What Happens in the Darkness

by Monica J. O'Rourke

  Patrick approached, laying his hands on Rudy’s shoulders. “I want you to join me.”

  Fear distorted Rudy’s features as it became clear he knew exactly what Patrick meant. “I can’t,” he whispered, face paling. “I-I just can’t.”

  “You have no choice.”

  “But why? You already have an army.” He wiped the corner of his eye. “You don’t need me.”

  “Then you condemn the human race. You destroy every man, woman, and child in this country. Sacrifice yourself. Prove your loyalty.”

  Rudy sobbed once, a sound like a bark, and lowered his head. When he looked up almost a full minute later, his tears had dried. Patrick could smell the adrenaline, syrupy sweet, on the man’s skin.

  Rudy shut his eyes, nodded. “Go ahead. Do it!”

  Patrick leaned forward, his teeth razing Rudy’s neck, but then pulled back. “I’ve changed my mind. You’ve proven your loyalty.”

  Chapter 28

  They were gone.

  Just like that. Like a bad dream, diminished upon awakening. Like the end of happiness when summer’s over and school begins.

  Janelle woke Thomas, shook the sleep out of him. He rubbed his eyes, sat up, probably as disoriented as Janelle by the darkness entering the room from outside rather than the morning sun.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Who?”

  “Them.”

  “So?”

  She leaned back against the sofa cushions. “So where’d they go?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. Home? What do you care?”

  “I guess I …” She scratched her head. “I thought they’d say good-bye or something. And I didn’t think Rebecca was okay enough to travel.”

  “She was healing pretty fast. I guess she was okay. Doesn’t matter. Them being here was creeping me out.”

  “Yeah, I know. Me too, I guess.” She pulled her legs up and leaned into them. “Now what?”

  “Now what what?”

  “What do we do now?”

  He stuck out his tongue and shoved her arm. “You’re so weird sometimes.”

  “Am not! I just don’t know what we should do. We can’t even go outside. People out there are even worse than vampires. It’s like we’re stuck in jail or something.”

  “We could watch a DVD.”

  “Which one?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. A comedy though. Nothing scary. And no vampires!”

  She laughed. “Fine, pick something. But Thomas, we really need to make a plan. We can’t stay here forever.”

  “But we can’t go outside.”

  “We have to leave New York City.”

  He looked through the DVDs on the shelf across the room. “I knew you were gonna say that. And I’ll just bet you got a place in your head.”

  She smiled sheepishly. “Maybe.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “I want to go see my mom.”

  ***

  They’d slipped out at the first sign of dusk. Rebecca had recovered enough to travel, to Martin’s relief.

  Now back at the army base, they rejoined the others who had returned the night before.

  Martin told them what had happened.

  Jeff’s hatred for Patrick had an even deeper root now, understandably, after he’d been told what Patrick had done to Dagan and Rebecca. He was ready for action, even if that meant acting impulsively, irrationally.

  “Settle down,” Martin said, resting his hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “You think Patrick’s sitting there waiting for you to impart justice? Of course not. It’ll be difficult enough finding him, never mind stopping him. We know he’s well protected and has a family of his own. Probably an army.”

  “We have to do something,” Jeff snapped. “Your passivity isn’t always appropriate, Martin.”

  “I’m not passive, I’m careful. We need to think this through. Impulsive behavior will mean our deaths.”

  Lana spoke up. “We’re not safe here anymore. Patrick knows about this location, of course. And knowing Patrick, he’ll strike.”

  “Agreed,” Martin said. “But for now, we wait. It would be a mistake to react impulsively, react based on fear. We need to figure out what Patrick’s up to.”

  “Is that so?” Jeff asked. “And what makes you think he doesn’t have spies here?”

  Martin looked around the cavern, at the thousands of resting bodies. Some sleeping, some listening. “Good point. From now on, we meet in private. Original family, plus Jeff, Nelson, and Paula. We share with the others what we feel is safe information.”

