by Phil Maxey
Joel walked across the room towards the foyer. “Maybe. Let’s find a side door or something to let everyone in.”
The blood stains continued on the otherwise smooth-tiled floor of the lobby, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. About twenty yards further into the central hallway was a huge mound of furniture. Tables, kitchen appliances, chairs, and other pieces of wooden construction were stacked on top of each other, against one side of the wide corridor.
“Why do you think they did that?” said Evan, with Kelly standing beside him.
Without answering, Joel walked past one of the buildings wide staircases and other closed doors and examined the mass of wood and steel. Closing his eyes, he quietened his mind to what lay behind the barricade. At first there was only an icy silence, then sound and screams burst into his mind. His eyes flicked open and he wavered before clearing his thoughts.
“Behind all this is a door that leads to the basement. And in there are a lot of vamps.”
Evan gently touched a chair leg that was pointing towards the ceiling. “This going to hold them?”
Joel nodded. “I reckon so. But…” He looked around him, then walked to a wall light and pulled the glass lamp shade from it, and then walked back and carefully placed it amongst the refuse, obstructing the door. “We’ll put things on here that, if they fall, we’ll hear them. Should give us some kind of warning.”
After a bit of exploring through other doors with ‘staff only’ signs above them, they found a corridor which led to a side entrance, one that could be unlocked easily from the inside.
They all moved into the building, apart from Gabe who needed Dawn and Mary’s shoulders to enable him to stay upright and made it to the foyer with the others.
They all stood looking at the mass of furniture along the corridor.
“Behind all of that is where the vamps are,” said Joel.
“Hell, I’m not staying in here then,” said Hardin, walking back the way he had just come from.
“That barricade has held them so far,” said Joel. “And there are going to be vamps wherever we go. We’ll all stay on the same floor, in a few rooms, close to the fire exit.”
Hardin stopped.
“Do you think they’re all the guests?” said Mary.
“Maybe,” said Joel.
Marina looked down at Jess, who was holding Flint on his leash. “Wait here.” She then moved behind the large dark wooden counter, and slowly opened the door to the office behind. The room was largely mundane, with a desk, computer, and a few filing cabinets. It also had a wall of key cards hanging from on one wall. Roughly half of the forty spaces were missing. Marina frowned, then quickly picked each card from its hook, until she had a small pile, which she crammed into her pockets. She then walked back to the foyer. “These are the rooms we can stay in.” Some of the group were missing. “Where did the others go?”
“Seeing if the other floors are safe,” said Mary, standing next to Jess and Flint. Gabe was leaning back on one of the small sofas, with Anna hovering over him.
Hardin slammed his hand against the side of a vending machine.
Anna looked angrily at him. “Maybe not let the monsters know their dinner has arrived.”
He frowned and hit it again.
Marina looked at her daughter. “Let’s see if we can find the others.”
Joel pushed open the door to the first floor. He looked into the long corridor and its patterned carpet and paused as his mind flashed back to months earlier, when he discovered his first vamp.
“You alright?” said Kelly.
Joel pushed himself off the frame of the door and walked forward. “Just tired.”
“Of course you’re tired, the sun’s still up,” said Claire, walking into the corridor behind him.
Joel ignored the comment and moved along trying each door. The fourth one he arrived at was already open. He peered inside, already knowing there was nothing living within, but what drew him in was the cool draft. He entered a small room with a single bed, and a large hole where the window used to be. He walked forward and stuck his head between splintered panes and looked down fifteen feet to a set of blinds, laying on top of a dark red smear on the concrete.
He wasn’t sure if the occupant had jumped or been pulled out.
What does it matter, dead either way.
He looked up at the sun. He could feel its rays boring into him and pulled back.
Only a few more hours until sundown.
He wasn’t sure why, but he felt that was a good thing.
*****
Anna looked down at a man that was dying. She was doing what she could to keep his fever down, and she had him on anti-viral medication, but the scourge was going to take him regardless. She had seen it happen on too many occasions to know there was no changing the outcome, and she hated that. She walked across one of the bigger rooms they had found on the fifth floor and sat on a two-seater sofa against the opposite wall. The dull blue light that was seeping through the closed blinds confirmed that the sun had gone down, and she reached out with her right hand to make sure her shotgun was within reach. She then pulled the single blanket she had found over her and looked at Gabe and Dawn laying next to each other on the bed. Both soundly asleep.
She pulled her glasses from her face, and laid them on her lap, then leaned back.
No sleeping. I’ll just rest for a bit, then get someone else to take my place.
“What…”
Anna opened her eyes to darkness and crying.
“I’m sorry…” said Gabe from somewhere in front of her.
For a moment Anna was confused as to where she was, then her memories from a few hours earlier flooded into her mind, and she instinctively grabbed her shotgun and stood. Her glasses tumbled to the floor.
Swearing, she crouched and spread her free hand across the coarse carpet, trying to feel the metal frames, when she heard the bed creak. She looked up, trying to make sense of the shadowy blurs that were moving in front of her. “Gabe? Mary? Are you awake?”
