Phillip took a turn at the handle. He squatted deeper and, legs and arms straining, pulled on the handle. Metal screeched against metal. The door rose, but only five inches. It would rise no farther. Neither man could escape.
They turned to find the female vampire pulling at the door’s mesh, snarling and cursing.
“Well?” Brother Bob asked. He held a lighter in his hand.
Phillip Bruce held up a road flare. “I’m afraid. I wasn’t before. I thought it would be over quicker.”
The men nodded to each other, held hands, and slid to the fuel-soaked floor coughing on gasoline fumes.
The vampire was almost through the door. Still, they hesitated to ignite their cargo.
It will be okay. It was Jaimie’s voice, a message only the men could hear. You don’t need to be brave anymore. It’s not bravery to set off the bomb now. Desperation will serve. Light it and the monsters won’t get you.
Phillip stayed Brother Bob’s hand on the lighter. “Tell me again that I’ll see my wife and son!”
Jaimie Spencer appeared before the men. There seemed to be no detectable transition. He was not there and then he was, as real and tangible as if he stood before them in person.
“I’m sorry,” Jaimie said.
“I’m not,” Phillip said. “I’ll see my wife and son in a moment, right? Say it. Tell me again. Just once. Tell me.”
“Perhaps you will.”
Phillip looked at the boy, stunned. “But before you said — ”
“What you wanted to hear.”
A large, snarling male Alpha shoved the female vampire aside. He began peeling the thick wire mesh farther back.
“You lied to us,” Brother Bob said.
“Carriers of the Alpha strain of the Sutr virus must be destroyed. It’s not me. It’s The Way of Things.”
“It’s you, boy! We won’t live,” Phillip said. “What good does our sacrifice do us?”
Tears slid from the corners of Brother Bob’s eyes. “No redemption? No salvation?”
Phillip gritted his teeth. “No family? No forever?”
“Maybe there is a life after this one. I don’t know. There’s only one way to find out.”
Phillip shouted, “You sounded sure before!”
Jaimie shook his head. “If I’d told you seventy-two virgins were waiting for you, would you have believed that, too?”
The vampires burst through the door and through Jaimie’s image. The men on the floor hugged each other as the Alphas hurtled at them. Brother Bob and Phillip squeezed their eyes tight against ignition, ready or not.
Drool and Want, snapping and slashing
Pulse pounding in his ears, Sinjin-Smythe gulped air as he reached the top of control tower stairs. His lungs, thighs and calves burned from the effort of the climb. Shiva’s screams led him, urging him on.
The doctor had attended countless cadaver labs in university. He had vivisected monkeys. Dealing with Ebola outbreaks, he’d witnessed the grisly deaths of entire villages in Africa. He’d survived the Sutr-X plague and the Sutr-Z attacks on London and Reykjavik.
Nothing in his experience prepared him for the scene he encountered as he mounted the last step and entered Misericordia’s realm.
The Alpha was bent over the woman who had once been Sinjin-Smythe’s fiancee. The naked man crouched before Shiva, his bare, muscled back to the doctor. A silver fence post impaled the mother of his child through the torso. Blood soaked the bedsheets and the floor.
Despite everything she had done, the doctor pitied her. “Oh, Ava…” Sinjin-Smythe raised the Walther.
Misericordia raised his head and slowly stood. As he turned, Sinjin-Smythe glimpsed what the Alpha fed upon. The doctor nearly threw up.
His gun hand shook. He uttered the word, “No.”
The monster’s eyes shone like bright white headlamps. Gore covered Misericordia’s face and chest and hands. That was all that was left of his child.
The doctor’s mind reeled. His eyes went out of focus a moment, seeing yet not seeing. He had glimpsed Shiva’s torso, the womb torn open to the air, but he focused on the rumpled red sheets gathered around her thighs so he would not peer into the raw and ragged cavity Misericordia had made with his teeth and bare hands.
