Pitch

by Jillian Eaton

  My dad had started drinking before my mom left him. I don’t know if the drinking triggered the divorce or the divorce triggered the drinking. It didn’t matter, really. Either way, the results were the same.

  He wasn’t a mean drunk. Just a careless and forgetful one. He had never once raised his hand to me in anger, or even his voice, for that matter. I should have considered myself lucky – I knew other kids didn’t have it so easy – but how is cooking dinner for yourself every night of the week because you dad is passed out on the sofa by seven o’clock lucky?

  Then again, he has paid a heavier price than I have. He lost his job. His wife. His family. All he has left is a belligerent sixteen year old teenager who doesn’t obey her curfew and thinks hot wiring cars is an acceptable extra curricular activity.

  “Dad.” I touched his arm and he startled. “Dad, I don’t think we should stay here. It’s not safe. We should try to get to the police station.”

  He turned his head to look at me. His face was pale. There was a cut above his left eyebrow that had dried blood crusted in it. He blinked once, twice, and his gaze focused on me. “Lola, I thought they got you too,” he said.

  The hug was unexpected and awkward. I returned his embrace hesitantly, patting his shoulder before drawing back. “I’m fine. I was on the East side when it started. With Travis. I ran back here and found a boy. Maximus. He seems to know a lot about what is going on. He gave me this.” I pulled out the gun and held it flat. My dad’s eyes widened.

  “A gun? Why would a boy give you a gun? Is it loaded?”

  “I hope so.”

  He took a few steps forward and tripped. Taking his arm I guided him to the edge of the bed. He sat with a little sigh and stared down at his hands. “I thought they got you too,” he repeated quietly.

  I crouched down in front of him. “They didn’t get me, Dad. I’m right here. I’m okay. Have you heard from Mom or Gia? Do you have your cell phone?”

  His head jerked to the side. “No. No. I forgot to charge it. The… the power is out. The TV isn’t working. The radio. The computer. I can’t… I can’t reach them.” He closed his eyes. “Everyone was screaming so loud. Doors were slamming. Someone came in here. They knocked everything over. They broke everything. I hid in the closet but… I don’t know what’s happening. Lola, what’s happening?”

  “It’s okay. Everything is going to be fine.” I soothed him like I would a small, frightened child as I reconsidered what to do. If the Drinkers had already passed through here maybe the best idea would be to simply lay low until sunrise. Stock up on supplies. Try to sleep. Wait and see if the electricity came back on. It wasn’t an ideal plan, but it sure sounded better than going back outside.

  I was confidant that in the light of day things would make sense. Part of me still wasn’t ready to accept Maximus’s explanation for what was happening. I was certain at some point the military would have to show up. I was positive this couldn’t be happening across the entire world.

  I was so wrong.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Bodies, Blood, and Burning Cars

  Bodies. Blood. Burning cars. It had been a massacre. With a mix of horror and morbid fascination I stared out my bedroom window to the street below. Bodies littered the pavement like broken dolls, their necks ripped open, their limbs twisted in horrible angles. A police car had crashed through the drug store. The cop who had driven it there was mangled almost beyond recognition. Even Barnabus, the gray cat that lived in the alley, had not survived the night.

  I lurched away from the window and covered my mouth to contain the scream that threatened to burst free. Keeping my hand firmly in place I rushed into the bathroom, collapsed in front of the toilet, and was sick for the first time since my parents sat me down and told me about the big D.

  My dad was still sleeping off his hangover. I took a quick shower – so cold it instantly cleared my head – and got dressed in cropped off jeans and a plain black t-shirt.

  Before falling into a restless sleep last night I had packed a green duffel back I found in the back of my closet chock full of things I thought would be useful for an apocalypse: clothes, an extra pair of sneakers, sun screen, toothbrush, little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, peanut butter (it never went bad), batteries, and all the flashlights I could find, which only ended up being three.

  I put together a bag for my dad as well. In his I stuffed as many bottles of water as I could fit and any food that wasn’t perishable. I wasn’t positive, although I was pretty sure, that since the electricity was still out the water would stop working soon. When that happened I wanted to be prepared. Why die of dehydration when there was a perfectly willing vampire ready to rip your throat out?

  Vampire. Drinker. Whatever they were called; I believed in them now. How could I not when I had looked out my window and seen what they had done with my own eyes? And even worse than the broken bodies outside – even worse than the senseless murder of innocent people – was the knowledge that no one had come. No one had saved us. Not the police. Not the army. Not the secret service government people. Which had to mean this was happening all over, because how could anyone just sit back and let an entire town be wiped out? The answer was they couldn’t. They answer was the only ones who could help us were fighting somewhere else or they were already dead. No one was coming to our rescue. We were on our own.

  “Dad, you have to get up now. We have to move.” I knocked on his door and when he didn’t answer I opened it and shook him awake. He groaned and covered his eyes against the light that was streaming in through the windows. If this was a regular day I would have closed the blinds and let him go back to sleep. But this wasn’t a regular day. I didn’t know if there would ever be a regular day again. “Dad?” I poked him.

