“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to get a wittle tummy ache,” Kain teased in response.
“You don’t speak much about your parents,” Mary-Anne said quietly enough for only Caitlin to hear. “What happened to them?”
She lost herself in her thoughts for a moment, then simply replied, “The same thing that happened to everyone else. One minute they were here. The next minute, they were Mad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Caitlin waved it away. “That was all a long time ago. I’ve got new family now, anyway.” She smiled. “Even if they are a bit dysfunctional and weird.”
Caitlin watched Jaxon as he yipped happily, jumping into the water and disappearing beneath the surface. For a moment, her heart stopped as she envisioned some kind of mammoth fish dragging Jaxon beneath the surface—surely there must be some hideously mutated creature in a pond like this?—until his head appeared and he paddled excitedly across to the other side. A neat line of clear water followed in his wake.
“He’s certainly got the right idea,” Tom said, shaking off his boot and holding it upside down as water poured back into the pond. “Somehow, that water is freezing. Definitely cooled my foot down.”
Caitlin crouched and studied the water. The smell was hideous and thick. She closed her eyes and imagined swimming in clean water, her entire body cooling down.
“What d’ya reckon, Kitty-Cat?” Kain said. “Fancy a swim?”
“I wouldn’ts if I weres you,” Joe said, plopping himself on his ass and taking a breather.
“Not today.” Caitlin pulled her map out and ran her finger along the parchment.
“How much farther?” Mary-Anne asked as she settled at the base of a tree.
“Not far at all.” She turned on the spot, pointing a finger ahead of her as she spun. “Should be right around…”
“Caitlin?” Laurie said, appearing from the trees on the other side of the pond. Caitlin hadn’t even realized she had left the group.
“Where did you go?” she asked, for a second thinking that she could see something in the trees not too far to Laurie’s left. A shadow of an animal—a dog, perhaps?—before it melted into the shadows.
“To water the flowers,” Laurie replied, nodding at her crotch.
“Gross,” Mary-Anne said.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kain said, a hint of disappointment in his voice.
“That’s exactly why, perv.” Laurie grinned. “Caitlin, there’s something you need to see.”
Caitlin rose and skirted the pond. Laurie led her a short distance into the trees before she saw what it was Laurie had found. The others caught up with them a moment later, gasping as the “something” came into view.
The shell of a huge building loomed eerily from the tangled undergrowth. Corrugated iron walls and large windows were smashed and broken. Several chimneys reached up into the sky. There was an area that looked to have once been a square piece of road, with the faded remains of painted lines at small intervals.
“What the hell is that?” Tom asked.
Kain was the first to answer. “That, dear simpleton, is a factory. An industrial building where items were manufactured by the thousands.”
“Thousands per year?”
“Thousands per day,” Kain replied.
“Thousands per…” Awe was plainly written on Tom’s face. “Impossible.” Even Joe gasped quietly.
“You’d think,” Kain continued. “But electricity and machinery were powerful things, my friend. In its heyday, Earth had vehicles to carry you hundreds of miles in a day, machines to produce food wrapped in packages by the thousands, TVs and music players which you could carry around in your pocket. Man, those were the good days.” Kain jolted at a memory. “Oh! Sweet-fangs, do you remember ice-creams?”
Mary-Anne nodded. “Chocolate and mint and caramel and strawberry.” She closed her eyes, licking her lips as if she were tasting it now. “Sitting in the living room and listening to David Bowie.”
“Ah, man! Yeah, I’d forgotten about him.” Kain cleared his throat and sang, “Rocket maaaan.”
Mary-Anne raised an eyebrow. “No, that was Elton… Never mind.”
“I’m telling you,” Kain continued. “I haven’t seen anything like this factory in years. It’s held up pretty well, too. What do you think is inside?”
“Our vampire, according to this,” Caitlin said, patting her map.
