Enslaved To The Vampire Zombie-Hunter (Pandemic Monsters Book 1)

by Veronica Sommers

  "Just great. You?"

  "I'm good." He's speaking low, just above a whisper so as not to disturb the soldiers dozing in their seats along the sides of the vehicle. "We've had one more communication from Deathcastle. Their satellite coverage of this area isn't great, but they're pretty sure a storm system is moving in close to where we are. A bad one."

  "Does that mean we'll have to stop again?"

  "Maybe. These trucks are massive, so they can handle most weather. But if visibility gets bad we'll need to halt for a while."

  "Okay."

  He looks so damn gorgeous and warlike right now, in his shiny black coat, with knife belts and ammo belts looped around his waist and hips, and those fantastic tall boots with all their unnecessary straps and buckles. His hand, braced on his hip, glimmers with silver rings.

  My gaze flicks back up to his eyes—he's watching me, heat and humor mingling in his gaze. Suddenly he leans down, slipping his hand under my chin, and he kisses me soundly—a tingling, fiery, claiming sort of kiss.

  Then he's gone again, swinging back into his seat beside the driver.

  I touch my lips lightly, dazed, not even caring that the soldiers around me snickered and stared.

  That was definitely an I-want-you kiss. Wasn't it?

  24

  Finley

  A roaring sound wakes me up. My neck aches fiercely along the right side, where my head was hanging over—but I'm instantly, desperately alert, my eyes raking the faces around me, searching for clues as to what's going on.

  One of the soldiers opposite me meets my eyes, so I call out to him over the roar. "Horde?"

  "Storm," he replies.

  The entire vehicle is groaning, buffeted by what I thought were bodies, but apparently it's wind. I unbuckle myself and slip up behind Atlan's seat, peering out the front windshield. From the clock on the dashboard, it should be six in the morning—the sun should be rising, but instead the sky is a roiling mass of black cloud, tinged sickly green and split with purple lightning at intervals.

  The driver swears, pointing, and I follow his gesture to the spot where a long, thin finger of cloud has emerged, reaching down to touch the earth, like a vampire fang extending to pierce skin.

  "Tornado," I breathe.

  Atlan whirls, startled. "Go sit down, Finley. We're going to have to drive fast, to get away from it."

  But the driver shakes his head. "No. We got to find shelter. That thing hits us, it'll pick us right up, smash us into splinters. I grew up in Tornado Alley, man. I know my twisters. They can do some pretty insane things. We gotta find a basement or something."

  "I disagree," says Atlan. "We need to stay in the vehicles and try to outrun it. Shouldn't be too hard."

  "I'll radio the sergeant." The driver picks up his unit and speaks with Sergeant Perez in the vehicle ahead. She orders him to stay on course, following the lead vehicle, but I can tell our driver doesn't like the decision. He tosses the radio aside, and his freckled hands tighten on the steering wheel. "Doesn't know what she's dealing with," he mutters. "Gonna get us all killed."

  "Trying to find shelter in the Hordelands isn't a good idea," Atlan says. "Look there, and there. Sure, there's no horde right now, but I'm seeing a lot of zombie clusters."

  "They wouldn't even notice us," protests the driver. "Look at 'em—they can barely stay upright against that wind."

  He's kind of right. Even as we watch, one of the zombies splits in half, its decayed torso ripping free of its legs and blowing away, splattering against a nearby building.

  We're driving through a tiny abandoned town, a handful of boarded-up stores and a few homes with shattered windows passing by like gray broken ghosts. Beyond the buildings, flat grasslands stretch away to the horizon, as far as I can see.

  "See that?" The driver points. "A church, with a basement. Best place to hole up. Probably no zombies in there either, seeing as the Gorging happened on a weekday when there were no services being held. We gotta stop here and shelter in place."

  "You heard Sergeant Perez," says Atlan. "We have to follow her orders."

  But the roaring of the wind spikes suddenly, and a second funnel descends not far away from our vehicle.

  "That's it!" yells the driver. "We're stopping." He jerks the steering wheel, and our vehicle careens to the left, toward the church. I clutch the back of Atlan's seat to keep myself from being thrown.

