Madeline heard the words but they didn’t really register. Her thoughts were in a far-off place. A place less than two days ago when her biggest worry was what she was going to make for dinner that night. She could hardly believe that life had brought her to this. She was a vampire, for lack of a better term. All the legends, myths, and stories, as it turns out, were real. The things that go bump in the night were real. And she was one of them. Now her family had the burden of keeping her hidden from a society that would destroy her if they knew of her existence. She didn’t want to be a killer. She didn’t choose this. Could she choose to sustain herself with animal blood? Would that be enough? Could she control herself around her family if she went into a frenzy like the one she felt when she killed the two muggers? Too many questions and too few answers.
“Mom?” Ginny’s voice brought her back to the present. “The bath?”
Madeline nodded solemnly. She walked towards the bath and looked at her hands and arms. They were just as badly burned as her head. Even her lower legs, unnoticed until now, were burned although not as badly. She was naked. They had probably been afraid to clothe her, lest the clothing stick to the scabs. Her mind had been so far divorced from her situation that she hadn’t even noticed. She set her right foot down in the bath. The cold was shocking. She braced through the cold sensation until it slowly gave way to numb relief. She stepped in with the left foot and went through the same ritual. Slowly and methodically, one inch at a time, she was able to lower her entire body into the bath. She bent her knees and allowed her head to slide underneath the water. She kept her lips closed but the icy water flooded into her mouth from the hole in her cheek. She held her breath as long as she could and then rose out of the water. The pain returned, but it was reduced slightly.
As she began to feel better, she caught a whiff of pheromone on the air. The pain was receding and her thirst returned proportionately. It was intoxicating. The smell seemed to envelope her in warmth and wanting. A flood of yearning came over her. She looked at Ginny and the thump of her heartbeat erupted in her ears. Not my heartbeat. Madeline thought. I’m hearing Ginny’s! Her vision zoomed in on the carotid artery in Ginny’s neck and she could see the pulsing of the blood through it! Panic! No! Not my family! She thought. Lord, God, please help me to control this!
“Ginny!” She looked away from her daughter and gripped the sides of the tub to keep herself from leaping from the tub and onto her defenseless daughter. “Ginny, you need to leave right now.”
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Ginny walked towards Madeline but recoiled quickly when Madeline’s gaze locked onto her like a steel trap.
“Now, Ginny!”
Virginia ran out of the bathroom at a quick pace, barely looking back at her mother to see if she was following. Madeline sat in the tub, struggling to control the hunger. Her hands were shaking with the pressure at which she was squeezing the edges of the bathtub. She heard Philip’s car pull into the driveway and the door close as he entered the house.
“Philip!” She yelled. “Hurry!”
She heard his feet thudding down the stairs as fast as they would carry him. He exploded into the room with a box under his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to feed!” The pain in her face must have been obvious. His eyes widened and he rushed to open the box at his side and lower it so she could see. She never looked in the box. She could smell the blood of the small animals inside and simply grabbed with one claw-like hand and jammed the small body into her mouth. She heard a small squeal of pain and tasted the course hair of the animal, but the rush of warm blood was like ecstasy. She covered the hole in her cheek to keep any of the precious fluid from escaping and lapped at it with her tongue. The human in her was disgusted, but to the new Madeline Beaumont, the blood meant life. She heard Philip wretch and run from the room. The rest of the rats in the box squealed and ran in circles like horses that smelled death coming for them. She dropped the lifeless husk of the first rat and grabbed another. With each rat, her hunger abated more and more. The pain from her burns decreased with every gulp of life-giving fluid.
As her hunger left her with the final rat, she began to regret what she had done. She tried to tell herself that it was nature. That she was simply doing what she needed to survive, but the shame of taking a life was daunting to say the least. The worst thought was that she might, one day, be so desensitized to the violence that it would become as natural as breathing. In one swift action, she had become a killer. Not by choice but by necessity. She would need to come to terms with that if she was to keep her sanity and hopefully, some remnant of her humanity.
Chapter 12
A warm pink glow filtered into the room as dawn crept silently over the horizon. Charlie had been zoning in and out of a sleep state for the last few hours. The experts that trained him called it “micro sleep”. In the field, they called it an essential survival tool. To sleep without sleeping had saved many a men from an early demise at the hands of their enemies. It was bred into soldiers through fear of what might happen to them if they slept too deeply.
On this particular night, Charlie had plenty to be afraid of. He had fought hand to hand with five of the things now and didn’t relish the thought of wrestling with any more. He couldn’t help but wonder if the men that attacked him in his apartment were the same thing or not. Like Maggie’s ex, they seemed much more in control of their faculties. The ones that had invaded the vet’s office the night before, the girl from the house that burned down and as much as he hated to admit it, Al, Serena, and David had seemed more like animals than anything resembling a human.
As more light trickled in through the windows, he heard the rush of a fire igniting on the street below. He had been sitting with his back to the wall next to the window so he sat up to look out. The street was quiet. Nothing moved anywhere that he could see. In fact, the street resembled a ghost town boulevard. A few pages from a newspaper blew across the street as a breeze picked up out of the West. Broken glass and trash littered the street.
