by Jamie Ott
Chapter 5
The next day, the kids all seemed pretty down. As usual, they fished at the dock, but they avoided Lily. A few times, Starr caught them staring at Lily with fear and loathing in their eyes.
Poor Lily, thought Starr.
Lily took it well. She knew they were afraid of her – and even repulsed, yet she pretended to be oblivious.
The kids took their meals to the dock, and only returned to the house to clean their dishes. Everywhere they went was in groups of two or more. This hurt Lily, but Starr thought it was a good idea.
Lily wasn’t the only target of distrust: they were mad at Starr, Mica, Marla, Shane and Lucenzo for refusing to abandon Lily. The kids watched her with just as much disgust. They quickly turned their heads when she looked back.
“They think we’ll turn on them, and try to eat them,” Shane told them.
“Oh my gosh!” exclaimed Marla. “After all we’ve done to protect them, really!”
“Screw them,” said Starr. “We’re not gonna just throw her out into the streets. They’re selfish brats.”
Over the next few days, Lily became even more sullen.
But Starr didn’t try to comfort her, either, because whenever she got close to her, since that day with the squirrel, her inner animal threatened to come out. A couple times, when in the same room with her, she started growling and her fangs protruded.
Lily pretended not to notice. She ran outside and wasn’t seen for the rest of the evening. Starr could hear her crying, through the walls. Although she wanted to, she didn’t go to her for fear of vamping out on her.
Rachel and Chloe had become extremely wary of the situation, too. One day, they came to Starr and told her they’d be going to Rachel’s grandmother’s house. They hoped to find Maria, from the gym, along the way.
Funnily enough, Starr was sad to hear they were planning to leave. She gave them a machete and a pistol, and spent the day showing them how to use them. Then, the next day, they gave her a hug and thanked her for everything, before walking off, down the road.
“Hey,” called Starr.
“Yeah?” asked Chloe.
“What was it you were doing at school? You know, when I was following you?”
“Modeling, or so we thought. The guy was a creep and it turned out to be an escort service,” said Chloe.
“Yeah, but he’s dead, now. A vampire got him,” Rachel smiled. “Bye!”
Starr and the others watched them walk away for a few moments.
Starr returned to the dock, feeling an all-time low. Lily was a zombie, the kids didn’t trust her, and parts of group wanted to leave. It made her feel empty and unnecessary. Since being turned, her number one concern was protecting the kids, and she was failing, terribly.
There was a wrestling in the trees behind her.
“Hello?”
No one answered. She turned back to the water.
“Behind you, Starr!” called Lucas.
Starr whirled around, right into the arms of a vampire.
Mot came up and smashed in his head with a metal bat, just as he was about to take a bite out of her neck.
She fell to the ground, breathing hard. “Thank you.”
Then, as she looked up, she saw another vampire running down the bank towards the others. “Get inside the house,” she shouted at Lucas.
Starr snatched the bat from his hand and ran back up the dock.
A hard bash to the head and it fell to the ground. She was about to drag him off into a clearing behind the trees - to obliterate his skull and burn him without the kids seeing. Then her worst nightmare came true: a dozen or so vampires ran through the trees, and they were headed in her direction.
In her vampire voice – majestically amplified and sounding like a demon from a movie, Starr shouted for Marla, Mica, Shane and Lucenzo to help her. A moment later, they arrived. To her surprise, even Lily came with a machete in her hand.
The vampires ignored Lily, probably sensing she was like them, and went for the others. Lily took the opportunity to behead them from behind.
Two vampires ran at her. Starr delivered, flawlessly, a pirouette-like spin, which she learned from Parker - a fencer in Romania. She spun her long knives, beheading them so they dropped to the ground effortlessly. To her right, Mica struggled with a female vampire who had her by the hair and was slowly inching her neck toward her mouth.
Lily ran up, behind her, and cut off her head, spraying Mica’s face with blood. Worried more about infection, she immediately ran down to the dock and jumped in the water.
One fat vampire was looking, hungrily, at Starr, but her butterfly kick sent him back a yard, and then down to the ground where she sliced her knife through his neck.
An arm enveloped her waist and pulled her backward. Carefully, she positioned her knife, leaned her head to the right and speared him in the head. His blood spilled all the way down her front.
Lucenzo pulled the last vampire off Shane who was crying. He ripped off its head. Marla emerged from the water and ran back up to the house.
Just when they thought they were done, there was another scream.
“Go, you guys,” yelled Lucenzo. “I’ve got it, here.”
Starr ran back up the bank, followed by Marla, Mica and Shane. Three more vampires were up on the porch, but Starr couldn’t believe what she next saw.
Bielz grabbed Misaki, an Asian refugee Starr rescued from smugglers, and threw her at the closest vampire; then ran inside the house. Fortunately, Starr made it to the platform just in time, and killed him before he could hurt her.
Figuring that Mica, Marla, and Shane could handle the other two vampires, she ran after Bielz.
Inside, she found Misaki screaming and beating on her.
Starr pulled them apart and screamed at Bielz. “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You threw Misaki at the vampire!”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Shane was right about you, wasn’t she?”
“What?”
“You purposely got Lily infected, back at the clinic! Why?”
