by Sam Sisavath
“Are they dead?” Danny asked.
“They look asleep,” Lara said.
“Like some kind of coma?” Will said.
“Maybe. Some kind of induced coma? I’ve never seen anything like it. They could have been here for a while.”
“How are they still alive? Don’t coma patients need to be intravenously fed?”
“Yes,” Lara said. She didn’t understand it either.
She saw them. Teeth marks along the woman’s arms.
She leaned forward to get a closer look. There were more teeth marks along the woman’s calves, all the way up to her knees. They weren’t from the same set of teeth. One had a chipped molar. More bites along the woman’s neck. It wasn’t just one set of teeth that had bitten into her, it was many.
Dozens.
Will said, “What is this place?”
“It’s a farm,” she said, standing up. “They’re farming these people for blood, Will. It doesn’t matter how many times you take blood from the human body, it will always replenish the lost supply. As long as we’re alive, we’re making new blood every day.” She looked around her, the very idea of what she was saying staggering even to her. “These people are still alive, Will. I don’t know how, but they’re still alive, and they’re producing blood that’s being taken from them on a daily basis.”
“Fuck me,” Danny whispered.
Will walked past her and examined another sleeping figure, a man in denim overalls with a thick beard. He felt the man’s pulse, then shook his head. “This can’t be possible. How do they keep them like this?”
“Blue-eyed ghoul,” she said softly.
Will looked back at her. “What?”
“This is intelligence, Will. This is strategy and organization and leadership and God knows what else.”
Davies was shaking his head. “Holy Christ. The others are going to freak about this.”
“Then don’t tell them,” Danny said.
“How can I not tell them?”
“Okay, then tell them.”
“Ideas, guesses, wild theories?” Will asked, looking specifically over at her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. They turn us by infecting us—the hosts—at a cellular level, changing our DNA to meet their needs. If they can do that, then this…might be child’s play. If I can get one of them back to the facility, I can run tests and find out more.”
Will glanced at his watch.
“How are we on time?” she asked.
“Nine fifty-three a.m. We’re still good.”
Danny said, “What now? Do we wake them?”
“How do we do that?” Davies asked.
Danny looked to Lara. “You’re the doc, Doc.”
“Third-year medical student,” she said, managing a slight smile back.
“Close enough. So how do we wake them up?”
“You’re asking me like this is normal,” she said. She looked around her again, at the pale, ossified bodies on the floor. There were so many, and each one looked more malnourished than the next. “I don’t even know what they did to these people, much less how to wake them up. Or if we even should.”
“What do you mean if we even should?” Davies asked. “We can’t just leave them like this. Right?”
“I don’t know what would happen if they woke up from whatever this…is. Look at them. This isn’t natural. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen if you force one of them awake.”
Will nodded. “Lara’s right. We’re wading through uncharted territory here.” He looked around the auditorium. “Maybe not all of them are asleep. Maybe we can find one that’s awake.”
“You want us to go through this graveyard?” Danny asked.
“You got a hot date?”
“Actually, yeah. Don’t tell Carly, though.”
“Let’s get started,” Will said.
She walked among the bodies. They were packed so tightly into every available space that there was barely any room between them. Even being as careful as she was, she still managed to step on an arm, then a leg, then an open palm. She felt horrible each time, expecting to hear bone snapping, and was relieved when she didn’t.
Could these people know what was happening to them? She had heard horror stories about coma patients who could hear and feel everything going on around them, but couldn’t speak or move to let someone know. It was a terribly debilitating existence, and she hoped and prayed it wasn’t the case here. She shivered at the mere possibility.
“Anyone having any luck?” Danny called from thirty yards away. “The only thing I’m finding here is Jack and shit, and Jack just took off for the hills and forgot to leave a letter behind.”
“None,” Will said.
“They’re all asleep here,” Davies added.
“Nothing here,” she said.
They spread out across the auditorium, with Will and Danny farther ahead. As she moved through the room, she realized she was wrong about there not being any space to walk. There were clear pathways through the auditorium, big enough to allow someone to go from end to end without stepping on the bodies. There was also a much bigger empty space along the right side wall, where the bathroom and offices were.
She was almost in the middle of the auditorium when she nearly stepped on an open palm. She carefully lifted her boot to step over the outstretched hand when it suddenly came alive and the fingers grabbed her around her calf, above her boot. She gasped sharply at the feel of cold fingers. She looked down at milky white eyes, like cream in a coffee mug, looking back up at her. The mind behind those eyes was very much alive, and she focused on the pale, cracked lips which quivered, trying to talk.
“I found someone!” she shouted.
She crouched next to the figure. It was a young woman, maybe in her twenties, with short pink hair and piercings in her nose and ears. She wore dark black clothes and a T-shirt and looked completely out of place among people in overalls and jeans. She also looked reasonably healthy, and her bones weren’t protruding dangerously out from underneath loose skin, her cheeks not quite as sunken as the others’. In a room full of skeletal forms, she stood out.
The woman let her hand drop back to the floor and let out a soft, relieved sigh.
