The Darkening

by Paul Antony Jones

  Birdy tried to struggle free, but the vampire's grip on her chest was like nothing she had ever felt before, she could barely breathe. Her muffled screams only faintly reached her own ears.

  The gunfire stopped. She thought she heard Genie calling her name, but her mind reeled as the vampire sprinted through the darkness. Shapes, hidden within the darkness, flashed by. Her head grazed something sharp that cut into her scalp, and she felt blood begin to flow. Hot tears of pain welled in her eyes.

  Then as suddenly as she had been snatched away from her friends, Birdy found herself thrown violently to the ground. She skidded across the floor hitting something hard and unyielding with a metallic thrum. Birdy pushed herself upright, as good as blind in the darkness of the hangar, her hands flailing around her as she tried to find something, anything, that she could use as a weapon. She felt cold corrugated metal against the flesh of both her hands. She backed up a few inches and felt the same cold metal behind her; she was in a corner of the hangar.

  From somewhere in the darkness ahead, Birdy heard Tyreese calling her name, his voice echoing off the walls. Then Collins's and Genie's voices joined in too. She tried to scream for help but her throat was so tight, and so very dry that nothing came out. She let out a tiny gasp of fear as a pair of yellow eyes appeared just inches from her face. She tried to push herself even deeper into the corner, her wet feet slipping on the slick surface of the floor.

  A second pair of eyes appeared to her right, then a third, and a fourth.

  Birdy was sure her heart had stopped. She tried to scream again but managed only a weak whimper. Fingers touched her right ankle. She pulled her legs up to her chest, but a pair of hands grabbed her foot and yanked her so violently that her head hit the floor, snapping her jaw shut, her teeth sinking into her tongue, filling the darkness with sparkles of light that floated and pulsed across her vision. Birdy tasted blood in her mouth, felt it trickle down her throat as the pain in her tongue finally registered in her concussed brain. She moaned with pain and kicked blindly at her assailant, but the hands that had grabbed her were like steel traps. Inescapable.

  Pain, like she had been stuck by a fistful of needles exploded in Birdy's right arm; something horribly sharp had pierced her flesh just above her left wrist. A second burst of agony seared her left leg as she felt another set of fangs sinking into the meat of her calf. Her right arm was wrenched so hard above her head the sudden pain hid the bite of the third vampire as its teeth sank into her other wrist.

  When she felt bony fingers grab and twist her hair, yanking her head to the right, felt teeth bite deep into the flesh of her neck, Birdy finally managed to scream.

  •••

  Tyreese heard Birdy's scream echo off the walls of the aircraft hangar. In Afghanistan he'd heard the screams of dying men, of terrified women and children; this was worse.

  "Dear God," Genie said.

  Tyreese hissed an expletive and took off in the direction he thought Birdy's terrified scream had come from. Collins hesitated for a second. If he went after Tyreese and the kid, they were all being put at risk, and he sure as hell couldn't leave Genie here by herself. Genie apparently had other plans; she was up and running after Tyreese.

  "Well, shit!" Collins said, then took off after the beam of Tyreese's flashlight as it bounced off the hidden surfaces of walls, and glass, and the glistening bodies of aircraft. He ducked under a plane's fuselage... and almost collided with his two companions.

  "What the hell are—" Collins forgot the rest of the sentence when he saw what the beams of Tyreese's and Genie's flashlights were illuminating. Three vampires were caught in the pool of light like butterflies pinned to a board. Really goddamned ugly fucking butterflies, Collins thought. The feet of another of the bastards was just disappearing into the shadows as Collins's eyes moved to the still form lying spread-eagled on the floor nearby.

  "Oh... no," he managed to whisper.

  Birdy lay on her back, her left leg straight out, her right leg akimbo, both arms were stretched above her head. Her head was tilted to one side, her hair pulled upward to expose her throat. There was not much blood, not really, just the multiple puncture marks, puckered an angry red, against the pale skin on Birdy's wrists and throat, a trickle of blood flowing from each bite. She looks like she's doing a pirouette, Collins thought. He had left his weapon in the back of the Cessna. He looked across at Tyreese; he had not brought his weapon either.

