There was blood. So much of it everywhere. On the floors. The walls. It dripped from the ceiling like a light rain, creating dark ripples in the ground beneath my feet. I didn’t hear it fall, my ears were filled with a sweet sickly buzzing. It was an inhuman sound, the constant scream of a drill, the rip of flesh.
Exuratis cineribus!
That was no machinist’s tool, someone was screaming.
No. Something. It was inhuman, crying out in a language unspoken.
Cold metal bound me. My stomach churned. Ached from the hunger. Breathing in the putrid metallic air my limbs thrashed weakly in their bindings. A whisper in my head…ne me mori facias…
Dimitri...
The car had jerked to a stop. No room. No blood. No Dimitri. Just I in the passenger seat of the jeep with drool on my chin and a brain lost in the throes of lethargy. Damn, the dreams were getting worse. The pains in my stomach lasting long after my eyes had opened.
Sitting up in my chair I realized my hands were shaking, hell I was even hyperventilating.
We were on county road five, probably only twenty miles from Junction. There were no threats on this gravel road, just a worn ranch set back from the street. I didn’t see Ben’s van on the road ahead of us. What was going on?
“Out.” Rylie barked.
“What?” I asked half asleep, but he wasn’t talking to me. His stare was pegged on Zack.
“Get out of the vehicle.”
“No way! What the hell man?” Zack cried out. Rylie grabbed a 9mm from the center console. Holy crap. I pushed a little closer towards the window, slipping my hand onto my short knife’s hilt inconspicuously. Just in case.
“Out. Now.” He growled.
Zack practically stumbled out of the door, eyes wide and pale as a sheet. I got out too, just as Rylie came around the front of the vehicle getting right in Zack’s panic addled face. Shit, had Zackary Graham talked Rylie into a breakdown while I was out?
To be quite honest, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen since the outbreak.
“Look.” Evener’s tone was calm, collected, “we don’t want you to be here and despite all your macho shithead posturing about what an amazing killing machine you think you’ll be, you don’t want to be here either. So this is what I’m going to do.” Rylie whistled towards the farmhouse on the road. Two men dressed for combat came out, faces hidden under ball caps and thick glasses. “We are going to continue north, you are going to stay here with these two nice gentleman.”
“But deadhe-”
“Shut it. This is the green zone, especially since the vamps stepped it up.” Rylie smiled.
“Consider it a mini vacation.”
Zack didn’t argue. Standing there pale as a sheet he just gulped and nodded. It was quite ridiculous considering his ‘combat’ ready outfit.
“We’ll pick you up in a few days on the way back, until then keep your head down and follow their instructions.” Rylie turned back towards the jeep, holstering his gun. “You cross either of these gentleman they have my approval to put a bullet in the middle of your head.”
“Th...th...thank you...for this.” Zack called after him, the color slowly returning to his perfectly proportioned face.
Rylie didn’t turn around, he just kept walking away. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me. Frankly, you're a liability. Liabilities get good men killed.”
Not another word was spoken as we piled back into the jeep, driving slowly away from Mr. Zackary Graham who still stood awestruck as his handlers attempted to coax him into his safe house. I watched him get smaller and smaller in the rear view, leaving the stress of his family behind with him.
“Ben should be waiting for us at the next intersection.” Rylie commented casually, his dark hair obscuring his facial expression.
I wore my smile with pride.
“Okay.” I replied with a bit too much enthusiasm. I thought about thanking him, but there was no sense in wasting breath on the drama we had just dropped off.
When the jeep rolled over the winding hill the muddy once white van was proudly parked at the top. Its driver gave a wave out the window and started forward once we were about a car’s length from their bumper.
Mile marker by mile marker, we drove north past the overgrown fields and dilapidated homes. Past the long forgotten stronghold attempts and ominous signs that said everything from send help to the end is here.
“Do you think we’ll ever move out past the walls again?” I wondered out loud. We hadn’t seen a single threat for miles, just abandoned land, burned out cars and skeletal remains.
“Hope so. Someday. It’s still damned dangerous to be in the wilds. Hell, look what showed up at our doorstep not too long ago. I’ve heard talk of building up high, of building bigger walls, all sorts of grand dreams.” Rylie snorted. “I imagine someday it will be like the old west out here again. Pioneers ready to face off the dead the way the American’s dealt with the natives when they rolled through.”
“Maybe someday the dead won’t even be a threat, just gooey piles on the ground to clean up.”
“I wish. It’s been a decade, they should be mostly decayed by now, yet something keeps them moving. Something keeps them wanting.” Rylie put his left hand over his chest, touching something under his shirt. A cross maybe? It reminded me how little I knew about the great soldier.
With a nod, I started rummaging through the glove box. Someone had kept the owner’s manual with complete maintenance records in there. Oil changes every three months like clockwork. Beneath that were a couple of parking meter fine slips, a few sticks of extremely old gum and that weird little tool used to check tire pressure. Closing the glove box I flipped through the center console, reading the titles of the few cassette tapes in the vehicle.
“Mind if I?” I asked Rylie, waving the small plastic box in the air.
“Please.” With a grin, I popped the tape into the player and lost myself to the forgotten sounds of another age.
