by Maxey, Phil
“All the doors and windows are locked or barricaded. Heading back up to the first floor. Over,” said Marina.
Between them, they had explored the rest of the building and found no vamps.
By the time Joel walked into the medical ward, Marina was already there, and the others had made themselves comfortable on the remaining beds. All of the blinds across the windows had been pulled down, but he walked across the room and pulled one back slightly to look out to the vehicles which were now parked closer to the main entrance and the flat emptiness beyond. The highway they came in on stretched for miles into the approaching night, with just dirt, faded grass, and the occasional tree and shrub adding any detail to the farm land which enveloped it. There was nothing out there, yet he couldn’t help but feel something was coming.
He looked across to Kelly and Evan, both of which were conscious but sleeping, and Claire and Bill nearby who were doing their best to hide the terror of almost losing the people that meant the most to them.
The ward door opened and Anna appeared, beckoning Joel over and outside. Without talking, she walked back into the lab with him following.
“You got news?” said Joel.
“Not really. I’ve not seen any difference in the cells of my blood from the infusion of yours.”
“So, it has no effect then?”
“It might be having an effect, but it’s not at a level that I can see with the equipment I have.”
“So…”
She sat heavily on the stool and rolled up her shirt sleeve. “I’m going to need a fresh sample of your blood. Which I will inject into myself, and then we will see what happens.”
Joel walked forward, taking his jacket off. “You’re sure about this?”
She forced a smile. “Like I said, nothing left to lose.” She picked up a new syringe. “The worse that could happen is nothing happens.”
Joel sat on a stool next to her, and she took his blood again, and injected it into her arm.
She dabbed a bit of gauze onto the insertion, then held it there.
“That it?”
“That’s—” Her expression tightened, and her eyes became slits.
Joel held her arm as she almost fell forward. “What is it? What’s happening?”
Her head flung backward as her whole body convulsed. Joel fought with her arms and legs and lowered her to the ground. “Anna? Can you hear me.”
Her mouth opened and closed as if searching for air. Marina burst into the room and walked around the first counter to see him trying to keep the doctor on the ground. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. She injected herself with—”
Anna’s eyes turned black, and before Joel could react, her hand sprung up and grabbed him by the throat. As he struggled to break her grip, she got back to her feet.
Marina pulled her gun and aimed it at the woman that now was almost lifting Joel off the ground.
Despite his attempts to get air into his lungs, he threw his left arm out, waving at Marina not to fire. With both of his hands on Anna’s one, he pulled her grip from his throat, but was unable to stop her thrusting her hands out and sending him flying backwards against the refrigeration units.
“I’m going to fire, Joel!” said Marina as the doctor’s head whipped around to face her.
“No!” shouted Joel, picking himself up and walking forward. “She’s just turned, I got this.”
Anna moved her bottom jaw around, trying to find room for the larger canines in her mouth, she then looked firmly at Joel.
“Anna, you can control this.” He had no idea if she could, but if his blood did have any effect on her, he needed to know.
Bill and Claire appeared behind Marina near the door. Anna’s dark eyes flicked between them and Joel.
“Look at me,” said Joel. She did. “Your name is Anna Faraday, you worked at the Bellweather Medical Center.”
Her expression grew confused.
“I’m Joel—” He pointed behind him to Marina and the others. “— That’s Marina, she has a daughter, called Jess…”
The doctor shook her head as if trying to rid the pain of a headache from her skull, and her eyes and teeth returned to normal human versions. She fell back against the counter, spreading her hands out to stop her from falling further.
“I… I changed… I’m sorry, the urge to… it was overwhelming.”
Joel moved forward and helped her back to the stool. Marina tentatively put her gun back in her pants. Claire frowned, shaking her head and went back outside.
Anna looked up at Joel and across to Marina. “I wanted to kill you both…” She hung her head. “I can’t do this…”
Joel put his hand on her shoulder. “We don’t know what effect my blood is going to have. But first, we need to find you some animal blood.”
*****
Anna spread her arms into the air and swung around. “I’ve never felt so alive!” Her rifle knocked against her back.
“Yeah,” said Joel.
There were no glasses on her face. She didn’t need them anymore.
They were walking down a two-lane road which led into the nearby town.
She sprinted forward fifty yards in the blink of an eye then sprinted back, skidding to a stop next to him. “I have this like… energy inside me that wants to be let out… and… I can hear—” She cocked her head and leaned forward listening to the night around her. “— everything.” She jogged forward and caught up with him.
“It takes some getting used to. The hunger will come in phases. But that first time is tough.”
“What was it like for you?”
A flash of discomfort appeared on his face.
“If you would rather not talk about it…”
“By that time, LA was lost. Those that could, had left the city, fled to anywhere where there were less people. They thought that meant the scourge wouldn’t get to them. Anyway, me and some others stayed behind, trying to keep some of the hospitals going. Protect who we could… I didn’t know that I had changed. I had seen people be infected, I had seen people die, and I had seen vamps, but I still didn’t know the connection between all of them. Eventually, we gave up and we all decided to leave. It was night. There were maybe five vehicles, each one containing one of the people I worked with, and their families. I was with this LAPD guy and his family. I was sitting in the back with his son. He was about the same age as… He was about ten. And he was showing me some comic book, telling me the story, when it hit me. The thirst.”
