What Happens in the Darkness

by Monica J. O'Rourke

  “Run,” Sammi croaked, unable to move. “Run!” Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her into the street, saving her from the arrow that missed her by inches.

  “Move!” the vampire yelled at Sammi and at the rest of the vampires.

  They ran into the streets, dodging arrows and hoses streaming holy water. Struck vampires exploded into flames, screaming in agony until their fiery death reduced them to ashes, silencing them forever.

  Of the sixteen vampires that walked into the town of Taos, only three survived to flee into the mountains.

  Sunrise was in twelve minutes.

  They raced aimlessly through the mountains, wind and leaves and twigs whirling in their dizzying wake. Despite their tremendous speed they could not find shelter. No caves, no shacks, nothing but trees everywhere. They came across a huge clearing, sparse trees spotting the landscape.

  Sammi was panicked, and the three vampires moved in circles, looking frantically for an idea, any idea.

  Sunrise was in three minutes.

  “Dig!” one yelled, falling to his knees and pawing at the soft earth. He attacked the ground and tore through the soil, pulling away mounds in great scoops, frantically trying to dig himself a grave.

  The other two attacked the ground, trying to dig holes they could hide in.

  Sammi found a sharp rock and used it to loosen the soil, pawing away like a dog, digging, digging.

  The warmth of the sun was unbearable. They felt it rising, had only a minute left before it fully rose.

  Sammi threw herself into her hole, frantically pulling dirt on top of her body, trying to pack herself into her makeshift grave. Her exposed arm was the shovel that pulled the dirt onto her face and neck, and before she could finally pull it beneath the soil, it burst into flames.

  She dragged her burning arm into the dirt, extinguishing the fire. The pain was excruciating, but she would have to deal with it until sunset. Soil filled her mouth and eyes and nostrils. Small bugs assaulted her skin, climbed in and out of her ears.

  But she couldn’t move, couldn’t risk exposing her body to the deadly rays of the sun.

  The sun found the vampire who had been unable to hide. Sammi heard his terrible screams, the sizzle and pop of his flesh. She squeezed her eyes shut and winced.

  His anguished screams tortured her until they finally faded away, and he existed no more.

  She would have to endure this for more than eight hours, wait an interminable amount of time for the procrastinating sun to finally set again.

  Chapter 18

  Global Dominion soldiers ran up Second Avenue, yelling and screaming like they were fleeing from the devil.

  Janelle watched, well-hidden behind the shell of a Mustang. Seconds later, a blur of light streaked past her and caught the soldiers.

  All movement stopped for the briefest second before the attack was underway.

  Clutching small crosses in both fists, Janelle ventured closer, scared by the brutal attacks, but not as afraid as she had once been. At this point she was more curious than afraid.

  The noises were hideous: slobbering, slavering grunts and crunches. Janelle moved even closer to get a better look.

  It was over before she reached them. Ten soldiers lay dead, strewn about like discarded newspaper, their mutilated bodies illuminated by the glow of the nearby trashcan bonfire. Blood filled the gutters beneath them. Their heads were cocked at bizarre angles.

  The two vampires who had done so much damage so quickly were alerted to Janelle’s presence.

  She held up the crosses in her shaking fists. “Stay away from me. Martin says these will protect me!”

  They strolled over, wiping the splattered blood from their cheeks, licking their gore-coated lips, and studied what she held in her hands.

  Janelle looked at their faces and gasped, her slackening fingers nearly dropping the crosses. “It’s you.”

  The vampires were Sandra and Matt, the couple who had taken her in and fed her, letting her rest in the bank vault. She’d hidden beneath the cot and watched, the first time she had seen a vampire attack. She had watched as—

  As Sandra and Matt had been killed.

  “No,” Janelle whispered, tears staining her cheeks. “Not you. I was hoping—”

  “Hoping what?” Matt asked, “for a miracle? That maybe we were dead dead?” He snorted. “But here we are, kid. Right?”

  Janelle sniffed, wiping away the tears with her palms. “I guess. I didn’t know you were one of them.”

  “Them,” he said, clearly annoyed. “You mean us, not them, you little idiot. You make it sound like it’s a disease.”

  Janelle opened her mouth but had no idea what to say.

  Sandra said, “I’m sorry you’re scared. But there’s no reason to be. We won’t hurt you.”

  Janelle saw the sharp edges of Sandra’s fangs and felt little comfort. She shook her head and backed up, connecting with the car. Nowhere to go. She held up the crosses. “Yeah, right.”

  “Baby,” Sandra crooned. “With all these vampires running around the streets, don’t you think you would have been caught by now, if that was our intention?”

  Janelle shrugged. “No. I’m a good hider. And I have weapons. You’re a vampire!”

  “So?” she said. “This wasn’t something I chose, but I’ve learned to live with it. Why can’t you? I’m the same as I was before!”

  Janelle absorbed her words, considering them. Then she realized the truth of the situation. “Yeah, right!” she snapped. “No you aren’t the same! Don’t try to trick me. You kill people and drink their blood!”

  “The people we kill are the enemy,” Matt said, fury the color of fire burning in his hazel eyes.

