by J. N. Baker
I scanned the parking lot. No one else seemed to notice us in the chaos. Everyone was far too busy worrying about the safety of their own families, many of which were still trapped under the collapsed building—most of them dead. The smell of blood was heavy in the air.
I took in my own little family, the family that I chose, looking them over to make sure they were okay. But someone was still missing. As much as I knew it would piss William off—and as much as she often drove me crazy—I couldn’t leave her behind. She was family.
“Josh, Cody—do one of you have your cell?”
“Yeah,” Cody scoffed. “Because I sleep with it in my pocket.”
Josh simply shook his head, his eyes falling to the phone in Trent’s massive hands.
“Trent, I need to use your phone.” I extended my hand out expectantly. When he didn’t make a move to give it to me, I snapped my fingers at him. “I wasn’t asking.”
He groaned. “She might be hot, but your girlfriend is a little on the demanding side, Alec.”
I opened my mouth to argue but stopped myself. It wasn’t the time for the “relationship” talk. Was that what I was—his girlfriend? I didn’t exactly remember agreeing to that. Alec flashed his friend a wide grin and I resisted punching him in his too-handsome face.
Trent slapped his cell phone into my palm with a grunt. “Here you are, princess.” I cocked an eyebrow at him, and he took a step back. At least he wasn’t a complete idiot.
“What are you doing, Zoe?” William asked, stepping beside me.
I held up a hand to silence him, tapping on the screen to wake up the phone. I dialed so fast that I got the wrong number the first three times. I took a deep breath and attempted to dial once more. It rang and someone answered.
“Cindy?”
“Zoe, is that you? Where are you? What’s happening?” She sounded hysterical, more so than usual, sobbing between shallow breaths. I could hardly understand her as her words all jumbled together. “The floor above mine collapsed. Everyone’s dead! I don’t wanna die, Zoe!” Through the receiver, I heard her knees hit the ground.
“Cindy, you need to calm down. Listen to me.” I paused. “Are you listening?”
She sniffed. “Yes.”
“Where is she at?” Cody asked over my shoulder. “We’ll go get her.”
“Where are you, Cindy?”
“I’m heading to the beach. I didn’t know what else to do. I have nowhere else to go.” Her sobbing resumed. “Please, come get me. I’m so scared, Zoe.”
“Don’t talk to anyone, do you hear me? Don’t stop or talk to anyone. We’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
“Okay,” she whimpered and the call ended.
I sighed, running a hand over my face. I handed Trent his cell back, mumbling my appreciation.
Josh rested a hand on my shoulder and my muscles relaxed ever so slightly. “Is she all right?”
“No—I don’t know. Her apartment building collapsed. She’s heading to the beach.”
“I am sorry, Zoe,” William said, stepping in front of me, his blonde hair hanging heavy with the rain. “You know I cannot permit this. We must leave before it is too late—all of us. Your human friend is not our priority. If it is her time to d—”
“Then I will go alone,” I snapped, cutting him off. “She’s my priority and she’s counting on me, William. What’s the point of being who we are if we keep letting everyone around us die? It isn’t her time, not yet. I refuse to accept that.”
William searched my face. “You are so much like her,” he said finally.
“So I’ve been told,” I mumbled.
There was a moment of silence as William and I faced off. “Annie, Jade, Ryuu, and Trent will come with me,” he finally said. “We will find proper transportation before the final attack. You have one hour to get her and get out of the city. Not a minute longer.”
“The final attack?” Josh choked on his words. Tiffany clung tighter to his arm.
“All due respect, William,” Trent said. “But I go where Alec goes.”
William simply nodded, turning away from me.
“All right, let’s go. Jade, give me the keys to your Jeep,” Alec demanded.
“They were in the hotel,” she snapped as if he should’ve known.
Alec growled under his breath and snatched the rental keys from Trent’s pocket with little resistance from the shift. He marched toward the street in the direction of a black VW Jetta parked on a broken slab of asphalt with a pickup truck glued to its rear bumper. Alec gave the pickup a shove and it went rolling down the road. His finger pressed hard on the unlock button. “Pile in, I’m driving. It’ll take too long to walk.”