On the sidewalk beneath the window lay the burning husk that used to be Terrence. The things had torn his body to pieces and half eaten, burning pieces of him lay strewn about in the street. A faint scream came from far down the street. Charlie could see the unmistakable glare of a fire dancing around in the street. The figure zigzagged back and forth through the street in complete confusion until it finally fell to the ground and became silent. The flames still roared long after the screams had died out. “Vampires.” Charlie whispered under his breath. He could hardly believe he was saying it. Was he losing his mind? What else could they be? The fire below him had burned down to a low smolder when Maggie woke up.
“Charlie?” She paused for a long while. Her eyes seemed to overflow with questions. “Thank you.” was all that she could muster. He saw a tear leave a shiny, wet trail down her cheek and went to sit next to her. She leaned over to place her head on his shoulder and he put his arms around her.
“It’s going to be alright, Maggie. We’re going to be alright.”
“Charlie?” With her British accent, it sounded more like, Cha-ley. He smiled despite the situation. “What are they?”
He exhaled as though speaking were an effort. “Vampires.” The answer crept out of him, barely audible. “I think they’re vampires.” This time he spoke with slightly more authority. If it was hard to admit it to himself a moment ago, it was definitely harder to admit it to her. She gave no reaction to what he said.
“Was he one of them?”
She didn’t have to say who. He thought of the burning meat that lay on the sidewalk below them and replied. “Yes, he was.”
She began to cry again, albeit softly. Her sobs were muffled by the fabric of his shirt and he could feel warm tears seeping through. “What do we do now?”
“Well, we need to be ready if they come back, but most importantly, we need to find out what’s going on.” He stood and looked out the window. “Still clear.” He contemplate
d the situation. “I wrestled with a teenage girl a few days ago. We were in a dark room and when her skin came into contact with the sun, she burst into flames and burned the house down.”
“That was you? I saw it on the news! And that’s where you got Tank?”
He nodded. “Also, Terrence’s remains started on fire this morning just after sunrise and I saw somebody down the street that was on fire about the same time.”
“So you think they can’t be exposed to the sun?”
He shrugged. “Makes sense, right? All the legends about them say it and there aren’t any of them to be seen right now.” She nodded, half lost in thought.
“Why don’t you see if anything is on the news. I’m going to try and get in touch with someone at the department.” Charlie pulled out his cell phone and dialed the department. He waited and waited, but on the fifth ring he gave up and shoved the phone in his pocket. He was watching Maggie flip through the TV channels, one after another, and his mouth hung open in disbelief. Nearly all of them held the image of the President of the United States. He was sitting in the oval office addressing the nation.
My fellow Americans, today, I come to you, not as your President, but as a member of the human race. Over the last five days, our planet has been besieged by an enormous, calculated attack by an unknown foe. The intent of this attack was to create confusion and bring about a power shift of global proportions. We must not give in. We must not succumb to the chaos. We must fight chaos with order. That is why, as of 7AM Eastern time, I have instituted Martial Law throughout the entire country. Our best scientists have been working around the clock to determine the best course of action in the fight against these beasts. It has been discovered that they have a chemical in their blood that reacts violently to the presence of ultraviolet light, the greatest source of which is our own sun. For this reason, all the major population centers will be patrolled from dusk until dawn by soldiers with nonlethal, to us, high-powered ultraviolet light systems and will be authorized to use lethal force if necessary. Anyone outside after dark is at risk, therefore, anyone caught outside after dark will be viewed as a threat to the security of our great nation and will be subsequently terminated. If you are bitten by one of these creatures, you will become one of them. We have been told that the creatures carry a virus that, as of now, has no known cure. Forgive me, America. Right now, there is no greater threat to the human race and any chance we had for diplomacy has long since passed. Our armed forces have been fully mobilized against the threat. More information will be forthcoming as it arrives. Godspeed, America, and God bless.
The image on the screen flickered for a moment and when it came back on, the President started his speech anew. “My fellow Americans….” The sound trailed off as Charlie stopped listening to it.
“On a loop.” He said under his breath. “Oh man. This is bad. This is really, really bad. If they’re running this on a loop that means the government has taken control of the airwaves.”
“You don’t think they could have something to do with this, do you?”
“I don’t know. They sure seemed to know a lot about something that supposedly came to light a few days ago, but the government is like that. They can be slow as dirt with most things, but they’re fast when they go into defense mode. And there are bound to be riots with a message like this going out over the wire.” Suddenly, the room started to spin and he had to catch the edge of the window to keep himself from falling over.
“Charlie? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” A deep breath helped the room stop spinning. Maggie scowled at him in concern. Another stab of pain in his hip, where the old wound from the AK-47 burned. He shook it off after a few seconds. “I’ve got to get in touch with someone at the department.” He pulled out his cell phone again and dialed the number. This time he let it ring and keep on ringing. Still no answer. He hung up his phone with more emotion than he had planned. He grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and put it on.