  "You can't do this!" Atlan shouts. "You're putting all of us in danger!" Lunging for the wheel, he grips it and tries to turn our vehicle back into place behind the sergeant's truck.

  There's a sickening crunch under the wheels as the truck hits something—a piece of a crashed car, a chunk of broken pavement, I'm not sure what—and the wind slams us full-force at the same moment. The armored truck jumps into midair, its body creaking under the pressure. Atlan lets go of the steering wheel and grabs for me, as for a split-second we're all suspended in midair—and he pulls me into his arms, shielding me, right before the vehicle crashes back down, tipped on its left side. I feel the impact through Atlan's bones as his skull strikes the roof of the truck. He relaxes beneath me, dazed, blood dripping down his temple.

  I've never seen him bleed.

  "See what you did?" screeches the driver. "Crazy vampire!" He shouts to the soldiers in the back. "You want to live? Follow me!"

  He climbs right over me and Atlan, stepping on my arm and Atlan's shoulder in his hurry to get to the passenger side door and force it open. With a massive effort, he shoves it upward and crawls out of the truck. The other soldiers are headed toward us, toward the open door, panic in their eyes. Shaking off his daze, Atlan pushes me out of their way, and I huddle against the truck wall, which used to be the roof. Then I notice my bag and my book, lying in a heap of other bags and buckles and equipment. I crawl over and rescue them, shoving the book into my pack. Frantically I scrabble through a side pocket, where Sarah said she put a few first aid supplies—there has to be a bandage in here for Atlan's head—

  "What are you doing?" he mumbles to me. And then louder, to the soldiers, "Wait for me—it's not safe out there."

  But they ignore him, driven out by the incessant onrush of wind, great sweeps of it rocking the massive vehicle where it lies like a giant overturned tortoise.

  As the last of the soldiers scrambles out, I finally find a bandage. I hold it out to Atlan, but he shakes his head. "No time, Trouble." Clumsily he buckles on his swords. "I've got to protect them. Stay here."

  "No! I'm coming with you. What if the tornado hits the truck while you're gone? We need shelter."

  "Fine," he mutters. "Come on."

  He climbs out first, then hauls me up after him. Instantly I lift my hand to shield my eyes—the air is a whirling brown mess of dirt and sand and debris, kicked up by the wind. I don't see the other two vehicles in our caravan anywhere. They must have kept going. Maybe they don't realize we're in distress.

  A couple of the soldiers who climbed out ahead of us are prying open the church doors, while the others fight off a cluster of zombies. The zombies seem very confused—the wind is probably swirling our scent too fast for them to pinpoint its source.

  The driver who caused the wreck is shouting, but he might as well be mute, because I can't hear anything over the wind. I glance back behind us, and my heart leaps into my mouth. There's a massive dark cloud headed straight for us, its perimeter a swirling death trap of debris—chunks of roofing, pieces of lumber, and what looks like part of a tire—

  Atlan hasn't noticed the funnel yet. He's swiping the head off a zombie with one of his swords—I grip his coat collar and yank him along, toward the doors of the church. The soldiers are already disappearing inside.

  I sense the moment when Atlan realizes the danger and starts running for real. We crash through the warped doors of the church into the stale-smelling carpeted lobby. To my right, a flight of steps leads downward, and a stained placard on the wall reads "Children's Church—Nursery—Classrooms."

&nb
sp; "This way." I snag Atlan's hand and pull him down the steps, into the inky black of the basement.

  "Stop, Finley," he barks in my ear. "You can't see. There could be zombies down here."

  "Right." I scrabble along the outside of my pack, unfasten my flashlight from its holster, and switch it on. Atlan sheathes one sword, unhooks a tiny emergency flashlight from one of his belts, and turns it on as well. We continue down the steps, into a hallway. At the far end, I see a couple of other flashlight beams waving, jerking wildly around—

  Shots punctuate the background roar of the wind outside.

  Someone is shouting—no, not shouting—screaming.