  “Whaffisit?” he mumbled.

  “Well…” I took a deep breath. It was probably better just to get it over with all at once. “Vampires invaded the town last night. Everyone is dead. If we want to stay alive, we have to find a safe place to hide before dark.”

  That certainly got his attention. He sat bolt upright and said, “What? What? Lola, is that you?”

  This again? Good thing I had dumped all the beer I could find last night down the sink. “Yes it’s me,” I said impatiently. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I… Yes.” His eyes cut away to the bureau in the corner of the room that had been flipped on its side. “I remember. But vampires, Lola? That’s… that’s impossible.”

  I shrugged. “Go look for yourself.”

  He shuffled over to the window. I waited by the bed. I did not need to see what he was looking at. It was already imprinted in my brain; sizzled into my memory like some sort of hot brand.

  “All those people,” he whispered, still looking out. “I don’t understand. Who could have done this? Where are the police?” He swung around, his eyes a little wild, his face a few shades shy of albino. “Have you talked to your mother? Your sister? Are they all right?”

  “I don’t know. I dropped my phone last night. It won’t turn on.” And just like that, all of my contact with the outside world had been severed. No cell phone. No regular phone. No internet to send an e-mail or a message on Facebook. No text messages. I had always taken it for granted, how easily I could get in touch with someone, no matter what distance separated us. Now I had no way of knowing if my own mother was alive.

  My dad rubbed his face. “Someone will come. Someone has to come.”

  “Dad,” I whispered. “There isn’t anyone left.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ninety Miles an Hour Down a Dead End Road

  We had to get out of the town. Besides the dead bodies everywhere being the stuff nightmares were made of, it just made more sense to flee to a less populated area. Apocalypse survival 101: run as far away from everything as you can.

  I didn’t know if the overnight slaughter of a town of over ten thousand people counted as an apocalypse. I had decided to call it that anyways because I li
ked the word and how else would I describe what had happened? How else would you describe the people lying in the street in pools of their own blood? Men. Women. Children. Pets. No one had escaped the Drinkers. No one, it seemed, but me and my dad.

  Since we were the least likely people to survive an apocalypse I figured it meant there had to be others out there. I mean, if a drunk and a defenseless kid had made it through the night then there had to be other survivors. There had to be.

  We had our pick of cars. Many of them had just been abandoned in the street, keys still in the ignition, previous owners dead on the asphalt. Dad picked a navy blue Audi sedan mostly because it was the only car that had a full tank of gas and a little bit because he had always wanted to own one but had never had enough money.

  I piled all our stuff in the back while he grabbed more bottled water and batteries from the drug store across the street.

  “Ready?” he said when I slid into the passenger seat and buckled my seatbelt.

  “We have to make one quick stop first.”

  “What? Why? That’s not part of the plan.” His knuckles turned white as they gripped the steering wheel. I did my best not to notice.

  Dad has never been very good in crisis situations. I still remember when my sister fell during her basketball game and broke her ankle. He went absolutely nuts before he passed out. And then there was the time I was twenty minutes late coming home from school in the fifth grade. Mom had to physically restrain him from calling the National Guard. So far he’s holding himself together pretty well given the circumstances. I can only hope it lasts.

  “Travis. I have to see if he’s all right,” I said.

  Dad started the car. “Where is he? At his house?”

  “Well…” I hesitated. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean not exactly?” Dad’s voice pitched up an octave. “Where is he, Lola?”

  Oh boy. It was funny, really, that in the wake of everything that had happened some part of me was afraid of telling my dad where I had been last night. What was he going to do, ground me?

  “I thought it would be cool to see if I could hotwire a car. I talked Travis into coming. It was on the East side, Turner Street. We heard a loud noise from inside and knocked on the front door. A guy answered. One of them. He put some sort of trance on Travis and he walked right in.”

  “Lola,” he sighed.

  “I know, I know,” I said hastily. “I promise I won’t do it again but I can’t just leave without him. I know he’s probably not… not okay but I have to check, Dad. I have to be sure.”

  “What if that thing is still there?” he asked apprehensively.

  “He’ll probably be in the basement or something. Maximus said they couldn’t come out in the daylight.” I had told Dad about Maximus this morning. That, and the gun that was currently sitting in my lap, had finally convinced him the Drinkers were real. The bodies piled outside hadn’t hurt either.

  Dad sighed as he put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. When we reached Main Street and headed left, towards the East side of town, I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and slumped back, gazing out the window as Dad weaved through the motionless traffic.

  Everything was destroyed. Shop windows had been smashed in. Cars were driven up over the sidewalks. A truck with a boat attached had been flipped completely over and was hanging half in and half out of Petunia’s Pastry Shop. Here and there fires burned and I wondered how long it would take for them to consume the entire town.

  Was this what they had intended? Utter destruction? But why? What was the sense in it? I only knew the basics about vampires courtesy of movies. Sunlight burned them, they were allergic to silver, and they drank blood. Why, then, had not one single victim been drained? Mutilated, clawed apart, ripped open: yes. Emptied of blood: no.

