by Maxey, Phil
Jess nodded and gulped down some more tears then moved around the corner into the hallway with Mary.
Marina visibly sunk into the chair.
Bill placed his hand on her shoulder. “She couldn’t be here to see this. You did the right thing making her leave.”
Marina nodded but couldn’t talk, the words refusing to leave her throat. She swallowed. “Let’s get this over with.”
Anna and Bill soon smothered both the infected with the plastic cables and chains.
“Right…” Anna walked to the kitchen counter and pulled two blood-filled syringes from her small bag. “I managed to get these from Joel just before he left.” She walked closer to the two bound individuals. “I’m going to inject both of you one after the other, starting with Evan.”
“What does it feel like? When you change?” said Evan.
“It’s hard to explain. You know when you wake up from a dream sometimes, and you don’t know where you are? And everything is confusing?”
He nodded.
“Well imagine that, with an overwhelming feeling to drink the blood of anyone around you.”
Evan sighed. “Sounds great…”
Bill squeezed his grandson’s shoulder. “I’ll be here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Evan looked at his grandfather directly, gesturing to the handgun on Bill’s hip. “Promise me if things get out of control, you’ll use that. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Bill nodded.
Anna took in a deep breath. “Evan first then.” She walked forward and tapped the vein on his arm, and slid the needle from the first syringe into it, emptying the blood. She then immediately walked a foot to her left and did the same to Marina’s arm.
She and Bill took a few steps back.
Evan smiled, looking at both of them. “Well, nothing so—” His face contorted in pain, and the chair he was on hopped.
Anna looked at Marina who was watching. Jess’s mother looked back at her with a questioning expression, then the same thing happened to her. Her eyes narrowed and her whole body stiffened.
“Hold him!” said Anna to Bill, who then grabbed Evan’s shoulder, trying to steady the chair.
Anna did the same to Marina, but the shaking was quickly becoming too violent to keep the chair upright.
“You got this, Marina, just concentrate on my voice!”
Evan’s chair bounced up and down as Bill struggled to keep it upright.
Groans and shrieks came from somewhere deep within both those fighting the agony surging through them. Then it stopped, and their heads slumped forward.
Anna and Bill looked at each other, then back at those bound.
“Is it over?” said Bill.
A gurgling noise came from Evan whose chin was still on his chest.
“Evan? Can you hear me?” said Anna.
She took one step forward when Evan started to sniff.
“Evan?” said Bill.
Marina’s head flicked upwards making them both jump backwards. Her eyes were as black as night. She grinned at both of them.
“Mmmmm… what is that smell. It smells so sweet…” said Evan who slowly lifted his head. He then started to struggle against his cables and chain holding him.
“Marina? It’s me, Anna. Do you remember who you are?”
Marina nodded, while she continued to smile. “Where’s Jess? A daughter should be with her mother. Get her for me.”
Anna looked at Bill. “I think Jess needs to stay where she—”
“Get her!” The words roared from Marina’s mouth with a force that made Bill reach out to the kitchen cupboard next to him. His other hand instinctively slid around to his gun holster.
“Mom?”
Anna whipped around to face Jess standing near the entrance to the hallway. Mary soon appeared behind her, trying to pull her away. “Get her out of here!” shouted Anna.
“Come here, baby,” said Marina, her voice a full octave lower than it normally was.
Evan squirmed in his chair. “They burn, Grandfather. These ropes. Get them off me!”
Bill grabbed Evan by both shoulders, and looked into his dark eyes just a few inches from him. “Evan! Come back, my boy! You’re stronger than the scourge!”
Anna’s ears picked up Marina’s cables stretching and breaking before anyone else, but she was sure the chains would hold.
Mary pulled Jess back into the hallway, as the child screamed to be with her mother.
Anna grabbed Marina’s face, pulling it up to look at her. “Marina! Fight the urge inside you!”
Marina violently shook Anna’s hand from her. The plastic cable around her legs snapped. It was the one place where the chains weren’t securing her. In one swift movement, she stood and charged forward, slamming into Anna, sending her exploding backwards across the kitchen counter.
Marina whipped around to face Bill who fumbled for his gun. Just as his fingers began to withdraw his Glock from its holster, Marina pushed past Evan, knocking his chair backwards onto the tiled floor, and impacted the older man, knocking him back against the wall, unconscious.
She looked down at her unconscious prey as her canine teeth began to grow.
Anna staggered back to her feet. Her own inner rage was beginning to build within her. She shifted her weight to throw herself at the newly born vampire that was about to end Bill, when she felt a presence to her right in the doorway.
“Mom!” shouted Jess.
Marina’s black eyes flicked towards her daughter.
Jess went to run forward, but Anna grabbed her. She could feel the child’s heartbeat beneath her fingers but pushed the hunger inside her away.
“Come to me, Jess. Your mother needs you…” Marina’s head dropped to one side as she spoke.
“Your mom’s not well, Jess,” said Anna, holding her, although the young girl didn’t need restraining anymore. In fact, she was trembling. Anna looked at Mary standing in the doorway, her hand over her mouth watching Marina hovering over Bill.
