by Maxey, Phil
Kirk laughed. “Being a farmer too much for that extra strength of yours?”
“Reckon so…”
Kirk continued shoveling the corn into sacks. “What’s on your mind, Joel.”
“We’re going to be back on the road tonight. Most of the journey up to the border is farmland. So there shouldn’t be too much danger from vamps during the night.”
Kirk stood. “That makes sense…”
“And I want Donnie to come with us.”
Kirk paused then frowned. He returned to shoveling. “I apologize for my son going on about leaving. But he knows he’s needed on the farm.”
“It’s for the farm that I want him to come.”
Kirk stopped and stood again. “I don’t understand.”
“We’ll take some of your produce up to the camp. Some of it Donnie can exchange for things you need here on the farm. Then he can bring it back.”
Kirk shook his head. “He’s just a kid. What if something happens on his drive back? Who’s going to help him?”
“I’ll make sure someone comes back with him. He won’t be alone.”
Kirk rubbed his chin. “I don’t know…”
“You’re needed here. You need to talk to the other farms you mentioned before. Help them. Donnie can do the drive, I’m sure of it.”
Kirk went back to his work. “Maybe, I’ll let you know.”
An hour later Kirk walked to his son’s room. The door was already open and Donnie was scouring his room for the last item he needed. His backpack was on his bed, full to the brim. He noticed his father and continued looking.
“So, I guess you’re going then,” said Kirk in the doorway.
Donnie looked under his bed, pulling out a small penknife and pushed it down a small pocket in his pack. “It’ll just be a few days then I’ll be back.”
“You don’t look like you’re packing for just a few days.”
Donnie looked at his father. “Always be prepared. That’s what you always told me.”
Kirk smiled. “That I did. Like my father told me.” He walked forward and hugged his son. It was the first hug in a long while that Donnie was happy to receive and he gripped his father tightly.
Kirk let go then backed off to the door. “Mom’s waiting downstairs with the others.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“There’s a town up ahead, let’s find a place there to sleep for the night,” said Hawkins to Fields who was driving. Dalton sat motionless in the back.
Soon the two vehicles were driving alongside towering blocklike hotels and casinos, nestled within mounds of rocks and cliffs.
Hawkins pointed to their left. “Pull into the parking lot over there.” He raised his radio. “We’re going to find some rooms in this hotel. Over.”
Shaw, driving the Humvee behind, acknowledged and followed. They both parked alongside one of the few vehicles that was left in the lot. A silver truck.
They all got out. Dalton sniffed the night air, glancing up at the moon above them.
“Your vampire senses telling you anything?” said Hawkins.
Dalton shook his head.
Hawkins looked at Amos and Kizzy. “What about you two?”
Kizzy giggled. “There’s a dragon just around that building!”
Hawkins sighed then turned, bringing his M4 down from his shoulder. He pushed a switch on the side of his weapon and an intense bright white light shone from a tube just above the barrel. He looked at his two colleagues. “This is a big place. Chances are there are vamps here.”
They both nodded, holding their rifles ready and switching on their own lights.
Amos could hear the fear within their minds and smiled.
This is going to be fun.
The door of the main entrance was unlocked. Pushing it open, Hawkins moved inside quickly, the barrel of his rifle following the beam.
“Snazzy,” said Kizzy, looking at the decor.
The cones of light briefly lit a brightly colored carpet which covered a large floor area. As Hawkins walked across it his light shone up against the check-in desk which was covered in streaks of dark red.
He leaned over the waist-high counter then climbed up and over, dropping down to the other side. As he decided upon which key cards to take, the other two mercs anxiously studied the entrances to the other parts of the hotel.
Kizzy sat heavily on one of the lounge chairs, picked up a magazine, and started flicking through it while Amos stood with Dalton.
“Right, I got the cards to rooms on the first—”
A sound echoed in one of the halls nearby.
Hawkins flicked a switch on the side of his weapon. The light from it became an intense purple.
Amos flinched instinctively for he already knew the beam was ultraviolet light.
Another clatter came from the opposite direction to the first.
“Maybe coming in here was a bad idea,” said Shaw.
“We can handle a few vamps,” said Hawkins, stepping out from around the counter, and moving closer to a set of double doors.
He pointed his rifle’s beam through the small glass panel in the doors. “Looks clear this way. Come on.”
He pushed the first door open with his boot then stepped through the gap. Fields and Shaw walked quickly across the floor, following.
Amos sighed then went with them as did Dalton.
Kizzy sat in the room as the light disappeared into the corridor beyond.
“You coming?” growled Dalton as he got to the doors.
Kizzy sighed. “Yeah, yeah.” She got to her feet, walked a few feet then retreated, grabbing a handful of glossy magazines, then ran after the others.
The hotel corridor in daylight would have seemed wide, spacious even, but in the shadow-infested dead of night, it seemed oppressive. Even to the three vamp hybrids.
Hawkins led the group, and they soon came to an open staircase. “We’ll take this up—”
A vamp came thundering down the stairs, and was on the merc before he had time to raise his weapon.
