Tank lifted his head and emitted a quiet moan in response to her movement. He stared at her with big beady eyes and shook his head, making a wet, slobbery sound. She had to laugh. “And people say dogs don’t have souls.” She chuckled at the animal as she scrubbed his ears with both hands and he let out a groan. “You need to go out, buddy? C’mon.” She got up and wrestled the heavy dresser to the side. Charlie was sleeping peacefully and even his burns looked better. The melted bag of ice had fallen to the floor at some point in the night and left a large puddle on the floor. No sense in cleaning it up. They probably wouldn’t be here another night. Despite Charlie’s condition stabilizing over the night, she still wanted to get him help. She didn’t have the expertise or tools to make sure he was really alright. If she could get him back into the truck, they would have to try to find a hospital.
She went to the bathroom to relieve herself and was ecstatic that the plumbing still worked. Thank God for small conveniences. She thought. It amazed her how much was taken for granted day in and day out now that the most basic of necessities had become a chore. She clamped Tank’s leash onto his collar and was about to open the front door when she had a flashback to yesterday’s events and paused. She went back to the bedroom and found the revolver on the nightstand where she had left it. She slipped it into her pant waist and it sank naturally into the small of her back. Only a few days ago, she was anything but a gun advocate, and now it gave her such a sense of security, she couldn’t imagine going without it.
Unbolting and opening the front door, she had just gotten out onto the front porch when she heard the cacophony of small arms bolts locking and loading. No less than three rifles were trained on her as one soldier stepped forward cautiously. Tank barked furiously.
“Ma’am. We’re not here to hurt you, but you need to restrain the animal or it will be dispatched.” The man in front said to her.
“Who are you?” She asked as she tried to rein in the giant dog. “What do you want?”
“We’re with the Army, Ma’am. We’re clearing this sector and taking the survivors into the city where we have a defensive perimeter well established and we can meet basic needs. Out here, you’re just a liability. You’ll have to come with us.”
She stood in shock as a million different questions ran through her mind. She was unable to voice any of them. Tank had stopped his barking and the men seemed to relax their weapons a bit.
“Is there anyone else inside?” The man moved closer to get her attention as she was lost in thought. “Ma’am?”
“Um… My.. My husband.” She blurted out, hoping that if the soldiers perceived an emotional connection between her and Charlie, they might not try to separate them. Somehow, she doubted ‘some guy who was a total stranger until we spent the last couple weeks fighting for our lives together’ would elicit the same response.
The man made a quick motion with his free hand and three soldiers rushed past her into the house. She heard the men inside yelling. ‘Clear!’ From the living room. ‘Clear!’ From farther away. ‘Clear!’ Further still. ‘Here! Here! Agghhh!’ Was followed by a crash on the side of the house. Glass shattered and wood splintered as one of the soldiers flew from the window and landed on his back, groaning in pain. The man who had done all the talking up to that point, made a quick motion with his hands and three more soldiers rushed into the house. She heard the familiar pneumatic pop of a taser. Then one more pop sounded a few seconds later with Charlie yelling in pain.
“Charlie!” She screamed as they dragged his limp body out of the house. She ran to his side and wrapped her arms around him but the men dragged her off of him.
“Calm down, Ma’am.” It was the voice of the soldier in charge again. He had stepped onto the porch to restrain her but Tank had pushed his big body in between them and let out a low warning growl. The man glanced nervously at the dog. “Don’t worry. He was combative so they tazed him. He won’t be hurt, except…” The man seemed perplexed. “Has he been bitten? It looks like he’s been bitten, but he’s in the sun and nothing’s happening.”
“No.” Oh God! She thought. What would they do if they thought he was going to turn into a vampire? “No!” She said again, almost yelling at the soldier. “He hasn’t been bitten!” The soldier gave her a wary look as though he didn’t believe her. Had her plan backfired? She began to panic. Of course, his wife would say he hadn’t been bitten if she thought his life was in danger! I wouldn’t believe me, either! She thought. “Where are you taking him? I want to come with you! Please!”
The soldier hesitated, then said, “Do you have a vehicle?”
Suddenly she was worried about the vehicle they had chosen. Would they be in some kind of trouble for taking a police vehicle? And would the soldiers confiscate all the weapons and supplies in it? She didn’t trust them. Better to leave the supplies hidden in the garage, where she had parked the truck. “Um, no. No, I don’t.” She answered.
“Alright, but I have to search you.” The soldier made a move towards her and was greeted with another growl from Tank. The soldier sighed. “You know what, just get in the humvee over there. It’ll escort the ambulance into the city. You’ll have to be in-processed there and issued housing and supplies, but you can check in on him after that.” The man urged her towards the humvee as if he was happy just to be rid of her. She was thankful for that.
With one last glance back at the address of the house, and a look at the street signs, she walked to the humvee and got into the back seat with Tank. Hopefully she would remember where the truck was whenever she was able to return.
