Pitch (Death Day)

by Jillian Eaton

  “Angelique.”

  “Angelique… but… her pet ran away. Unless…” He sprang up and grabbed my jaw, forcing my head as high as it would go, leaving my throat completely defenseless. “Unless the little lost lamb has returned to her flock,” he murmured, all but shivering in delight.

  “Did I say Angelique?” I gasped. “I meant Angela.”

  “No,” he purred, rubbing his cheek against mine. “I don’t think you did.”

  “Let her go.”

  I had never heard three sweeter words.

  “Maximus!” I cried out his name as he stepped into view. His eyes were trained with deadly intensity on the Drinker that held me captive. I could have wept when I saw the gun in his hand. “Maximus, he’s going to –”

  “Shut up,” he said without sparing me a glance.

  The Drinker twisted me around until my back was pressed against his chest. I could feel his breath on my ear. The smell of it reminded me of the sickeningly sweet scent coming from Mrs. Dobb’s apartment. Oh God, I thought dimly as his arm looped around my throat and tightened. He’s using me like one of those human shields in the movies. The ones who always get shot by the good guy trying to get the bad guy. I’m toast.

  “I said let her go,” Maximus repeated. He took a step towards us. The Drinker snapped his teeth an inch from my face and dragged me back past the lamp post.

  “Finders keepers,” he whined. “I found her first. I want her.”

  Maximus stepped forward again. This time the Drinker reacted by tightening his hold on my neck until I gasped for air. Maximus stopped short. “She belongs to Angelique,” he said calmly. “You can’t have her.”

  There wasn’t going to be any of me left if the Drinker didn’t stop choking the life out of me. I wheezed in air through my mouth as my vision went gray around the edges. My legs kicked feebly, striking at nothing.

  “You’re killing her!” Maximus didn’t sound so calm now.

  The arm wrapped around my throat released a fraction of an inch. I sagged forward, gasping and sputtering. My hair tangled around my face, temporarily blinding me. Maximus and the Drinker continued to exchange words, but I wasn’t listening to them anymore. No, I was concentrating on the lamp post two feet in front of me and trying to remember what other helpful tidbits I had learned in the defense class. Too bad I hadn’t paid closer attention. Mrs. Hamilton had been right – you never knew when you would have to kick a guy’s ass.

  The idea came to me suddenly, like all great (and ridiculously crazy) ideas do. If it did work it would give Maximus one open shot where I could only pray he wouldn’t hit me by mistake. If it did not work I would most likely end up with a broken neck. Not great odds, but what else was I going to do? Wait for Prince Charming to come rescue me? I just wasn’t that kind of girl.

  I tucked my elbows to my sides and buckled at the knees, throwing the Drinker off balance. Humping my back like some kind of deranged whale I charged at the lamp post and slammed on the brakes an inch before hitting it, twisting sharply to the side and simultaneously dropping my left shoulder. Caught by surprise the Drinker went soaring rather gracefully over top of me. The lamp post broke his fall.

  I scrambled away on my hands and knees, shouting something highly intelligent along the lines of, “SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM.”

  Maximus was very obliging. I watched between my fingers as he shot three bullets into the Drinker. Head, heart, and stomach. The Drinker stutter stepped to the side and collapsed forward onto his knees.

  “Why?” he managed to groan.

  Maximus walked up behind the Drinker and put one foot between his shoulder blades. “You touched her,” he said harshly before he drove the heel of his boot down and the Drinker turned to ash.

  “Holy shit,” I gasped, scuttling back on my hands and feet crab style. “Holy shit. What happened? What did you do? He – he vanished. Where did he go?”

  “He’s gone. That’s all that matters. Get up, Lola. We can’t stay here.”

  I took his offered hand, still staring at the spot on the sidewalk where the Drinker had simply… disappeared. Shaking my head, I looked dazedly at Maximus. “So you were what, like following me or something?”

  Maximus’s fingers reached out toward my face. I flinched automatically and his hand hesitated in midair. “Your hair is tangled,” he said softly.

