by Phil Maxey
Mary got to her feet, picking up what they all had just eaten from. “I’ll get these cleaned. We don’t need to give the young girl more to do.” She then left the room.
Joel stood and joined Marina looking outside. “We’ll get it stocked up before the sun goes down and leave at first light.” He looked at her more directly. “When it’s evening, together with Evan, we’ll go out and see if we can find some animals.”
Marina nodded, her eyes not knowing what to settle on.
He held her hand. “You’ll get through this. If we keep our heads and stick together, we can make this work.”
She smiled, pulling her hand away.
He turned and looked through the door to the hallway and the bedroom door opposite. “Someone’s going to have to make contact with her at some point. We can’t just leave her in there. She needs to come with us.”
“I agree…” She leaned forward as if listening. “It’s going to take some time to get used to being able to sense a person through a wall. I think she’s sleeping. I’ll give it another thirty minutes or so, and try and talk to her.”
“Right. I’m going to start getting the RV ready.” Joel walked into the hallway, opening the front door, while Marina walked into the kitchen area which was more organized than it was a few hours earlier.
Bill and Evan were both studying the screens of two of the three laptop computers Joel had brought back, while Mary was cleaning some dishes. Anna was studying her own computer, with Jess seated next to her.
“Whatcha doing?” said Marina, walking to her daughter.
“Looking at maps,” said Jess.
“Evan and Bill had lots of these maps on their USB sticks, which I’ve copied across to this machine. I’m looking at the various towns, wondering what’s good to avoid or not. There’s a few hospitals that might be worth visiting.”
Marina looked around, and then through the jagged hole where the doors to the back yard used to be. “Where’s Hardin?”
“Said he wanted to check out the neighbors places,” said Bill. “He’s got that assault rifle with him.”
Marina shook her head. “We should always go in twos, especially—” The other words got lost in a momentary haze of hunger which suddenly welled up from somewhere inside her.
“Mom?”
Marina’s brain came back to her surroundings, and she faked a smiled for her daughter.
“Hungry, right?” said Evan nearby.
Marina nodded.
“Joel said he’ll take us out, so we can find some… animals to feed on,” said Evan.
Bill did his best to hide the discomfort. Despite one being his grandson, he was seated next to three vamps. “Maybe he could—”
A shot rang out in the distance.
Marina stood with a speed which surprised even Anna and Evan. She ran outside and cocked her head slightly, trying to ascertain from where the loud noise came from.
Joel ran around the side of the building. “That was a gun shot. Not too far off. Wait here.” He disappeared around the corner of the building.
Marina looked back to Jess and the others. “Stay here, I’ll go with him.”
She quickly caught up with Joel, and they both jogged past the other homes, until they heard the sound of someone out of breath behind a barn half a mile ahead of them. They covered the distance at pace and skidded to a stop in front of an old wooden fence. A dark brown horse lay dead on the ground, with Hardin standing over it.
He sauntered over to them. “Your kind need animals, right? Well there you go. Don’t say I don’t pull my weight around here.”
*****
Evan, Marina, Joel, and Anna walked back from the paddock towards Shannon’s house.
Joel passed Marina a rag. “You still got some on your mouth.”
She hurriedly wiped the smear of blood away, and passed it back to him.
The western horizon was now a blur of pinks and purples as the last vestiges of sun cast long shadows of anything above ground.
Despite only getting a few hours of sleep during the day, Joel was feeling energized. The idea that his new found vigor was connected to the oncoming night was something he couldn’t ignore anymore.
Will I get to the point where I can’t go out in the day?
He shook the idea from his head, he wasn’t ready to give up on the daytime just yet.
“How do you both feel?” Anna said to Marina and Evan.
“Not hungry,” said Evan.
“How long until the hunger returns?” said Marina.
“Well, the good news is you have fed first on an animal, which means the urge to attack humans will be less… right, Joel?” said Anna.
He nodded.
Marina looked at him. “Have you killed a person before?”
Flashes of people slid through Joel’s consciousness, until eventually resting on an image of Marina’s husband. He nodded again. “As long as you get fresh animal blood every three or four days, you should handle the urge to take it from anywhere else.”
Marina looked back at him. “I’m not putting my daughter in danger.”
“She would have been in greater danger if you died, or changed without my blood.” He switched his concern to Evan. “Were the computers useful?”
“Yeah—” He pulled a tiny black box that was hanging from a string around his neck and held it up. “Back at the house in Bellweather, we had a nightly routine. We would back up all our research onto thumb drives. I got one, and my grandfather’s got the other copy. So, even leaving everything behind, we still got all our work. Just needed a computer to display it all on.”
They reached the start of the drive to Shannon’s home.
“What’s the point of all of that? How is your research going to change anything?” The final words came from Marina with a tinge of anger which she didn’t mean to express.
“That’s a question for my grandfather. But if there’s a way out of this mess, isn’t it worth finding?”
Marina walked forward towards the house. “Yeah… the old world’s gone.”
