I gazed at Travis with new appreciation. “Really?”
Looking embarrassed, he hunched his shoulders and said, “Yeah. I heard you scream so I came out and when I saw him coming up the stairs I thought he was, you know, one of them. Who is he, anyway?”
“He’s the guy I told you about before. The one who knows about the Drinkers.”
Maximus scowled. “You told him about me?”
I nodded.
“Don’t tell people about me,” he said.
I rolled my eyes.
“Is he always like this?” Travis whispered.
“Pretty much.”
“I can hear you,” Maximus said.
“Where’s my dad?” I asked.
Travis shifted from foot to foot and scratched the side of his head. “In the room we picked out. Sleeping. He, uh, found an old bottle of wine downstairs in the restaurant.”
Travis didn’t have to say anymore. Leaning down, I picked up the flashlight and pointed it directly into Maximus’s eyes. He cursed and backed away, but I tracked him relentlessly until I had him pinned in the corner. That was it. No more nice girl. No more vague answers. I was ready for some facts, and I knew just the guy to give them to me. “We’re going into one of those rooms and we’re not leaving until you tell me every single thing you know about what is going on. You got that?”
“All right,” he said quietly.
“And if you don’t Travis is going to take that baseball bat and –”
“Uh, Lola?” Travis interrupted.
“What?” I snapped.
“Maximus said okay. Plus he kind of, uh, broke the bat.”
I swung the flashlight towards Travis who squinted and threw both hands up in front of his face. “Hey, watch it,” he complained.
“Sorry.” I pointed the flashlight at the ground. “Travis, you can come too if you want.”
“Gee, thanks,” he muttered.
“Well?” I said when he just stood there.
“What?”
“Lead the way, Travis!” Did I have to spell everything out?
Maximus crossed his arms. “Are you two always like this?”
“Shut up,” Travis and I said in unison. We exchanged a quick grin and for a second, just one fleeting, wonderful second, it felt like nothing had changed. And then I remembered that everyone in the town was dead or dying and the world was ending and I was being hunted by a psychopath vampire chick and I suddenly didn’t feel like grinning anymore.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I Sleep Next to a Boy
Travis led us to the room next to Dad’s. It was sparsely decorated with a bed that had been stripped of its linens and a bureau shoved up against the back wall. The window blinds were still intact and Maximus double checked to make sure they were closed tight. I hopped up on the bureau and slouched against the wall. I was, I realized as I stifled a yawn, absolutely exhausted. When was the last time I had slept? Last night? Barely. An hour or so at most and before that? I couldn’t remember.
“Does the water work?” I asked when Travis reappeared from the bathroom.
He nodded. “It’s cold, though.”
From across the room Maximus released a bitter laugh. “They’ll cut the water lines soon. Take a shower while you can.”
“We’ll get cleaned up in the morning,” I said. I didn’t relish the idea of going to sleep covered in dried up sweat, but I couldn’t think of a more vulnerable position than being naked in the shower. What would I do if a Drinker attacked? Hit him with a loofah?
I set the flashlight down and clicked it off. I needed – we all needed – to get in the habit of conserving what we had. The room went dark and I heard Travis’s muffled intake of breath, then the squeak of rusty bedsprings as he sat on the mattress. Bringing my legs up to my chest I rested my head on my knees and looked to where I thought Maximus was standing. “So tell us everything,” I said.
There was a very faint popping sound, like a joint being distended followed by a quiet, drawn out sigh. “Are you certain you want to know?” Maximus asked.
“We want to know,” Travis answered for me.
“Fine. What is happening out there, what has happened out there, is not a random act of violence. It was planned and executed down to the tiniest detail.”
“But why?” I wanted to know.
“If you are going to interrupt me every three seconds this is going to be a very long night.”
“Yeah, Lola, be quiet,” said Travis.
“It was just a simple question,” I defended.
I couldn’t see Maximus’s face, but I was almost certain he was rolling his eyes at me. “I am not a psychologist,” he said. “I can’t see inside their heads. I don’t know why they do what they do, only that they’re doing it. You want to know, go ask one of them.”
That shut me up.
“They’re fast,” Maximus continued. “Faster than any other living thing on earth.”
“Faster than a peregrine falcon?” Travis interrupted skeptically. “Because, you know, in a hunting dive they can reach speeds upwards of two hundred miles per hour.”
I couldn’t help it. I snickered. I felt a slight whoosh of air as Maximus stalked past and then the door slammed shut.
“What?” Travis asked. “What did I say?”
“He’s a little… moody,” I decided.
Travis’s voice dropped to a whisper as he said, “He’s a little more than that, Lola. Are you sure you can trust him? I mean, the guy came out of nowhere. He hasn’t told you anything about himself. He could even be one of them for all we know.”
The idea was so preposterous I laughed. “He’s not one of them, Travis.”
“How do you know?”
“He killed one of them. I saw it with my own eyes. If he was a Drinker he would be killing us instead.”
“How did he do it?”
“You mean how did he kill the Drinker?”
“Yeah.”