The monster reached back slowly and grasped the pole. He pulled it up out and of her. Shiva screamed again, weak but no longer a butterfly pinned to a cork board.
Sinjin-Smythe’s gaze fell to Shiva’s face. There was a slight movement. She swallowed. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Amazing, isn’t it? Even with so much blood loss, the bitch is still alive.” Misericordia raised the long pole as if it were a baseball bat. “Your baby tastes swe — ”
The doctor’s first shot went wide. He took more careful aim.
The next shot hit Misericordia in the shoulder. The vampire flinched and the hollow pole fell to the floor, clanging. But Misericordia kept coming.
He reached the doctor in one leap and seized the weapon in one shaking hand.
Sinjin-Smythe still held the Walther, but it would not fire. The doctor gaped at the vampire, both horrified and oddly fascinated. The tissues around the Alpha’s shoulder pushed out the mangled bullet. It clinked as it hit the floor. The gunshot wound closed in seconds.
Sinjin-Smythe tried to pull away but Misericordia would not let go. His fangs were long and blue veins stood out on his muscled forearms. He smiled and pulled the Walther’s muzzle under his chin. “So close, doctor, and yet…”
Shiva stirred. Vampire and human looked back toward her. Her huge wound was slowly closing. She struggled with each breath, but she was still breathing.
“Remarkable,” Misericordia said. “Imagine the life you might have had together if she’d turned you into an Alpha instead of me.”
“You know who I am?”
“The father, yes. Your baby told me you’d be coming. I could hear fully formed thoughts from the womb. The phenomenon was so impressive, I almost didn’t eat her.”
Sinjin-Smythe tried to kick Misericordia in the groin but the vampire was far too fast. The Alpha squeezed his fist and Sinjin-Smythe screamed. His palm bled as Misericordia crushed his hand into the pistol’s grips. When the doctor raised his free hand, hoping to poke out those bright, white eyes, Misericordia squeezed even harder, knuckles white, and drove Sinjin-Smythe to his knees. The doctor shrieked as the bones of his fingers snapped.
“Ah. Thank you. Shiva was intent on the world bowing to her, but you’ll all bow to me. Is that a cliche? I feel like that’s a cliche.”
Craig Sinjin-Smythe wept.
“It all comes down to a simple difference of opinion, really. Shiva wants to make all the survivors Alphas. I happen to think being a vampire is something special that should be reserved for a chosen few. I am the apex predator at the top of the food chain. I’ll hunt down all your friends. There’s nothing like a meal made of the food you kill yourself.”
Misericordia’s hands shook harder. He took the Walther from the doctor and tossed the pistol behind him. Sinjin-Smythe looked at his broken right hand. He put his forehead on the cold tile floor and gasped for air, willing himself not to scream again.
Standing above him, Misericordia stared at his own hand, opening and closing it, ignoring the man at his feet. The shaking would not stop. Misericordia shivered and stepped back. “I feel…odd. I think I ate too much baby. Surprisingly…filling.”
The doctor rocked back on his heels and spit at Misericordia’s feet.
The vampire raised a hand, ready to strike down the doctor, but he paused as he looked at the virologist’s face. A new thought formed and the doctor’s aura shifted. He was actually pleased about something.
Sinjin-Smythe watched the shivers and shakes work their way through the vampire’s body. “How many people have you eaten?”
The vampire’s smile faltered. Sinjin-Smythe no longer looked like a victim. Despite his ruined hand a
nd his tears, the human assessed him with almost clinical detachment.
“A lot. I’ve eaten a lot of people. More than anyone.”
“You’re shaking.”
“All the time, I feel like I drank a magic stew of mushrooms, heroin and magic unicorn horns. What of a few tremors?”
Shiva stirred on the bed. Her skin was white. She did not have the strength to stand, but her burning white eyes were open and clear. “Poison pill,” she croaked.
“What?”
“My little parasite. Eve. Your sister…” Shiva whispered.
