“So let’s all kill each other,” she said bitterly. “What about me? Would you kill me? I asked you for help tonight because I thought we were friends.”
“Friends,” Ramona said, as if she’d never heard the word before. She didn’t say anything more for a while. “We have a bond, Joan. We bonded after the children died.”
“I feel—”
“But I didn’t push you out of my body. I didn’t make you from nothing. I didn’t give you years of my life. We’re not the same blood. Do you think anything can compare with that?”
“I see you’ve thought it all through,” Joan said.
Ramona turned to look at her. Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “What else is there to think about?”
“But it’s crazy. All of it. It’s crazy.”
“Crazy,” said Ramona. She clearly hated the word. “It’s not crazy, Joan. It’s survival.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Doug
44 days after Resurrection
Doug pulled up to the curb and killed the engine. He sat in the dark for a while, watching the Harris home. He was a little surprised by the digs. He’d expected to find the doctor and his cute little wife living in a big fancy mansion instead of this modest Tudor house.
He flicked his smoke out the window and lit another. Leo Boon sang: Look away from the cross to that glittering crown. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, indeed. He turned it off and took a long snort on his flask, closing his eyes as he swallowed, breathing through the burn. From the seat next to him, he picked up the cold black crowbar—the weapon that had brought him luck during his first blood heist—and hefted it.
Empties spilled out of the truck with a clatter as he opened the door. It was time to have a little talk with the good doctor, man to man. He thrust the crowbar in his belt behind his back. He emptied his flask with a final pull and tossed it into the truck. Then he approached the front door of the house along the neatly shoveled walk.
He’d scrapped the idea of going in there with a plan. The idea of throwing the dice excited him. His face was killing him. He was tired of the constant pain. He wanted to lose control and let the winner take all. Doug was prepared to gamble everything he had, but that was nothing to a man like him, a man who no longer had anything to lose.
He rang the doorbell. A shape moved in the window. The porch light turned on.
“Open up, doc,” he said quietly, displaying calm before the storm.
David
44 days after Resurrection
David turned on the porch light and stepped back, the reassuring weight of his gun in the pocket of his bathrobe. His heart galloped in his chest; his breath came in shallow gasps. Cotton-mouthed, he peered out of one of the curtained windows framing the door.
“Mr. Cooper, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“What happened to you? Are you all right?”
“I got mugged a few days back. For my blood. I got a great, big cut on my head.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. If you drop by the office tomorrow, I could take a look at it for you.”
“I didn’t come here for that. I came here to talk to you about my kids.”
David checked the lock. He placed his hands against the door and leaned against it. “I’m afraid I’ve said everything I have to on that subject.”
“Five minutes, doc. It’s important.”
“Go home, Mr. Cooper.”
He almost added, Or I’ll call the police! It only reminded him how isolated he was. This was how Ben felt, he knew, just before he died. Like his back was pushed against the wall so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Before he could stop himself, he slammed his palms against the door with a loud thump. “Go home, I said!”
The police had terrorized him for days. Now this overbearing giant had showed up at his house trying to bully him. David was tired of being pushed.
Nothing happened. He waited with his head pressed against the door. He heard nothing. He glanced at Nadine, who stared at him from the couch, her hands covering her mouth. She shook her head. Don’t open the door.
David shrugged. “I guess he left.”
He staggered back as the decorative window on the left shattered, spraying glass across the hardwood. Moments later, a hand reached in and groped for the lock. David stared at it in dumb shock. The inconceivable was happening. His home was actually being invaded.
The hand found the lock, which turned with a click.
The door opened, and Doug Cooper stepped into David’s house, reeking of alcohol and gripping a crowbar.
Doug
44 days after Resurrection
The doctor reeled away from him, looking pathetic in his bathrobe and slippers and old T-shirt. Without his tie and lab coat, he was just a tired, middle-aged man. The nurse sat on the couch wearing oversized men’s pajamas. She gaped up at him with doe eyes.
Doug closed the door behind him. His boots crunched on broken glass. He felt a little silly after briefly inspecting the damage he’d done, but it was too late to turn back now. He was already committed. The dice were still in the air.
“I’m sorry to bust your window, doc. But you weren’t listening to me. I need you to listen.”
The doctor and his wife just stared at him. Doug hadn’t expected that. He felt even sillier.
“Here’s how it is,” he explained. “You take blood from my friend. Two pints. Then I’ll be out of your hair for good. You’ll never see me again.”
“Mr. Cooper,” David rasped. “You’re the one who’s not listening.”
Doug scowled. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
The doctor licked his dry lips. “We helped you. We helped you, and this is how you repay us. By breaking into our home like a common criminal!”
“You do my friend, and we’re good. I’ll call him right now.”
“We’ve done enough. All we want now is to be left alone!”
Doug shook his head. “You heard the news. A substitute is on the way. We hang on a few more weeks, and we could have our kids back forever. They’ll grow up. Maybe our son will even be a fancy doctor like you.”