“I couldn’t help myself…”
“Gabe?”
Her hands moved frantically across the rough surface. “Where are they!”
Then she sensed him. Even with her blurred vision, she could see the dark shapes of legs in front of her. She swung the shotgun around, but it only moved parallel with her shoulder when her arm knocked into Gabe’s hand, which grabbed her wrist and squeezed.
The pain shot up her arm making her drop the gun. In the gloom she kicked out, her boots digging into the middle-aged man in front of her, but despite the impact he held his grasp.
“Let me go!”
She went to shout again, but a vicelike grip latched onto her neck and lifted her upwards. Barely enough air made it down her throat as she flailed at the man that, just a few hours earlier, she had been caring for. She knew she only had a few more moments of life, as she could feel her head swimming from the lack of oxygen, and small sparkles of light started appearing in her vision.
Then she smelled it. The warmth of his breath on her face, and the stench of blood. She wanted to retch but couldn’t due to her throat being constricted.
“I had to… Don’t you understand? The thirst… it’s… too… much…” His nails dug deeper into her neck, causing small trickles of blood to run down her skin.
If Anna had been able, she would have consoled him, tried to make him feel she was on his side, just before she blew a hole in him, but instead these were just pointless thoughts. As her vision narrowed, she thought about her parents, and that she would be glad to see them.
Joel smashed through the door to the hotel room like it wasn’t there, and an explosion of splintered wood flew into the room. He went to move forward, to tear the thing apart that was holding the doctor against the wall, when the vamp that used to be Gabe, swung around to face him, bringing Anna with him like she was just a doll.
A beam from a flashlight illuminated the room, and the vamp ducked
slightly behind his captive.
“I’ve not got a clean shot, Joel,” said Marina, looking down the sight of her handgun.
Joel held his hand up slightly behind him, his eyes not leaving the vamp. “Gabe. I know you don’t want to do this.” Joel could smell from the thickness of particles of blood in the air that Dawn was almost certainly already dead. But he could hear Anna’s heart was still beating.
“I… I…” Gabe stuttered as if a thought had lodged in his brain, and then his head flicked to the side. And then the other.
“What the fuck is happening to him?” said Marina, the gun in her hand swaying slightly to stay on target.
“I don’t know!”
Gabe’s head righted itself, and his eyes narrowed. He then looked around left and right, as if seeing the room for the first time.
Joel sensed the air around him change, as if it had become electrified, and he could hear the vamps heart rate increase.
Gabe’s head then fell slightly to one side, as if he was studying Joel. “What is your name?” The words came out with a clarity that seemed to echo in Joel’s mind.
“You know my name, Gabe. Now put the doctor down, and we—”
“You don’t even know, do you…”
“Know what?”
“I think I got a shot! Shall I take him?”
Joel anxiously looked to his side. “Hold on.” He then looked back to the vamp. “What don’t I know?!”
Gabe sneered. “What was so special about you? Why should you have been chosen!”
“He’s gone crazy!” shouted Marina.
“I will find—”
The forehead of Gabe exploded across the room, and he fell back onto the bed. Anna collapsed to the floor.
Marina pushed past Joel and kneeled, feeling Anna’s neck for a pulse. “She’s not breathing…! Joel?” she shouted.
Joel shook his head then kneeled. “Clear her airway, then start compressions”.
Marina blew into Anna’s mouth, then started pressing on her chest. “I know what I’m doing. Done this a few times before.”
Claire, Kelly, and Hardin’s faces appeared in the room’s doorway.
“What happened?” said Claire.
“He turned,” said Marina.
“She dead?” said Hardin.
Anna’s hand started to scratch at the carpet, then moved to her throat.
“No…” Marina grabbed a pillow and slid it under her head.
Anna coughed, then her eyes widened, and she looked around. “Gabe?”
“He’s taken care of,” said Marina.
Joel got up and walked around the front of the bed. The white of Dawn’s eyes were just visible amongst the blood seemingly poured over her. He grabbed a blanket and pulled it over her head.
Hardin walked further into the room. “How do we know she won’t turn?”
Joel continued looking at the figure beneath the sheet. “The dead don’t turn.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Joel laid in the double bed looking at the moonlight on the ceiling of his room. It was one of the more smallish options with a desk, drawer unit, small safe, and an equally proportioned fridge.
Despite how exhausted he felt, his mind wouldn’t quiet. He couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever was standing in front of him for those few seconds before Marina fired, was not Gabe. There was someone else looking back at him through the vamp’s blackened eyes, he was sure of it.
He breathed out in frustration.
Makes no sense.
He sat up, spilling some of the tiny empty glass alcoholic bottles from the mini fridge, then stood and walked to the window. He pulled the blinds to one side and looked out into the night. The moon was providing more than enough light for him to see the stores and other hotels which stretched into the town. He looked at the mountains in the distance and wondered if Nebraska would be any safer than where they were. Marina was right. The human race was in trouble, and he wasn’t sure if it could be saved.