  I held my breath as he pushed my hair behind my shoulders, using his fingers to comb out the worst of the snarls. For an instant his thumb lingered on the curve of my collarbone before he withdrew his hand and cleared his throat. “The bruises on your neck are already fading. You didn’t get rid of the scars yet, I see.”

  I cleared my throat as well. Maximus had managed to do it with a quiet hem hem. I sounded more like a car engine backfiring. So ladylike. “Ah, no. Not yet. I wanted to ask you about that, actually.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Ask away.”

  “Well…” How, exactly, did one ask if they were turning into a vampire? “The thing is…”

  Maximus offered me one of his rare smiles. “You are not becoming one of them.”

  “I’m not?” I said with relief.

  “No. Consider your fast healing a side effect of the bite. When the scars are removed, it will go away.”

  “Oh.” I glanced down at the scars. Such tiny things to have caused so much worry. At least now I could tell Dad and Travis the real reason I had survived going through a windshield.

  “What are you doing out here in the open so close to night?” Maximus asked, all traces of compassion vanishing as quickly as the Drinker’s body had. “Do you have a death wish?”

  “Of course not,” I said indignantly. “For your information I have found a perfectly safe place to stay.”

  “That doesn’t exist.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “A safe place,” he said.

  I stiffened. “We tried to get out of town but they must have detonated some kind of bomb in the road. We couldn’t get to the interstate.”

  “We?” His head cocked to the side.

  Damn it. I wasn’t going to tell Maximus about Dad and Travis. “Nothing. No one. Nevermind. I misspoke. It happens when I’m nervous.”

  “You don’t trust me.” He stated it matter of fact and he was right, of course, but the brief flickering of hurt that crossed his face took me by surprise.

  “I – I trust you.” As much as I can trust anyone who carries more weapons around than Brad Pitt in an action movie and seems to know a suspiciously large amount about what is happening, I added silently.

  “You shouldn’t,” Maximus said, studying me closely.

  “Shouldn’t what?”

  “Trust me.”

  He was impossible. “I have to go back.”

  “Back to where?”

  “The Ren—damn it. How do you do that? Are you in the government?” My eyes narrowed. “FBI? CIA? GI Joe?”

  Another smile, this one longer than the last. I ruthlessly ignored the answering flutter in my belly. “None of the above. So the Renner Hotel, hmm? Not a bad choice, all things considered. Who is with you?”

  Why fight the inevitable? “My dad and my best friend.” Something in the assuming nature of his tone caught my attention and I quickly added, “Wait. Are there other survivors that you know about? Anyw—in the town?” I was about to say ‘anywhere’ but I changed my mind at the last second. If the entire world had been destroyed, I didn’t want to know about it. At least not yet. As my Mom used to say, you have to focus on the little things to see the big picture.

  His shoulders lifted and fell beneath his leather jacket. “There are always survivors. You know what they say about cockroaches, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. I was not, by any means, a cockroach expert.

  “If the world was destroyed by a nuclear blast, cockroaches would survive.”

  “Are you comparing me to a cockroach?” I asked skeptically.

  His teeth glittered white in th
e darkness. “What if I am?”

  “Then I would say you’re crazy. This isn’t some kind of nuclear blast or a war or something.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Lola.” Maximus stepped closer, pushing into my personal space. I let him push. I liked to see his face up close. To see the color of his eyes. The curve of his lips. The unruliness of his hair. “This is a war,” he said softly, so softly I had no choice but to lean towards him to. He angled his body to mine. We were as close as two people could physically be without touching. My breath caught in my throat, refusing to go up or down.

  “What kind of war?” I managed to croak.

  “A war to end all wars.” His eyes burned into mine. “A war to end the human race.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The War to End all Wars

  A war to end the human race.

  The words rang in my head. Our eyes held until I looked away, over his shoulder. I saw the case of beer that had gone flying out of my hand when the Drinker grabbed me and brushed past Maximus to pick it up. He followed me, silent as a shadow.