“Nice try, kid,” Trent said to Cody as he tried to snag the front passenger seat. “Noobs sit in the back.” Cody growled but didn’t put up a fight, coming to stand beside me. I had a feeling Trent had quite a few years on Cody and that he had just pulled rank.
It was a tight fit, squeezing six adult bodies into a car that seated only five, especially when one of those bodies was as large as Trent’s. Alec and Trent took the front while Josh, Cody, Tiffany, and I crammed into the back seat. I sat squished between Josh and Cody, with Tiffany propped on Josh’s lap. It was uncomfortable in more ways than one. The engine roared to life and we took off down the broken street, dodging fallen debris and panicked people. The badly damaged roads made our drive feel more like a rollercoaster ride rather than the pleasant trip to the beach it would have been on any other day.
I stared out the rear passenger side window, desperate to distract myself, though what I found outside the car brought me little comfort. People hung from broken windows, overturned cars still held passengers prisoner, and only the newer buildings were still standing—barely. Everywhere my eyes fell, I saw men, women, and children running through the streets covered in blood—whether their own or someone else’s, I couldn’t say. No one was spared from loss. No one.
“Um, Alec?” Cody said, the tone of his voice making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“What?”
“You feel that?”
“Feel what?” Alec paused, looking over his shoulder at us.
The start of the second earthquake was deafening, like an explosion deep within the earth. Screams erupted from the already demolished streets, bricks raining down on the sidewalks. The strained asphalt beneath us bowed, lifting the car until the road could take no more. The asphalt snapped, sending the car hurtling backward down the hill. The tires squealed as Alec stomped on the brake pedal, cursing under his breath as we lost traction. He cranked the steering wheel and the Jetta veered to the right, crashing into an overturned vehicle on the side of the road. Suddenly, as if nothing had happened, we stopped moving.
After a moment of intense silence, we all exhaled in unison, releasing an air of relief into the overcrowded car. Cody started laughing, then Trent, even Tiffany was smiling. Despite the collective relief in the vehicle, the poor visibility made me uneasy. That was when I saw the massive figure shift in front of us. I squinted, leaning over the center console.
“Go! Go! Go!”
But it was too late. There was no time to escape.
The bus barreled down the street, bouncing off smashed vehicles and rubble. Tiffany screamed and we braced for impact.
The sound of steel against steel made my stomach churn as the bus smashed into us, obliterating the front end of the Jetta. The violent force hurled us backward, breaking us free from the car behind us. We rolled in unison with the large bus, catching air between flips, demolishing anything that dared get in the way. After what felt like twenty flips, the car rocked to a standstill on its roof before the back end of the bus crashed down on us.
The silence was sickening.
A moist tongue dragged across my cheek and something cold and wet nuzzled my face. My eyes fluttered open. The golden retriever whined at me to move, trying to dig out the glass from under me.
“Cody
?” I groaned.
It took me a minute to regain my sense of direction. I was face down on the interior roof of the car, my head poking out through the shattered rear window. One of my legs was tangled under someone’s warm body. I felt no movement in the overturned vehicle apart from my own. I tried to pull myself free, crying out. Hot blood covered every inch of my skin. I couldn’t let myself think about whose it might have been.
Sirens screamed in the distance. I peered through the sheet of rain, red and yellow lights flashing at the end of the street, drawing closer. But something was wrong. The ambulance was moving way too fast.
“Cody, run!” I shouted, shoving the dog away as the ambulance hit a broken slab of concrete and catapulted into the air. I watched as it sailed in my direction. It scraped along the back end of the car, its rear tire missing my head by mere inches. It continued its rampage, crashing head-on into the brick wall of what use to be a local pizza joint. No one got out of the ambulance.
No one was coming to help us.