  “Speaking of original family,” Lana said. “Where the hell are the twins?”

  ***

  The twins were in hell.

  It had happened by pure luck—or lack thereof—but Rudy had come across them sleeping in the basement storeroom of Peter Luger’s steakhouse.

  He’d been searching for the secret sauce, certain there had to be one because no chef could make a steak that good without some key ingredient—and found them huddled besides bags of rice.

  They’d been easily captured—they were found during the day, and they were weak and tired and afraid. And now they were prisoners, shackled and heavily guarded, stakes aimed at their hearts around the clock.

  Entombed in boxes like upright coffins, a spray of sharply pointed sticks and knives fastened to the wood, pressing into their chests, any movement meaning instant death.

  And Luke and Tim had considered suicide, had discussed it when their guards walked away for all-too-brief moments, but neither brother was willing to die. They decided there had to be a way to escape.

  During the day they hung suspended inside the same boxes, the only way they were able to sleep. Dangling painfully by their shoulders, they hung limp.

  Then night would come again.

  “Suppertime, boys!” The guard carried a silver platter with a high domed lid covering the contents.

  It had been days since the twins had eaten, and they were starving.

  The guard grinned, placed the tray on the table, and stepped back to examine the vampires. “You boys look like shee-it. I mean that. Death warmed over.”

  Luke closed his eyes, and his head dropped forward. He didn’t know how much more he was willing to take. Leaning forward into the knives, he felt the sharp points jabbing his skin.

  “You go right ahead, boy,” the guard said. He picked up a barbeque fork and scratched his head with it. “It’ll save us the trouble later. Go on and end it if you want.”

  Luke opened his eyes and met the gaze of his tormentor.

  The guard stood with his hands on his hips. “Suit yourself. So who wants to eat first?”

  “What’s up, Billy?” Rudy entered the room, bald head glistening with sweat beads.

  “Suppertime, man.”

  “What’s taking so long?”

  “Nothing. Just havin’ a little talk is all.”

  “Feed them. Cut the chit-chat. We got work.”

  Billy lifted the lid and revealed two plump, dead sewer rats.

  Luke scowled, turned his head as much as he could, yet couldn’t control the salivating.

  Billy stabbed a rat with the barbeque fork and hefted the body to Luke’s mouth. “Chow down, bloodsucker.”

  Rudy laughed. “Rats? On a silver patter?”

  “Saw it in a movie once.”

  The dead rodent’s fur brushed against Luke’s face, and he leaned in slightly. Billy pressed harder, and Luke opened his mouth wide, his fangs biting into the rat’s underbelly. The rodent was still warm, though its heart had stopped beating. Blood trickled from the gashes made by Luke’s teeth, and he pressed his mouth to the puncture wounds and drank. The flow was slow, but it was there, and he had to imagine it wasn’t rat’s blood he was drinking.

  Very quickly the wound ceased giving blood, and he bit into the rat’s flank, drinking from there now instead.

  Billy shook the rat off the fork an
d speared the second one, this time feeding Tim

  “Disgusting,” Billy said, looking away. To Rudy he said, “What’s up for tonight?”

  “I got plans for later tonight. Our new alliance with the other vampires should turn out all right.” Rudy grinned.

  Tim glanced up, interest sparked in Rudy’s words.

  “Anyway,” Rudy said, changing the subject. “This should be interesting. I understand vampires can regenerate. We’re gonna find out.”

  “What’s that mean? Regenerate?”

  “Means body parts grow back after they been removed.” * Three days passed unnoticed, three nights creeping up on them like time was an enemy, bringing in the inevitable change of day. And still they waited, rested, ventured out only to eat. Each night planning, hoping to guess what Patrick might be up to, hoping to guess what he would do next.

  And Martin’s family grew restless, eager to end their nightmare. And each night he reminded them they needed to be patient.