“Where are you going?” The shock in her voice was apparent, but the look in her eyes was worse. The blood curdling fear he saw in her eyes was enough to change his mind before he had a chance to protest.
“We need to find out what is going on and we need to stock up on some things if it’s at all possible. If we’re really in the midst of a vampire apocalypse, we’ll want to gear up. I’m fresh out of ammo.” She was silent and staring at him with wide open eyes. “I um… think it would be best… safest, I mean, if we stick together.”
She nodded and seemed to snap out of whatever thought she was lost in. “Yea. I… I would feel safer if we stuck together, too.” She smiled faintly and jumped up from the floor where they had been sitting. “I’d better get a jacket.”
Maggie dug a backpack out of her closet and they filled it with a few essentials. Some bottled water, food, and extra clothing all went in it. The stairs down to the vet’s office were devoid of life as were the hallways downstairs where they came upon the bodies of the vampires he had shot the night before. Their bodies were smoking slightly from the small bit of sunlight that was reflected off of the white walls around them. Charlie looked around quickly and found a dog leash hanging from the wall by a hook and took it down. Tying one end around the ankles of the first body, he stopped when Maggie spoke. “What are you doing?”
“If the sun gets back here and they ignite, they could burn the whole building down.”
Maggie must’ve understood his urgency because she ran to the back room. “I’ll get some more leashes.”
He dragged the first one out the front door and just as he expected, it burst into flames before he could even get it completely out of the building. Luckily, he had enough momentum to get it outside before the heat became too much for him. He had to drop the leash and back away from the heat by the time he made it to the middle of the road. The sickly-sweet smell of seared flesh and burnt hair invaded his nostrils and it was all he could do to keep the vomit down.
He walked back into the clinic where Maggie had the other two bodies tied around the ankles with two more leashes. After dragging the two remaining bodies out of the clinic, he returned to find Maggie waiting. She had outfitted Tank with a large, heavy looking leather leash. He looked at her and smiled.
“What?” She asked. “What if he tries to run off?”
Charlie just chuckled. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
They loaded into Charlie’s car which was a much greater effort than he thought it would be. Tank’s massive frame engulfed the backseat and the rear window was almost instantly covered in slobber. When they started driving, Tank swung his head over Charlie’s shoulder and leaned on him with the full weight of his body. Charlie looked over at him and the dog’s bloodshot eyes rolled over to meet his. “Dude, seriously. Do you mind?” Tank simply lifted his head and began panting. Drool ran freely from his jowls and oozed down both his and Maggie’s shoulders. “Oh, Jeez! Here! Here!” Charlie scrambled to open his window. Tank’s ears popped up a little and he shoved his head out the window to smell the air. “For Pete’s sake!” Charlie looked down at his shoulder and rolled his eyes. “Nasty!” Maggie began dabbing at his shoulder with some napkins she had found. When he looked over at her, she had a huge smirk on her face. “What are you laughing at?”
Maggie exploded in a hysterical bout of laughter. Charlie tried not to follow suit, but her laugh was contagious. Had it been the stress from the last few days? Maybe they just needed a laugh. Either way, by the time they were able to stop, their cheeks hurt from laughing.
“God, it feels like forever since I laughed that hard.” Maggie said after they had calmed down. “I haven’t laughed like that since before Mum died.”
They both grew quiet after that. It was just as well. People were starting to appear on the street and they didn’t all look like they had good intentions. A few walked around with brandished weapons. He saw one man standing guard in the front window of his store with a shotgun. A small group of t
eenagers ran out the front door of a stereo store with large bundles under their arms, laughing. Charlie was driving slowly, trying to take in all the devastation. Trash and debris littered the road and he was forced to veer out of the way of a stranded automobile every once in a while. Most of the cars on the road were empty. Many of them looked like they had been in accidents, with dents and scratches all over them. A few had doors missing. Charlie was in awe. He knew they were strong and fast, but were the vampires really capable of doing that to a car?
“Charlie, look!” Maggie was slapping his shoulder, staring out her window. Far down the side street her gaze was locked onto an armored humvee. Soldiers milled around it, fully armed and in battle dress and flak jackets. They were stopping people at random and questioning them.
“Whoa. Those fellas are ready to throw down. Odds are those are a bunch of weekend warriors.” Maggie just looked at him like she didn’t understand. “National Guard. Maybe Army Reserve. Poor guys probably never thought they’d be called on for something like this. Probably scared out of their minds.” Charlie moved on from the intersection, eager to get away from the checkpoint, if that’s what it was. For a guy, wishing for action only a few days ago, he suddenly realized how little he wanted to return to government service. If they found out he was prior spec ops, they’d put a rifle in his hand without blinking and probably some troops to command on top of it. He didn’t want to be thrust into that right now. Not because he was afraid, but because even in the very short time he had been around Maggie, he wanted to stay with her. He had stood guard over her all night. Sure, if he hadn’t been there, Tank would’ve helped, but would he have been enough? He doubted it very much. But more than anything, he felt a connection with her that he hoped she felt too.
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