Purple beams converged on the flailing creature, each stream searing it’s flesh. Hawkins kicked out sending it tumbling onto the steps, and, getting to his knees, fired multiple rounds, killing it.
He let out a large breath. “Thing moved too quick. We need to be—” He looked back to the others. “Where’s Dalton?”
Fields swung his rifle and light around, causing Amos to duck.
“Hey, watch that thing!” he shouted.
Hawkins got to his feet and walked past everyone else, shining his light the way they had just walked. “Where the hell is he?” He looked at Shaw. “He was standing right behind you!”
The female merc looked as uncertain as her colleague. “I dunno. He was behind me when that vamp attacked…”
Hawkins shook his head. “He can’t be that stupid to run.”
“Well, he never really seemed like the brainy type…” said Kizzy, looking down at her magazine.
“What do we do, sir?” said Fields.
Hawkins pulled his phone from his pocket, its screen illuminating the ceiling above it. After a few taps Hawkins eyes widened. “Got you…” He went to move off in the direction indicated on the map.
Amos looked down at the number imprinted on his arm. “Wait… you mean you can track us with this tattoo?”
Hawkins walked past him, moving back the way they came. “It’s not just a tattoo, kid.”
Kizzy frowned towards Amos. “You didn’t know? I thought you knew everything?”
Amos shook his head.
Hawkins stopped, his head still down over his phone. “He’s coming back…” He pointed his gun along the corridor towards the lobby they entered from. The other mercs did the same.
Then they heard it. A repeating scratchy thud.
“What is that?” said Shaw. The barrel of her weapon was now shaking.
“I think we should just leave,” said Fields.
“Hold your ground, son. I’m n
ot running from no freak.”
Kizzy looked up from her magazine towards the lobby doors. “What’s so special about—”
The doors exploded in a shower of splinters and from the melee came a vision of muscles and fangs.
“Oh…” said Kizzy as the three mercs fired at the canine man-beast that tore through the air towards them.
Some rounds hit their mark, but others missed, ricocheting off the walls and ceiling.
“It’s not stopping!” shouted Fields who then turned and started to run in the opposite direction.
“Hold your—” Hawkins wasn’t able to finish as the creature’s huge claws were now around his throat, slowly lifting him off the ground. His rifle fell to the floor. The beam of light now only illuminating a small patch of wall. A snapping of bones signaled Hawkins was no more.
Shaw got off another round of shots, most impacting the creature, but none seeming to have the power to stop it. Seeing the futility in her actions, she turned and ran, but only made it a few yards before falling over the remains of the dead vamp in the dark.
She tried to scramble to her feet, not daring to look behind her. The pounding footsteps of the werewolf grew closer then stopped.
She swung around, trying to make out any details in the gloom behind her.
Kizzy looked up at the beast which almost had to crouch so not to touch the ceiling above them. “What are you doing! We had a good thing go—”
A razor-sharp claw sliced across her chest, through her clothes, revealing her lungs and beating heart.
Shaw and Amos looked on in horror. The former got to her feet and ran.
Kizzy wavered then her muscles and tissue started to form over her organs, and within seconds the outer layers of skin were also mending.
She pushed her hand out angrily towards the snarling creature. “You are not heeelllllppping…”
This time Kizzy’s fingers flew and hit the wall as the beast sliced once again. They quickly regrew.
“Okay, you want to throw down dog-man. Let’s do it!”
As if she was being pumped up by some invisible liquid her body mass increased, and with a fist equally as large as the thing’s own in front of her, she slammed it forward hitting the creature and sending it spiraling backwards, until the wall stopped it.
It growled then lunged forward.
A flurry of blows, mere blurs, covered Kizzy, but her body was a mass of arms and legs, each one blocking then producing its own strike.
Amos grabbed his temples. He could feel the rage in the two fighting. Feel the anger blocking their reason. They would keep going until one of them was dead. This had to end.
Closing his eyes, he felt his own anger, his own disappointment, his own solitude, all of which he let flow from him.
The shouts, screams, and grunts receded. Kizzy, whose multi-limbed physique was bent around the large canine man-beast like a human snake, morphed back to something resembling human and she jumped off, collapsing to the floor. As she did the coarse hair, snout, and claws of Dalton retracted, until only the man they had been travelling with remained. He too fell to the floor.
They were both sobbing.
Amos breathed deeply, stood, and walked forward to them.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” said Kizzy breathlessly. Her words falling between her tears.
Dalton angrily tried to shake the depression that had fallen upon him, but it was useless. Instead, he curled up into the fetal position.
“We can’t do this. We can’t fight. Copeland’s going to be coming after us.”
*****
A convoy, made up of an army truck with a wagon attached behind and a pickup with another wagon, moved through the void across the Nebraska plains. In the east the darkness was fading.
Driving the truck, Joel could feel it.
He looked out into the fields. Spikey rotating shapes were just becoming visible.
Anna yawned sitting in the passenger’s seat. “How much further?”
“Few hours.”