“Whatever they’ve got, they said it’s not going to be ready for a month,” the doctor told him. “Then they have to start production. There are millions of children. It could be months, even years, before you see a drop of it. It’s a lie, Mr. Cooper. A lie to give you false hope.”
Doug blinked. The doctor was making sense.
But none of it mattered.
“Don’t care,” he said. “We want our two pints. It’s the only chance we’ve got. Our kids are about to pass on. They need the medicine. It has to be done soon. Tonight.”
“And how are your kids, Mr. Cooper? What are they like now? Are they changing?”
He tightened his grip on the crowbar and snarled, “Don’t you talk shit about my kids.”
The doctor was going to say what Joan said. They were changing. They were monsters. They weren’t worth saving. Doug could take it from his wife but not this man.
Behind him, the door opened wider, and in walked Joan with Ramona Fox.
“Doug!” she said. “Doug, no more of this! You did enough here. Come home with me!”
“It’s too late for that, Joanie.”
It truly was. When he turned back, the doctor was pointing a gun at his face.
David
44 days after Resurrection
David felt new confidence holding the gun. One of the first things he’d learned during his firearm course was never point a gun at a human being unless you were willing to shoot him dead. He was okay with that right now. Either way, he’d already taken back some control of his life by simply exercising the choice.
Nadine stared at the gun. “I’ll help you, Mr. Cooper. I’ll draw your friend’s blood.”
“No, you won’t,” David told her, his eyes locked on Doug Cooper’s.
“But the children—”
�
�Are dead!” David said. “They’re gone!”
“No,” Nadine said with a shake of her head. “That’s not true.”
“The children are becoming vampires. Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooper?”
“They’ve gone wild,” said Joan. “Tell him, Doug. They barely even know us anymore.”
“I know them,” said Doug.
“Doug, listen to me,” his wife said, persisting. “This is crazy, what you’re doing here. Crazy and pointless. He’s right. We don’t need the blood. Come home to me, babe. I need you home.”
“Stay out of this, Joanie.” The big man took a step closer. “Let’s try that listening again, doc. Because what I’m going to say is pretty important. Here’s how it is. Either you take my friend’s blood, or I’m going to take yours. Right fucking now.”
“All for a few hours with children who don’t even know you anymore,” David said. He kept the gun leveled at the man’s chest. “Is that worth a man’s life, Mr. Cooper?”
“I think we’re on a first-name basis now, doc. And yes, it is. Even yours.”
David remembered to flick off the safety. Red means dead. “Then the real parasite is you.”
Nadine sobbed. “David, please—”
I can’t shoot, David thought. He took a step back and wiped sweat from his forehead. The gun trembled in his hand. Doug matched him by taking another step closer.
If I give in, this man will own me, and so will Herod.
“Doug, stop this right now!” Joan screamed.
A wave of calm washed over David. He actually wants me to do it.
“This doesn’t have to happen,” he said. “You can still walk out of here with your life.”
Doug inspected the crowbar in his hand and looked David in the eye. “This is my last chance.”
I just wanted to help people.
David squeezed the trigger.
The roar filled the room, making them all jump. David opened his eyes. Through an acrid puff of smoke, he saw Doug pat his chest, looking for a wound, while Joan Cooper screamed.
He lowered the gun and gaped in disbelief. Had he missed from just five feet away?
Doug turned. “Joanie, are you okay?” He laughed. “Holy shit, doc, you scared the living shit—”
David stepped forward to close the distance and squeezed the trigger again. The gun kicked in his hand with an electrifying bang and flash of light.
The first slug punched a red smoking hole in Doug Cooper’s chest. The second shattered his skull, spraying blood and bone onto the man’s screaming wife.
Doug grinned as his body crumpled to the floor, his brains spilling onto David’s Persian rug. With humor or relief, they’d never know.
Ramona
44 days after Resurrection
Rich red blood pooled thickly around Doug Cooper’s shattered head, Joan was screaming to wake the dead, and all Ramona could think was, It’s going to waste.
This wasn’t crazy. This was survival.
The difference lay in one’s priorities.
Yes, a man had been murdered in front of her, and that was upsetting.
If she indulged the horror she felt looking at his corpse, however, she couldn’t save Josh. Rather than get upset, she brushed those feelings aside and focused on how much blood she could harvest from Doug’s body.
If only she could get at it.
The doctor raised his gun with his shaky hand and shouted at her to leave. At his feet, Nadine pointlessly checked Doug’s vital signs; the man was obviously dead. Joan, splattered with Doug’s blood and bits of brain, wouldn’t stop screaming.
They needed to harvest the body fast. The blood was already clotting.
“Out!” the doctor was shouting. Nadine scooped up Doug’s crowbar and stood at her husband’s side, quaking in her slippers.
Ramona looked at her. “We need the blood. Josh needs it.”
Nadine said, “David—”
“No,” said David.
“But—”
“I told them to get out, and they’re getting out. They can take the body with them.”
“We’ll never get it home in time,” Ramona said. “We need tools to collect the blood. Right, Joan? You have nothing in your car we could use to harvest it.”