“You killed the kid?”
“I would have done. Except Alex shot me and dumped me out of the car. Alex was the boy’s father.” I woke up twice as hungry a few hours later on the outskirts of the city, with a throbbing pain in my chest. “Luckily, I was near a small farm.”
“And you fed first on an animal?”
“Yup.”
“And then from then on you could resist feeding on humans?”
“Mostly…”
“It makes sense. The virus must change according to the first infusion of new blood it gets from the host. Then that new shape is…” She swallowed and held her stomach. “I think I need to feed soon.”
“You will…” He could sense the snorting of the wild deer a mile off.
He looked at the dark, low, block shapes of buildings in front of them and the wilderness beyond. “There are some—”
She surged forward, vaulting a fence, and ran across a gravel parking lot then disappeared into the absolute darkness of the fields behind a row of stores. Joel could hear the small herd of stags and doe stampeding away, then the sound of the weakest fall to the ground as a predator descended on it. By the time Joel had caught up to Anna, a dead deer lay on the grass in front of her, its neck broken, and her lower jaw was drenched in blood.
“I killed it quick, so it wouldn’t suffer…” She plunged her teeth back into the creature, then came back up for air.
“Feel better?”
She nodded.
“Good, because that feeling of contentment? You’re going to have to learn to make it last.”
She nodded and fed again.
Joel turned and looked at the small town ahead of them.
They’re watching.
“What is it? Vamps?” said Anna, noticing Joel’s concern for what lay a few miles ahead of them.
“I don’t know… something.”
His radio burst into life with Marina’s voice. “Joel? You got to get back here. Claire’s taken Kelly!”
Seven miles to the south, Claire looked across at her still sleepy granddaughter, patting her on her leg, then pulled the blanket up across her. “I’m going to keep you safe. From now on it’s just you and me. We don’t need them. They’re just going to get us killed.”
The pickup bumped as she drove along the deserted country road.
She shook her head as if a fly had just flown between her lips. “Did they think I’m going to be told what to do by one of those things.” Her head swayed between the concrete being illuminated by the pickup’s headlights and her granddaughter, who was murmuring things under her breath. “We’ll find a nice little place somewhere. Miles from anything or any—”
Way off in the distance, human-shaped shadows, hundreds, spanned the road and darkness beyond. Claire saw them, and after momentarily slowing, the pickup accelerated.
“Mom…”
Claire’s eyes remained fixed on the things she hated. The things that took her son, and husband. The things that she was going to run through with her pickup.
The figures that were bathed in shadow held their ground as the pickup sped towards them. “Hold on, just got to take care of—”
Kelly’s enlarged canine teeth sunk into her grandmother’s neck. Claire froze, her hands stuck fast to the steering wheel. “You have to stop… Kelly… stop…” As Claire’s blood pressure fell, her hands dropped to her lap, and the pickup veered violently to the side of the road and flipped, tumbling through dirt and rocks multiple times, until eventually coming to a halt.
Despite the older human body inside being dead, the vamps swarmed like vultures upon the upside-down crumpled wreck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Joel and Anna arrived back at the armory in a fraction of the time the opposite journey took. He ran past Marina who was waiting in the parking lot and went to move to his pickup, when he stopped and looked out into the darkness.
“What is it?” said Marina.
Anna walked forward, straining her eyes to see what Marina could not.
“We need to get back inside,” said Joel.
Bill and Mary appeared at the main doors.
“What can you see?” persisted Marina.
“Vamps… a lot of them,” said Anna.
“Can Evan be moved? We could make a run for it,” said Marina.
Joel opened the back of his pickup and grabbed an armful of weapons. “There’s no time.”
One of the main doors swung open and an out-of-breath Hardin appeared. He waved his hand towards the airport. “Vamps… coming from… runway.”
Everyone looked towards the west.
“I see them,” said Anna.
Joel ran inside with the guns, while Bill and Mary moved to Bill’s pickup and, between them, with Marina’s help, lifted a heavy container from the back of it into the gloom of the main hallway.
Joel ran back out. “Inside! They’re almost here!”
Anna ran back in, while he jumped inside the driver’s seat of his pickup, started the engine, and drove it forward so it was blocking the main entrance. He jumped out, closing the door behind him and looked out into the night. As he scanned across the landscape, he could feel the vibrations through the ground around him. Dark humanoid shapes, less than a mile off in all directions, were tearing up the ground, thundering towards the building.
“Come on!” shouted Anna, standing at the door, her rifle in her hand.
He ran inside and they bolted shut the two sets of doors. Somewhere within the building a window smashed.
He pulled his M4 rifle from his shoulder. “I’ll check that out, you get upstairs.”
Anna nodded and was out of sight, moving up the main staircase in an instant.