Tom, Laurie, and Joe’s faces dropped as one, and she honestly couldn’t blame them. They were all great fighters in their own right, having survived and battled the Madness as well as many other things along the way. But not many of them had first-hand experiences with wild vampires. Caitlin, on the other hand, had seen what Mary-Anne was fully capable of and had been the one to track and bring her over to the good side.
But that was different, wasn’t it? Mary-Anne was good from the start. She helped me survive. What will happen if this vampire turns out to be a shit-eating piece of garbage? Can I take them then?
Caitlin steeled herself, forcing herself to remember how much she had accomplished since that fateful day she had set out into the wilds from Silver Creek. Dylan’s words echoed around in her head: Now head on out there and bring some color to this miserable grey-scale fuckery of a world.
“Come on, bitches,” she said, raising her head high and walking towards the rusted iron door of the factory. “Time to recruit another vampire.”
They searched high and low inside the factory. The damn thing was huge. Caitlin couldn’t believe that it was nearly half the size of Silver Creek in its own right.
They split into two groups, Caitlin with Kain, Joe, and Jaxon, and Mary-Anne with Laurie and Tom, making their way through a reception of sorts and emerging out into the wide-open space of the factory floor. Conveyor belts snaked every which way with large square tubes, strange machines that apparently used to revolve, and the sound of pigeons and other birds nestled in the roof.
When they re-grouped a short while later, both parties hadn’t found anything worthy of note. “It’s as empty as Psycho Joe’s head,” Kain said.
“Y’alls best watch your mouths, dog-fucker,” Joe said, eyeing Kain with a warning look.
They found a set of metal-grated stairs which wobbled precariously as they climbed. They split once more, this time able to see each other from afar over the walkways suspended above the factory floor. There were rooms on either side which they explored. Some doors stood wide open while others were locked, the mechanisms so rusted by time that a gentle push snapped them easily.
“Over here!” Mary-Anne called as she poked her head into what appeared to be the old foreman’s office.
Caitlin, Kain, Jaxon, and Joe made their way over to her. Jaxon raced ahead, growls creeping up from his throat.
“What have you found?” Caitlin paused. “Are they in there?”
The vampire held the door open for Caitlin. She walked in and almost felt she had to rub her eyes to believe what she was seeing.
Should there be a bedroom in a factory?
There was a bed in the far corner, the sheets all folded and near-pristine. A small unit next to the bed held a stack of books, a larger cupboard stood at the side of the room, and in the far corner, a small area looked charred from where a fire had clearly been sparked and burned some time ago.
The room was relatively clean, too, compared to the thick carpets of dust which lined everything in the factory.
There was no sign of the vampire who lived there. But there was a knocking from inside the wardrobe.
Jaxon barked.
“What is it?” Joe cried.
Caitlin pulled open the cupboard door, jumping back slightly as the Mad rocked and raged. It was bound and gagged at the bottom of the wardrobe, it’s scent overbearing.
In one swift movement, Caitlin stabbed her sword into the Mad’s chest. The thing wriggled a little longer before the light in its eyes died out.
“What the fuck was tha
t about?” Tom asked.
“Hey, Joe! Violet beat us here. What are the odds?” Kain teased, remembering the bound-up Mad woman they had met at Joe’s trash pile house.
Joe glared at Kain.
“That’s not funny,” Caitlin scolded.
“You think that was the vampire?” Laurie asked, her eyes wide as if afraid to hear the answer. “You think they…turned?”
Kain scoffed. “And then bound themselves up in the bottom of a wardrobe. Are you crazy?”
“You think they’re somewhere else inside the factory?” Caitlin asked, looking at Mary-Anne. She figured if anyone knew the trail of a vampire, it would be another vampire.
“Possibly,” Mary-Anne said. “Although honestly, it’s early afternoon, so I figure they’d be fast asleep if they were here by now. No vampire in their right mind would skip out on sleeping during the day unless they absolutely had to.”
“You mean unless they were gifted an item of clothing which blocked the sun and allowed day-walking so they could spend time with their day-walking friends?” Caitlin smiled.
“Exactly.”