Joan had stopped screaming. She breathed in short little hiccups and stared down at the body.
The doctor stepped closer with the gun aimed at Ramona’s face. “I don’t care what you people do. You’re not my problem. I just want you the fuck out of my house before I shoot all of—”
He dropped to the floor with an explosive grunt.
Nadine stood over him. The crowbar looked large and heavy in her hands. Her husband writhed next to Doug on the Persian rug. He grimaced at the pain in his leg while he pointed the gun at his wife.
“Why?” he cried.
“The children,” she said. She brought the crowbar down against his forearm.
He screamed and rolled. He pointed the gun, still held in his good hand, at her again. He didn’t shoot. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
“Please don’t do this,” he begged.
She hit him again. “I’m sorry, David.” He lay groaning in a fetal ball. “I’m so sorry.”
Ramona had already gone into the kitchen and found what she needed to collect the blood. She was an expert at this by now. Time was critical; she moved quickly and harvested her first pint with ease.
“Stop it!” Joan screamed at them.
Ramona paused long enough to glimpse Joan standing with her fists clenched. Then she returned to work. “You promised me a pint, and I intend to collect. You should be helping me. This blood could keep our kids alive for hours.”
“Stop defiling his body!”
She sighed. There were too many distractions here. She needed to simplify things. She picked up the gun from the floor. “Sorry, Joan,” she said. “This is survival.”
Joan was already running for the door.
The gun recoiled with a powerful boom. She leveled it for a second shot, but Joan Cooper was gone.
Her ride had just left, but no matter.
She turned toward Nadine and David and thought, I’m rich.
Joan
44 days after Resurrection
Joan unclipped the handle of her purse and tied it below her knee as a tourniquet. She pressed handfuls of snow against the jagged holes in her leg to staunch the flow of blood.
Aw, fuck. The pain was incredible. Blinding, heart-stopping pain.
The bullet had ripped through her calf as she ran out the door. She’d stumbled off the porch into the bushes, certain Ramona was one step behind her with the gun. She fled into the dark next to the house until her leg gave out beneath her, and she fell hard.
She cried out as a gunshot boomed in the house, accompanied by a flash of light in the window over her head.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Then nothing except the ringing in her ears.
Joan wept for the doctor and his wife. For Doug, most of all.
A pale little face appeared in one of the dark windows of the house next door. Joan looked back in horror as two more appeared. The children pressed their tiny hands against the glass. They stared at her leg with gleaming eyes.
Oh God, no.
She needed to get out of here fast.
Joan gritted her teeth and got back onto her feet, using the wall for support. Then she began hopping one step at a time toward her car.
She heard crunching and slurping noises behind and craned her neck.
The neighbors’ children had left their house and were following her blood trail, shoveling handfuls of red snow into their mouths.
They were gaining on her.
She hopped again. And again. Then spared another glance.
The children were even closer. They were on all fours now, biting at the snow.
Joan hopped again. This time, her good leg gave out from exhaustion and dumped her onto the groun
d. She began to crawl. Teeth clicked behind her.
She reached the car with a cry of relief. She climbed inside and sat gasping behind the wheel. In her mind’s eye, she saw the side of Doug’s head explode in tiny red fragments. She couldn’t believe he was dead.
“Oh, Doug,” she sobbed. “Oh, my poor man.”
She screamed as the children slapped their hands against the windows. They pressed their faces against the glass, nostrils flaring. They could smell her. Their breath fogged the windows.
“Go away,” Joan hissed. “Leave me alone!”
She started the SUV and backed out of the driveway.
A dark shape appeared in the living room window and waved as she drove off.
Her body knew the way home. The road appeared to move, not her. By the time she recognized her house, she felt as if she were floating. She hopped toward the front door until she fell hard and writhed on the ground in piercing agony. Again, she crawled.
Again, she made it.
Joan dragged herself into the kitchen and sat on the floor with her back against a set of drawers. The pain in her leg had dulled to a steady, throbbing ache. A massive headache bloomed behind her eyes. Every muscle in her body felt stiff and disjointed. The house stood dark and empty. This was home, yet without her family, it didn’t feel like it. It was just a big empty space without Doug and Nate and Megan to fill it up. She shook off these thoughts. If she wanted to live, she had to get help. Her leg was still bleeding. She wrapped her leg in dish towels and held them tight.
Her phone was in the pocket of her jeans. She took it out and stared at it. If she called the paramedics, they’d bleed her to death. She couldn’t trust the police. She couldn’t trust any of her friends. She decided to call the only people she could still trust.
Her mother’s voice: “Yes?”
“Oh, Mom.” She covered her face with her hand and sobbed. “Thank God.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s so good to hear your voice, Mom.”
“Did something happen, Joanie?”
“I need help. Doug’s dead. He’s dead, and I’m hurt bad.”
Mom gasped. “Where are you?”
“I’m home.”
Mom asked her a question, but Joan didn’t pay attention. She’d heard a familiar creak.
Suffer the Children Page 32