  But Genie had her ax.

  As if she had read Collins's mind, she raised the ax to her shoulder and rushed at the vampires, a scream of rage roaring from her mouth. She was a Berserker, with nothing but death and fury on her mind.

  She swung the ax at the first of the blinded vampires. It connected with the old man's head just above his left ear, dug deep, and separated the creature's lower jaw from the rest of the head. The vampire collapsed backward to the floor. Genie placed her foot on the side of the man's head and pulled the ax free, raised it again and swung at the second vampire, a skinny woman. The ax hit the vampire on the meat of her upper back as she turned to flee into the darkness.

  The ax should have stuck, Collins thought as he watched the fight play out as if in slow motion. Instead, Genie's ax sliced through the vampire's meat and bone as momentum drove it through the strangely transmuted flesh. It did stick when it hit the woman's hip bone. Genie gave a deep growl like the vengeful mother bear she now resembled, and kicked the screaming creature, tearing the ax free, ripping the blade the rest of the way through the vampire. The woman's entire left side, along with the arm, tore away from the rest of the woman's body and lay twitching next to Birdy's feet. The vampire screamed and thrashed, spraying liquid and pieces of flesh though the air.

  Genie raised the ax again and brought it down with a grunt of satisfaction, splitting the vampire's skull diagonally from the crown of her head to her left shoulder, instantly silencing the screams. The final vampire, confused and disoriented by the light, scrambled away into the darkness, disappearing faster than either Tyreese or Collins could follow with their flashlights.

  "Birdy!" Genie whispered. She rushed to the girl's side, slipped her arms beneath her back and raised her gently upright. Birdy's head lolled like a broken doll's onto her chest, her arms hung limp at her side.

  "Birdy!" Genie yelled. "Birdy?"

  The girl did not move.

  "Put her down," Tyreese ordered, almost pulling Birdy's body from the woman's hands. He laid her gently back down onto the floor, dropped his head to her chest and listened.

  Collins stood at Birdy's head. He swung the beam of his flashlight back and forth across the hangar floor, cutting through the darkness, forcing any remaining vampires to stay deep in the darkness.

  "Is she alive?" Genie asked, her voice filled with fear, almost to the point of breathlessness. "Is she?"

  "Shut up," Tyreese commanded, he pushed his ear closer against Birdy's chest.

  Apart from the hammer of the rain on the metal roof, and the scuffing of Collins's shoes as he shifted from one foot to the other, all was quiet inside the hangar. Tyreese's hand found its way to Birdy's arm and pressed two fingers to her wrist just above a set of puncture wounds.

  "She's alive!" he finally declared.

  Collins wasn't sure who exhaled louder, Genie or him.

  "Come on, let's get her into the plane," Collins said. He helped Tyreese to his feet, then along with Genie, lifted the girl into Tyreese's waiting arms.

  Collins led the way back to the Cessna, sweeping his flashlight across their path.

  "Genie, get in," ordered Tyreese. Genie threw her ax to the floor of the plane and climbed into the rear bench seat.

  "Hand her to me," she said, when she was seated.

  Slowly, ever-so-slowly, Tyreese slid Birdy onto the seat next to Genie, lowering the child's head into the woman's lap.

  "We have to get her to a hospital," Tyreese demanded.

  "Yes, but not here," Collins said. He ran around the front of th
e plane, his flashlight slashing the darkness, and climbed into the pilot's seat.

  "She's going to die if we don't get her medical attention fast," Tyreese insisted. He stood on the copilot's side of the plane, one hand on either side of the doorway leaning into the cabin, making it clear that he had no intention of getting in until he had a satisfactory answer.

  "We have to head to Nevada," Collins said as he pulled a lightweight earphone and microphone set from the dashboard, plugged it in then placed it over his ears. "Now will you get in the goddamn plane?"

