by Kim Petersen
“I won’t let her go, Avila. I’ve already lost too much.” I shook my head. “I looked away from her for only a moment and they snatched her away. I have to get her back.”
Avila’s jaw twisted. She gnawed on her bottom lip before gesturing toward the lone window in the airless room.
“Okay, but there’s nothing we can do right now; it’s almost nightfall.” I was about to protest when she stopped me with a flash of a palm. “Listen dad, we can’t do this alone. You can’t do it alone. They’ll kill you on sight. We need to contact Michal. We need help.”
Michal was our sole connection to what little life remained in the city. We’d been work colleagues at the Norbury Blood Research Center for more than two decades. He was one of the most gifted hematologists I’d ever met and had chosen to stay in the city to search for a cure for the V-Virus, working with a group of vigilante scientists in an underground laboratory.
Our communication with Michal was sparse and not always reliable, considering that the only means of contact rested solely on old CB radio transmitter. We’d agreed to reach out to one another only when it was necessary. Scarla was more than necessary, but what could he do? He was a few hours’ drive away and I had no idea if he could handle a blade.
I swung my gaze toward the window, noting the diminishing light spreading through a gap in the curtains. Honestly, the way I felt, I could not care less about the threat of the kindred if it meant I could find Scarla and bring her home. But I was aware my thoughts weren’t rational at that moment. There was Avila; I had to protect her too.
Reaching out to Michal couldn’t hurt. Perhaps he could stay with Avila while I got this under control. My fingers clenched the machete handle as I glanced back at her, ready to concede when a loud knock thumped against the cottage door. The sound of my name spoken by an unfamiliar and gnarly voice reverberated through the flimsy walls.
What the hell?
Avila’s eyes widened. I motioned for her to stay put as I gripped the machete and raced to the front of the cottage, edging along the wall of the sitting room to steal a glance through the curtains at the yard. My blood drained to my feet as I caught sight of a group of hawkers spreading across the clearing and leaning against the timber porch frame.
There must have been about fifteen of them wearing ragged leather jackets above grimy jeans and carrying an array of long blades and rusted chains between frayed fingerless gloves. The voice called again; the sound of my name grating against my churning gut. I steeled myself, taking the few steps toward the door before flinging it open.
Stained teeth greeted me with a wry grin that split between wiry ginger whiskers. His tall, solid frame filled my vision as he toyed with a switch blade and cocked his chin to the side. Dark eyes bore into me above pockmarked skin.
“Ah, you’re home! How fortunate that we caught you at the witching hour.”
My eyes flashed dangerously.
“What do you want?”
He laughed, a few of his cronies joining in when he leered their way. He turned back at me.
“You’re asking the wrong question, my friend.” He leaned closer, his breath hot and rancid in my face. “I have what you want. The question you should be asking is how bad do you want it.”
3
Sun
Forty-eight hours. That was the deal offered by the hawkers if I wanted to keep Scarla breathing. She now had a ransom on her head – a blood-ransom.
Myths and legends always seem to accompany major change. In a new world where blood ruled, it was blood that had become our most valuable commodity. Scarla’s life had just become dependent upon a few drops of rare blood. Blood represented power to its possessor, and I was uncertain I could produce the payoff.
Avila lifted her head from the cradle of her arm and yawned beside me in the pickup cabin. I glanced at her before looking back to the road that stretched ahead in an endless brutal strip as we sped toward the city. It was brutal for the bloodshed it had silently witnessed and for that which dwelled at its end. We were headed back into vampire territory.
“Are you okay?” My voice was as rigid as the stupidity of the question, but I knew she was good at disguising her fear. My little tough nugget wasn’t always as brawny as she made out. Still, her courage in the face of the epidemic was admirable.
She snorted and gazed out the passenger window. Fields of rotted vegetation and wild grasslands swayed beneath the morning sun, blurring the passing landscape.
“Of course.” She looked back at me. “Is it really true, dad?”
“Is what true?”
“What the hawkers said about AB positive blood type. You’ve never mentioned it before. Can it transcend a vampire’s supernatural powers?”
The sun’s sharp heat already bit at my brow despite the early hour. When I lowered the truck window, the foul odor of spoiled crops instantly assaulted my senses. I flinched and tried not to gag.
“I wish I had the answers, Avila.”
“Well, you of all people should know.”
I flinched again, and this time, it wasn’t because of the rotting crops. My eyes never left the road when I answered.
“It doesn’t matter what I know or don’t know. All that matters is that the hawkers believe it enough to keep Scarla hostage until I deliver it to them.” I wiped my brow with the back of hand. My jaw clenched. “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Or die trying.
She was silent for a few beats, her fingers toying with one of the wooden stakes swaddled in a bag that lay on the bench seat between us. She sighed.
“Maybe Michal has the answers. Last night when you spoke to him, I heard him tell you he has one vial there at the lab. Surely, he’s discovered something new by now? After all, you guys put in some grueling hours before … the end.”