Marina’s smile distorted into a sneer as her head dived lower towards Bill’s exposed neck.
Before she could leap forward, there were more sounds of breaking cables and cords.
“No!” shouted Evan as he stood, the chair hanging in fragmented bits from his back. He launched himself into Marina’s midriff, and they both careered across the small dining room and smashed through the glass and wooden doors to the outside.
Anna leapt over the counter, pulling her own gun from the rear of her pants, and ran outside to the concrete.
Marina lay on the ground blinking at the blazing sun above their heads. “What happened?”
Anna switched her aim towards Evan. Who was looking back at her, his eyes as normal as her own.
A crunching noise made her jump and her gun moved to another target. This one Joel. Behind him stood Shannon, Hardin, and Flint. Anna slowly lowered her gun.
Shannon angrily looked at Joel. Then stormed past all of them, through the kitchen, and into the hallway. A door opened then slammed shut.
CHAPTER THREE
Marina looked out the front window of Shannon’s home at the cream and brown RV parked close to the front door. Even though it was a late eighties model, it looked in decent condition.
“Good thinking with the RV,” she said to Joel sitting on a stone-colored sofa behind her. Drips of soup in bowls and remains of crackers sat on the coffee table, together with empty plastic beakers.
Mary got to her feet, picking up what they all had just eaten from. “I’ll get these cleaned. We don’t need to give the young girl more to do.” She then left the room.
Joel stood and joined Marina looking outside. “We’ll get it stocked up before the sun goes down and leave at first light.” He looked at her more directly. “When it’s evening, together with Evan, we’ll go out and see if we can find some animals.”
She nodded, her eyes not knowing what to settle on.
He held her hand. “You’ll get
through this. If we keep our heads and stick together, we can make this work.”
She smiled, pulling her hand away.
He turned and looked through the door to the hallway and the bedroom door opposite. “Someone’s going to have to make contact with her at some point. We can’t just leave her in there. She needs to come with us.”
“I agree…” Marina leaned forward as if listening. “It’s going to take some time to get used to being able to sense a person through a wall. I think she’s sleeping. I’ll give it another thirty minutes or so, and try and talk to her.”
“Right. I’m going to start getting the RV ready.” Joel walked into the hallway, opening the front door, while Marina walked into the kitchen area which was more organized than it was a few hours earlier.
Bill and Evan were both studying the screens of two of the three laptop computers Joel had brought back, while Mary was cleaning some dishes. Anna was studying her own computer, with Jess seated next to her.
“Whatcha doing?” said Marina, walking to her daughter.
“Looking at maps,” said Jess.
“Evan and Bill had lots of these maps on their USB sticks,” said Anna. “Which I’ve copied across to this machine. I’m looking at the various towns, wondering what’s good to avoid or not. There’s a few hospitals that might be worth visiting.”
Marina looked around, and then through the jagged hole where the doors to the back yard used to be. “Where’s Hardin?”
“Said he wanted to check out the neighbors places,” said Bill. “He’s got that assault rifle with him.”
Marina shook her head. “We should always go in twos, especially—” The other words got lost in a momentary haze of hunger which suddenly welled up from somewhere inside her.
“Mom?”
Marina’s brain came back to her surroundings, and she faked a smiled for her daughter.
“Hungry, right?” said Evan nearby.
Marina nodded.
“Joel said he’ll take us out, so we can find some… animals to feed on,” said Evan.
Bill did his best to hide the discomfort. Despite one being his grandson, he was seated next to three vamps. “Maybe he could—”
A shot rang out in the distance.
Marina stood with a speed which surprised even Anna and Evan. She ran outside and cocked her head slightly, trying to ascertain from where the loud noise came from.
Joel ran around the side of the building. “That was a gun shot. Not too far off. Wait here.” He disappeared around the corner of the building.
Marina looked back to Jess and the others. “Stay here, I’ll go with him.”
She quickly caught up with Joel, and they both jogged past the other homes, until they heard the sound of someone out of breath behind a barn half a mile ahead of them. They covered the distance at pace and skidded to a stop in front of an old wooden fence. A dark brown horse lay dead on the ground, with Hardin standing over it.
He sauntered over to them. “Your kind need animals, right? Well there you go. Don’t say I don’t pull my weight around here.”
*****
Evan, Marina, Joel, and Anna walked back from the paddock towards Shannon’s house.
Joel passed Marina a rag. “You still got some on your mouth.”
She hurriedly wiped the smear of blood away, and passed it back to him.
The western horizon was now a blur of pinks and purples as the last vestiges of sun cast long shadows of anything above ground.
Despite only getting a few hours of sleep during the day, Joel was feeling energized. The idea that his new found vigor was connected to the oncoming night was something he couldn’t ignore anymore.
Will I get to the point where I can’t go out in the day?
He shook the idea from his head. He wasn’t ready to give up on the daytime just yet.
“How do you both feel?” Anna said to Marina and Evan.
“Not hungry,” said Evan.
“How long until the hunger returns?” said Marina.
