by Alexia Purdy
“Fixed her.”
He licked his dry lips and let his head fall as he stared hard at the tiles at our feet. “I would’ve done anything to save her.”
“Why? You didn’t even know her. You did this to her. Why would you care if she died or not?”
He shook his head, closing his eyes and rubbing his face as he sighed. Why did he seem to care? Maybe he was so caught up with making super vampires he’d forgotten about the human aspect of it all.
“I knew her. I knew her before all of this.” He waved his hand around the lab, letting out a slow, tired breath. His eyes met mine again, and the ocean of confusion had been replaced by a sea of loss and pain. “I knew her very well. I would never allow anyone to hurt her. She had agreed to help me until the vampirism took hold of her brain functions. Then I couldn’t get her to respond to me properly. I never wanted to hurt her. I… I….”
“Knew her? What are you talking about?” Now I was totally thrown a curve ball.
“Before the outbreak, I knew her. She was a teacher at the same school I taught at. She turned me down for a date a few times after your father died, but we remained friends. That was before she left to do some internet business.”
Shocker. Of course. Before her successful internet business, she’d been an English teacher. “So you knew her when they dragged her in? I bet you were happy to have her under your command.”
“No, I knew about her, about you and your brother, for a while before they were taken. You guys were so thorough, this hive was unable to find you for a while. It wasn’t until they tracked you to the city that day that they got her and your brother alone, without you. It was the only way to get her without a full on battle. If you weren’t there.”
“You had them take her?” My voice quivered, and I refrained from putting my shaking hands to his neck.
“Yes, April. I’m sorry. They had reports of your family, and when I found out it was her, I had to have her. One way or another. If I could show her what I was working on, then maybe she’d look at me as more than a microbiology teacher. I’d be more than just a smart guy to her. She’d have a reason to love me back.”
“You stole my mother because she rejected you?” The rage was spilling over, and I could tell he felt every ounce of it as he sat up, his eyes widening at my rising fury.
“She was immune, unlike any of us. We had to have her help us. It was a coincidence that she was the one we needed. I would’ve never allowed them to take her if there were others to help us. Your family was the only one. Get it, April? No one else has survived this epidemic like your family did. No one.”
“What about the twelve from Vida? You could’ve taken them.”
“They didn’t emerge from the underground until after the Stratosphere event. Otherwise I would’ve focused on one of them, April. I swear. I would’ve never hurt her, I couldn’t have known she’d lose her mind and do what she did.”
“But she did. She killed herself! You did that to her. It’s all your fault!” I was on my feet, but Rye’s arms were already around me, pinning me to his chest. “Let me go! I’m going to kill this motherfucker!”
“April….”
“Let me go!”
“Stop. That’s enough. Nothing will change what happened. Nothing will bring her back.”
“I know. I know that! I have to do this… let me do this.” I continued to fight to no avail against him. He’d fed before he’d left our hive earlier, and I’d had no vampire blood in ages, nothing. Hell, I hadn’t even eaten dinner, and I was paying for it now. That protein bar was sitting on the counter, only a bite nibbled from it. How dumb could I be? “Please,” I begged, but slumped in his grip. He wasn’t going to budge until my rage had dissipated. I knew that and let it morph into complete and utter despair. My sobs and tears spilled over, and he turned me around to hug me tighter.
“It’s okay to be mad, it’s okay,” he whispered. I let my anger pour out into his chest, wetting his shirt, but I didn’t care. It’d been so pent up for so long, I had no idea how strong it had grown. I did want to kill Rick. It’d been the only thing I had thought about since I’d watched the sputtering embers burn out at our bunker. Just like that, my world had collapsed. My mother Helen had been my anchor to sanity in this hell the world had turned into. With her gone, how was I supposed to care for my brother Jeremy and keep my wits intact? How was I supposed to do it? The world had turned into something I wasn’t prepared for. No one could have prepared for this. How was I supposed to do this without her?