With the music blaring and the green fields rolling by my mind played with all sorts of stories and tales to pass the time. In this car I could have been anyone. A girl on a way to a concert, a fashion designer looking for inspiration, a soldier returning home, anyone but a girl driving hundreds of miles across deadhead infested territory to break into a colony run by a deadly vampire. I found myself stealing glimpses of Rylie when I could. He was ever the model of good driving habits; hands at ten and two, eyes forward on the road, seat belt buckled and mirrors adjusted. A lazy smirk crossed my face as I admired his ability to focus. Focus? Hell. He looked positively relaxed in the process. It was a quality I had always yearned for myself. Instead I was the girl whose mind took a flighty walkabout. My face fell as I pondered if I would have been able to spare myself woe had I his particular qualities. The last time I had dropped my guard playing through my mind; a decrepit two fingered hand scraping at my boot in the tall grass, a rusty moan flowing over the slow drag of a torn fingernail against the leather.
Tucking my hair behind my ears, I bolted up straight. Cleared my throat, stretched. Forced my thoughts to something else. What cows may have looked like in the field to my left. The sounds, the smells. Actual farms instead of waves of regrown prairie grass and wild corn.
“Ya’ll right over there?” Rylie asked me, not taking his eyes off the rolling gray in front of us. With a nod I mumbled something about stretching out my back, then flipped the jeep’s vertical lever with my left hand. The beautiful cottony tuffs danced about the blue stage in endless bliss. Fully disinterested in the woes below their light shadows. With a yawn I wished I was as serene as a cloud. The last thing I heard before my eyelids drooped into slumber was the sound of Rylie singing along to sweet home Alabama, a dark note of sorrow in his tune.
What should have taken three hours by car on the freeway had so far taken us two days by mostly back road. It wasn’t that we were driving sunup to sunset. There was a lot of hurry up and wait. Moving debris out of
the way, waiting for Candice to clear ahead at night, waiting for Ethan and Ben to scout during the day.
Getting through the initial drama of Ben discovering his ex-girlfriend was a vampire. In Caius’ cleanup of her immediate family he had neglected anyone who may have known her in a social sense. Needless to say, Ben about shit his pants.
I didn’t blame him, it is one thing to leave a woman scorned. It’s an entirely different situation to scorn a vampire. The latter was rumored to get your spine removed and heart used as a Slurpee straw. In a rare showing of true grace, she just laughed off his fears. The lady Alyssa, as she proudly called herself, would not stoop to mortal conflict.
Good for her. After all, this journey had enough conflict to go around as it was.
Our initial plan to take the main drag up had been hindered by a severe infestation. So many roamed about that if we had tried to drive over them, well let’s just say we would have gotten our vehicles stuck in mud made of bodies. Candice had offered to clear, but there were so many around Ames, it would have taken her a few nights to get it done. Rylie made the executive decision to go around.
Way around.
Slowly but surely we were making our progress through the burnt out homes and overgrown fields north into what was once a pretty awesome state. The bloody “welcome to Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes” sign greeted us in the early morning. Things hadn’t been that much different up here. The housing we passed was in various states of decay; burned down, damaged, broken into, you name it. Cars were abandoned everywhere from people trying to flee from the inescapable during the outbreak. Same sad story in a different state. Still we were making decent progress. We figured by afternoon we’d hit Lake City.
Then we had to navigate around a few semi’s. Set us back a good half day when the van got stuck in the mud.
Then we ran into a patch of deadheads during the day, thirty or so sun cooked cracked once humans listing about by a collection of tattered tents.
I found myself more irritated with them than anything else. They should have known not to try to camp so close to a road, might as well have just rang a dinner bell for the dead. Maybe they were just suicidal, who knew. I frowned at the poem in my notebook, the doodles I’d been working on to past the time while Rylie drove.
So far away from where you are
These miles have torn us worlds apart
And I miss you, yeah I miss you
So far away from where you are
I'm standing underneath the stars
And I wish you were here
I miss the time that was erased
I miss the way the sunshine would light up your face
I miss all the little things
I never thought that they'd mean everything to me
Yeah I miss you
And I wish you were here
I feel the beating of your heart
I see the shadows of your face
Just know that wherever you are
Yeah I miss you
And I wish you were here
I miss the time that was erased
I miss the way the sunshine would light up your face
I miss all the little things
I never thought that they'd mean everything to me
Yeah I miss you
And I wish you were here
So far away from where you are
These miles have torn us worlds apart
And I miss you, yeah I miss you
And I wish you were here
Something thumped against my window, drawing my eyes up from the pink font on the paper. An empty socketed gaze was transfixed upon me, its two fingered hand dragging across the glass leaving a brown smear in its wake.
The thing wasn’t an immediate threat by any means, our vehicle was moving forward slowly around the wreckage and the deadhead was so far decayed its strength had long since vacated with its muscle.
At this point it was just a gross annoyance.
“What are you scribbling in there? You’ve seemed sullen all day.” Rylie asked me gruffly, his eyes focused on the tail lights of Ben’s vehicle ahead of us.