As they passed the RV the side door opened, and Bill appeared with his shirt sleeves rolled up. “We’ll need to keep an eye on the generator, and I’m not sure I would use the toilet for anything other than… umm, well I wouldn’t put much down it, if you get my meaning. But other than that, she’s a good ’un. Should get us to where we need to be.”
Anna walked up the steps and into the interior of the high-sided vehicle. The table top and sofa had a layer of dust covering them, but nothing looked damaged.
“Don’t reckon it’s been used in a number of years,” said Bill behind her.
“Dibs I get the main bed!” said Evan over their shoulders, looking along the narrow space between the bunks and small bathroom.
Bill frowned. “I think that’s going to be shared between a number of the women, including Jess.”
Joel walked up the steps and peered inside. “We got everything onboard?”
“Everything that you brought back from the store, yeah. I don’t know about anything belonging to the young girl…”
“She made an appearance while we were gone?”
“Kind of…”
Inside, Marina walked into an empty kitchen. She then turned around and moved into the living room. Hardin and Mary were both sitting discussing the last Bellweather town hall meeting. Mary found some aspect of it amusing, and was laughing when Marina appeared. “Where’s Jess?”
Mary pointed towards the opposite door in the hallway. “Jess went in there about forty minutes ago. I heard them giggling so I thought I’d leave them be,” she whispered.
Marina immediately turned and walked across the hallway, and went to knock on the door, then stopped. She could hear the conversation her daughter and Shannon were having as if she was in the room with them. Jess was talking about her father, and how she hoped she would see him again, whereas Shannon was mentioning snippets of information about her own parents, but it was obviou
s to Marina the older girl was not ready to fully talk about them.
Marina knocked on the door. “Jess, Shannon, you both hungry? I’m going to cook us something up.”
There was silence from the other side of the door.
Come on, Jess…
“Okay…” said Jess.
A short while later, they were all inside in the living room, each with a bowl of tuna pasta. Outside was only darkness, and the room was lit by a few candles. Conversation had been kept to a minimum between the room’s inhabitants, but Shannon had been especially quiet, and it wasn’t lost on Marina how she kept watching those in the group that had changed.
Joel put his bowl down. He knew he didn’t need the fishy tomato sauce and pasta shells, but the meal pinged some memories of how he used to enjoy normal, human food and that was enough. He could tell it was the same for Anna, Marina, and Evan despite their feigned enthusiasm.
The humans, though, weren’t faking anything and were the first to finish.
“That was a fine meal,” said Hardin.
Mary smiled and nodded.
“It’s my favorite!” exclaimed Jess. Her smile quickly dissolved. “And Dad’s…”
Marina searched for something to change the subject, but everything she thought of seemed inappropriate. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you, Shannon?” The abrupt nature of the question made everyone pause inside the room, including its target.
She looked down into her bowl. “I don’t know.”
Jess looked at her disappointed. “You said you would? We can play games.”
“Hey, don’t I play games with you?” said Evan.
“The more to play games the better!” responded Jess.
A few laughed in the room.
“Can’t argue with that,” said Bill, smiling.
Most eyes fell back on Shannon.
“It’s just, what if Ma and Pa come back? And I’m not here?”
“You can leave a note. We’ll tell them where we are headed,” said Anna.
Shannon looked down. “I don’t even know what some of you here are. I don’t understand. You’re infected like the other vamps, but you—”
“Are not homicidal maniacs bent on drinking your blood?” said Marina.
“Well, yeah…”
Anna leaned forward. “There’s something special about cells in Joel’s blood. He has a form of immunity from the scourge, which slows down how it changes people. I don’t fully understand how it does that, I just know it does. We are vamps, you’re right, and we do want blood, boy do we want it, but we can control those urges. We are still ourselves.”
“Brent—”
“Brent wasn’t like us. He would have killed you the first chance he got,” said Joel. “I think you know that.”
Shannon was silent.
“Come with us. If we find a place which is safe, maybe you can come back here at some point, see if your parents got the message,” said Anna.
Shannon nodded.
CHAPTER FOUR
A piercing tone echoed through Daniel Copeland’s mind. The sun had gone down, it was time to wake. Not that he needed the alarm. He had woken an hour earlier anyway. He sighed and stared up at the high ceiling of his bedroom. The architecture of his penthouse apartment was minimalistic, with only the occasional Rembrandt and Caravaggio to break up the white and beige stone walls. He preferred the classical artists, especially those from the Baroque movement of painters. He felt their stark use of light and shadow properly reflected the true nature of life. There could be no light without darkness.
In his mind, he could hear them. The thousands upon thousands that the scourge had claimed, that he had claimed. The endless drone of other minds intruding upon his own. At the start, they almost sent him insane, but with some help from tailor-made drugs he managed to drown them out, until he was back in control.
His clawed-hand pulled back the single silk sheet which covered his leathery body and he sat up. There was no light source inside the apartment, none was needed, but his dreams were still of the sandy beaches of Orange County and the blistering sun of clear blue skies.