“Then where are they?” Caitlin asked, but was immediately distracted as Kain ran excitedly over to the bed and began jumping on the mattress.
The frame creaked in protest. “Got a great spring, this one.”
Jaxon barked excitedly and jumped on the bed with him. With every one of Kain’s bounces, he was launched a foot or so in the air. He landed clumsily with a bark, his tongue drooping out the side of his mouth.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Laurie ventured, watching as the bed frame began to buckle beneath their weight. “If you’re not careful, it might—”
Before she finished, the four legs—which had suspended the bed a foot or so off the floor—sank into the floor with a strange whooshing sound. The frame fell with it, resting flat against the floor and kicking up a small puff of dust.
“Is there anything you can’t break?” Caitlin chided.
“Give me your heart, and we’ll see how I do with that,” Kain said, dropping dramatically to one knee in front of her. He grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it.
Caitlin snatched her hand back and shoved Kain’s shoulder. He fell onto his back and Jaxon immediately jumped on him, licking his face as his tail wagged his enthusiasm.
“Quite the charmer,” Laurie said.
Kain winked. “Why, thank you.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Mary-Anne said.
“This room has been empty for a while,” Tom said, crouching near where the fire had been set. He ran a finger through the charred remains and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “At least a few weeks, or so.”
“You think they just…left?” Caitlin asked.
“Are we’s even sure it’s a vampire?” Joe added.
Mary-Anne took a deep sniff. Her brow furrowed. “Definitely a vampire? Yes. Look at that back wall.” She pointed to where a tar-like substance decorated the wall in patches where holes had once been. “You think someone would have gone through the effort of blocking out the sun if they didn’t want to hide from it? I can also smell them, though the trace is faint. Someone definitely lived here, ‘lived’ being the operative word. I’ve seen vampire hovels in my time, and this isn’t one. Someone didn’t just sleep here, they made it their home.”
“A good someone?” Laurie asked hopefully.
Mary-Anne shrugged. “Hard to say for certain. I’d hazard a guess and say probably. This vampire lived nowhere near humans so must have turned vegetarian, too.”
“Damn.” Caitlin settled on the floor. “All this way for nothing.”
“Not necessarily nothing.” Tom stood by a cupboard next to the wardrobe. He opened the door, and hundreds of small tins spilled out onto the floor. “You said the factory manufactured thousands of items? I think I found several hundred.”
Caitlin picked one up and examined the tin. “What is it?” she asked.
Mary-Anne picked up another. “Hard to say. The ink in the printer must have run out ages ago. It’s only white paper.”
There was a loud noise as Kain smacked the tin against the bed frame. The sound of metal on metal hurt their ears. He raised the tin to eye level, inspecting the dent he had just made. “Damn, why do they make these things so hard to open?”
Mary-Anne held up a finger, hooked her nail under the ring-pull, and lifted it to undo the top. She handed the tin to Caitlin.
Caitlin sniffed the contents and recoiled. “Is that… What is that?”
Mary-Anne rolled her eyes. “That, my friends, is SPAM.”
“What’s SPAM?” Laurie asked, taking her own tin and pulling the top off.
“Tinned meat. A delicacy from the old world. Basically, a pig shoved into a small container and mixed with some other shit to make it taste good and last a long while.”
“No way,” Kain said as he tore off the top of his own tin. “I used to love this stuff.” He scooped a chunk of meat with his finger and tossed it into his mouth. His eyes rolled back orgasmically as he slumped back against the bed. “Ah, man, I forgot how good this stuff was.”
Laurie, Tom, Joe, and Caitlin eyed the tin suspiciously. It didn’t seem right, the idea that food could be kept for so long in small containers—or that it could actually taste good. Aside from salting and leaving meat to dry out over racks, Caitlin’s only experience with food was that it rotted over time, sometimes very quickly. Fruits and vegetables were in short supply, grown on small patches of land within Silver Creek. No food should last this long.
“Want to try it together?” Caitlin asked the others.