  “The vampires killed you,” Janelle said, cocking her head. “Were you the enemy?”

  “Smart-ass mouth on you, kid,” he snapped, raking his fingers through his curly red hair.

  “Easy, Matt,” Sandra said. She turned back to Janelle. “We’re all on the same side. Right now we just want to win this thing.”

  Janelle nodded but frowned, so sad at the way things turned out, and knowing she still needed to protect herself. “First we win this thing—and then you come after the rest of us. Right? Right?”

  Matt scowled and took a step toward her.

  Janelle raised the crosses, stopping him in his tracks. “You should go,” Janelle snapped.

  “Come with us,” Sandra said.

  “Are you kidding? Get away from me!” She stared at the jagged fingernails on the woman’s sinewy fingers. Who was she trying to fool?

  “If you change your mind, look for us at the Hudson Army Base near Saratoga,” Sandra said.

  “Why did you tell her that?” Matt yelled.

  Sandra laughed. “Why? What’s she gonna do, one little kid? Anyway, we can smell humans a mile away. We’re in no danger.”

  They hadn’t smelled Janelle, hiding behind that Mustang, until Janelle had made her presence known, Janelle thought. Maybe the vampires didn’t know as much as they thought they did.

  She watched them disappear down a street as black as their hearts.

  ***

  Sammi woke to the sounds of agony, to screams piercing the new night, and to the snarling of dogs or some sort of lupine creatures barking and fighting a few feet away.

  It still wasn’t evening; the sun hadn’t yet completely set, and it wasn’t safe to come out.

  The other surviving vampire had been discovered by this pack of animals, and he was being unearthed.

  His screams mixed with the furious snapping of jaws and the high-pitched yelps of the marauding dogs. But then came the sizzle, like a book of matches catching fire, and the horrible, heart-rending screams as one of her own died a flaming death.

  Sammi cringed, feeling his pain somewhere in the hollow shell that had once housed her soul. If she still prayed she would have prayed that the animals would leave without finding her. It seemed that the combustion of the vampire had scared aw
ay the animals, because everything was silent once again.

  She could smell his charred flesh.

  ***

  Dagan was usually the impatient one, the worrier, but that night it was Rebecca who paced endlessly from one end of the room to the other. Dagan, arms crossed behind his head, sat on a pile of crushed boxes. The vampires milled about like obedient sheep, waiting for instructions.

  On one of her passes, Dagan grabbed Rebecca’s arm. “What’s with them?” His brogue was light.

  “What? With who?”

  “Them.” He waved his arms toward the others. “Were we ever so obedient? We tell them when to eat, who to eat, where and when to sleep. We say kill, they kill.”

  “So?”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t seem natural.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Time for what? A dialog?”

  She shook her head. “I have too much on my mind.” Off again, pacing the floor, long red hair whipping her shoulders every time she turned.

  “You’re making me tired,” he said, whining slightly.

  She stopped abruptly near his feet. “Didn’t we tell them three nights? They should have been here by now.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Something probably happened.”

  “Probably.”

  “Would you stop agreeing with me?” she snapped.

  Everyone’s attention was suddenly diverted by the bodies barreling down the stairs.

  The two vampires posted at the head of the stairs as guards stumbled into the room, dragging a barely conscious Sammi between them.

  Rebecca reached them, clutching Sammi’s face in her palms, and they lowered her to the floor. “Sammi? Sammi, what happened?”

  The other vampires began to approach, but Dagan told them to stay where they were. He knelt beside Rebecca and Sammi, gently lifting the girl’s wounded arm. “Look at this,” he said, but the smell warned them before their eyes did.

  The arm was badly charred; large chunks of flesh had burned away, and pus dripped from the red-flecked, scabrous wound.

  “Why isn’t she healing?” Rebecca asked, panicked. She had never seen a vampire so badly injured who wasn’t ended.

  “Nasty burn,” Dagan said, examining the wound. “They must’ve been attacked.”

  “Yeah, but by what?” Rebecca looked toward the top of the stairs. “Get the first-aid kit!” she instructed one of the gawking vampires. “Where are the others in her group?” she asked the guards who had brought Sammi downstairs. “Did anyone else come in? And where are Nelson and his group?”

  Dagan went upstairs to see if there were any waiting upstairs, perhaps too injured or too afraid to come down.

  Sammi’s eyes fluttered, and she cried out, but she didn’t wake up.

  Rebecca tended to the wounds as best as she could—she had no experience in these matters—and she lay Sammi in a sleeping bag, covering her with blankets.

  When Dagan returned, he shook his head. “The guards say she was alone. That she could barely stand, never mind talk.” He looked at the girl. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I have no idea.”

  ***

  The streets, if they hadn’t before, now truly resembled a war zone. Buildings had been stripped of their façades, exposing apartments and businesses, their contents coated in a thick layer of soot; fires burned endlessly in cars and trashcans; corpses had been gathered, stripped of anything useful, and made into piles of human amalgam; glass seemed to coat every inch of the streets; lampposts and street signs lay smashed through windows or crisscrossed over cars. Craters in the sidewalks or in the streets stretched endlessly and reached into the depths of hell.