  "Not until you tell me we're taking her to the nearest hospital," Tyreese demanded. "If we don't she's going to—"

  Collins cut him off. "How? How are we supposed to do that?" he yelled.

  "It's not up for discussion," Tyreese yelled back. "We get her to a hospital. Now!"

  "Again, how the fuck do you propose we do that? Are you gonna drive her? And which hospital are you going to take her to? Hmmm? How many lights did you see on our way here? I'll tell you how many I saw; none! Not one! Know why? 'Cause every last goddamn man, woman, and child is dead... or one of those... those goddamn vampires. And you can probably count every doctor and nurse between here and Santa Barbara among them. And even if the hospitals haven't been overrun yet, how long do you think it's going to be before they are?"

  "You can fly us there," Tyreese insisted.

  "And land where?" Collins implored. "How many hospitals do you know with a convenient airstrip? And this storm is all along the West Coast. Who's to say it's going to be any better in Oregon? Or Washington? Hell! For all we know, this could have come up from Mexico. No, the only hope for her and us, is if I get us to Nevada." Collins paused. "Now, are you gonna get in the goddamn plane or are we leaving without you?"

  Tyreese hesitated for a moment, then heaved himself into the cockpit and closed the door behind him. "What are you doing?" he hissed as he strapped himself into the shotgun seat. Collins was flipping switches and checking gauges on the plane's console.

  "Pre-flight check. Making sure everything's flight ready."

  From across the darkened hangar, the sound of movement within the room they had just left could be plainly heard.

  "We don't have time for this," Tyreese insisted. His voice sounded like escaping gas.

  •••

  "Listen," Collins shot back, "It's going to be hard enough getting us off the ground in this goddamned weather. I don't want any surprises if... once... we're in the air. So you better just let me get this done." Before Tyreese could argue any further, Collins flung his door open and was jogging around the exterior of the aircraft, running his flashlight over the plane's wings, tires, engine, checking whatever it was that pilots needed to check before takeoff.

  "Christ!" Tyreese turned sideways and opened his door. He pressed one foot against the bottom of the door to keep it from swinging closed, then turned his attention back to the hangar. His rifle lay in his lap but now he brought it up to his shoulder, holding the flashlight under the barrel as he swept back the darkness with its beam. "Hurry up, for Christ's sake," he whisper-shouted at Collins.

  The detective ignored him, ducking under the fuselage as he moved back toward the front of the plane.

  From the direction they had just come, Tyreese heard the sound of something moving, or rather things, plural. Footfalls, shuffling sounds that he could not identify, which made them all the more terrifying because there were almost certainly no other living humans in here besides the four survivors. Three survivors huddled together in a deathtrap of an aircraft while they waited for the fourth to finish checking they wouldn't explode the second he put the key in the goddamn ignition or however the fuck you started this thing.

  "Okay, let's motor," said Collins, climbing back into the pilot's seat.

  "That wrist gonna give you any problems?" Tyreese asked, nodding at the cop's bandaged forearm.

  "You know how to fly?" Collins asked Tyreese.

  Tyreese shook his head.

  "Then it's not like we have any choice is it. Now close the goddamn door."

  Tyreese pulled his feet inside and closed the door, fastening it shut, while Collins checked the plane's fuel valve, quickly tested the brakes, primed the engine, set the throttle to idle, then turned the ignition key. The engine fired up instantly, the propeller twirling into a blur of motion in seconds.

  "See," said Collins, turning to face Tyreese, his voice raised loud enough to be heard over the thrum of the propeller, "I told you there was nothing to worry about."

  The vampires appeared as if from nowhere, but Tyreese's mind, hyper-vigilant from adrenalin, instantly figured out that they must be dropping from the ceiling, having climbed up the corrugated metal and then used the girders that crisscrossed the roof-space to move silently and quickly to where the humans sat, like canned meat inside the Cessna. He yelled a warning, instinctively trying to bring the rifle to bear on the nearest vampire. Genie yelled something that was probably an expletive but her voice was so run through with fear that her words were indecipherable.

  Collins gunned the engine and released the brake.