A few short minutes later, a man got into the driver seat and paused midway in. “Hot damn, lady! They said you had a dog, but that’s not a dog. My daddy’s farm has horses smaller than that thing!” He said with a smile. He got into the driver’s seat and buckled up, turning to face them. “You guys hungry?” He looked from her to the dog and back again. The soldier reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a silver plastic pouch and handed it to Maggie. “Corn beef hash.” He said. “Tastes like shit, but it’ll keep your feet kicking.” He smiled at her and Tank moved his huge muzzle near the soldier and gave him a giant lick.
With the tension eased by a simple act of kindness, she let out a sigh. “Thank you.” She said.
“No problem.” His smile broadened as he turned to face the road in front of him. The humvee started with a throaty roar and the soldier put it in gear and pulled in front of the ambulance she had watched them load Charlie into. He stopped the humvee for a minute and another man with a rifle got into the passenger seat. “We ready?” The driver asked him.
“Ready.” He answered.
They pulled out onto the street and she turned and saw the ambulance pull out onto the road behind them. The ride to the city was as uneventful as anything else she had seen in the last two weeks. She was quietly thankful that the vampires were only out at night. The only danger they had to face during the daytime was unruly humans. She thought about the incident the previous morning and shuddered. She hadn’t wanted to kill the two men that attacked them. She truly felt it was her or them. Now she couldn’t help the guilt that swarmed in on her. She thought about what Charlie said to her as he blacked out. ‘Put it in a separate place’ I didn’t kill them. She thought. It was someone else. But in her heart, she knew it had been her finger that pulled the trigger. What scared her more was that she kind of liked it. Not taking their lives so much as metering out justice. Who was she to decide who lived and who died? But in that moment, did she really have a choice? She merely exchanged one terrible sin for another.
The soldier sitting in the passenger seat looked back to check on the ambulance. His gaze stopped on Maggie for an instant and then he turned back to the front. Could he see the guilt on her face? Did he know? She couldn’t help but feel as though everyone who looked at her knew, could see right through her.
As they arrived at the outskirts of the city, she could see people piling up near a tall
fence with rolls of razor wire around the top. Men, women, and children stood en masse waiting for the approval of attending soldiers to pass through the gate and into safety.
“Safe zone.” The driver declared in answer to Maggie’s silent question. At the sight of the humvee, armed men came from the gate and separated the crowd. As the caravan of two moved past the crowd, she caught the eye of several people. All seemed to echo her fears. All of them stared in accusation. Murderer! They seemed to say. And worse, Murderer escorted to safety like royalty! Scanning over the bruised and battered faces, she could only imagine what it had taken for them to survive this long. Had they done the things she had had to do to survive? Had they seen the same things she had seen? The horrors? One more man caught her eye as they passed through the gate in the fence. His face was smeared with dirt and grime. His clothes were torn and the look on his face was so blank, so vacant, that she couldn’t be sure that he was still alive or as dead as the young child he held in his arms. The sight of him was almost more than she could take. She looked down at her feet as a tear formed at the corner of her eye and she fought it back as best she could. Until that moment she had been sure that she and Charlie were the only ones experiencing the hell that had been their world. Now she realized that they truly were at war with the vampires. This was an all-out assault on the whole country, if not the whole world.
Once on the other side of the gate, the humvee pulled over in front of a make-shift colony of tents where a long line of frightened people waited to be admitted by a large group of soldiers hunched over computers and phone banks.
The ambulance drove around the humvee and continued on. Maggie protested but the soldiers assured her that they would get her checked in and then drop her off at the hospital. “I’m in no hurry to get back to that door-knocking committee.” One of the soldiers said. “Yeah,” came the reply from the other soldier, “if it wasn’t bad enough, we’ve got to fend off the bloodsuckers all night, now we’ve got to chase down ornery civilians all day.” Maggie shot him a sideways glare. He simply smiled at her.
The driver stayed in the humvee with Tank while the other soldier walked her over to the area where people were being checked in. He escorted her to the front of the line where the people waiting patiently eyed her with contempt. Great. She thought. More accusatory stares.
They were greeted by a slender man in fatigues. He had a pencil behind each ear, wire-rim glasses, and the look on his face was anything but inviting. He was obviously under a lot of pressure and saw Maggie as nothing more than another annoyance shackled to his plate. The soldier rushed her through the process and told her to skip large sections of the paperwork more than once. The processing took longer than she would’ve liked, but under the circumstances, she could hardly have asked for better service. With the key to her new, government-issued apartment in her pocket, they drove to the hospital.
“I hate to ask for any more favors, but can you wait for me with the dog? I need to see Charlie, but they’re not going to let me in with him.” She jerked her thumb towards the dog who was happily panting next to her.
The driver looked at the soldier next to him, obviously his superior, as if awaiting an answer. The soldier in the passenger seat sighed. “Alright. But I’m walking you in and then we’re dropping you off at your apartment. If you want to come back, without the dog, take the bus.” He said, then mumbling to himself, “Feldman’s going to chew my ass for this one.”
It didn’t take the triage nurse long to locate Charlie, but she frowned slightly when she found his chart on the computer and picked up the telephone, her eyes darting nervously around the room. She mumbled something unintelligible into the receiver and hung it up. “You can have a seat over there, Ma’am. The doctor will be out to see you.”