  On the fourth night, Martin paced the courtyard, his trusted small family waiting for him to decide. Clouds obscured the quarter moon and bathed the vampire in gray shadow.

  “I thought Patrick and the twins would have attacked by now,” he said quietly. He rested against a chunk of concrete that had once been part of the admin building’s roof.

  “Why would he?” Lana asked. “We’re sitting here like fools while he runs free, destroying everything in his path.” Her head snapped in Martin’s direction. “And how did you find out the twins were with him?”

  “I didn’t. I’m assuming they’re with Patrick. Where else would they be?”

  “Dead?”

  Martin nodded. “A possibility.”

  Lana returned to the original topic. “Why would Patrick bother with us when he has the rest of the world at his disposal?”

  “Because I know him. Know how he thinks. He wants revenge, and it doesn’t matter to him what’s out there. He wants what’s here.”

  “How do you expect to defeat him, Martin? He outnumbers us. He’s taken the enemy soldiers and created an army. Just how are we supposed to fight that?”

  Martin watched Lana’s anger, saw her throw her hands up in despair. Or disgust. “I don’t know,” he said, looking around as if expecting someone else to say something. “We’ll have to try.”

  “So now you want to try?” Lana laughed humorlessly.

  “You’re not making this easy.” He understood her frustration, felt it as much as she did. “No one has anything to add?”

  “Why do we have to attack?” Nelson said. “I like the idea you had once before, to disband, go our separate ways. Make a life out there for ourselves somehow.”

  “Because there’s safety in numbers.” Martin licked his lips. “Don’t for a minute imagine he wouldn’t hunt or destroy any one of us, given the chance.”

  “So we lose if we stay, lose if we go. Is that it?” Nelson asked.

  “No. We fight. We survive.”

  “Look,” Jeff said, wiping cement dust off his pants, “Lana’s right. We can’t win. There’s no point in—”

  “Just great,” Lana said, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Jeff says not to fight Patrick. We know where his loyalties lie. He’s one of Patrick’s.”

  Jeff bolted toward Lana, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He stopped short of reaching her, fists raised and then lowered. “Why would you say that? Why! I’ve done nothing but prove my loyalty to Martin time after time. You’re a goddamned liar, Lana!”

  “You’re one of them,” she said, lip curling, moving toward Jeff until they were practically touching. “He made you. Your loyalty is with Patrick.”

  Martin didn’t try to stop them.

  “I fight your fight every day. I fight every urge or impulse to join him because my place is here. I can’t help the fact that he did this to me. I can’t change it! But I choose where I want to be, no matter how hard it is. No matter who disagrees with me or wants me gone.”

  “You left us once before,” she said. “Why don’t you just leave now?”

  “My place is here.”

  “Spoken like the military man you were,” Lana said. “There’s no time. We go now, and we fight. But if I find out that you betrayed—”

  “Come on, you two,” Rebecca said. “We don’t need this right now. We need you both.”

  Martin lowered his head as if searching the ground for answers. “Tomorrow night then. Tonight we feed. Tomorrow we strike.”

  ***

  Within the next three hours, Patrick listened to news of Martin’s plan.

  “There was a time Martin meant everything to me,” he said quietly. “I would have died for him, would have done anything he asked. How the mighty have fallen.”

  He thought he should be more pleased with this news, this inside information, but he discovered he was disappointed. It felt … anticlimactic somehow. This was going to be too easy.

  “You’ve served me well. I know it hasn’t been easy for you. Go back to them now, and remember to keep this between us.”

  Patrick’s spy disappeared into the blackness to return to the army base.

  ***

  Eight days after they set out, Janelle and Thomas arrived in Saratoga. They rode bikes part of the way, the snow a major hindrance the farther north they traveled. They hitchhiked when they could and walked the rest.

  Janelle stared at the sky, studying the falling sun before glancing at her watch. “I don’t think we have much time left before night. Where do you think they are?”