At first, she stared, silent and defiant, but then decided to confess.
“Because you killed the only person in the world that cared about me,” she said angrily. “I did it to get back at you!”
“Bielz, I told you, Antony was not in his right mind. He was insane, killing people, and he tried to kill me.”
“If he hadn’t gotten mixed up with you, in the first place, he never would have never done those things. He would have stayed with me.”
“Fine, you’re angry, but how can you betray the people who would save your life?”
Bielz didn’t answer. She ran up the stairs.
Shane, who’d been watching said, “I’d follow her, if I were you. She’s up to something.”
Starr bounded up the stairs.
Bielz was in her room, packing a bag.
“How could you do that to an innocent girl?”
She still refused to answer. When she had all her items packed, she ran back downstairs. Starr followed her out into the forest.
“Bielz!” she shouted. “Come back! I’m not done with you!”
Finally, Starr stopped following her and watched as she disappeared through more trees. It was just better to let the girl go, she thought.
As Starr made her way back to the cabin, Shane watched her from the window with an I-told-you-so look in her eyes.
The next day, was a depressing one. Everyone was glum. No one wanted to go outside. Mica was kind enough to bring Lily up to speed about the fight with Bielz and how she left. They expected Lily to be upset, and to confirm if Bielz was responsible for her getting bit. But instead, she quietly left the room and wasn’t seen again.
In an effort to make everyone feel safe, Lucenzo set to cutting back the trees. The vampires arrivals was a surprise because they couldn’t see clearly. Cutting back the trees would at le
ast make it visible, giving them more notice, if anyone at all happened across the property.
When Shane could no longer tolerate feeling everyone’s down energy, she went out to help Lucenzo. Starr, feeling angry and frustrated, followed suit.
She was angry with herself because she should have sensed Bielz wasn’t to be trusted. Was she a vampire or what? Where was her instinct? Why did it fail her?
But she knew the answers to her questions. It was because she was too concerned with her own problems, with the Fleet, the Council and Credenza.
“Starr,” said Marla, as she hacked down a small oak that was covered in ivy. “Can we talk?”
“Yeah,” she said, and set down her hatchet. There weren’t enough axes for everyone.
She followed Marla five hundred feet away from the others.
“You know, Mica will still hear us,” said Starr.
“Yeah, it’s not her I’m worried about.”
“What is it, then?”
She got up close to Starr and whispered in her ear.
“Stay close to me because Lucenzo has very good hearing, too, though he doesn’t let it be known.” She paused and looked around. “Last night, in the back, I saw Lucenzo feeding Lily.”
“So, what? We’re vampires; we have to eat what sustains us.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She swallowed hard.
Starr watched her a moment.
“Just say it: whatever’s on your mind.”
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but it was the scent.”
“The scent of blood? You gotta eat, Marla.”
“No, I mean the scent of what they were eating; I don’t think it was animal.”
She jumped at the sound of leaves crunching.
“Let’s go,” said Starr. “Someone’s coming.”
Marla didn’t get a chance to finish what she wanted to say.
Starr wanted to confront Lucenzo and Lily – to find out what had got her scared. But something inside her told her to wait and watch. There was already a rift in the relationship between the kids and the vampires of their group. The last thing they needed was a rift between Lucenzo, Lilly, herself and the others. So, for the rest of the day, Starr observed Lucenzo and Lily; Marla, Mica and Shane watched them closely, too.
Lucenzo appeared to be oblivious to their sudden attention.
About 7 p.m., Lily announced that she wanted to take a walk.
“Oh, I’ll come with you,” said Lucenzo.
Starr watched them steer right, into the new clearing, and then disappear into the trees. Using her mind, she followed them, but he was cloaking his thoughts. So all she saw was blackness.
Not wanting to lose them, she quickly left the house and followed Lily’s scent into the forest. She followed them out for nearly a mile, until they stopped near a shed.
Quietly, she got closer and closer, to see what it was they were doing. True to Mica’s word, Lily sat on a stump as Lucenzo went inside and came back with a small black bag.
From inside, he pulled out a needle and a vial. After pulling some of the liquid into the needle, Lily rolled up her shirt and allowed him to inject her.
As he whizzed the clear liquid into her vein, she sighed with relief. A slight rosiness appeared on her cheeks. Lily’s eyes became less dilated, and she looked more alert.
Lucenzo put the needle in the bag and went back inside the shed. This time, when he came back out, he carried something oblong and wrapped in a black plastic bag.
He pulled back black tape and plastic, revealing a partially eaten and emptied torso. Lily crouched down over it and took a large bite of flesh.
She walked up to them.
They looked up, startled.
The face of the torso was still intact: it was Rachel. She’d never made it out of town, for she had become Lily’s meal.
“So this is what you, two, have been up to? Did you get Chloe, too? And Bielz? ” she asked. Her voice quivered with anger. “How could you do this to one of our own?”
But she didn’t get the answers to her question.
Lucenzo was older and very fast. He whipped around her at flashing speed.
Starr spun around and readied herself to fight, but then there was a sharp piercing through her neck that hurt like hell.
Lily was screaming.
Next thing she knew, she was looking at the dark sky through the trees, and then all went black.
Beheaded