My fingers began to tap along the edge of the bureau. “He shot it three times and it just went poof. Vanished, like nothing was ever there. It was a boy, or at least it looked like a boy. Not much older than you and me. Do you think…” I hesitated. “Do you think they used to be people? Like us?”
“Maybe,” Travis said after a long pause, but he didn’t sound very convinced. “I mean, a long time ago or something. People don’t do this to other people, Lola.”
“People kill each other all the time.”
“Not like this.”
“No,” I said, remembering the bodies. “Not like this.”
The mattress squeaked again as Travis stood up. He crossed the room and sat next to me on the bureau. I leaned against him, resting my head on his shoulder. He held my hand. We were quiet for a while, just two kids trying to make sense of the impossible.
“Lola?” Travis said finally.
“What?” I murmured.
“I’m sorry about your dad. I never knew… I mean, I never…”
I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, Travis. You don’t have to say anything.” And he didn’t. It was just enough that he knew. That finally, someone else knew. It was funny, ironic even, but sitting in the dark in an old abandoned hotel holding hands with my best friend who I thought had been eaten by a vampire, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. “Travis?” I said.
“Hmmm?”
“We should probably get some sleep.”
He instantly sat bolt upright and there was a nervous hitch in his voice when he said, “Sleep? You mean… uh… here? Sleep together in here? Because, you know, you could go in with your dad. That would probably be best. And I’ll, uh, stay in here.”
“Travis,” I sighed, “you are such a drama queen sometimes. The bed is big enough for both of us. Just don’t try to spoon me or anything in my sleep, okay?”
His skin felt hot where it still touched mine. “O-okay,” he stuttered.
“Just think,” I said, springing down from the bureau and landing wi
th a quiet thump on the carpet. “If the world wasn’t falling apart you never would have gotten me into bed with you.”
“Lola.”
I grinned and tugged on his hand, guiding him to the edge of the bed. He went on one side and I went to the other. We climbed on top of the mattress gingerly, and for all my cockiness I felt the same flutter of nerves dance in my belly that I was sure were doing the Macarena in Travis’s.
There weren’t any… feelings between me and Travis. Not of that sort, anyway. Still, I had never exactly slept next to a boy before unless you counted a sleepover in the third grade, which I didn’t because the boy in question smelled and picked his nose in front of all the girls.
Settling onto my back I folded my arms neatly across my chest and closed my eyes. Surprisingly, I was asleep within minutes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
An Unwanted Pen Pal
Over the next few days we developed a routine. It went something like this:
Sunrise Wake up, take freezing cold showers
Morning Work on barricading our rooms
Afternoon Search the town for supplies and survivors
Evening Meet back at the hotel an hour before sunset, go to bed
By the end of the week we had a considerable stockpile of clothes, food, flashlights, batteries, and water sitting in the hotel lobby. We had yet to find any other survivors. The bodies were gone, snatched up in the middle of the night and taken God only knew where. Only the blood remained, staining the sidewalk and glistening like red paint on the grass in the early morning.
On the third day Dad had taken a car and tried to go for help. He had returned four hours later, discouraged and drunk. Similar holes in the road existed at all exit points, he had explained before he went into his room and slammed the door.
The electricity was still out. The water pressure was waning. Travis and I had discussed trying to walk somewhere, but why would we leave when we had everything we needed right here? Besides, who knew what was still out there? With no television, computer, or radio, I had never felt more cut off from the outside world in my life.
Maximus came by at least once a day. He ignored Dad and Travis and spoke only to me, which I didn’t mind. Often he bought his version of a ‘present’ in the form of another gun or a knife and spent an hour or so teaching me how to use them. Soon the big oak tree behind the hotel was riddled with bullet holes and I had become a rather good shot, something I was inordinately proud of. The knives were a different story.
Maximus was still secretive and danced around my questions with the expertise of a hot shot lawyer, but I managed to get bits and pieces out of him. He was working with a select few who where fighting back against the Drinkers. No, I could not meet them. No, I could not join them. Stay at the hotel, he said constantly. It was the best possible place we could be for now.
He had known about the Drinkers for a while, but he wouldn’t tell me how long, or how he knew. I also couldn’t ferret out where he came from and the one time I asked him about his family he said flatly, “dead, they’re all dead,” and I didn’t ask again.
The weather was exceptionally hot for mid August. The one thing I had not been able to find during my daily excursions was sunscreen, and my fair skin had paid the price. I was somewhere between tomato and lobster red, and my shoulders were peeling like crazy. It wasn’t a great look for me, but vanity was one of those things you weren’t really allowed to have when the world was ending. Like money, it had become irrelevant.
On the morning of the thirteenth day – or was it the fourteenth? I was beginning to lose count – I woke up and reached over to poke Travis as I usually did, except this time there was nothing there on the other side of the mattress.
Immediately I knew something was wrong. Travis had never been an early riser, and he never would have gotten up without waking me. I felt his pillow. It was cold to the touch, as if he had left hours ago.
Rolling out of bed I flew across the room and ripped apart the blinds, flooding the room with light. I called Travis’s name as I peered under the bed, looked in the bathroom, opened the closet door. Nothing.