  Thomas shrugged. “How should I know?” He pulled the map out of his back pocket and tried to make sense of it. At least they’d made it this far; they knew the army base was in Saratoga. And according to the map, they were close.

  Janelle cupped her hands and puffed warm breath into them, wishing she’d brought an extra pair of gloves. Hers had gotten wet and made her hands even colder than not wearing any at all.

  “It’s getting dark,” Thomas said, glancing around and behind his shoulder as if expecting someone or something to sneak up and attack. “This was a bad idea, Janelle. Real bad.”

  “We’ll be okay.” But her stomach quivered as nervous acid churned. “They haven’t hurt us before, right? They won’t now.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “Right. The vampires won’t hurt us. What if they’re thirsty? What if they want to drink some kid blood and we just happen to come along? What then?”

  He shrugged off his backpack and dropped it by his feet. “Wanna just leave? We can find a place to crash for tonight. Come back tomorrow or something.”

  “If you turned chicken, Thomas—”

  “I’m not chicken!” He glanced around again, lowering his voice. “We can’t fight them, you know. Ain’t no way to beat vampires. This was a stupid idea.”

  Janelle knew what they were doing was dangerous, but she didn’t care. She knew her mother was with them, and some part of her felt she could rescue Paula. Convince her to stop what she was doing and come back to Janelle. As if being a vampire was a choice Paula had made … and if that was even a remote possibility, then maybe Janelle really could convince her mother to come back.

  The only thing Janelle knew for sure was that she had to try. “I don’t want to beat them, Thomas. I just want to see my mom.”

  They moved off the Northway and trudged up a side road, passing signs for gas and lodging, passing road markers and green posts indicating names of small towns.

  The army base hadn’t exactly been well advertised, but they recognized the name once they reached the chain-link fence. The grounds were a mess, obviously the target of a bomb. The surrounding towns they had passed had been relatively unscathed, but the army base was as hard hit as Manhattan. Buildings were toppled, now huge slabs of concrete, almost unrecognizable.

  Janelle wandered around the base, Thomas sticking close to her side. Every twig that snapped in the woods made him jump, every gust of wind slapping the branches caused
him to clutch her arm. They peered inside bombed-out shells of buildings, of what had once been barracks and offices.

  “I’ll bet they’re underground,” she said, barely above a whisper. As night descended, she began to feel more uneasy as Thomas’s face gave way to shadow, until she was unable to see him at all without pointing the flashlight beam at him. Barely any starlight, and the moon was hidden behind dark, snow-heavy clouds.

  With trembling hands, she aimed the beam into the darkness. “This was a bad idea,” she whispered. Never mind the vampires—they were standing in the dark, surrounded by black woods. No place to go, no place to find shelter. They’d made a big mistake. She hadn’t planned this well at all.

  Thomas suddenly shoved her arms down, the light beam pointing toward the ground. “Turn it off,” he said, a rough whisper. “Hurry!”

  She turned off the flashlight and dug her fingernails into the thick material of his coat. “What is it?”

  He wrapped his arms around her shoulder and hugged her. Still whispering: “I heard something. And I think I saw something move over there …”

  “I’m scared,” she said breathily, closing her eyes and pressing her forehead against his shoulder. She felt him trembling.

  Then came the sound of dry laughter from not far away, like crisp leaves in autumn, and a voice broke the stillness of the night. “Looks like we don’t have to go very far this evening after all.”

  Janelle froze, praying that if they remained very still, maybe they wouldn’t be discovered. That maybe the vampires would believe they had imagined hearing something wandering around the base. With her eyes closed, maybe they couldn’t see her … it was so dark, so very dark you couldn’t see your own hands, couldn’t see the frosty breath on the air in front of your mouth … maybe they would go away and disappear into the night.

  A hand that was not Thomas’s grabbed Janelle’s shoulder.

  Chapter 29

  “What if they come?” Kem asked, his face smeared with the blood of his dinner. He always was a sloppy eater.