The waiting room was loaded with all manner of people. In one corner, a young couple held each other as though they were saying good-bye for the last time. An old man sat a few chairs away from them and stared into space, lost in his own mind while a line of spittle seeped from the corner of his mouth. All around her were strangers in turmoil. Some paced, some slept, some even wept, but there was no laughing in that waiting room. There were no happy endings that she could see. The room began to close in on her. She knew the look the triage nurse had in her eyes. It was the same look she got when her mother had died. She felt a tear well up in her eye. Not again. Please. She thought. Her heart began to race when she saw the doctor come around the corner. There was no doubt he was there to see her. His eyes met hers and locked on as though he knew who to look for.
“Miss Stone?” He asked, offering his hand. She shook his hand and nodded. “I’m Dr. Lemley. We were barely able to get Mr. Cutter into his room before he went into cardiac arrest.” She inhaled quickly, startled. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “But we were able to revive him. We’re monitoring him at the moment. He’s weak and unresponsive, but stable. I can’t allow any visitors right now. I’m sorry. He’s at a crucial point and I want things as quiet and calm as possible. He needs to get rest. I’m confident we can help him.”
“But can’t I see him…”
He raised a hand to stop her mid sentence. “Miss Stone, did they give you a phone number when they issued you your living area?” Again, she nodded. “Then please leave it with the triage and we’ll contact you as soon as there are some developments in his condition.” She moved to protest again, but again, he interjected. “Please, Miss Stone. We will take care of him. Why don’t you get settled into your new place and call us in the morning, hmm?”
He smiled and put an arm around her, slowly turning her to face the exit and walked a few steps with her to start her moving. No! She thought. No! This is wrong! Something’s wrong! Why won’t you tell me? Inside she was screaming, but for some reason, her feet kept moving towards the door. It was as if she had been disarmed by some cosmic force. Even her mouth was numb. What if she never saw Charlie again? What if she never got a chance to hold him? Oh God, Please don’t let me lose him now! The rest of the walk back to the humvee was a blur. All she could think about was Charlie. She knew that they had grown close in these short weeks together, but it wasn’t until now that she realized how much he meant to her, how much he kept her grounded, kept her from losing her mind completely. And how safe she felt when he was around, as if all the terrors around her were simply an inconvenience. How could it be that in that short time, she cared for him more than she had ever cared for any man, save her father? The engine of the humvee roared and the tires thudded down the street but her thoughts were somewhere else. She tried to stay positive, but her mind kept returning to the worst-case scenario. How would she exist, how could she exist without him? How could she get by if he were gone?
Chapter 21
Avery looked up from the whet stone where he was sharpening one of his six-inch combat knives. “What are you reading this time, Mon Ami? Shakespeare? Frost? Yeats?”
Phinneas K. Ledge, his friend of many years, looked up from the book he was reading and answered with a small smile. “Poe.” He recited the last few lines of the poem he was reading:
‘And travelers, now, within that valley
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly, rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh--but smile no more.’
He paused for a moment, reflecting on the pertinence of the passage before returning to the book in his hands.
The abandoned motel room they had chosen was both defensible and secluded enough that they were confident they could ride out the daylight in relative safety. The thick, concrete block walls were unlikely to be breached and the windows, which had been boarded up, were limited to one wall of the room. Outside, it was daytime, but you’d never know it from inside the room. Every crack had been sealed. Enough to keep out t
he faintest bits of sunlight. The vampires worked by the light of one candle that cast heavy shadows on the corners of the room but did little else. They didn’t need much.
Avery sat at a small table in the corner of the room, sharpening his knives while Ledge read his book and Sylvia perched on the nightstand near her ward. Julia was sleeping in one of the two beds while Sylvia tried to glean as much information off of her dreams as she could. What little they had gotten up until now had been completely useless. Nothing more than cryptic messages and obscure clues that usually led them to places where insignificant childhood memories had occurred. They checked her parents’ house first, of course. Julia went nearly hysterical when she saw it blown to bits.
She stirred in the bed and Avery let out a sigh, just loud enough for Sylvia to hear. He had made it clear that he thought using the girl’s talent would prove useless and he let Sylvia know it whenever possible. She glared at him for only an instant before resuming her concentration on the girl. He smiled to himself. For some reason, the thought of getting under Sylvia’s skin always amused him.
Far away from the motel room, lost in the sea of her mind, Julia was walking through pure desolation. The air was cold and dank. Her feet dragged across the charred ground, kicking up small plumes of fine ash. The sky was dark, but for a blue orb of light on the horizon in the far distance. She looked behind her and the ground seemed to disappear into the inky blackness beyond. She had nowhere to go but towards the light, so she kept walking. She was tired. Her legs felt like lead weights threatening to drag her down to the ground. She gave a start when she kicked something and it rattled across the dry earth like a hollow gourd. She glanced down and almost yelped at the sight of the human skull she had absentmindedly kicked.
She walked further, paying more attention to the ground. More bones began to come into view. And still more until the ground was littered with them. Something passed in front of the blue light in the distance and her heart jumped. Far ahead, a figure was standing between her and the blue light. Her skin began to crawl. She felt as though the thing was staring at her but the distance was too great to be sure.
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