“DAD, DAD OPEN THE DOOR! IT’S ME!” I pounded on his door with both fists. Like mine, it had been reinforced with four heavy steel bolt locks. The biggest ones we could find at the hardware store on the other side of town. I heard Dad fumble to slide them across, and the door opened a crack. He stared at me from bleary, bloodshot eyes, courtesy of yet another late night spent drinking away his problems.
“What’s wrong?” he slurred.
I used both arms to shove the door all the way open and he fell back with a muffled grunt. “Travis is gone. Did he come in here? Have you seen him? Where is he? Travis? TRAVIS!” I searched the room, shoving aside the mattress to look under the bed and tearing the blinds clear off the window to peer outside.
Dad groaned like a wounded bear and covered his eyes. “Lola, what the hell are you doing? What time is it?”
I whirled on him, chest heaving, hands curled into fists that rested tight against my hips. “Didn’t you hear me? Travis is gone. I woke up and he was gone.”
Dad blinked and rubbed his forehead, pulling the skin taut. “I – I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
Like what? I wanted to cry. Of the three of us Travis was the most timid. He never would have left the room without telling me where he was going. Hell, he never would have left the room without bringing me with him. Yet he was just… gone.
For some reason I thought of a 20/20 episode I had seen on TV once. It had been about a mom who had been grocery shopping with her four year old daughter. She had stopped at the frozen food section to pick up a bag of peas. When she turned around her daughter was gone. She had described it as feeling like some part of her had been ripped away, and that’s how I felt. Like someone had come in the middle of the night and taken one of my kidneys. Cut out my spleen. Ripped out my liver. Taken a part of me that was so connected it should have been impossible to steal without killing me first. At the very least I should have woken up.
“Lola, I know what you’re thinking,” Dad began. My searing glare cut him off. I was in no mood to hear what a hung over drunk had to say.
“I have to go find Maximus. He’ll know what to do,” I decided. I was halfway down the hall when Dad’s voice bellowed out, stronger than I had ever heard it.
“STOP IT RIGHT THERE YOUNG LADY.”
I halted dead in my tracks, too stunned to move. Dad’s footsteps echoed as he stomped towards me and I gasped out loud when he grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him.
“We stick together, do you hear me?” he shouted. A vein pulsed rapidly across his forehead and I was shocked to see his eyes were damp with tears.
“Dad?” I said uncertainly.
“If Travis is gone we will find him together. I’m not going to lose you too, Lola.”
Not going to lose you too. Like he thought he had lost Mom and Gia. I swallowed hard and for the first time I could remember I looked away from him. What kind of person didn’t think about their own mother and sister? I had been so busy worrying about myself, worrying about Dad, and worrying about Travis that I had forgotten I had other family. Just like they forgot about you, a little voice added slyly. My shoulders stiffened. It was painful, but true. Travis and Dad, they were my only family now. I could not afford to think about anyone else. And Maximus, the voice piped in again. Don’t forget about him.
“We can’t risk going out there without a plan, even if it is daylight,” Dad said. He dropped my arm and glanced to the right, where my room was. His eyes narrowed. “Did you see this?” he asked before he plucked something off the door. A piece of paper. A piece of paper I hadn’t seen because I had rushed out of the room too fast. He read the note in silence, and when his face blanched and his hand trembled I tore it away.
“Lola, what does that mean? Who is Angelique? Is this for you? Is this about Travis? Lola? Lola, can you hear me?�
�
Head spinning, I sat down in the middle of the hallway and buried my head in my hands. The note fluttered to the carpet beside me. I didn’t need to see it again. Every word, every letter was already burned into my mind. My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Angelique had finally found me. Had I ever truly believed she wouldn’t? And instead of taking me, instead of killing me, she had done something far, far worse. She had taken Travis; sweet, helpless Travis who had already been traumatized by one Drinker. He had yet to talk about what happened that first night in Mr. Livingston’s house and I had never pressed him, but he screamed in his sleep sometimes. Horrible, gut wrenching cries that sliced through me like a knife and left me awake for hours trying not to imagine what sort of tortures he had been forced to endure.
By not telling him about Angelique – by not warning him I was some sort of monster magnet – I had allowed this to happen. My fault. It was all my fault.
Dad hovered over me and continued to ask the same questions again and again. Who is Angelique? What does she want? Where did she take Travis? I didn’t have any answers for him. I didn’t even have answers for myself.
“Maximus,” I whispered.
Dad stopped talking. His eyebrows knitted together. “What? What did you say?”
I looked up at him. Inside my chest my heart was racing, but suddenly my head was clear as a bell and I knew what I had to do. “We need Maximus.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Operation Rescue Travis Commences
We could not find Maximus. It seemed he, like Travis, had simply… disappeared. As the hours began to tick by, each one bringing sundown closer and closer, the pit in the bottom of my stomach grew bigger and bigger. There was no question I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t want to do it.
I didn’t want to walk towards my death like the proverbial lamb meekly lining up to be slaughtered. Yet what choice did I have? Angelique had Travis. There was no denying that point. I don’t know how she found me, or why she didn’t kill me when she had, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting Travis back. This time I wouldn’t run the other way.
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