She was referring to the intense blood research program I had participated in when there was still hope the epidemic could be controlled. Of course, we’d failed. But when delirium had struck near the end, so too did the mysterious tales begin to circulate about a blood type that could provide the supernatural with even more extraordinary powers. Alas, by that time, most of the city had fallen and with it, the remaining blood banks ransacked and gutted.
No one really knew where the legend surrounding the rare blood type had originated. Some say the collapse of humanity was an ironic twist of fate handed down by unseen higher forces. That our most vital lifeforce would prove to be our undoing. Those same folks foretold a future time of reckoning in the form of a blood legend. Whether there was truth to those mystifying predictions did not concern me. I wanted no part in this new world. Once I got Scarla back, I planned on taking my girls and getting further off grid. Blood legends and myths be damned.
“Dad?”
I glanced at Avila, catching her eyes tapering as the wind blew fast into the truck cabin. She pushed strands of dark hair from her face.
“Yeah?”
“If Michal has a vial of this rare blood, why would he give it up so readily for us?”
It was a valid question and one that had already crossed my mind. I’d managed to contact Michal after the hawkers had left the evening before. He had been pleased to hear from me, posing little protest when I filled him in on our current predicament and what I needed to get Scarla back. We’d left the cottage at first light with the promise of the blood we needed awaiting us in an underground city laboratory.
I pushed away the unease rippling through me and shrugged. Even as I spoke my next words, I wasn’t sure I believed them.
“Why wouldn’t he, Avila? Heck, he’s been a part of our lives for over twenty years. I trust him.”
She gave a half laugh.
“The concept of trust disintegrated when the city fell and vampires overtook the world.” She turned away, speaking toward the black tarmac that stretched before us. “You were the one that taught me that.”
Indeed, I was. It was something I’d drummed into both Scarla and Avila.
Keeping the guards up and the barriers firmly erected was as important to withstanding the new world as the basic needs for survival. As it was, we were fortunate to have enough supplies stockpiled at the cottage to last several months if rationed carefully. And as far as trusting Michal, Avila could be right, but I had no choice but to pursue the blood and this was my only option.
I was about to voice as much when Avila gasped and jerked next to me, lifting her arm to gesture toward a lone figure appearing on the hazy black horizon.
“Up ahead, dad. Look!”
My skin flushed as I squinted beneath dark sunglasses. My mind whirled with possible scenarios. You don’t often spot lone figures walking along the deserted highways. You don’t stop to ask questions either. Yet, as we neared the solitary person hiking in the middle of the road, my thoughts were lost when she spun around to face us, the sun catching the length of her wild golden tresses while her long black dress flowed with her movements.
A woman?
My foot automatically eased off the accelerator and my breath quickened with my knotting belly. The air in the pickup thickened with decaying pungent offerings as we slowed. When the woman raised a palm to wave us down, I noticed the rucksack slung over one shoulder and the wooden stake she gripped by her side. The sound of Avila’s voice was the next thing I heard over the rumbling truck motor.
“What are you doing? Don’t stop for her, dad. Keep moving.” Her eyes were like frantic storm clouds when I tore my gaze from the woman to meet her stare. She shook her head wildly. “It’s got to be a trick.”
I took a shallow breath and scanned the area, the pickup now only inching forward as I clutched the steering wheel. The roadside was a tangle of high weeds and twisted bramble that suffocated farm fences and boarded rising fields of sloping grasses. Anyone could be hiding in those shrubs. Anyone. Still, I felt compelled to press my foot on the brake as we drew closer.
“Is your door locked?” My voice was taut as I double checked my own door and wound up my window until only a few inches remained open.
Avila checked her door and gasped loudly. “Have you lost your mind?”
Perhaps I had lost my mind. Either that or it was fast deteriorating beneath the precarious nature of the unfolding events, but something compelled me to stop for this woman and I had no idea why. I didn’t look at Avila as I began to veer alongside the woman, maintaining a crawl in the pickup.
“Keep vigilant.” I reached for the machete that was propped next to me.
“Ha! A lot of good that’s gonna be if we’re ambushed with weapons. What if they have guns? You have lost all your marbles.”
She fell silent when the woman smiled from between chafed lips and fell into step on my side of the pickup. Her blonde hair fell stringy over slim shoulders clad in a faded denim jacket worn over a red singlet. Grimy fingers adjusted a pair of dark sunglasses poised on a petite nose.
“Thanks for stopping.” Her voice was as light as the breeze drifting off the unkempt, sleepy pastures. The cawing sounds of crows circling over the fields clung overhead like an ominous warning as I stopped the truck. She looked beyond me to Avila. “My name is Sun. I’m heading back to the city. Can I ride with you?”
My jaw tightened and I dropped my eyes to the stake she clasped. A slight chill prickled my spine when I saw the dried blood that stained the end of the wooden stave.
“What’s your business back in the city, Sun?”
She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and took a sharp breath. Eyes the color of gold peered at me from sunken sockets before she lowered her chin and swallowed hard.
“I’m going back for my daughter. I left her behind.”
Avila scoffed next to me.
“Bullshit! If that’s true, she’s probably dead. Are you on a suicide mission or something?”
