This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  A scream yanked me from my quiet and morbid reflection, and I looked up in time to see Trigger twisting through the air halfway down the cliff. Though he grinned like a fool, his eyes were wide with terror. At the last second, he pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them, hitting the water butt-first in a perfect cannonball. The plume must have shot thirty feet.

  Even as the displaced water rained back to the lake Kenny sailed over the edge. He jackknifed and greased in with barely any disturbance at all. Behind me, Russ hooted, and I turned to see him swimming back toward the beach in an awkward stroke somewhere between a dog paddle and a butterfly.

  “Wait up!” I called, and started after him.

  Trigger surfaced in the distance, sputtering and flailing and bellowing, “My ass! I broke my ass!”

  Kenny’s peal of laughter bounced off the vertical walls and doubled, then tripled, until it sounded like a mocking crowd. At the shore, Russ veered over and pulled two beers from the last six-pack, and we drank them as we picked and stumbled our way around the lake to the upper end. From the top of the hill we could see for miles, nothing but verdant green cotton plants against the carmine soil stretching out in every direction. I set my snorkel and mask on a chunk of limestone the size of a suitcase near the precipice. M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” thundered from the boombox sitting with our towels, the sound surprisingly clear outside the enclosing rock sides. A gentle breeze blew in our faces, cooled by the water below. It carried a slightly metallic, clean smell. I gave Russ a dopey smile that was part indescribable happiness, part cheap beer.

  “Last one in is queer,” he shouted, and ran for the edge with me hot on his heels.

  He sprung away from the drop, twisting around to look at me as he fell, a look of triumph on his face, an image frozen in my memory as the pure essence of summer and youth. I jumped after him, but just as I pushed off, my foot slid in the loose gravel, kicking out behind me like some kind of satirical ballet move, and I tumbled gracelessly over the edge.

  The fall is imprinted in the archives of my mind as a series of snapshots taken as I somersaulted toward the water. White rock, speckled with black, far too close. The sky, impossibly blue. The lake, stretching off in the distance. Russ looking up at me, his mouth opening in a scream, Kenny and Trigger blurry smudges in the water beyond him. White rock. Blue sky.

  When the workers carved away the hillside to harvest all that stone, they cut it away into a giant series of steps so that each one made a simple path across the face of the rock for them to use. One of those steps jutted out of the face of the cliff two feet below the waterline, forming a shelf six or seven feet wide. It’s pure luck I didn’t plunge headfirst into it and chum up the water with my fool brain. Instead, I hit the water on my back, part of me over the shelf and part over the abyss. Even through the roar in my ears I heard the brittle crack! of my spine as I impacted the edge just below my shoulder blades.

  My eyes were open. I could see the disc of the sun through churning water turned cloudy by the lime silt, white and brilliant and uncaring. Even though I must have been going into shock, my mind was preternaturally alert and screamed for me to get to the surface before I drowned. It felt like someone had cinched a nail-studded belt around my midsection and was pulling it ever tighter, but compared to the pain that came later, it was nothing. I had a dim awareness that I no longer felt anything below that fiery circle.

  I teetered there on the edge of the shelf for a second, then slipped over, pulled down by the weight of my dead legs. I sank in a dreamy kind of slow motion, desperately trying to use my arms to swim upward, but they didn’t want to obey and merely flapped ineffectually. I grabbed at the rocky wall as it slid by, searching for purchase, but my fingers were twisted into claws and wouldn’t open. I succeeded only in pulling loose a thick rubbery sheet of the pinkish fungal growth we called quarry skin. That stuff seemed to coat everything under the water, soft and slick like the sodden flesh of a bloated corpse.

  Pressure built in my ears and lungs as I descended. I fell through a deepening green haze, no longer able to see the sun. No longer able to see much of anything but that single color, slowly bleeding away and leaving only blackness behind. I knew I was dying, but despite it all I felt a calming sense of peace build within me. I don’t know if it was the beer, or God, or just my body starting to give up and shut down, but I found that I wasn’t so concerned about making the transition. Even though I was technically still a virgin.

  I saw something gliding toward me through the gloom, one of God’s angels coming with open arms to lead me home to heaven. Hot joy rose in my heart. They told me later it was just Russ, swimming down to catch me by the hair and drag me back up to the shelf.

  My recollection of what happened next is hazy. I remember bits and pieces, little snippets of memory spliced together like a movie trailer made with only the worst parts. Lying in the cold water on the shelf, cradled in Russ’s arms, shivering and telling him to stop crying like a little girl, then crying myself when the belt of pain twisted a little tighter. The sun as it slipped out of sight over the cliffs. The flat whupwhupwhup of the LifeFlight helicopter sent all the way from Jackson to get me after a pell-mell drive back to Starkville by Kenny and Trigger to find help. Dizziness from the rotation of the basket as they winched me up, and the feel of the warm rotor wash on my face, upper chest, and arms. Wonderment over why I couldn’t feel it anywhere else.