  “Beer?” he said as his gaze dropped to the case I had balanced against my hip. “You risked your life for beer?”

  I could tell by the disgust in his voice that any special moment that may or may not have sprung up between us was gone. Hitching the beer up a little higher, I tightened my arm around it protectively. “It’s not for me. It’s for my dad. He needs it. To… to fall asleep,” I finished lamely. I had never told anyone about Dad’s drinking problem before. Not even Travis. He probably should have caught on when I stopped inviting him to my house, but Travis was oblivious about stuff like that. Real problems were beyond his scope of understanding.

  “To fall asleep,” Maximus repeated.

  “Hey, if it’s really the end of the world a guy is entitled to a few beers, right? I might even have one or two myself.” Two complete lies in one sentence. Dad would have the case finished by morning and I would never drink beer again after I had stolen a sip from a lukewarm can he had left lying around one afternoon. My gag reflex kicked in just thinking about it.

  Maximus cupped the back of his neck and looked heavenward to where the last traces of daylight were fading away. “We should go. Give me the beer. I’ll carry it.” He held out his hands and I passed the case over, grateful that I wouldn’t have to lug it all the way back to the hotel.

  “So I guess this means you’re coming with me?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question as we had already started walking. Maximus ignored it.

  As with most things, the way back seemed faster. We reached the cornfield without coming across any more of the Drinkers, although I could hear them, slithering in the shadows like snakes. Every so often a shrill scream tore through the air, sending a shiver down my spine. I glanced sideways at Maximus when I heard the screams, searching for some sort of reaction, but his grim, tight lipped expression never faltered. Only when the high pitched squeal of a child reached us did he curse under his breath and falter.

  “Are you okay?” I said hesitantly when he stopped and looked back towards the town. His chest rose and fell with every sharp intake of breath. Without thinking about what I was doing I wrapped my fingers around his arm. It was like holding granite.

  Maximus jolted at my touch and looked down to where my fingers were splayed across the sleeve of his leather jacket. Neither of us moved. The cornstalks rustled quietly as they closed in around us, cutting away the outside world. Our eyes met, dark gray against deep, stormy blue. For one crazy, mind numbing moment I thought he was going to lean forward and kiss me and I imagined the way my eyes would close and how my arms would curl around his shoulders as if they had always belonged there and my fingers would bury themselves in his hair.

  He licked his lips.

  My eyes began to drift closed…

  “Stop lagging behind,” he growled. “We don’t want to be caught out in the open.”

  My eyes popped open. It felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of freezing water over my head. Maximus ripped his arm free and stalked off into the corn, leaving me standing by myself like an idiot. Muttering my own curse under my breath, I hurried after him. Maximus might have been an asshole, but he was an asshole with a gun.

  He didn’t look at me when I pulled up alongside him and we continued on towards the hotel in stony silence, neither one of us willing to give an inch. The sun was dipping below the mountain range to the west when we reached the parking lot. Or at least, what remained of the parking lot. Time had not treated the Renner Hotel and her grounds very kindly.

  The hotel sat before us, an old, neglected building that sagged slightly to the right. Four large columns, the marble chipped and cracked, guarded the entrance. The front door was one of those old fashioned spinning doors where only one person could go in at a time. I was surprised – and relieved – to see all of the glass was still intact. I gave the door an experimental push. Without electricity to help swing it around, the door didn’t so much as slide an inch.

  “Get out of the way,” Maximus said.

  Tight lipped and glaring, I stepped to the side.

  Leading with his shoulder, he threw his weight into the door and moved it easily. I darted in behind him and narrowly avoided tripping over my own feet as the door spun around with a high pitched whine.

  The inside of the hotel was no better than the outside, with the exception of it being darker, so the neglect and decay weren’t as visible. The scent of mold and dust hung heavy in the air, although I would take grandma’s closet over blood and burnt flesh any day of the week.