And it was all his fault. All Rick’s fault.
~~~~~
The humming of the machines whirring in the background kept me in a daze as I stared off into space and let the others shuffle about as they worked to take supplies from the lab, the cafeteria below and finish off the few hybrid vampires which had escaped from being quarantined when the walls had come down. Mercer had not figured out how to lift them yet, and by the way we could see him yelling at his troops on the cameras we’d managed to reroute so we could watch their movements, he was no closer to escaping than we were.
My fury had been expended, and I felt lighter, but as empty as a gas tank. It wasn’t a good empty either. I felt hollow more than anything, as if a piece of my own machinery humming under my skin and keeping me alive and going had been ripped out and taken apart, piece by mechanical piece. I’d let the madness, the hate and the anger take over and had let it fuel each and every thought and movement I had made in the last few months. Now, without it, I was left vulnerable and weaker than I had ever been before. I had to fill it with something, some purpose or goal, and I didn’t have any idea what that could be. How quickly vengeance ate away at one’s soul without remorse, leaving nothing but a carcass of what we were before we let it overtake us.
Well, I had crashed and burned without even a thought on how to recover.
Hands slipped over my shoulders, warm and cold at the same time. I knew it was Rye. His scent wafted into my nostrils. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he wasn’t going to let me wallow in misery for long. He knew I would hate myself for it later. At least someone cared to know me nowadays. It did perk me up enough to make me snap out of it and look up to meet his eyes. A small smile attempted to form on my lips.
“Hungry?”
I shook my head.
“Here.” He handed me a canteen filled with fresh, cool water. I accepted it and sipped on it slowly, still afraid to eat or drink. I just didn’t have any desire to do so.
“Where’s Rick?” I asked.
Rye studied me for a moment, and I knew he was searching for any deadly intentions in my question. “He’s resting in one of the bunk rooms nearby. The morphine really knocked him out.”
“At least one person is enjoying their beauty sleep,” I muttered. I rubbed at my temples. The headache hovering behind my eyelids and forehead was throbbing, and I knew I had to lie down soon or drop from sheer exhaustion. The night had been extra-long, but dawn was just a few hours away.
“Come on.” Rye slipped his fingers around my wrist and tugged.
“What?”
“We need to rest. Nothing is going on with the quarantine doors, so we have some time to regroup. You need to sleep.”
I pulled away, shaking my head. “No way in bloody hell am I sleeping here. Their hospitality isn’t really conducive to that.”
Rye chuckled but grabbed my wrist again. “You’re coming to lie down with me, or I’m throwing you over my shoulder after I hog tie you.”
“You’d like that,” I groaned and got to my feet. He was right, though.
“You bet I would.” His devious grin had me shaking my head and chuckling. I wondered how he did that, how he could lighten my mood when I was so intent on soaking in my mellow blues.
I let him drag me to another bunker room which only had four bunks in it. I wondered if the one Rick was in was like this. I wondered if I could sneak in there after Rye went to sleep and slit Rick’s throat.
I shook my head. Morbid thoughts wouldn’t help me now. I still had questions for him, and I’d make his death long and painful, just like my mother’s. Plus, I still had to ask about that antidote. His discussion about it had piqued my curiosity.
Rye threw himself onto one of the bunks, letting out a breath as he sighed in pleasure. I took the one across from him and untied my boots so I could lie down. How he could relax so easily in a place like this was beyond me. I hadn’t felt safe to sleep without one eye open since I’d slept in my tiny cot bed in our mountain bunker. My mother had taken more than her life when she’d destroyed our home. My entire world had been there since everyone had died or turned into ferals. Now I had no choice but to plan a return to my old house in the city and scavenge for old stuff like photographs and what memories were left of our old life. It’d been so long since I’d been there, I was sure nothing was left to even go back to. We’d left it all boarded and locked up tight, but who knew if it had held against the end of the world?