“Prions,” Sinjin-Smythe said.
Shiva managed a tiny smile and a slight nod.
“Nature’s defense against those who eat their own species,” Sinjin-Smythe said. “You’ve got the cannibal’s disease. You’ll be getting holes through your brain.”
“Nonsense, Doctor. I’ve never felt better. A little shaking never hurt anyone. I’m just high.”
“You have Kuru,” Sinjin-Smythe said. “It will ravage your central nervous system.”
“No worries. With your baby in me, I expect I’ll heal fast. Cheers and beers, mate!”
Shiva spit blood before she could speak. “You ate. You…are…cursed. You cannot fight Nature. It is…The Way of Things.”
Vigilax arrived at the top of the stairs limping, scythe in hand, blood trailing behind him with every second step. “We’re under attack.”
Misericordia gestured to the pistol on the floor and the doctor at his feet. “Really? You think so?”
Vigilax shrugged. “Humans tried to drive a truck bomb into the nest. Their truck is stuck against the wall at the bottom of the ramp. I ordered the tribe to the other side of the arena. We’re safe. Their attack is a complete failure.”
Sinjin-Smythe struggled to his feet, his eyes on the Walther. It lay behind Misericordia, halfway to the bed.
Misericordia lunged forward, backhanded Sinjin-Smythe across the face, and grabbed the arm with the broken hand.
“Vigilax, I’ve disarmed the father of the golden child, but he’s a pesky one. Would you be so kind as to disarm him again?”
Vigilax raised his scythe, aiming the long cruel blade just above the elbow joint.
“Hack it off!” Misericordia commanded.
* * *
The big vampire pushed one hand through the door’s wire mesh, slid the deadbolt back, and burst through.
Phillip let out a low moan.
Brother Bob struck the end of the stick, igniting the road flare and detonating the truck bomb.
Jaimie watched the flame burst in slow motion. Fierce tendrils of fire, fed by gasoline fumes, reached for the boy. The blast shot through him in a furious dance, pushing out, blowing flesh and bone and metal apart in a rain of sad fascination.
Jaimie turned away from Brother Bob and Phillip Bruce. His memory was far too good. He did not wish to carry the weight of their deaths in his memory. If his mother was right — if he had a soul as she described — it was stained enough without adding the burden of their sacrifice to his remembering.
Jaimie told himself that at least their deaths had been quick. For the rest of the survivors? Time’s blade cut each throat, drawing the serrated edge across the exposed flesh with a long, slow pull.
Jaimie had assured Phillip that he would be with his family again. He’d told Brother Bob his sins would be forgiven if he did as he was asked.
Jaimie wept. I cannot see the future. I cannot see past death’s curtain. And I keep saying I’m sorry, but what does ‘sorry’ mean if I keep demanding more soldiers’ sacrifices?
Our highest hopes dashed and crashing.
The scythe’s blade was dull. Vigilax did not cut through Sinjin-Smythe’s arm cleanly on the first swing. Nor the second. The blade fell on him three times before Misericordia pulled away two-thirds of Dr. Sinjin-Smythe’s right arm. Shreds of skin, tendon and fascia hung from the wet end.
The doctor’s screams were drowned out by the explosion.
Misericordia roared in fury as he watched a plume of black smoke issue from the guts of the Rec Center below.
Sinjin-Smythe collapsed to the floor and shoved his bleeding stump into his left armpit, applying pressure as best he could to prevent himself from hemorrhaging across the floor.
The Alpha leader grabbed his collar and balled a trembling fist, ready to punch through the doctor’s face. “If any of my tribe are hurt, I’ll cut you into more pieces, a little at a time. And if none of them is hurt, I’ll cut you into more pieces, a little at a time.”
Misericordia ran to the stairs and raced for the Rec Centre. Vigilax followed, leaving Shiva and Sinjin-Smythe to their misery.