The reinforced glass doors started to rattle, and the sound of countless scrambling hungry things filled the air.
Another explosion of glass echoed out elsewhere in the building, and Joel reached out with his senses to locate the intrusions. He ran to the main hall and opened the door, then looked up at the windows. All were still secure. Running across the large space he entered a corridor of doors, which led to small offices.
There was only silence around him, but he knew in his gut he was not alone. He walked forward slowly, when the slightest of noises drew his attention to the closed second door on his right. Moving in front of it he fired two shots through the wood. Before he could fire again, a vamp tore through the splinters and was on top of him. Its claws flashed past his face, but he swiped the rifle upwards smashing into the thing’s jaw, knocking it backwards into the room, then put another two bullets into its head. It crashed against a filing cabinet and fell to the floor.
A cool breeze washed across him from what was left of a window. He moved quickly into the small office and lifted the metal cabinet in one move across the gaping hole. As soon as the heavy piece of furniture settled, something angry slammed into it from the other side, knocking it back into the room. Joel fired into the dark, the shots illuminating not one, but tens of blood-stained blue-and-purple faces, all intent on getting inside.
Clawed hands burst through the broken window breaking more glass. He fired again and again, each shot accompanied with screeches and growls, but the vamps kept coming. He quickly realized that his wasn’t the only sound of gunfire as the clatter of another battle was coming from the first floor.
He turned, running through the dark corridors until he was back at the main hallway to the entrance. The heads of a group of vamps all flicked towards him. Some snarled as they moved in his direction. Screams, some human, echoed from the floor above him.
Have to get upstairs.
He let loose with the remainder of the rounds in his rifle and put down five vamps, while another four clawed at the air to get to him. He slammed his rifle into the head of one, stunning it, then dropped the rifle, and pulled a large knife from his belt, and stuck it into the chest of another.
Teeth sunk into his arm, which he ignored, pulling the blade out of the vamp, and swiping it across the throat of another, then plunged it into the skull of the first.
He staggered forward, climbing the stairs as quickly as he could and onto the first floor. A trail of vamps lay dead across the carpeted floor, while at the end Anna and Marina stood, both covered in sprays of blood. He ran to them.
“Are you hurt?” he said to both. More gunfire came from within the ward.
“I’m okay,” said Marina. Anna nodded then noticed the wound on Joel’s arm.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
They all moved into the ward. Evan was awake and firing, with Bill, Mary, and Hardin, at the vamps outside.
“Anyone hurt?”
“We’re fine,” said Bill, moving his rifle from one target to another.
“How’s everyone doing on ammo?”
“I’m almost out,” said Marina. She walked and crouched under one of the beds, where Jess was huddled.
“Me too,” said Bill and Hardin.
Joel noticed Evan talking to Bill, and Bill trying not to listen. He walked closer to them. “What is it?”
“He used to be a pilot,” said Evan.
Bill shook his head. “I flew crop dusters for my father when I was barely older than you are now! But that’s not the problem.”
Scuffling came from the corridor. Anna pushed open the ward doors, walking out and started firing again. Marina briefly hugged her daughter then followed her.
Bill moved closer to Joel. “From what I saw of
what’s at the airport, they’re six-seaters. With two more and the dog, we might have problems getting off the ground, and we won’t be able to take any extra weight. No guns, no water, nothing.”
“It might be our only—”
“Joel!” shouted Marina as her gun fired off.
He burst out of the double doors, and instantly charged into two vamps that were bearing down on the two defenders. One fell back against the wall, but the other quickly recovered and sliced across his chest. He grimaced, grabbing its throat and slammed his knife up through the bottom of its jaw. He then quickly turned and pulled another vamp from Anna and Marina, sliding his knife into the side of its head.
Anna got to her feet, helping Marina do the same. Both the doctor and Joel noticed the lacerations across Marina’s face and hands.
She looked down, then shook her head from the thoughts which were beginning to run away in her mind. “Doesn’t matter.” She looked at Joel. “We can’t stay here.”
Anna held up her hand gun. “I’m out”
“Same here,” said Marina. She felt around her back to the samurai sword in its sheath residing there.
“There may be a way to get out of this, but it’s going to be a one-way trip.”
“If we stay here we die,” said Marina.
“Then we need to get to the biggest plane on the runway, and hope Bill can fly it.”
For a moment they both looked at him in silence.
“It’s not the best of plans.”
More noises came from the ground floor.
Joel looked at Anna. “Grab clean syringes from the lab, and the silver suitcase.”
“You’re going to have to tell me what’s in that at some point.” She ran into the lab, grabbed a small cardboard box of syringes and the suitcase, then rejoined them outside. They then ran into the ward and closed and bolted the double doors. Noises came from the stairs at the end of the corridor outside.
Joel looked at those inside the large room. “Listen up. I’m going to try and lead them away from the airport, to clear a path. When you see it clear of vamps, get to the plane, get it started, and I’ll catch up. Leave everything here apart from the guns you have, but drop them to the ground before you get on the plane.”