She looked at the wind turbines, slowly turning. “All that electricity is going to waste. Now we just have a landscape of giant children’s toys.
“Who knows, maybe they can be useful again.” He wasn’t sure if he believed that.
She looked at the truck’s headlight beams lighting up the two-lane road. “It’s a good thing Kirk let Donnie come with us.”
“Hopefully he’ll go back.”
“Do you think he will?”
“I think right now he has no plans to return. But he might change his mind when he’s in the camp.”
“Did he tell you what kind of vamp he is? Because he’s not like us, I can tell you that much.”
Joel agreed, but was curious why she thought the same. “The conversation never got to that. But why do you say that?”
“He’s a good kid, but when I’m around him I’m on edge.”
“Yeah.”
Silence returned to the cab for a few moments.
“I… checked the blood supply. And—”
“We’re out. I noticed.”
“Be a good idea if we can find a hospital or something before we get to the camp…”
“I’ve been looking out, but there’s not been much. There’s a town coming up, we can look there.”
Behind them in the truck’s bed, most of the humans were trying to get an uneasy sleep while Jasper watched Evan work on his laptop.
A short while later, motor homes appeared on low hills, followed by advertising hoardings asking the passersby to visit their showrooms, or eat at their restaurant.
As office buildings and hotels crowded the side of the road, Joel slowed to try to read some of the road signs.
Anna looked into the blackness of side streets and forecourts. She was sure she could see motion in the shadows, but they quickly moved too far behind them to take a second look.
“I think there’re vamps around.”
“There are, I can sense them. But not that many.”
They passed through junction after junction as the buildings grew in size and density.
A particular large group of buildings stood out against the sunrise.
“That’s a hospital,” said Anna.
Joel took the next right, and they drove past a sleek, modern building, attached to old ones. A large empty parking lot sat in front of both.
“Get as close as you can to the main entrance.”
Joel stopped alongside two ambulances that were parked over the sidewalk. He immediately spotted three shadows moving in the gloom in the street ahead. He briefly turned and banged on the small window to the trucks bed behind him. “Take Evan and Hickman, I’ll take care of what’s outside,” he said to Anna. She nodded and they both got out.
Joel ran towards the vamps that were now sprinting towards them while Anna, Evan, and Hickman moved into the hospital lobby.
Hickman flicked on a flashlight to a scene of devastation. Broken chairs and tables mingled with overturned gurneys and other medical equipment. And the floor, which would have otherwise been cream-colored, was full of pink smears.
From outside came the sound of grunts and squeals.
Hickman looked back to the entrance.
“Joel and the others have got that. We need to get to the blood banks,” said Anna. “Shine your light up there.” She pointed to the large printed sign on the wall. It detailed the various departments within the hospital.
“We’ll start with ‘Pathology.’”
She went to walk forward towards a set of double doors, but they burst open before she could. A lumbering beast of a vamp lunged forward, its nails narrowly missing Anna’s chest as it slashed across her.
Shifting to one side, she grabbed the back of its jacket and pushed it into the mix of rubbish at the center of the room. “Shoot it!” she shouted.
The clatter of semiautomatic gunfire echoed around the walls, and the vamp fell forward collapsing what was left of a wooden table.
Anna pushed the doors open again. “Come on, we need to be quick.”
Outside, a fourth vampire slumped to the ground, blood gorging from a large neck wound.
Joel’s knife dripped blood which he slid across his tongue until it was dry. The jolt from the crimson liquid did nothing to quell the fires that were still burning within him. It was important Anna found some more.
As Flint’s barks rang out, Joel scoured the streets around the truck, but they were devoid of any unwanted life.
He looked behind him to the pickup parked twenty feet away. Donnie, in the driver’s seat, tried not to meet his gaze.
Joel looked into the back of the truck. “Marina, keep an eye on the roads around us.”
She nodded, stepping forward.
Joel jogged over to the pickup. Donnie wound his window down.
“I need you out here.”
Donnie gave a nervous smile in reply. “I’m good. Better I stay here, in case we need to get away quickly.”
“Right… Okay, well if you see any vamps, hit the horn.”
“Will do.”
Joel walked back to the trunk.
Inside the hospital, Anna looked along the corridors with doors announcing what kind of treatment would be carried out beyond them. “Cardiology, Oncology… Ah…”
She and Evan ran forward down the hall.
“Wait up!” shouted Hickman, trying to keep up. Following them best he could around a series of narrow corridors, he emerged at another set of doors which told in no uncertain terms that the public were not to enter. There was another sign which said, ‘Blood and Tissue.’
He opened the door to silence and an empty room, but noises came from two more open doors which appeared to belong to cold storage areas.
“Anna? Evan?” he half-shouted into the blood banks.
“Yeah…” said Anna from inside.
He entered cautiously, his footsteps making a crunching sound as he walked over hundreds of empty blood bags.
They all stood looking at empty shelves, and mounds of plastic on the floor.
“Looks like some vamps had a party in here,” said Hickman.
Anna sighed. Her hunger was like a crying baby needing to be fed. Its screams were increasing in volume.