  Atlan forges past me and runs up the hallway, toward the screams. I can barely hear them now because the rushing of the tornado overhead is loud—so loud—

  With an impact like a bomb blast, the tornado hits the church. The walls shake, and plaster rains down around me. I scream, crouching and locking my arms over my neck and head. I want to call for Atlan, but instead I bite my lip until it bleeds, because he is busy saving lives right now and my own life shouldn't be of greater importance than those of the other humans in this building. I press my body to the wall, shuddering, and I wait, my eyes fixed on the bright beam of the flashlight lodged between my feet.

  After several long minutes the roaring and crumbling and cracking from above subsides to a dull murmur. The tornado must have passed through.

  The hallway around me is still mostly intact, although a few nasty cracks branch along the ceiling. I rise, spitting dust, and aim my flashlight down the hallway. "Atlan?"

  The only light I can see at the end of the hall is static, low to the ground. A dropped flashlight, half-blocked by a dark lump lying on the floor.

  I have a gun in my pack.

  Carefully I extract it and switch off the safety. Then I sidle along the corridor, trying not to inhale too much of the dusty air at once. There's a rank sort of rotting smell down here—moisture and mildew, mixed with a scent I know far too well. The smell of death, and rot.

  Zombies.

  "Atlan?" I say softly again.

  A tall shape with a long sword emerges from a room, and I draw a relieved breath, coughing immediately afterward as grit enters my lungs.

  "Atlan, where are the others?"

  Instead of answering, he hauls back and plunges his fist into the drywall. The punch goes all the way through, and the entire wall shudders in response, sending a fresh rain of particles over me from the ceiling.

  "Stop it!" I catch his arm as he rears back for another blow. "You'll bring the whole place down!"

  "I suck at this!" he snaps. "I suck at saving people. Put them behind walls and I can protect them fine, oh yeah. But when they're outside the walls, I'm useless. Worse than useless. Damn it, damn it!"

  "Atlan, are they—are they dead?"

  "Yes!" he shouts in my face. "They're all dead! I couldn't save one, not one. I guess there must have been a Bible study or some crap like that on the day of the Gorging, because there were a bunch of damn churchy zombie women in dresses, okay? And a couple of—a couple of babies—" He swears again, and I push past him.

  "The soldiers, Atlan—we have to collect their dog tags, flashlights, guns—we can't just leave the bodies—we have to—"

  "Finley, no." He darts in front of me, gripping my shoulder. "I'll grab their tags, but we have to leave everything else. We need to get out of here, to catch up with the others. If we don't, we'll be left behind. We'll be stuck, unprotected."

  "Okay." I pinch my nose to keep the tears back, and I try to wrap my head around this. It happened so fast—seven people dead. Atlan and me, left behind in a broken church, in the Hordelands. No protection, no Blue City wall. Maybe the armored truck is still intact and drivable, although I doubt Atlan can get it back upright again. He might be strong, but he's not Superman.

  Why didn't the driver listen to the sergeant, and to Atlan? If he had just listened, instead of panicking, we'd be fine. They'd all be alive.

  When Atlan returns, pocketing the seven sets of dog tags he salvaged from the corpses, his face is a mask of guilt and agony, thrown into stark relief by the harsh beam of the flashlight. The sheer pain in his face throttles my breath. I have to do something about it, to salve these wounds of his—inner wounds so much worse that the ragged cut along his scalp and temple. The torn flesh is already healing, but unless I can get through to him, the emotional damage could last a long time—as long as a vampire can live.

  Stepping into his path, I grip the front of his shirt in my first. "Stop blaming yourself, Atlan. Stop it right now. I don't want to hear it again. It was the idiot driver's fault, not yours. If he'd obeyed orders, we'd all be alive, still on the road."

  "I should have gone in here ahead of them," he said. "Checked it out, cleared any threats—"

  "They ran ahead without you. They failed to take the proper precautions and clear the rooms carefully. It's not your fault. Do you hear me? It's not your fault."

  He stares at me, then nods once. "Okay."

  "Okay." I let him go and back up a step. "Now, I'm going to clean up your wound, and then we're getting out of here."

  25

  Atlan

  These guys were supposed to be trained to handle a crisis. They weren't supposed to panic like that.

  None of that mess went down like it should have.