“Just stupid stuff.” I lied, flipping the notebook shut. The sparkly blue peace sign on the cover glittered up at me, all too cheery for our surroundings.
“Fair enough." He smirked. "Your boyfriend came to see me early the morning we left."
My first impulse was to claim he wasn't my boyfriend. Which was silly, because he was I suppose. "Oh? What about?" Although I was pretty sure I knew, Cole's possessive neanderthal nature was one of his less appealing qualities. Frankly, if that's what it was I was going to be pretty pissed.
"Seems he was fairly irritated I danced with you. Thinks I'm making a move on what's his." Yeah I was pissed. Although that was an anger to file for later, when we were all back home.
"Are you?" I teased. Admittedly, I did enjoy his company. There was something to be said for commanding yet respectful men. Not to mention his combat-and dance- skills.
Rylie laughed. "Hey all I know is, if he was your man, he wouldn't have to be runnin round sayin such."
"That makes a surprising amount of sense." The jeep slowed as we maneuvered around an suv that had crossed the median and T-boned a coupe of some kind. Both were pretty burned out making it hard to make out anything besides their metal frames.
"So tell me Liv, how much of what they say about you is true and how much is pure bullshit?”
“What do you mean?”
“The girl who broke all the rules. The vampire whisperer.”
I laughed. “I doubt anyone could convince them to do anything they didn’t want to.”
“Whatever possessed you to go runnin north in the first place? After being on patrol for almost a decade I figured you’d have betta sense.” I liked his voice when he relaxed. The creole slipped in just slightly when he uttered more than just a few military grunts. Made him sound surprisingly sophisticated for the breadbasket states.
“You don’t know?” I muttered before I could stop my mouth. Shocking that Rylie would be left in the dark. Being so close to the Grahams and pretty much our head of all things security I figured they would have to bring him in on the whole ‘our doctor is a murdering psychopath’ event.
“Know what?” The steering wheel turned slightly to the left navigated by scarred hand, swerving around an abandoned motorcycle.
“Nothing.” Clasping the little angel pendant around my neck I mumbled “Just wanted to go home is all.”
“No offense, but my bullshit meter is going off.”
“Well maybe we’re within range of a bullshit cloud, we are driving behind Ben you know.” That got me a laugh.
“Alright, I won’t get into who shot John.”
“How’d you get those burns?”
His head whipped over to me, eyebrow kicked up in amusement. “Really?”
“Well, I figure you’re gonna try to have this heart to heart with me, I might as well make you feel uncomfortable to.” I quipped.
His deep chuckle told me I hadn’t crossed a line.
“Civilian booby-trap. Some holed up survivors had rigged parts of this storage complex to blow on contact.”
“You tripped a wire?”
“A member of my team did. Back when we still had teams.” Rylie tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his voice quiet and thoughtful. “I was lucky enough to be on the edge when the blast hit. The force threw me through the windshield of a car parked in front of the complex. Being out of sight and unconscious like that was the only thing that saved my hide that day from the flaming dead that poured out after the explosion.”
“Wow…”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure what to do at first but lay low in that old Buick. My team was...well lunch by that point. Every last one of them. I think I sat there for three hours, give or take a day just breathing in the smell of burned flesh while I tried to come up with a plan. I had a hell of a concussion and blood loss to boot.”
Rylie shook his head. “Eventually someone drove by in a jeep kind of like this one. Prolly just survivors trying to make a run from the city. The commotion of the vehicle was enough to get the dead off my team and stumbling down the road after the sound. I took the opportunity to run, well stumble, in the exact opposite direction.”
Our vehicle slowed as we maneuvered through a few burned out cars. Someone had spray painted ‘send help’ in yellow on a piece of metal, possibly a removed door to some sort of sedan.
“I passed out on the front porch of the Dale’s family farm. Five generations it had stood, or at least that’s what they told me when I came to. Those farm boys were tough as nails, kept the dead at bay with pitchforks and shotguns those first few days while I zoned in and out of consciousness. When I got my strength up, I helped them protect the perimeter. We didn’t see many dead out there on that acreage. Could see smoke in the distance sometimes from the city, a dark cloud that loomed over the horizon miles away. When the air force started dropping bombs…” Rylie cleared his throat.
“Met up with the Grahams not too long after that when we tried to syphon gas from a station on the edge of Milo. Found a whole town of people who were trying to weather the storm and had no clue on how to do it. Gave me a new purpose.”
“Your family?” I asked like an idiot before I could stop my mouth.
“Ain’t no way to get back to the Carolina’s. I wouldn’t have made it past Missouri and if I did? Just be a bunch of wandering corpses waiting for me to bury in the ground.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for? We didn’t ask for this hell,” Rylie reached over and turned up the radio, “we just roll with it.”
Our caravan stopped in the early evening outside a small town with no obvious welcome to smallville sign. A lazy little northern village along the river. It wasn’t a stop to take in the scenery however, smoke was pouring out from under the hood of the van.
“What’s up Ben?” Rylie called as we pulled in behind them. The burly giant was already out of the driver’s seat and wafting at smoke from the popped hood.
The Blood Bargain (Book 2): Breach Page 19