The golden retriever returned, lying at the mouth of the window and resting its head on my arm with a whimper. I patted its wet fur, stained with blood. “I’m fine,” I whispered, my voice a little shakier than I would have liked. The dog stood, reaching its head into the car, and retrieved a bloody pair of shorts in its mouth. It trotted off, disappearing.
I shifted, trying once more to pull myself free from the wreckage. A groan from somewhere within the vehicle only fueled me.
A hand dropped in front of my face and I instinctively grabbed it. “I got you, Fido,” Cody said, sitting on the wet ground in front of me. He braced both of his feet against the rim of the window. “On three. One. Two. Three!”
Cody yanked on my arms and I kicked my leg until I finally broke free. He carried me from the vehicle and set me on the ground.
“Are you sure you’re okay, dude?” he asked, kneeling beside me.
I simply nodded. “Just give me a minute. Go, check the others.”
He hesitated and then gave me a quick nod, turning back to the vehicle.
Rainwater began working its magic, washing away most of the blood that covered my body. It seemed like the majority belonged to someone else, a realization that didn’t make me feel any better. I yanked a long shard of glass from my thigh and blood gushed beneath my hand as the flesh fused back together.
My eyes were fixed on the mangled mess of steel that was once the Jetta. The car was hardly recognizable with the bus folded around its undercarriage. A good chunk of the front end was either smashed or missing, along with at least two of its tires. Every window was shattered and the roof, which was now on the ground, had concaved and was now two feet lower than it used to be.
Blood stained the rough edges of broken glass and tattered upholstery and I shuddered. I knew I should have been helping Cody but, if I was being honest, I was afraid of what I would find. It was a miracle Cody and I had escaped in one piece.
I felt a shred of hope pulse through me when I saw Cody lift a screaming Tiffany from the car. She kicked her legs wildly, like a child throwing a tantrum, clinging to her left arm. No doubt the bone had snapped. As Cody set Tiffany down, working to bandage her arm, I got to my feet and hobbled to the vehicle. If Tiffany could survive…I knelt beside the driver’s side door, going with the safest bet first.
Alec was hanging upside down, smashed between the twisted driver’s seat and the car door. His lifeless face was flattened against the broken glass of the window, blood seeping from his cheek.
“Alec!”
He gasped for air, his eyes snapping open. “What happened?” he croaked, spitting out pieces of glass.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “You need to teleport out of the car, Alec. Can you do that?”
His hand found mine. He looked up at me with hollow eyes, his face pale. I started to wonder if most of the blood had come from Alec. “The car is on fire, Zoe. I can smell it.” With that, Alec lost consciousness once more.
And then I saw it, the smoke starting to billow out from the mangled metal.
My heart stopped.
Cody came up beside me. “I’ve got this, Zo.”
As Cody’s bones began to pop and silver and black fur sprouted across his back, I retreated, withdrawing my hand from Alec’s.
The car is on fire. Alec’s words echoed in my mind repeatedly as I rounded the car, searching for Josh’s face. There was so much blood. I yanked the mangled back door open, the metal scraping across the pavement with an ear-piercing screech.
Shaky fingers grabbed hold of my ankle. I dropped to the ground to find Josh dangling upside down from the car, still very much alive. I pressed my hands to his face, trying to push away the blood. There was so much—I needed to know it wasn’t his. A cut above his right eyebrow leaked more blood into his hairline.
“I’m fine, Zoe,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Are you okay?” Josh stretched his free hand to my cheek.
I didn’t answer his question, pressing my forehead to his. I cradled his face in both my hands and breathed him in. He smelled of blood—everything did.
“How’s Tiff? Is she okay?”
I sighed, turning my face away from his. That shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. “She’s fine, a broken bone or two, nothing too serious. She’ll survive. We don’t have much time. I need to get you out of here.”
“It’s my left foot, it’s stuck on something. I think it’s the passenger seat.” He winced as he tried to pull himself free. I gave Trent’s seat a shove but it didn’t budge. I gulped. Crawling to the front passenger seat, I peeked inside, worried at what I might find.