Sun’s eyes instantly flew to Avila, and her lips quivered. She shook her head.
“Please. I have to know what happened to her.”
Avila and I exchanged glances. Her lips pursed as she frowned at me. I gave a slight nod and ignored her look of disbelief as I turned back to Sun.
“Get in.”
4
Hollow City
“So, what’s your story, huh?” Avila glared at Sun sitting between us on the bench seat as we raced along the highway.
Sun shrugged; her fingers twisted in her lap. “What do you mean? My story isn’t any different from anyone else’s.”
“Ha.” Avila’s lips curled as she indicated the stake leaning against the seat beside Sun. “I’m not buying the innocent act, Sunny. What’s with the blood-soaked stake? Did you kill kindred?”
I glanced at Sun as her jaw squared while she stared straight ahead.
“No.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Turns out, stakes can kill humans too.”
Avila was silent for a moment. I could almost hear the gears in her mind turning over. Her eyes never left Sun.
“What happened? Who’d ya kill?”
Sun shifted slightly before she faced Avila. She frantically rubbed the back of her neck.
“Avila,” I started, shaking my head. “Leave it alone.”
Avila didn’t even look at me. Her eyes were like fire in water as she scrutinized our hitchhiker. It was Sun’s brittle voice I heard next.
“Hawkers. There were three of them. They stumbled upon me in an old church I was squatting in. They’d been drinking rum … and just as nasty as the devil’s drink.” She gave a half laugh and shook her head. “They’d been looking for some ‘pink cookie’, they said. For days, I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t leave, could barely breathe. On the fourth night, the ginger one got sloppy with his rope knot. I waited till the booze knocked them out cold and then I jimmied the rope from my wrists and drove this stake into each of their hearts.”
Avila raised an eyebrow. She nodded briefly before turning her gaze toward the passenger window. Not much was said after that. We’d all been through our version of hell. Sun was right. Her story was no different to anyone else’s.
The two women exchanged a few words every now then, but I tuned out for the most part. My thoughts were trained toward the rural landscape as it began to give way to desolate suburban streets that skirted the outer sections of the city. After hearing the disturbing scene Sun had just described at the hands of hawkers, I was having trouble pushing away visions of those barbarous humans pawing over my woman. Scarla must be beside herself with fear.
Swiney prickass lowlifes. If they so much as touched a hair of her head, I’ll kill them all – one way or another.
I couldn’t help but think of that last moment we shared on the beach together. The way the shade of her eyes deepened like copper inkwells when she looked at me. It haunted me. I’d failed her.
What if I couldn’t get to her in time? What if it all went to shit?
I shuddered as feelings of helplessness and anger coursed through me. The hawkers had said they had a way of testing the blood type. If that were true, I couldn’t produce anything other than the real thing. I had to keep my eye on the endgame. It was all I could do as I kept speeding through the streets, ignoring the stillness of the shopfronts, townhouses and buildings that only months before were part of a thriving city. Now, those dwellings were prey to vultures, crows and vermin that scavenged for human remains.
When the streets narrowed and the maze of suburban districts began to merge with clusters of tall city buildings, I slowed the pickup in search for a discreet place to park. The hidden laboratory was in Norbury’s southern precinct, about a mile and a half away. I didn’t want to risk drawing unwanted attention by driving the truck through the inner-city streets. We would walk the rest of the way.
Scarla’s favorite Italian restaurant caught my eye. We’d spent many an evening together drinking red wine and dining on boscaiola in that cozy joint. She loved it for its unexpected charm and authenticity. She loved it for its candlelit dining and checkered tablecloths. Bella donna. My gut knotted as pee
red closer at its gloomy facade.
Below the sloped faded green roof, the windows were covered in a slick of grime, the words “Bella E Buona” now barely visible. I recalled the off-street parking bay around the back of the small building. It was a perfect place to stow the pickup, and quite fitting given we were here for Scarla’s sake.
I veered into the driveway and stopped the truck, the wrenching sound of the park brake shattering the silence in the cabin. I reached for my machete and the rucksack filled with rations and a water canister. I had also brought the hunting knives, a box of matches, a flashlight and a few candles. In the pickup tray, I stored a supply of fuel enough to get us back home. Avila and Sun gathered their belongings and climbed from cabin as I refueled the truck before setting off into the city.
Avila’s boots scuffed the gravel parking bay as she crept around like a predator. She was clad from head to toe in black, her jeans appearing sprayed against her slim legs as she clutched the cleaver in one hand while carrying the swaddled stakes over a shoulder. She moved closer to me, gesturing toward Sun.
“What are we gonna do about her?”
I finished refilling the tank and twisted the cap into place before straightening to peer at Sun. She rummaged through her rucksack before producing a canister and taking a sip. As harsh as it sounded, she couldn’t tag along with us. I could not risk jeopardizing the location of the laboratory.
“She will go her own way.”
Avila gazed at Sun and nodded. I knew what she was thinking, but we had helped the woman reach her destination safely. There was nothing more we could do for her. We had our own problems and time wasn’t on our side.