by Phil Maxey
He walked inside, not stopping, and moved straight through a small hallway to the front where the lobby was. A high counter stood near the front door. Behind, all the room keys were still hanging on the wall apart from one.
Room seven.
He walked through the pleasantly decorated hallway and up the carpeted staircase, trying to keep to the far sides of the steps to avoid any creaking, and was soon on the first floor.
Marina and Evan moved into the other rooms below.
Room three, room five…
He suddenly remembered how it all started for him when he was investigating the source of screams at his hotel in LA and felt a rush of warmth as he started to sweat.
If the room number had been on the door where the others were, he would have seen that he had arrived at room seven, except there was a large, splintered hole instead. He leaned forward.
Lying on the floor was the remains of a body. Its fingers were clawed.
Vamp.
Pushing the door open best he could, he stepped over the body and looked around the bedroom. An open suitcase sat on the floor. Tourist brochures laid scattered on the bed, some covered in spots of blood, but the room was empty.
He picked up the body and carried it with him, back down the stairs, through the kitchen, and threw it into a group of bushes. He then beckoned to the others to come inside.
The fourteen travellers quickly divided up the twelve rooms the hotel had, and Mary found plenty of food in the pantry and cupboards in the kitchen.
Joel, Evan, and Hickman barricaded the two entrances with the heavy furniture they found and placed smaller pieces in front of the ground-floor windows.
With a few hours of sunlight remaining, and some food and drink, Marina walked Jess and Jasper to the room she had picked. It contained double and single beds and a large couch. The two kids sheepishly walked to the bed, kicked off their sneakers, and laid down. They both were asleep within a few minutes.
Joel knocked on the door behind her. “Umm… mind if I take the couch?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
Joel sat heavily on the deep red three-seater, pulled his boots off, and leaned over until he was laying flat.
Marina pulled one of the sheets from her single bed and laid it over him.
“Thanks.”
He looked up at her. “Why don’t we build something of our own? We have been searching for somewhere safe to be, but maybe that’s the mistake we keep making. Maybe we should just create something ourselves?”
A tired smile came to her, and she laid quietly on the single bed. “Maybe. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but right now I need to sleep. Evan’s got first watch?”
“Yeah, then Hickman.”
“I can’t get a read on him. One minute I think he hates us, then…”
“We’re stuck with him for now.”
She nodded and turned on her side.
Joel pulled his sheet up over his shoulders. His mind raced with possibilities of a new home. They just needed to find a natural source of water, away from a big town.
No more military bases.
He pictured flowing fields of crops, and Jess and Jasper running through them. Marina stood near an old farmhouse waving at him. Nebraska was the next state over. Their original destination.
The scene brought him comfort, and he quickly fell into the embrace of sleep.
*****
The weather was bright on the California highway. There was a light breeze which Joel took complete use of, letting his hand hang out of the pickup’s window. It was the first moment since leaving LA that the horror of the past few weeks momentarily let up, and he felt vaguely human again.
Joel knew he was dreaming, and for the first time in a long time, didn’t care.
As he drove, he remembered his son. These were not memories of the last time he saw his lifeless body, but a month before when he had taken him for his first ride on a pony. Joel smiled and was just able to force the pain away long enough for him to enjoy the scene of his son atop a dark brown pony, replete with a riding helmet.
Joel yanked the steering wheel hard to the right to avoid a man that came from nowhere. He knew what the small explosive sound that followed was, and the pickup banked and yawned with its front right wheel rim grinding across the concrete.
“No… no…”
The pickup was headed for the pylon and there wasn’t a thing Joel could do about it.
He slammed on the brakes, but the pickup was now on loose dirt and continued relentlessly. He braced for impact. The pickup slammed into the solid wooden pole, forcing the radiator back into the engine block, which whined and spluttered.
Joel smashed through the windscreen, narrowly missing the pylon, and landed hard on the bank. After a number of rolls he came to a stop.
Shearing pain pulsed from his chest. Pulling the flap of his jacket back revealed what he suspected. A piece of pink-white bone pierced his T-shirt.
“Great…”
He suddenly remembered the man that started all of this and looked across the dual-lane road.
A weathered-looking individual stood a hundred yards away, seemingly frozen to the spot. He started walking fast towards Joel.
Joel turned so his back was to the on-comer, and pushed his rib back into place and buttoned his jacket back up. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t dead, or at least unconscious, but then he had seen vamps take a beating many times and keep on coming.
I guess I’m indestructible as well.
“You okay, buddy? You flew through the windscreen and rolled like a hundred times!”
“Yeah, I…” Joel looked at the ground around him. “I hit a soft spot. Got lucky.”
“That’s crazy. I thought for sure you were dead. I tried waving you down, didn’t you see me?”
Joel groggily got to his feet, wincing. “You ran out in front of me!”
“No, I was walking along the road. I heard you coming, and I turned and waved. I thought you were going to stop, but you just kept on coming…”
“Oh, right… yeah… don’t know…”
The man held his hand out. “I’m Russell. Russell Hopkins… and you killed me!”
What? That’s not what happened.
Joel’s confusion of his own dream startled him awake. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was. Then he remembered, in the hotel room with Marina and the kids nearby.
He started to relax then heard the click of a Glock handgun being loaded.
His blurred vision quickly cleared to show Jess and Jasper huddled behind Mary in the doorway. He looked up at the sleek barrel of the gun pointed squarely at his head.
“What did you do with my husband!” shouted Marina.
The End.
Thanks for reading The Scourge book 2: The vengeance of Shadows, I hope you enjoyed it. Book 3 will be available in a few weeks!
If you would like news on my latest releases, special offers or free short stories, you can sign up to my mailing list on my website at www.philmaxeyauthor.com .
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About the Author
Phil Maxey is an author who resides in the UK. Formally a game developer he now spends his time putting his love of sci-fi and the paranormal into words.
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Acknowledgements
Book cover design by www.starbookcovers.com