“We’ll have to exterminate them.” Rye’s voice interrupted the cool silence that had enveloped me. I pulled the thin blanket over me and rolled over to face him. “We can’t leave them alive, not after all this.”
“We could assimilate those who want to join Blaze’s hive,” I whispered across to him. Avoiding his eyes, I bunched the pillow under my head. I knew why he said those things. It was true. In this world, why leave alive those who wanted you dead? I wished there was a better way, but there just wasn’t.
“Maybe. If there’s too many, we’d never be able to control them if they don’t like it in our hive.”
“Who’s to say they won’t like it?”
“Blaze won’t allow them to join. It’s too risky.”
I closed my eyes and hoped the darkness would allow me some rest. “I guess you’ll find out.”
“I guess.”
“You don’t oppose him much, do you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know him like I do. He’s only shown the surface to you and the others. He even suggested killing your friends, the humans.”
I sat up but couldn’t fully since a bunk bed sat atop me. “What? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
His liquid steel eyes flashed under the hum of the fluorescent light. “I wanted to, April, but he made me promise not to.”
“And me? What about me? Did he ever suggest killing me?”
“No.” Rye sat up, hunching down in the cramped space. “If he had ever suggested that, I’d have told him no way in hell.”
“Maybe he’s thought it.”
“Maybe. But like I said, he didn’t ever suggest it.”
“Why not? I’m a much a threat as these people are.”
“You were alone, April.” A husky voice interrupted us, and we both turned toward the source. Blaze’s face looked tired and dark, and I held my breath. How long had he stood there, listening in and knowing what we knew? He’d been quiet and reserved this entire time, taking it all in to ponder and digest. I’d forgotten he was even with us.
“One person can be more dangerous than an army,” I whispered, and my thoughts went back to the destruction of Christian’s hive at the Stratosphere. I’m not sure if I was angry, but tears formed, and I sucked in a breath to steady myself before I focused my eyes on the hive leader. “Just like you are more dangerous to others than they know.”
Blaze contemplated my words quietly but didn’t move. The color seemed to drain from his eyes. I’ve never really spoken with him much, not since he’d opposed my search for the city of Vida. Ever since, I’d stopped talking to him altogether and done what I wanted anyway. He was not my leader, and I was not his follower.
“No words have ever been truer.” He narrowed his eyes on Rye as though mentally reprimanding him for what he’d told me.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be gone when this is all over.”
Rye abruptly turned to me, his face masked in horror. “What?”
“If you wish. No one will stop you. You have your own free will.” Blaze turned to walk away, as if he’d lost interest in our conversation.
“April, what are you saying? Why would you leave? Where are you going? What about Jeremy?”
“He’s fine. He’ll stay in the city of Vida. He already likes it there more than being with me. As long you guys leave them alone, he’ll be fine.” I emphasized my words about leaving them alone and narrowed my eyes at Blaze as he walked away, daring him to say otherwise. I knew he could still hear us.
“The city of Vida will never be under threat from us unless they attack us first. You have my word,” Blaze answered over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.
If I disliked Blaze any, I sure as hell hated him now. Even with his promise, I didn’t like how he made it seem that he was doing me a favor by leaving the underground city alone.
“April….” Rye was on the floor, his hands on my arms. “You’re not going anywhere. What kind of crazy talk is that?”
I turned and stared hard into Rye’s gunmetal eyes, knowing I was going to miss them like the dickens when I did leave. “There’s nothing here for me anymore, once I have what I want. There’s a medical research facility in California that I want to take the antidote to. They can help replicate it, and we can all put this crazy virus-infested world behind us. I just hope there’s still someone there who can help me.”
Rye’s mouth hung open like there was nothing more shocking I could say and withdrew his hands from my arms, though the reddened imprints of his fingers lingered on my skin.
“Not everyone wants to change back, April. You’re going to plunge the world into a civil war.”
“I don’t care if I have to spray it like a pesticide. I will make everyone take this antidote, and life will return to what it was.” My voice rose over his, and my chest heaved.