  I want a redo. I want to respawn at a damn save point.

  I want another chance to protect those soldiers, to keep them alive.

  But I won't get one, so my priority now must be saving Finley.

  I emerge from the church first, shoving aside beams and studs, lifting chunks of fallen ceiling out of the way. It's a small mercy that the tornado either whisked away or tore apart any zombies in our immediate vicinity. But the truck—that's a mess I can't fix.

  A telephone pole has been driven straight through the side of it, pinning it to the ground as surely as a dart to a board. Even if by some miracle I could have pushed the vehicle upright, the damage from the pole is too extensive. Plus the windshield is smashed, the steering column is bent, and one of the massive tires was somehow punctured too.

  Options. I need options.

  We need a vehicle. And I can't waste time searching the entire town. Most of it is smashed to kindling anyway.

  A block away from the church stands a bar—mostly intact. The irony that it was spared while the church was decimated isn't lost on me. I don't know that I ever believed in God, not in any kind of detailed way—maybe with a fuzzy "sure, something's out there" sort of thinking. Since the whole apocalypse thing started—since human beings started it—I've been more inclined to forgive him for his apparent lack of interest in us. Human beings are a damn mess. If God exists, I really don't blame him for giving up on us. Me, I don't ever expect to be forgiven for the things I've done—or haven't done. The guilt of them, of this most recent failure, constricts my lungs, like there's a huge demon squatting on my ribcage, claws sunk in deep, crushing me slowly.

  "This way," I tell Finley, and we walk toward the bar.

  We've had so much bad luck today, we're bound to catch a break, right? Like, the universe—God, whatever—owes us a little boost. Maybe I don't deserve one, but Finley sure does.

  "We're looking for a car?" she asks.

  "Anything that works. Car, bike—hoverboard."

  She snorts. It's not exactly a laugh, but it loosens a little of the horrible tightness in my chest.

  There's a handful of cars in the bar's parking lot, none of them driveable. Many have no key, while others are nearly out of gas, or their tires are flat. Too bad learning to hot-wire a care hasn't been part of my apocalypse training. I'll have to fix that if we ever make it back to Deathcastle alive.

  We move on to the houses, but most of the driveways are empty.

  I have to find something to get us out of here.

  Maybe we should have just started walking. Why haven't the other trucks in our c
aravan turned around and come back for us?

  We're almost at the edge of this little drop of civilization. Nothing beyond this town except—nothing.

  Beside the last house stands a shed, chained shut—and when I manage to break my way into it, I nearly fall to my knees and swear fealty to whatever Higher Power gave me this beautiful damn gift.

  It's a motorcycle.

  It's got maybe a third of a tank of gas—not much, but hopefully enough to get us close to our caravan. And when Finley lifts the helmet from a hook nearby, a key falls to the ground.

  I snatch the key and jam the helmet onto her head. "Let's ride, Trouble."

  We roar out of town, swerving often to avoid the debris left behind by the tornado. With the wind in my face, Finley's arms around my waist and her body against my back, my spirits start to lift again. I start to get that old rush of confidence, the one I get when I face down and horde and survive—like I could take on anything. But there's a sourness to the feeling, an edge of guilt, because I can't take on anything—I failed to protect those soldiers, and no matter what Finley says, what mistakes they made, I can't help feeling that their deaths are on me. My fault.

  We follow the route we were supposed to take with the caravan. But after half an hour of riding, we encounter a roadblock—some big farming machine overturned, and a few cars run up against it. There's a smashed silo too, and the ground is so torn up by wind, so scattered with trash, I can't tell which way our people turned to go around the mess, if they even got this far.

  After a quick look at the map in Finley's pack, we skirt the pileup and keep going, heading for the bunker and the research team. We've got to run into our people somewhere along the way, right?

  As we ride, Finley keeps trying her radio—but either something is interfering with the signals out here, or her unit was damaged in the crash. I watch the gas gauge needle dropping, and my hope sinks along with it. We've passed a total of three vehicles, and none of them were in any shape to drive.

  The only good news is that the sky is clearing, the cloud cover cracking into thick gray chunks with slivers of blue sky between.