don’t have time for this. We need to keep moving!”
The rest of the group pushed open the door and started down the stairs beyond.
Lucy paused at the door. “Good luck, Barry,” she told him. Then she headed towards the stairs.
“I don’t think luck has anything to do with it,” Barry muttered to himself as the rest of them abandoned him. “Fate makes its own rules, and I brought this all down on myself.”
He raised his gun as the first screams of the vampyre and the revenant horde echoed down the corridor towards him.
Here we go…
* * *
As the group rapidly descended the back stairs, they could hear screams and the sounds of breaking glass coming from other floors. It sounded like the horde had begun an all-out assault on the hotel and were coming in through the windows.
Though Paul wasn’t sure just how many of the old stories about these creatures were true, it seemed at least one of them was. Judging from how high up they still were it seemed like at the very least, some of those creatures outside could fly!
Jenna was counting all the stairs aloud as they went down in multiples of nine. Paul didn’t ask why. If it kept her quiet and calm, then all the better. He thought that she was a flake, and it was probably only a matter of time before she snapped.
Suddenly, she broke off from her counting.
“We shouldn’t have left Barry,” Jenna erupted, stopping everyone in their tracks. “We’re dropping like flies—first Jamie, now Barry. We shouldn’t have left him. We shouldn’t have left him behind.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Paul responded, “Barry was bitten, badly. He probably wouldn’t have made it much further in any case. I’m not even sure how he made it back to the hotel.
“As for Jamie, it pretty much fucking looked like he fucking welcomed those bitches in here. Looked to me as though he betrayed us. Or am I wrong?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you swear waaay too much?” Jenna asked. “And I mean A LOT.”
“Has anyone ever told you that your counting everything all the time gets on everybody’s tits?” Paul responded. “Cos it does…it’s just no one wants to be the first to say anything.”
“Will you two pack it in!” Lucy intervened. “This is neither the place nor the time for this. Paul, try having a bit of compassion for a change. You have as much to answer for as Jamie, whatever his motivations might’ve been.”
Jenna started to think she and Lucy might be friends. Unnoticed, she began to shy back away from the arguing couple. If there was one thing she could not abide, (actually there were several things, but hey-ho) it was confrontation.
“Really?” Paul answered back at Lucy. “You want to start this now? Right when we’re busy, fleeing for our lives. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I was kind of hoping we might actually think about getting the fuck out of here before we started allocating blame, you know? I would actually like to live long enough to see my twenty-eighth birthday.”
“I thought you said in our introduction that you were twenty-six?” Lucy snapped back.
“I lied about my age, all right?” Paul responded. “Haven’t you heard, the closer you are to thirty, the less chance you have of scoring? How old are you again, by the way, Lucy? Twenty eight…twenty nine?”
“We really should get moving guys…” Angela interrupted. Stefania was looking anxious and seeing as how she was their ticket out of there…
From upstairs, two floors up, from where they’d just come, came the sound of gunshots.
Barry.
“C’mon, keep moving,” Angela said as the group began to continue their descent.
The lights went out.
For a moment, there was darkness. Then, emergency lighting all up and down the stairway flickered and came on.
It lit the way down, but only just about.
“Shit,” Paul said. “Angela’s right. Let’s move…”
* * *
Paul and the others had just passed the next stairwell when Jenna came to a pause. She swore someone or somebody had just called out her name.
In the dim emergency light of the staircase, no one else noticed her stopping just below the door that lead to the third floor as a shadowy figure stepped out onto the stairs and beckoned her towards him.
“Jenna?” The figure asked.
For a moment, Jenna’s eyes couldn’t quite focus. The image of the man swirled in front of her, and she wasn’t sure who she was seeing. She couldn’t tell in this light whether the figure looked more like her father or one of the tall Italian guys from off the plane.
Then suddenly her vision seemed to settle, and she was finally able to recognize the man in front of her. With a shock, Jenna realized the figure was her psychologist, Doctor Ed!
He stepped back, pulling her out of the stairwell and onto the third floor. “I’m so glad I found you,” he told her. “Your parents were worried about you. They asked me to fly out here and make sure you were all right. I arrived about an hour ago. There was a bomb scare and the flight was delayed. I just managed to unpack, and then everything all went crazy.”
That wasn’t right, Jenna thought. The bomb scare had been in London…and why would Doctor Ed drop everything, his plans with his family, just to come all the way out here and see her?
“No,” Jenna shook her head. “You’re not Doctor Ed. You can’t be. That’s impossible.” She started to back away.
“And why’s that?” Doctor Ed asked, curious.
“Because Doctor Ed doesn’t exist!” Jenna all but shouted. “I made him up to keep me calm. He’s all in my head!”
“Well,” said the vampyre, shedding her disguise. “I suppose you can’t win them all…”
The scantily clad stripper leapt upon Jenna before she could escape, slamming her prey hard against the stairwell door. Ripping open Jenna's throat, the vampyre let her warm, salty blood wash all over her as she fed. She could taste the fear running through the young cattle’s veins, increasing her frenzy all the more.
“Oh Sweetie, your blood tastes gooood…” the vampyre positively purred, as Jenna lay dying slowly in her arms.
Jenna knew nothing. For her, everything had already faded to black.
* * *
The group had just reached the next stairwell when Lucy stopped abruptly. “Where’s Jenna?”
From up above came the sound of shouting, coming from the floor they had just passed. There was an almighty thud against the door leading to that floor…then nothing.
The entire group immediately and instinctively came to the exact same realisation at precisely the same time. The voice they’d all heard shouting was Jenna’s.
“It’s too late f
or her. They got her.” Paul pushed Lucy hard, urging her to keep going and moving on.
“No,” Lucy answered back, “we don’t know that.”
“Feel free to go and check,” Paul told her sarcastically, and continued following Angela and Stefania down the rest of the stairs.
Lucy paused. She almost went back. Then she heard the sounds of screaming and howls coming from the other side of the door, presumably as more undead broke onto that floor.
Quickly, she turned and moved to join the others.
She didn’t look back.
* * *
They reached the bottom floor about a minute later. The stairs ended in the middle of a short corridor. One way stretched off towards the hotel kitchens, and the other ended in a door that presumably lead out to the rear of the hotel and hopefully the car park.
Angela turned left towards the kitchens. “We should all grab knives,” she explained. “That way, at least we’ve all got weapons.”
Paul grabbed a cook’s knife, sharp and deadly with a precision edge. Testing it on his finger drew blood which, Paul noted, caused Angela to stiffen at the sight.
Angela took a cleaver, and Lucy and Stefania picked up smaller blades. They headed back down the corridor towards what they all hoped was the exit to the rear of the hotel.
Together, all four of them slipped out the door and found themselves in a bin area situated at the back of the hotel. Stefania grabbed the door before it could swing shut.
“Figlio di troia!” She cursed. “I dropped my car keys!” She had been toying with them all the way down the back stairs, Paul remembered. He hoped to God she hadn’t dropped them somewhere on the stairs, otherwise they were all going to be fucked.
“I put them down when I picked my knife,” Stefania explained. "I'll go and get them…”
Feral Hearts Page 22