  It turned my stomach and I had to swallow back more vomit, but I made myself study the dead bodies as we drove past them. Two things struck me immediately. The first was that all of these people had to have been dragged from their houses. No way had everyone in town just happened to be out for an evening stroll when they were attacked. And the second thing, much more alarming than the first, was that the bodies seemed to form a sort of line. Oh, they were scattered all over. Some on lawns. Others pulled to the sidewalk. One or two in the road. But almost every single one had been turned so their heads faced towards the houses and their feet pointed to the street. A bizarre coincidence? A warning? Or something else entirely? There was no way to tell.

  “Are you okay?” Dad asked.

  “Are you?” I shot back.

  “No,” he said quietly. “No I suppose not.”

  We drove the rest of the way in tense silence. When we turned onto Turner Street with its tidy little houses and neatly mowed lawns I directed Dad to the correct address. He pulled up behind Mr. Livingston’s car and turned off the engine.

  “To save gas,” he said.

  Together we got out and walked to the front door.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Dad asked in a strained voice.

  I straightened my shoulders. “I’m sure.”

  For the second time in less than twenty four hours I knocked on Mr. Livingston’s front door. I don’t know why. Habit, I suppose. Seconds passed. Nothing happened and I felt like an idiot. What had I expected, that Travis would just open the door and say, ‘Hey guys! Good to see you!’?

  Dad touched my arm. “Lola, we should just -”

  The door started to open. We both stepped back, our expressions equally nervous.

  “Hey guys! Good to see you.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Travis?”

  “Uh, yeah. Were you expecting someone else after you left me here to die with a WWE vampire? Who, by the way, is definitely not Mr. Livingston. In fact I think he might have actually eaten the poor guy, which would explain the smell coming up from the basement. Your choice of cars to steal was impeccable, Lola. Really.”

  It was definitely Travis. I leaped forward and wrapped my arms around him. I might have had reservations about hugging my father, but with Travis such things were simply natural.

  I felt him shudder and my grip tightened. “I’m sorry,” I murmured in his ear. “I’m so sorry, Trav. I never would have left…”

  “But the big bad vampire scared you off?” he finished for me. “Don’t worry. You know I would have done the same thing.”

  I searched his eyes. He looked tired, his clothes were wrinkled, his red hair disheveled, but he was alive. It was more than I had ever dared hope for. “Come on.” I entwined my fingers with his and tugged him out of the house. “We have a car and supplies and we’re heading for the mountains until this whole thing gets sorted out.” How easy I made it sound. Almost as if we were taking a fun vacation.

  “Hey Mr. V,” said Travis as we race walked back to the car. “Nice to see you’re not dead.”

  Dad tried to smile. It came off more as a grimace. He had never understood Travis’s humor. “Same to you,” he said.

  We made room for Travis between the duffel bags and cases of water. He squeezed in, his long legs and lanky arms stretching clear across the backseat.

  “You didn’t seem surprised when I said that guy was a vampire,” he said once we had backed out of the driveway and were heading east, towards the interstate.

  “That’s because I wasn’t.” I twisted around in my seat and told him all about my encounter with Maximus. He listened silently, his expression revealing nothing, which was kind of odd since Travis was a wear your heart on your sleeve kind of guy.

  “And now you’re going to the mountains?” he asked when I had finished.

  “There are some cabins up there that we stayed at when I was a little kid,” I said. The cabins weren’t much to speak of. Small, two room buildings made out of logs. But they were in the middle of no where, which was a big plus, and the stream that ran alongside them would provide fresh water. It was as good a place as any to lay low.

&nbs
p; “Mr. V, I hate to ask this but…” Travis trailed off and swallowed hard, his adams apple bobbing.

  Dad’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry Travis. I can’t,” he said.

  “I understand,” said Travis, looking close to tears.

  I remained silent. I knew what Travis had wanted to ask and I knew why Dad had said no. I went back to staring out the window and tried not to think about Travis’s parents. Tried not to think about how his mom had always called to check up on him and it drove him nuts, and how I always thought, but never said out loud, how lucky he was to have a mom who cared enough to call.

  The houses faded away as we got closer to the exit for the interstate. Now there were only trees that blurred together in one long line of green. Neither Travis nor I mentioned that Dad was going well over ninety. Who was going to pull us over? The police? I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle the snort of laughter that threatened to escape. As if there was -

  It happened so fast I didn’t have time to react. One second the car was barreling down the road and the next the wheels were squealing and Dad was screaming and I caught only a fleeting glance of the crater in the middle of the earth where the road used to be. I was thrown to the side. My head cracked hard against the window. Dad’s airbag deployed. It sounded like an explosion. I heard Travis yell out. The car bucked once before it hurtled off the side of the road and into the ditch.

  Too fast. We were moving too fast. I threw my hands up in front of my face. The tree was right in front of us. The car never had a chance.

  The collision shot me forward out of my seat. As I flew towards the windshield all I could think was all things considered, dying in a car accident wasn’t the worse way to go.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We Make a Decision

  Everything was black.