  The next solid memory is of waking up in a recovery room in Jackson General Hospital with my parents on one side of the bed and a strange man dressed in white on the other. Mom’s eyes were red and watery, and Dad kept clearing his throat. That was the first time they ever looked old to me.

  “Welcome back, Danny,” the stranger said. “My name is Dr. Feinbaum. Do you know where you are?”

  My throat hurt like hell, dry and scratchy like someone took a steel wool pad to it, so I whispered, “Hospital.”

  “That’s right, you’re down in Jackson, in the intensive care unit. Do you remember what happened?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he told me, and looked up at my parents. “Very good. Short term memory loss is always a concern in cases like this.”

  Reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket, he plucked out a pen and held it in front of my face. “Follow this with your eyes, please.”

  I tracked the movement of the pen and wondered why I wasn’t in more pain.

  Especially below that spot near my shoulder blades, where I landed.

  Sample Chapter:

  Maxfield Anderson’s Field Guide to Vampires

  Book I: Vampirus

  by Jarret Liotta

  Available at Amazon

  “It’s gonna be about two minutes,” they told me, and I did not feel ready to go on.

  I don’t know how many of you have ever been on television, but there’s a lot of fanfare happening before you even start. There’s literally an army of assistants and producers and people who move you from one room to another, like you’re some kind of prop. They get you all prepped and primed, primped and proper for your appearance—physically, mentally and emotionally—and by the time they’re done you feel like well-groomed Pekinese entering a dog show.

  Of course, in this instance, it wasn’t exactly a supportive kind of mental and emotional preparation.

  “So, you really believe this shit about vampires?” some stagehand asked me as I waited in the last room—the “green” room, they called it, even though it was blue—before my entry.

  “Yes. Yes, I do, because I’ve seen them.”

  He laughed. “Oh, really,” and he laughed again.

  “They’re real, my friend, and you’d be surprised how many there are, and how many different kinds inhabit the United States alone.”

  I could tell from his grin he didn’t believe me.

  “It’s true,” I commanded like a little kid, (though a voice inside me regretted—for the thousandth time in my life—falling
into defense of myself against an idiot).

  “And so, like, did you ever kill a vampire by putting a stake in his heart?” he tittered more, the fool.

  “I’ve killed vampires, yes, but only in self-defense, or to keep someone else from harm. I’m a naturalist. I don’t believe in killing any kind of life form if I don’t have to. Vampires have as much right to live as any of us, provided they don’t present a danger to the population.”

  “It’s time!” a slender, hyper woman with a clipboard interrupted us. “You’re on. Come on.”

  She led me out to the edge of a brightly lit stage, where the host—Chet Collins—was seated at a big desk, about to introduce me.

  “Geez,” that stupid stagehand said, following me to the edge. “You’re gonna be great. Just tell ‘em some of those stories about killing vampires and you’ll bring down the house.”

  And so I did … And continue to do so …

  The very first time I saw a vampire was in New Mexico.

  I’d gone there on a long weekend to study desert iguana. I was still at Princeton University at the time, working on my master’s in evolutionary biology. But this was more of a naturalist’s vacation than official study work. Even then, I’d begun to see the limits of traditional academic research, as opposed to extensive study in the field.

  I flew into Tucson and met my friend Paul, who lived there. We drove out on the I-10 toward Las Cruces. Paul, who worked as a counselor in a drug rehab, wasn’t that interested in animal behavior, but he liked to camp and we were looking forward to a couple of beautiful nights in the high desert.

  The first night was uneventful, save some great photos I got of a coyote crossing near our camp. Late that second night, however—about 3 a.m., early Sunday morning actually—I saw something I just could not explain.

  I probably wouldn’t have been looking in that direction, except the snorting of a javelina—a desert boar—caught my ear.

  “Hear that?” I whispered. “Javelina, I think.”

  “Wild pig,” Paul reiterated, trying to seem more interested than he was, especially at 3 a.m.

  I had my night vision binoculars mounted low on a tripod nearby. I crawled over and trained them toward the scrub, where I figured the javelina was rooting around, perhaps looking for some of the prickly pear cactus they like to eat …

  And there he was—a young boar, or collared peccary, as they’re known—a short, stout swine about three feet long, sticking his snout into the scrub, maybe 50 feet away from us.

  “Look at that,” I whispered, forgetting Paul had no real view in the dark.

  “Cool,” he said after a long pause that told me he was nodding off.

  “Look at him foraging.” I spoke softly, knowing I was talking to myself now. “That’s a teenager, I’d say, judging by the size, and a male, of course, judging by that dangling participle.”

  I didn’t hear anything else making any sounds, and let me tell you, it was quiet.

  The javelina apparently didn’t hear anything either. It didn’t even flinch before, suddenly, that creature was upon it.