But instead of Trent, all I found was a pile of bloody clothes. It was probably a good thing, seeing as the bulk of the bus appeared to have landed on his section of the car.
A crackling sound filled my ears and I snapped my head up. Flames were starting to climb from the wreckage.
“Shit,” I hissed. “Shit, shit, shit.”
When I turned back to him, Josh was staring at me with wide eyes. He could smell the smoke. Panic was setting in. “Zoe, get me the hell out of here.”
“Cody,” I called out as I rushed back to Josh’s side, yanking my sword around so it was out of the way. “Cody, I need your help.” I heard an animalistic grunt and the car rocked slightly in response. He was still trying to get Alec out.
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled. I planted myself in the doorframe, pressing my back into mangled steel and placing both of my feet on the back of the passenger seat. I pushed and kicked at the seat back, using all my fleeting strength to try to shove it forward. I could feel the heat starting to radiate from the car.
A large pair of hands fell on the seat and I looked up to find a very large and very naked Trent kneeling beside me.
“Sorry I’m late,” he groaned, pulling on the seat. “Insect shifting is hard to come back from.” Well, that explained how he’d managed to avoid being turned into a human pancake.
I cried out as the jagged steel dug deeply into my back, tearing though flesh and muscle. Between me pushing and Trent pulling, the smashed seat slowly moved and Josh squirmed free, dropping onto the roof and crawling out of the car. My legs snapped back into my chest and I tore myself from the vehicle just as it burst into flames.
“Alec!” I screamed. I staggered to my feet and rushed around to the driver’s side of the car, trying to see into the blazing inferno. “Alec!”
“Zoe,” Josh called, and I turned my head to find him standing next to an enormous silverback gorilla. In the gorilla’s big arms was Alec. The beast set him on the wet pavement and I ran to him.
Alec inhaled a sharp breath, leaping to his feet. His eyes flashed from the fiery wreckage to each of our faces. He exhaled.
We were all alive. For now.
We staggered down the busted street, fewer than five minutes from the coastline. The rain was relentless, beating down on us as we rounded the last corner to the beach. No one spoke, not
even Barbie.
Tiffany hobbled behind me, clinging to her broken arm. She whimpered with each step she took until I wasn’t sure if she was a human or a dog. Perhaps she was both. After all, Jade had called her a “human bitch.” She was flanked on either side by Cody and Josh, both covered with cuts and bruises from the fiery crash.
Alec and I, of course, were unscathed. Trent had also fared surprisingly well. Other than looking a bit green around the gills from shifting into something smaller than his fingernail and a couple of burns on his arms from helping to free Josh, he appeared to be fine. Apparently, when he’d seen the bus barreling toward us, he began to shift. Good thing too. He would have been squashed like a bug if he hadn’t. No pun intended.
Sadly, our broken and bloodied bodies didn’t stand out in the scarce crowd. No one rushed to our aid. No one took even a second look at us—which was probably good, seeing as Alec’s and my markings were on full display, as was the sword hanging from my side. They all had their own problems to deal with. No one was spared from the hell that had fallen upon us. The world we once knew was long gone, and it was only just the beginning. The future was paved with death and despair.
As our toes hit the sand, I instinctively took in a deep breath and instantly regretted it. The ocean air didn’t hold the same pleasing aroma it once had. I could taste no hint of salt in my mouth, only the permanent taste of blood. Was that what it was like to be one of the vamps? The murky water roared in response, waves crashing violently against the shore. It was hard to imagine that it was ever beautiful.
A bolt of lightning struck the teetering remains of one of the nearby boardwalk rides, illuminating the beach.
“Someone’s coming,” Josh announced, tearing his hand away from Tiffany as a small figure approached us on the beach.
Cindy.
She limped in our direction, arms wrapped tightly around her body. As she got closer, I could see the makeup smudged over her cheeks, the blood in her unkempt hair, the tears in her silk pajamas. I hardly recognized her.