  Janelle stared at the skeletal remains of a child, buried in a layer of dirt and ash, his body still partially attached to his bicycle. He still wore his Nikes, but his legs were stripped of flesh, shreds of clothing hanging off the bones. His helmet was half-blown away and lying beside him, part of his hairless skull still attached to it.

  People stared out glass-less windows, the stench of the dead weighing down the air like a funeral shroud. They stared at the destruction, their glassy eyes filled with tears, somehow absorbing it all, trying to understand the hellishness and senselessness of it all.

  And then there were the vampires.

  As if the bombs and invading troops weren’t enough, there was that element to throw into the fray.

  Janelle passed faces, shell-shocked and numb, people emotionally wounded beyond repair. Not believing what they had seen. Not understanding how something like this, something unnatural, something supernatural, something they had been told their whole lives was a Hollywood creation was now responsible for their security and salvation.

  She tried stopping them, tried asking questions, tugged on shirts and blouses but was ignored by many. She would stop by an occasional campfire and share whatever meal was being heated, usually something out of a can. She was getting really sick of Spaghetti-O’s but knew the food supply was dwindling.

  People desperately wanted their lives back, and Janelle understood—she wanted the same thing.

  A small group of people sat huddled around a campfire, a burning tire its base. It emitted a thick, foul smoke and filled the air with toxic rubber fumes. A couple of sticks sporting marshmallow tips dangled over the flames, but no one seemed to be eating them. She wondered where they had found marshmallows. The rats didn’t like giving them up.

  Not much conversation happening.

  “How come we still have no lights?” Janelle asked them.

  No one even looked in her direction. The small group—Janelle counted six people—were comprised of men and women with patches of blood on their dirty faces and torn clothes, gashes on cheeks and foreheads, arms in slings.

  Finally, one looked at her, a woman with greasy brown hair pulled into a ponytail, her long thin face sallow, like melted candles.

  “What?” she asked wearily. “You say something?”

  Janelle planted her hands on her hips. “Well, aren’t we winning this thing now?” she demanded. “I don’t see no soldiers around here. So how come this place is still such a mess? How come things aren’t getting back to the way they used to be?”

  The woman waved her hand in the air, as if Janelle was a bug. “It’s not that simple, little girl. You think this is easy? Take a look around you. We got nothing left.”

  “Pretty stupid if you ask me,” Janelle muttered, and as she turned to leave, a young man grabbed her arm.

  “There’s nothing left,” he said, letting go. “Don’t take it so hard, okay?” His white sweater was gray with age and soot.

  “Are we gonna stay this way?” Janelle asked. “No one’s even going to turn the electric back on?”

  The man wearing a red T-shirt with sunglasses dangling from the pocket chimed in. “Hey,” he said, pure Bronx. “I work for Con Ed. Useta, anyhow. It ain’t that simple, kid. It ain’t as easy as throwin’ a switch or nuthin’.”

  “Yeah, but why not? Can’t we—” another chimed in.

  Janelle smiled, feeling hope for the first time in months. The conversation around the fire took a spirited turn, and Janelle moved on to look for shelter.

  Chapter 19

  They’d lied. All of them. For some reason—possibly revenge, who knew?—they had told Jeff lie after lie. Vampires are never cold, one had said, and now he lay shivering on the damp, frostbitten ground. What had been the biggest lie of all? That Jeff was safe. Martin had sworn he would never be changed.

  And Jeff had foolishly, stupidly trusted him.

  Now he was torn, achingly torn between loyalty to Patrick, which unfortunately was as ingrained in him as knowing right from left, and an unbearably seething hatred, ready to explode because of his raw nerves.

  How profoundly he hated; how deeply it ran through him.

  Now propped up against a tree, arms wrapped around his knees, trying to conserve some no
nexistent body heat, some phantom remainder of a life that once had been. So tired. So weak … when had he last eaten? He had yet to taste blood, despite the passage of many days, most spent huddled in that blasted cave. What had the other vampires been told, during the many training sessions he had spied upon, eavesdropped on? That blood was their energy, their life force. That without it—

  He would die.

  So be it.

  He had yet to taste blood. While the craving was maddening, he chose not to drink it, chose instead to end this life, or this lack of one.

  But death was so painful. His second death. The first at the hands of Patrick, who allowed Jeff’s blood to seep from his dying body through gashes and punctures, making contact with each wound, the vampire’s saliva completing the transformation. Excruciating pain as the mouth sealed over the wound, the blood sucked away, drained from the body until all that remained was a caricature of the former man, waiting for his own sustenance to rejuvenate him.

  But that had never come, for Patrick left him, lying in the dark, not a vampire and yet not truly dead, hovering between one plane and the other, waiting for Jeff to decide for himself. True death would be a lingering, painful process … and true transformation went against everything Jeff stood for.

  Jeff knew how it was done. He’d been reborn, even in his purgatorial state, with the knowledge, along with that blasted internal clock telling him the precise time the sun would rise and set daily. He knew how to sire another vampire, and he knew how to simply hunt humans for food. Killing someone outright prevented siring … but draining the blood while they were still alive, and then making contact using the vampire’s saliva created another.