  The Cessna began to move forward even as the first vampire flung itself at Tyreese. It smacked against the window, its jaws wide, teeth scoring the glass, thick black saliva running from its mouth, yellow eyes burning with an evil hunger. In the darkness over the creature's shoulders, Tyreese saw more eyes than he could count moving through the darkness, climbing over aircraft like spiders, along walls, and across the roof beams. He couldn't shoot the thing hanging onto the side of the plane, it would shatter both the window and the eardrums of those sitting beside him. Instead, Tyreese unlocked the door and threw it open with all the force he could muster, stopping abruptly when it was halfway open. The sudden jolt caused the vampire, a skinny white teen boy with blond hair cropped all the way down to his skull, to lose his grip and drop away out of sight. Tyreese closed the door and locked it again, turning his face forward in time to see six more vampires drop to the ground ahead of them, forming a cordon and blocking the exit from the hangar.

  "Oh no," said Genie from the back seat.

  "Fuck 'em!" Collins yelled. He gunned the throttle. There was an audible increase in the whine of the plane's engine as its revs surged. Collins aimed the nose of the Cessna directly at the vampires. They tried to move out of the way, leaping into the air, but they were too slow. The propeller turning at thousands of revolutions a minute tore into their bodies, turning them into tiny pieces of flesh that splattered across the windshield and sent body parts flying away as though a grenade had been detonated inside them. Another tried to leap out of the way, but the left wing caught it with enough force that it almost snapped the woman's body in two. She fell to the ground in a bloody pool.

  And then they were outside, the rain hammering against the plane's body.

  "They're following us," said Genie.

  "How many?" Collins asked.

  "All of them," Genie blurted back, unaware of how unhelpful she was inadvertently being.

  Tyreese looked over his shoulder and sucked in a gulp of air. "She's right," he said to Collins, then matter-of-factly added: "Go faster. Go much faster."

  The hangar was quickly fading back into the darkness, but bobbing and weaving like fireflies in the night were the gold eyes of vampires; hundreds of them streaming out of the deeper shadows of the hangar's doorway. Tyreese looked to his left; there were more coming after them from across the airfield, more than he could easily count. So many the otherworldly glow of their eyes had become a golden wave that undulated within the darkness; a beautiful yet terrifying sight.

  Tyreese forced himself to look straight ahead into the darkness. A darkness lit only by the intermittent flash of the aircraft's running lights.

  "Faster," he repeated. "You have to go faster."

  Collins held on to the steering yolk with one hand, grabbed a microphone with the other and keyed it. "Burbank Ground and Tower, this is Cessna November-six-one-four
-Juliet-Sierra at parking ramp, have information Tango, request permission to taxi to runway fifteen for immediate departure to the north, over."

  There was no reply.

  "For Christ's sake, we don't have time for this," Tyreese said.

  Collins did not take his eyes off what little of the runway he could see ahead of him. "I don't have a damn choice," he said. "If there's another plane out here with us, there's no way I'll see them in time to stop. If the tower's still operational, it'll be the only way to avoid a collision."

  He repeated the radio call. Again there was only silence.

  "Well... shit!" Collins said, exhaling the words.

  "They're getting closer," said Genie. Her voice was just above a whisper, as though if she spoke any louder it might draw the creatures to them faster.

  Tyreese glanced out the side window. A wave of vampires was moving across the airfield toward them, less than twenty feet away.

  "They're almost on us. You have to—" Tyreese's voice was drowned out by a sudden increase in engine noise as Collins throttled up. The plane began to pick up speed.

  Visibility was down to maybe thirty feet thanks to the swirling rain, and as the Cessna accelerated, just how insignificant that distance was became all the more obvious. They would stand no chance, none at all, Tyreese realized, if there was any kind of obstruction ahead of them. For all any of them knew, there could be a 747 parked on the runway ahead, or a refueling truck. Truth was, anything in their way would spell doom for them; there would be no chance of avoiding it. Tyreese reached out both hands and grabbed the dash, his knuckles white against his dark skin.