He went to turn away when a speck of light appeared in the town, then blinked out. At first, he wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but light meant humans.
He threw his pants, boots, and jacket on, and pushed the window wide open. For a moment, he sat on the frame letting the cool desert night air wash over him, then dropped the twenty or so feet to the ground, landing in the parking lot at the side of the building.
He looked in the general direction that he thought the light was, then took off across the concrete, running free. He was soon moving at a pace down a wide road with mostly flat landscape on both sides, then skidded to a stop at a junction with gas stations on two corners. A mass of vehicles sat in the center of the road, most crumpled and smashed. He walked slowly over to the closest, a red pickup, and looked inside. It was empty apart from a child’s doll. He reached in, picked it up, and sighed. Dropping it back on the driver’s seat he looked along the road to the north. A slew of billboards and hoardings fought for space at the edge of the road, and, back from them, single-story fast-food restaurants. He spotted movement far off as the road climbed to a small hill.
Vamps.
Three or four were staggering around with no purpose.
Don’t know I’m here.
He looked to the east and started running again. This time moving away from the main road and into smaller side streets. Warehouses with graffiti sprawled across their walls passed him by, and then metal fences surrounding single-story homes as the area became more urbanized. He slid to a stop in front of a shadowy figure at the end of the street he was at. This time, the vamp spun around and without pause sprinted towards him, clawing at the air.
He knew he could probably lose it by bounding over the fences and walls to his side, but instead he just stood, waiting for the creature. He also knew he could pull his Glock from its holster and blast it before it got anywhere near him, but he didn’t want to alert any more of them to his presence, so he stood, watching.
The vamp tore through the night air, hungry for his blood, not realizing Joel was not that different to it.
Joel figured that being so far out in the middle of nowhere, most of the populations of these towns changed, and who was left got the hell out.
No humans left.
The vamp screeched and lunged with its clawlike hands out in front of it. Joel deftly stepped to the side, grabbed the thing’s head, and twisted it, breaking its neck.
It fell to the road, tumbling a few times, then lay motionless.
Joel took a breath, then looked back to the east. He jogged this time, trying to sense his surroundings better, but still quickly moved down roads, with the occasional abandoned sedan or truck, and across neighborhoods arranged in a loose grid formation. Soon the ground was rising, and he was making his way up slight inclines.
He stopped and looked back to the west. The hotel was just visible a few miles away as a dark block against the sky.
The road he was on had hardly any homes on it and ended at a dead end some few hundred yards ahead.
I’m sure the light was up here.
Then he heard the voices. Men. A small group maybe.
He quickly moved up the hill and crouched behind a broken wooden fence. About a hundred yards ahead of him, amongst the worn grass and dirt was a flat concreted area, on top of which was an RV, and two pickups. Between the vehicles were five men, seated around a small fire that was burning in a metal barrel.
Humans.
He noticed they were well armed, each person having a rifle or shotgun.
He stood, then walked up the dirt track which led to the lot. He only got halfway along it when one of the men facing his direction leaned forward, then stood urgently. The other men grabbed their guns, and by the time Joel was at the edge of their area, all barrels were pointing towards him.
He raised his hands. “Easy there, fellas. Just a friendly traveler.”
“Ain’t no one friendly left,” said a scrawny man, wearing a cap.
�
�Quiet, Jacob,” said a thickset man, also wearing a cap. He looked at Joel. “Where you from?”
“Bellweather.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from Bellweather. There more of you?”
Possible responses ran through Joel’s mind as he looked over those that were watching him. “No, just me.”
“How you get here? Because you sure didn’t walk,” said another man.
“Got a pickup, not far from here. I heard the noise, thought I’d come say ‘Hi’. Where are—”
“You got stuff?” said the scrawny man again.
“I’m happy to barter if that’s what you mean.”
Two of the men walked towards Joel, their guns squarely pointed at his chest. He started to take steps backwards.
“I’m just here to talk, and maybe exchange some things. I don’t want any trouble.”
The larger man looked at another closer to Joel. “Lee, why don’t you see if this friendly person has any weapons on him.”
Joel could hear his heartbeat increasing, and a burning sensation start to build within him.
No…
Joel took another step back, further into the shadows. “If you don’t want to barter that’s fine. I’ll just be on my way.”
The man closest to him, then leant forward slightly, squinting. “What the hell! His eyes! They’re glowing! He’s one of them!”
“No, hold—” Before Joel could finish a bullet flashed past his head, followed by an explosion of noise. He pulled his own gun, and fired at the closest man, dropping him dead to the ground, then dived into the shadows. Bullets continued to split the air.
“Can you see him?”, “Where’d he go?” Came from the men, who were now behind their pickups.
A burning pain spread down Joel’s left arm and he felt his shoulder. His fingertips came back wet. But the pain from the bullet wound was nothing compared to what he could feel building in the root of his being.
No… I have to get away… I won’t feed on the innocent…
As the conversation was playing out in his mind, two of the men broke cover and walked forward, leaving the concrete lot behind and moving onto the dirt.