He shook his head and sunk to his knees. “Why would you want to take on that task?”
“For Jeremy.”
“He’s happy. Let him have his life down in the City of Vida. He’s fine. Why do you have to become the martyr here?” His eyes turned from hopeless to focused and then bled into fury. He was losing his patience with me. Might as well. I was done.
“Because he may be happy, he may be a little boy now, but what about when he wants to leave? What will the world be when they emerge to try and repopulate the earth? It will be a wasteland, infested with vampires and ferals alike. It will be in tattered ruins. If I don’t fix this mess, no one will. Rick may not want to help, but I’ll make him and the rest of the world do what they should’ve done before this blew up into the wreck it is.”
I yanked the blanket back over me and rolled to face the wall, hoping it was message enough for Rye to leave me alone. I was done talking. I’d made up my mind and not him, Jeremy, Blaze, hell, not even Sarah could convince me otherwise. I needed to do something. I couldn’t just sit there and let the time go flitting by with nothing but ashes left to the future. Nothing but soot and ashes.
As things stood, there was no future. No future for me, for Jeremy. How could he expect to live secluded, underground forever? How could he be denied the blue of sky, fresh air and snowy mountains? Were they that naïve that the world would work out in the end? Were people so hopeless as to give up on the world and leave it in ruins? How could this have happened?
I closed my eyes, squeezing fat tears onto my pillow. My mother would’ve fought for it. I knew she would’ve. This was my future, our future, that I fought for. Why couldn’t anyone else see it that way? As the dawn approached, I shoved at the turmoil in my head and begged for rest. It finally came but not without due payment of nightmares of a future filled with blood and death.
Chapter Eight
Truth and Lies
The humming of the fluorescent lights illuminating the hall felt like a buzzing bee in my ears. I couldn’t sleep, and what little I’d gotten had left me weary and itching to move fr
om the lumpy bunk I was lying on. Blinking, I focused on the lump covered in the scratchy grey military-issue blanket across from me. Rye was dead asleep, his soft breaths barely noticeable in the dim room.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, careful to not make any noise, and pulled my boots on. I’d slept in my clothes, like I always did. Nothing beats being ready to go at a second’s notice. Patting down the matted mess my ponytail had turned into, I frowned and decided to let it be. No sense in trying to impress anyone there. I slipped my travel pack on and was ready to go.
Sneaking into the hall, I glanced down the way toward the lab. It wasn’t far but wasn’t close enough to give me the heebie jeebies thinking about all the distorted things lingering in the tanks in there. It sent a shudder down my spine, but I let out a slow breath and decided to head down there anyway. I glanced around each door but only found empty bunks. It had me wondering where Rick was sleeping. Why did he make me feel that he was hiding so much more under that nerdy exterior of his? My gut feelings were usually dead on, and this one was screaming for me to talk more with him, alone. It wasn’t that he’d given me any hints or anything like that, it was just a feeling that he didn’t want to speak around the hybrid vampires, not about certain things. If I could find him, maybe I could squeeze out every little secret he held inside.
I followed the circumference of the lab, finding the place deserted. There were more bunks on this side of the lab, but no one filled the empty mattresses within, and I wondered where the hell everyone had gone. There were more bunks farther down the hall where Rye and I had slept, but I hadn’t bothered backtracking to check them out. Maybe everyone was over there, and I’d missed them.
It wasn’t a problem. I didn’t really want to see any of them at the moment. I didn’t want to explain my midnight stroll through this oppressive place.
I stopped, my heart drumming under my chest like frightened butterfly, warning me of something. Rick was nearby, and I didn’t even know how I knew it. It was as if it was just a fact I’d been told somehow. I tiptoed farther down until I reached the last door of the hall of bunks. It was slightly ajar, and the darkness within told me he was probably asleep. I wiggled my fingers. They itched to reach in there and surprise the son of a gun.