“It’s food, not a fucking orgy,” Kain said, already ripping into his third can. “Man up, folks, before there’s nothing left to try.”
And so they did. At first, no one seemed quite sure, but after a few mouthfuls, they all ate with enthusiasm, emptying can after can until their stomachs were full.
“Where has this magic food been all my life?” Tom asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and patting his now full stomach.
“Can you imagine what kind of world it would be to have these lying around in your cupboards?” Laurie asked, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. “No hunting. No gathering. Just cupboards full of food ready and waiting to go.”
“It wasn’t quite that easy,” Mary-Anne said. “First, you had to drive to the supermarket, then you had to choose what you wanted, pay for your food, and carry it all the way home. Before you knew it, you’d lost two hours of your Saturday afternoon.”
They all stared incredulously at her.
“What? I’m just saying. It was a chore.”
“More of a chore than sneaking through Mad-infested woods, tracking and hunting deer or anything that might put a small morsel of food in your stomach, then cooking over an open fire to ensure you don’t get some kind of disease from what you’re eating?” Laurie folded her arms as if making an obvious point.
“Fair enough,” Mary-Anne replied, poking out her tongue. “I suppose times are harder now.”
They sat inside the room for a short while, letting their bellies process the food. Soon enough, their eyes grew heavy. Jaxon and Kain curled up on the mattress and Caitlin, Mary-Anne, Tom, Laurie, and Joe with their backs to the wall.
All too soon, the room was filled with the gentle sound of snores.
Chapter Six
Silver Creek, Silver Creek Forest, Old Ontario
“This is bullshit.” Vex folded his arms and sulked like a belligerent child in Mother Wendy’s tavern. “Absolute bullshit.”
“Oh, will you let it go?” Belle snapped. “Orders are orders. Just learn to live with them.”
Vex was tired and wound up. It had already been several days since the others had left and there had been no action in Silver Creek. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. He had spent the last few days roaming the town, keeping a watch over the main gates, occasionally stepping out onto the High Road and w
alking for a half a mile before returning. Apart from that, he simply twiddled his thumbs.
Might as well be stuck in a hole with my thumb up my ass for all the use I am.
Vex had never thought of himself as a proactive fighter. Hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d miss being a part of the action. But he had to admit, the idea that the others were out there in the wilds actually doing something useful while he played babysitter to the town was starting to piss him off.
Not that it was all bad, of course. If he were to be stuck anywhere with anyone, he would choose Belle every time. Over the last few months, they had been almost inseparable. They slept in the same quarters, they paired up on walks, and their tag-team fighting style was second to none.
Then why the fuck am I still here?
Belle signaled for Mother Wendy to bring them another drink each.
“Come on, Belle. How can you live like this? You know how badass we can be when we’re out there fighting. We’re wasting away in here. It’s like having a permanent erection with nothing to stick it into.”
“Ew. Gross.” Belle rolled her eyes.
“You know what I mean. What’s the point if we can’t do shit?”
Belle thought for a minute. Vex knew her well enough to know that she was thinking exactly the same thing. The only difference was that Belle was happier to take orders. Vex, being older, was used to pushing the boundaries and trying to do his own thing. If it hadn’t been for Belle, he might have left days ago.
“We can do shit,” Belle said. “We can keep a watch over this town in Caitlin’s absence and make sure everyone is okay. We still don’t have an active count of how many Mad are in the woods. What if a sudden attack comes? What if the hordes come flooding in? What then?”
“The gate guards close the gate, and we stop their entry?” Vex said as if it was the most obvious solution in the world.
That shut Belle up.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Sully wasn’t such a wet sponge,” he persisted, his eyes darting over to a table where Sully sat with several of the residents of Silver Creek, his eyes glazed over with bags beneath them. “I mean, dude knows how to set orders and look after a town, but Jee-sus-Christ is he boring. I want to be out there again, Belle. Don’t you remember what it was like in New Leaf?”
Hunting The Broken: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Caitlin Chronicles Book 3) Page 5