  Our footsteps echoed over the hardwood floor as we walked across the lobby. It was empty; the various tables and chairs that had once filled the space stripped away long ago. Narrow slivers of moonlight passed through the windows and illuminated everything in a soft, silvery glow. It didn’t escape my notice that Maximus stayed mostly in the shadows.

  “Where are your father and friend?” he asked.

  I bit down on my lip as I struggled to recall what room Dad had said he would be in. “Umm… Two fifteen or sixteen, I think.”

  “We’ll have to go higher than that.”

  “Higher?”

  The whites of Maximus’s eyes flashed as he rolled them. “Drinkers are leery of heights. They’ll go up if they have to, but they prefer to stay close to the ground.”

  So much for believing everything I saw in the movies. “How do you know so much about them?” I asked as we headed for the stairs. Maximus held the door open behind him – barely – and he answered when it clicked shut behind me, plunging the stairwell into darkness.

  “Learn to know your enemy, Lola. You’ll live a lot longer if you do.”

  Clinging to the smooth metal railing, I made a face at his back. Or at least where I thought his back was. It was too dark to tell for sure. “What does that even mean? It’s a simple question. How do you know so much about them? Have you seen them before? Are you part of some secret government – AHH!” My shriek of alarm echoed as my right foot slipped out from under me and I went flying forwards. I threw my arms out, bracing for the fall, but it never came. Instead two strong, capable hands caught my shoulders and pushed me upright. Gasping, I collapsed against the wall. It felt cool beneath my back and I pressed the side of my face against the painted brick while I waited for my heart rate to return to normal.

  “Are you always this clumsy, or is it just in life or death situations?” Maximus asked dryly.

  “Shut. Up.”

  From somewhere above us came the sound of a door slamming and the clatter of footsteps. I drew in a sharp breath and instinctively moved towards Maximus, who wrapped one arm around my waist and jerked me hard against him.

  “Go back down and wait by the door,” he hissed in my ear.

  “What about you?” I heard a quiet click and then felt a cool brush of metal against my arm. “Oh yeah,” I said, feeling foolish. “You have a gun.”

  “Go down and wait b
y the door,” he repeated. “Now, Lola.”

  “But –”

  The arm around my waist gave a threatening squeeze.

  “Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “Just don’t… die or anything, k?”

  “Are you worried about me?” Maximus sounded amused.

  I could feel my cheeks turning bright red and was suddenly thankful it was so dark in the stairwell. “No. I’m worried about what would happen to me if something happened to you.”

  His low chuckle sent my heart pounding again, this time in a not so entirely unpleasant way. “Don’t trip on your way down.”

  I made another face.

  “I saw that.”

  My eyes widened. “But it’s so dark. How can you –”

  “I have excellent night vision.”

  I raised my hand with one finger in particular pointing high above the others. “Can you see that?”

  “Lola…”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I grumbled. Carefully turning around I made my way back down the stairs and waited next to the door as Maximus had instructed. He went the opposite way, sprinting silently up the steps and out of sight. I waited anxiously in the dark, twisting a lock of hair around and around my finger as I strained to hear even the smallest noise.

  I did not have to wait long. There was a muffled bang, like a door slamming, followed by a high pitched yelp that sounded suspiciously like…

  “TRAVIS?” I shouted up the stairs. “TRAVIS, IS THAT YOU?”

  “Lola,” came the answering wail. “Lola, get him off me!”

  Grasping the railing I took the stairs two at a time and was well out of breath by the time I reached the second level. A flashlight knocked into one corner of the landing supplied enough light to see Travis’s terrified face as he laid on his stomach with Maximus crouched on top of him, pulling his head back with one hand and using the other to hold his arms pinned behind his back in a position that looked downright uncomfortable.

  “Let him go,” I wheezed out. I seriously needed to get in better shape. “Maximus, that’s my friend Travis. Let him go, you’re hurting him.”

  Reluctantly Maximus released his death grip on Travis and stood up. “Your friend blinded me with the flashlight and tried to hit me with a baseball bat.”