“Well, the good news is you have fed first on an animal, which means the urge to attack humans will be less… right, Joel?” said Anna.
He nodded.
Marina looked at him. “Have you killed a person before?”
Flashes of people slid through Joel’s consciousness, until eventually resting on an image of Marina’s husband. He nodded again. “As long as you get fresh animal blood every three or four days, you should handle the urge to take it from anywhere else.”
Marina looked back at him. “I’m not putting my daughter in danger.”
“She would have been in greater danger if you died, or changed without my blood.” He switched his concern to Evan. “Were the computers useful?”
“Yeah—” He pulled a tiny black box that was hanging from a string around his neck and held it up. “Back at the house in Bellweather, we had a nightly routine. We would back up all our research onto thumb drives. I got one, and my grandfather’s got the other copy. So, even leaving everything behind, we still got all our work. Just needed a computer to display it all on.”
They reached the start of the drive to Shannon’s home.
“What’s the point of all of that? How is your research going to change anything?” The final words came from Marina with a tinge of anger which she didn’t mean to express.
“That’s a question for my grandfather. But if there’s a way out of this mess, isn’t it worth finding?”
Marina walked forward towards the house. “Yeah… the old world’s gone.”
As they passed the RV the side door opened, and Bill appeared with his shirt sleeves rolled up. “We’ll need to keep an eye on the generator, and I’m not sure I would use the toilet for anything other than… umm, well I wouldn’t put much down it, if you get my meaning. But other than that, she’s a good ’un. Should get us to where we need to be.”
Anna walked up the steps and into the interior of the high-sided vehicle. The table top and sofa had a layer of dust covering them, but nothing looked damaged.
“Don’t reckon it’s been used in a number of years,” said Bill behind her.
“Dibs I get the main bed!” said Evan over their shoulders, looking along the narrow space between the bunks and small bathroom.
Bill frowned. “I think that’s going to be shared between a number of the women, including Jess.”
Joel walked up the steps and peered inside. “We got everything onboard?”
“Everything that you brought back from the store, yeah. I don’t know about anything belonging to the young girl…”
“She made an appearance while we were gone?”
“Kind of…”
Inside, Marina walked into an empty kitchen. She then turned around and moved into the living room. Hardin and Mary were both sitting discussing the last Bellweather town hall meeting. Mary found some aspect of it amusing, and was laughing when Marina appeared. “Where’s Jess?”
Mary pointed towards the opposite door in the hallway. “Jess went in there about forty minutes ago. I heard them giggling so I thought I’d leave them be,” she whispered.
Marina immediately turned and walked across the hallway, and went to knock on the door, then stopped. She could hear the conversation her daughter and Shannon were having as if she was in the room with them. Jess was talking about her father, and how she hoped she would see him again, whereas Shannon was mentioning snippets of information about her own parents, but it was obvious to Marina the older girl was not ready to fully talk about them.
Marina knocked on the door. “Jess, Shannon, you both hungry? I’m going to cook us something up.”
There was silence from the other side of the door.
Come on, Jess…
“Okay…” said Jess.
A short while later, they were all inside in the living room, each with a bowl of tuna pasta. Outside was only darkness, and the room was lit by a few candles. Conversation had been kept to a minimum between the room’s i
nhabitants, but Shannon had been especially quiet, and it wasn’t lost on Marina how she kept watching those in the group that had changed.
Joel put his bowl down. He knew he didn’t need the fishy tomato sauce and pasta shells, but the meal pinged some memories of how he used to enjoy normal, human food and that was enough. He could tell it was the same for Anna, Marina, and Evan despite their feigned enthusiasm.
The humans, though, weren’t faking anything and were the first to finish.
“That was a fine meal,” said Hardin.
Mary smiled and nodded.
“It’s my favorite!” exclaimed Jess. Her smile quickly dissolved. “And Dad’s…”
Marina searched for something to change the subject, but everything she thought of seemed inappropriate. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you, Shannon?” The abrupt nature of the question made everyone pause inside the room, including its target.
She looked down into her bowl. “I don’t know.”
Jess looked at her disappointed. “You said you would? We can play games.”
“Hey, don’t I play games with you?” said Evan.
“The more to play games the better!” responded Jess.
A few laughed in the room.
“Can’t argue with that,” said Bill, smiling.
Most eyes fell back on Shannon.
“It’s just, what if Ma and Pa come back? And I’m not here?”
“You can leave a note. We’ll tell them where we are headed,” said Anna.
Shannon looked down. “I don’t even know what some of you here are. I don’t understand. You’re infected like the other vamps, but you—”
“Are not homicidal maniacs bent on drinking your blood?” said Marina.
“Well, yeah…”
Anna leaned forward. “There’s something special about cells in Joel’s blood. He has a form of immunity from the scourge, which slows down how it changes people. I don’t fully understand how it does that, I just know it does. We are vamps, you’re right, and we do want blood, boy do we want it, but we can control those urges. We are still ourselves.”
“Brent—”
“Brent wasn’t like us. He would have killed you the first chance he got,” said Joel. “I think you know that.”