Will and the others converged on her as she leaned over the woman. “Can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me. Anything.”
The woman struggled to speak, her lips trembling, but no words came out.
“It’s okay,” Lara smiled down at her. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay? Save your energy.”
Will crouched on the other side of the woman, careful not to step on an old man who was almost completely skin and bones and unconscious next to her. “How is she?” he asked.
“She doesn’t look like she’s been here as long as the others.”
He glanced up at Danny. “Give me a hand.”
Lara stood up and backed away as Danny took her place. They picked the woman up and carried her carefully across the auditorium. She lay weakly between them, like a mannequin with rubber arms and legs, head turned to one side, eyes wide with fear and uncertainty.
She and Davies followed them to the door, then back out into the hallway.
Will propped the woman against the wall, below a poster advertising a sale on yearbooks. He arranged her legs and arms and head for her as if she were a child. Danny held out a small canteen and dripped water between her lips. The woman struggled to swallow, desperate to take in as much as she could.
“How long have you been here?” Lara asked.
The woman stared at her while greedily swallowing more water. Finally, she leaned her head back and coughed. She whispered, her voice so low that Lara had to lean in closer to hear, “I don’t remember.” Her eyes darted left and right, then back to Lara. They looked alarmed, terrified. “Where am I?”
“You don’t know?”
The woman shook her head with difficulty.
“What’s your name?”
“Megan,” she whispered.
“They’ve been feeding off you,” Lara said. She gently picked up Megan’s left hand and held it up for her to see the teeth marks that ran up and down every inch of her arm like runaway train tracks. “Do you remember?”
Megan’s eyes widened at the sight of the teeth marks. She looked down at her right hand and tried to lift it, but couldn’t. “I remember…seeing them around me. I thought it was a dream. A bad nightmare.” Something occurred to her, and her eyes shifted back to Lara, anxious. “I have a friend, Tom. Did you…?”
Lara shook her head. “You were the first person we found awake. You might be the only one.”
“What about the others?” she croaked.
“We don’t know how to wake them, and we’re not sure if we should. It could be dangerous. We don’t know what’s happened to them, to you. I don’t want to do anything until I know more.”
Megan looked disappointed, but nodded.
Will tapped Lara on the shoulder. “I think I know where Elise and Todd went. Stay here with Megan. Davies and I will go make sure.”
She nodded.
Will and Davies went back into the auditorium. Danny stayed behind and took out a power bar. “Can she eat this?”
“Not yet,” Lara said. “Let her system get used to water first. Her body isn’t going to be able to accept solid food all of a sudden. We’ll have to reintroduce it to her one step at a time, no matter how much she wants it.”
“I can’t move my arms and legs,” Megan said. She looked down at her legs, as if to make sure they were still attached. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Muscle atrophy,” Lara said, “from lying down for too long without moving. It’s going to take time, and you’ll need to do physical therapy to get strength back into them. For now, just sit back and let your body do what it needs to, which is get used to being up again.”
Megan nodded slightly, her control over her head the only real power she possessed at the moment. Her eyes roamed the hallway. “Is this a school?”
“You’re in a high school. In a town called Dansby.”
“Dansby? How did I get to Dansby?”
“Where was the last place you remember?” Danny asked.
Megan seemed to think about it, trying to clear the fog that Lara guessed was currently swelling inside her head. After a while, Megan shook her head slightly. “I was in Cleveland. There were four of us, hiding in town, going from place to place. Then they finally caught us and… I don’t remember the rest. They brought me to Dansby?”
“It could be a hub for them,” Danny said to Lara. “A central location where they’re bringing people from the surrounding areas. So there’s probably one in Houston. Or two, or three. Bigger population centers mean bigger, well, farms, right?”
“Farms?” Megan said.
“You need to rest,” Lara said. “Save your strength.”
She nodded to Danny, who leaned over and gave Megan more water. The woman drank it like someone who had never tasted water in her life.
Their radio squawked with Will’s voice: “Lara, I’m sending Davies back out there. I need you to come over to me. First room to the right after you enter the doors. Boys’ locker room.”
“On my way.”
She stood up and waited for Davies, who showed up about ten seconds later. She hurried past him, back through the auditorium doors and along the right side of the room, where there was a lot of space and she didn’t have to worry about stepping on one of the sleepers. She turned right and headed down a smaller hallway that split up into two locker rooms.
Lara turned toward the boys’, pushing through the swinging door. Will was inside, standing with his back to her.
“Did you find her?” she asked.
Will took a sideways step to reveal an eight-year-old girl cowering in the corner. Covered in a thick layer of dirt and grime, there was maybe a month’s worth of cobwebs in her hair. She wore a plain white dress that was probably the apple of her eye months ago, but was now dirty and torn in places, strands from the hem drifting lazily off the bottom.
Immediately, Lara flashed back to those two nightmarish weeks in the Sundays’ cabin and the filthy dress they had made her wear. Was this what she had looked like when Will found her? She marveled that he could ever find her attractive after that first impression.