  I watched the whole thing. It was a small vampire, of the variety I’d later identify as a “bat” because of those extremely wide shoulders and kind of wing-like arms.

  At the time, however, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was. At first I thought it might have been a small puma, in part because the bulging muscles on its back and shoulders were formidable. But I’d really never seen anything like it.

  I’d been studying animals for many years already at that point—since I was a kid, in fact—but I just couldn’t comfortably wrap my head around what this could be.

  Lithe and sinewy, it just seemed to drop out of the sky and simply wrap itself around that poor, unsuspecting pig.

  The javelina barely gave a snort before the vamp had its teeth stuck deep in its neck. It bucked and jumped and tried to run, but it didn’t get very far.

  The vampire clung to it with no effort. The javelina quivered and quickly went down.

  I still had them in my sight. And what a sight it was.

  “Paul!” I whispered urgently. “Paul, get up.”

  He didn’t hear me.

  I couldn’t really tell what color it was in the dark, but I almost reckoned it to be a dull, damp greenish-grey. It had no fur, or no hair. Instead it was covered with a taught, grey, ugly skin.

  The oddest thing was, as I watched it, I came to see it was basically humanoid in form—about four-feet tall, apparently bipedal, with two strong legs and those two wing-like arms with the knobby elbows.

  It remained mounded on the downed javelina, sucking its blood with little excess movement. I couldn’t see its face as it gorged itself with such concentration, but from the back I saw it had a large head.

  Most of all I was struck by how muscular it looked, like a shaved panther, with enormous strong shoulders that kept its wing-like arms glued down upon that poor pig’s shoulders and back.

  It all happened very fast. I took it all in in just a few fast seconds. But before it was finished, that creature made a sound that stays with me to this day—a short, shrilled shriek combined with a kind of gurgling moan. At the time I couldn’t decide if it indicated the pleasure of feasting or the rush of a conquest. Short and quick, it shocked across the night.

  “Paul!” I urged. “Get up. Hurry up. Get up.”

  Paul stirred then. “What’s up?” he whispered stupidly.

  “Look at this! Hurry up.”

  And that’s when it heard me, because it looked up, right at me. I’ll never forget its eyes, glowing like gold in the dark. It was almost a man’s face in that moment, though the features were feral—the nose flat and wide, the mouth that of a ravaging predator with a hint of sharp canines protruding from its panting mouth. I saw then how its head tapered down toward a short snout, almost appearing like a bald bear, or perhaps like an enormous bat.

  It surveyed me for just an instant. Somehow I knew it could see me clearer than I could ever see it in this black night. Its expression was so flat, while its eyes glowed with a fire like hell.

  It licked at its lips with a very quick, long tongue—very bat-like. There was no light to speak of, but somehow I was able to discern the shine of the glistening blood smeared around its mouth. It sparkled wet and grim.

  It stayed absolutely frozen, surveying me for what felt like the longest moment, but was probably just seconds.

  The times I’ve known real terror were all alive in that moment. As comfortable as I’d grown in my research of the animal kingdom, even at night, as often as I’d encountered strange and savage animals of all varieties, and sometimes even found myself in hazardous conditions and potentially dangerous situations where wild animals were concerned … never, never, had I ever felt the gut-shaking fear and mystifying shock of meeting that creature’s eyes that night on the desert. Like legend, it seemed to look into my soul. I was entranced and naked, standing helpless in that still, black night. My legs and body began to tremble from a fear so deep within, I felt I might die in that very instant.

  This is the power a vampire can wield. Though I didn’t recognize it at the time, it was the first clue that these mysterious creatures defy ordinary classification within the biological world.

  Then, as suddenly as it had dropped upon the now-dead animal, this small, primordial vampire simply bounded off and disappeared out of sight. It moved so quickly, I could not even tell you which direction it took, though I was watching it the whole time.

  And as suddenly as it had disappeared, of its own accord, my terror subsided, as if a light had been turned on and all the imaginary things of darkness were instantaneously obliterated.

  “What is it?” I heard Paul say from right beside me.

  He leaned into the binoculars as I dumbly leaned away, still steadying my body from those intense moments before.

  “Whoa! Look at that,” he said.

  “Is it there?” I barked, as a swe
ep of terror returned, thinking he meant this vampire had come back.

  “Yeah, but is it dead?”

  “What? What? The—” I pushed him aside and looked again, but all I saw was the wild boar lying still on the ground.

  “What happened? Did it die? Did you see what happened?” he asked.

  For many seconds all I could do was shake my head. I didn’t know what I had seen, or what it was that had made me feel so terrible, so absolutely frightened.

  It would be a long time before I even began to understand what it was I had experienced.

  But this was my first encounter with a real live vampire.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Sample Chapter - The Convert

  Sample Chapter - Maxfield Anderson’s Field Guide to Vampires

  CONTAMINATION

  BOOK ZERO

  by T. W. PIPERBROOK