He stood and walked to the large glass panel which was his view upon the former city of San Jose. He never did like the name, and finally settled upon ‘Copeland’ as the new title of the location of his home.
Unlike the early days, there were only screams once or twice a night, but a few fires still burned in the distance amongst pleasant suburban homes and palm trees.
He smiled. The scene of devastation was his victory. He waved at a small black box on the wall and the entire panel changed to one of cobalt blue skies and waves lazily lapping against white sand. The fidelity was far higher than even the most expensive TVs could offer at the point the scourge struck and was accompanied with the correct ambient sounds.
He turned, moving casually towards a large metal and plastic block which stood against the wall. Taking a plastic cup, he pushed it up against a silver lever and watched the dark viscous liquid pour into it. He held it close to his catlike eye and marveled at the eddies and spirals of steam which rose from it. Tilting his head back, his mouth opened like a shark’s, and he let the warmed blood cascade over his snakelike tongue and into his throat.
Even though he had been drinking the life force from other humans for months, he still was not used to the electric charge which flowed through him each time he sipped the red nectar. That’s what he had come to call it, as ‘blood’ did not do it justice.
A small device lit up on a large black alter-like table in the center of the room. The name “Corvin” glowed in neon green on the screen. He slowly walked across and picked it up.
“Yes…”
Engine noise came from the phone. “We’re heading north.”
“Do you have a destination…”
“The boy thinks they are heading for a city. Looking at the map, the obvious one would be Salt Lake.”
“Keep me informed…”
He put the cell phone back onto the cold surface, and the room promptly fell back into darkness with only the blue and yellow hues coming from the former window.
*****
Jess shared the bed with Shannon. She was the only one from the group that Shannon would allow to stay in her room, and Marina heard the door lock when she pulled it closed, hours earlier.
Mary and Bill shared the double bed in the second bedroom, and Hardin got the couch.
The others were meant to be sleeping in the RV, and Anna was making a good attempt to dull her heightened senses in the biggest of the three beds, alongside Marina, but Joel and Evan soon gave up, and had chosen to play cards by candlelight instead. Flint laid by their feet.
Joel rolled his eyes and turned his cards over. “Remind me not to bet real money against you.” He pushed five cheesy snacks across the smooth table top.
“Is money even a thing anymore?”
“Money’s always a thing.”
“Don’t think the vamps have much call for it.”
Joel collected the cards and started to shuffle them. “Was Marina right earlier?”
“About?”
“All that ‘research’ that you and Bill did… are doing. It going to lead to anything?”
Evan slid his hand across the back of his neck. “Maybe… If we can understand how the scourge came about—”
“You said it has to do with Daniel Copeland?” Joel dealt another hand.
“Everything leads to him.”
Joel looked at his cards, but his mind was elsewhere. The small silver case popped into his mind. He put the cards down, stood, opened the cupboard above the sofa opposite, and pulled the suitcase down and placed it on the table.
Evan looked at it, including the handcuffs that hung from its handle. “What’s that?”
“I think it’s time we found out.”
Evan looked at Joel’s remaining snacks. “Is this your way of getting out of losing even more cheese sticks.”
Joel smiled, p
icked up the suitcase, grabbing both top and bottom, and put all his strength into pulling both sides apart. The case creaked a little, but remained firmly shut. He let out a breath, then looked at Joel. “Let’s both try.”
Evan stood and grabbed both sides with Joel. “Where you get this case from?”
Joel began straining. “It belonged to a CDC scientist.”
After a few seconds, they both gave up.
Anna appeared through the curtain which separated the main part of the RV from the rear room. “What’s going on?”
“Joel’s trying to get into some mysterious case that he got from the CDC.”
Anna walked to the suitcase and lifted it. “CDC?” she said, looking at Joel.
“Yeah…”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I thought this contained personal items of yours.”
“Because it was obviously important to the guy who used to be chained to it and the CDC, and I didn’t know who I could trust.”
Anna looked at the small number barrels closely. “Well, least you now finally trust us.”
“Yeah, now we’re like him,” said Evan with a smirk.
“If this is from the CDC, then it’s a Cordair case. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard of them. They are built to withstand a plane crash,” said Anna.
“What are they used for?” said Evan.
Anna looked back at him, then turned to Joel. “They are used for moving dangerous substances. Diseases, nuclear materials, things like that.”
Evan stood back. “Woah, maybe we don’t open it then.”
Anna looked at Joel. “Where was the CDC taking it to?”
“All we knew is we had to get it, and the scientists, to a ship that was waiting just off the coast of north LA.” He looked momentarily away from her gaze. “We didn’t make it.”
“What you’re describing sounds like an emergency protocol to get whatever is inside this thing to somewhere safe. Probably to somewhere where the scourge hadn’t gotten to yet. Maybe some lab. If what’s inside this suitcase is that important then we need to get it to where it should have gone.”