The girl in front of her looked like a feral animal with dirty blonde hair, but there was no mistaking those big blue eyes and trembling, small lips as belonging to a scared little girl.
“There’s a grate in the back corner,” Will said. “Probably some kind of unused vent. She must have crawled all the way over here then pushed her way up. Chances are the brother knew about it and taught her how to get to it, in case of emergencies.”
“Did you find Todd?” Lara asked.
“No signs of him. My guess is he went somewhere between yesterday and today, maybe to get that medicine he needed, and didn’t come back, and she was scared and ran off through the passageway.”
Elise looked catatonic, and it was only her darting eyes that convinced Lara she was even alert and conscious at all. Each time Will talked, Elise’s eyes went to him, and each time Lara said anything, those blue eyes sought her out.
“Elise?” Lara took a slow step toward the girl, who stiffened, her eyes darting from Will to her and back again. “It’s okay. It’s me. It’s Lara. Do you remember? We talked on the radio?”
Recognition slowly spread across her face. “Lara?” she whispered.
Lara smiled. It was the same voice that had spoken to her on the ham radio last night. Small and soft and afraid. “Yes. It’s me. I’ve been looking for you. You didn’t stay in the basement like we agreed.”
“I had to leave…” Her voice cracked.
“What happened?”
“Todd left and didn’t come back. He said I had to go if he didn’t come back, so I did.”
She nodded. “I understand. You did what you had to do.”
The girl began to cry. Lara moved toward her and was surprised when Elise leaped forward and into her arms. She hugged the girl to her body and Elise’s arms tightened around her, as if she were never going to let go.
“It’s okay now,” Lara whispered. “You’re safe, and you’re going to stay that way. We’ll find Todd, and then we’ll all leave together. I’ll take you some place where there are no monsters.”
“Promise?” Elise said between sobs.
“Promise,” she said. She glanced up at Will, who was checking his watch again. “How are we doing for time?”
“We’re still good,” he said.
“What about Todd?”
“Where would we start looking?”
“I don’t know. Maybe—”
Gunfire, loud and sudden, cut her off.
She grabbed onto Elise tightly, lowering both of them to the tiled floors, expecting the bathroom walls to shatter around her at any second. But they didn’t. Instead, she heard the rolling sounds of gunfire continuing unabated, coming from outside the school.
“What’s happening?” she asked, looking over, expecting to see Will crouched next to her, but he was gone.
His footsteps echoed through the locker room as he ran, his voice calm on the radio: “Danny, talk to me.”
Danny’s voice, replying through gunfire crackling in the background: “We only brought two trucks, right?”
“Yeah, why?” Will asked.
“I think we’re gonna need new trucks…”
*
There were ten of them, standing in the school parking lot, surrounding the Tacoma and Ram trucks and firing on the vehicles until there was nothing left but smoking wreckages, steam flooding out from underneath the hoods and broken windows. She noticed they had been careful not to shoot the gas tanks.
When they were done, they moved behind the trucks and took up fighting positions.
At first she thought they were just big men, but as she moved closer toward the
window, it became clear they were wearing suits. Black and green full-body hazmat suits with black gas masks over their faces. The suits weren’t the bulky kind, but slimmer versions, the type she had seen soldiers wear, that allowed them to still fight like soldiers while being protected. Tactical suits, she remembered someone telling her. They wore some kind of web belts around their waists, with gun holsters slung low and bulky pouches on their hips. Like Will and Danny, but…not.
“They showed up and began firing on the trucks,” Danny said, sounding almost amused by what he was seeing.
She stood on one side of the window, Will on the other. Danny and Davies were peering out through the opened front doors a few yards to their right, keeping their profiles as small as possible. The sun reflected off the lenses of the gas masks peering out from behind the trucks.
“Why didn’t you shoot them?” Will asked.
“Seriously?” Danny said.
“Yeah, why not?”
“I dunno. Seems kind of weird to just start shooting people without a reason.”
“They just shot up our transportation.”
“Yeah, but they weren’t doing that when they first showed up. They did that after they showed up. It never occurred to me to shoot them before they started in on the vandalizing. Seemed kind of knee-jerk.”
“Well, it’s too late for that now.”
“Ah, man, this is why I hate civilians,” Danny said.
“So now that you didn’t stop them, got any ideas for wheels?”
“I see two other cars in the parking lot.”
“Probably don’t work,” Davies said, “or they would have shot them up, too.”
There were two other vehicles inside the parking lot, both sitting on extreme sides, as if their owners had purposefully parked them as far away from each other as possible. One was a beat-up black pick-up parked to their left, the other a small red sedan parked to their right.
Danny was saying, “See, that’s you being pessimistic, Davies. This is me being optimistic.”
“You really think this is the time to be optimistic?” Davies asked incredulously.
“Of course,” Danny said, with absolute certainty. “Will and I were stuck on a mountain in Afghanistan once for three weeks, eating goat cheese and drinking goat milk. If we had been pessimistic pandas like you back then, we would never have made it back to base.”