* * *
With the ramp angled behind the truck, most of the force of the explosion was directed into the basement arena. Shrapnel burned through exposed flesh. Pain ripped through the tribe and they fell to their knees, writhing as the force of the blast rushed over them and pushed them off their feet.
Concussive waves rocked the building. Several support columns crumbled and the building slouched. The detonation was a punch in the building’s guts. The vast Rec Center bent, but still, it stood.
The tribe howled, first in pain and soon in elation. Most of them had survived the attack.
Black smoke billowed to the high roof as the Alphas stood. For most, their wounds were so minor, they were already healing.
The hulk of the exploded truck burned, furious and harmless at the bottom of the ramp, flames licking the air.
The building’s sprinklers kicked in and a fire alarm sounded. The vampires began to laugh.
Kezef, a tall hunter named after the angel of wrath, tipped her head back and drank, enjoying the shower of cool water as it washed the stultifying heat away. Rivulets ran down her naked body. An engine bolt had stung her side, but it was a small nick. She was fine.
Her first inkling of danger was the taste of jet fuel. The sprinklers weren't showering water on the flames anymore. The trap was sprung.
Someone screamed for everyone to run for the ramp, but it was from there that more flames burst forth. The second ignition had begun. The flames climbed toward the roof, claiming the oxygen as fire replaced the air.
Many of the Alphas burned to death, screaming. More burned in writhing silence. They’d escaped the flames, but they dropped and died anyway, asphyxiated.
Before Vigilax and Misericordia could find a way to break the heavy chains that sealed the big doors at the top of the ramp, flames reached the palettes of oil drums Desi, Brother Bob and the doctor had stored on the first floor.
The third ignition began. The next series of detonations took the Joint Air Base’s Rec Centre down to its foundations as the structure collapsed in on the Alphas, crushing the few survivors amid the rubble.
Misericordia climbed atop the pile, calling for his tribe frantically. He could smell an unlucky few survivors. They lay trapped under tons of rubble, barely alive.
Misericordia scrabbled, pulling stones away, uselessly. The Alpha leader cried and screamed and cursed and shook. Tremors climbed up and down the muscles of his spine. Those trapped beneath him would heal quickly down there in the dark. Then they would slowly starve to death.
Dust rose high into the sky and hung in the heat, obscuring the stars. Misericordia sat atop the destruction: a Job, a Frankenstein, a king whose subjects and slaves were lost.
And he swore vengeance upon the boy who had once freed him.
* * *
Sinjin-Smythe crawled toward Shiva. Soon, she would be able to sit up, if he let her. With his remaining hand, Sinjin-Smythe picked up Desi’s Walther 99c.
“Hello, Craig. I thought you might go to New York.”
“You blew up New York.”
“Not personally. That was the military’s call. I made it…a more attractive option. I’m tired, Craig. Do we have to talk?”
“The baby…”
“Eve. I w
as going to call her Eve.”
“My mother’s name.”
“Yes. Your mother didn’t approve of me, but she was always kind. Her, I liked.”
“You killed her and everyone else.”
“Really, Craig, I’m too tired — ”
“Why, Ava?”
“My name is Shiva.”
“I want to talk to Ava. You weren’t a monster then. I want to talk to the woman I knew. You were vain, silly, egotistical, but you could be tender. You weren’t…this.”
“I lied a lot.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you’re lying now. Let me talk to the woman who liked my mother even though she didn’t like you.”
“You accused me of genocide before.”
“Well. You did that. But I need to understand.”
She sighed. “I plead self-defense. I killed the killers. Sutr allowed us to start over. I helped nature defend itself against a parasitic infection. People. Bloody people. Always big plans to do better but no will to get it done. I got it done.”
“It’s wrong.”
“It’s The Way of Things. We aren’t even the first to die to save the planet. For us to thrive, the Neanderthals had to go. For us to drive cars, we had to stuff dead dinosaurs into our tanks. The cycle begins and ends and starts again. The universe expands out to infinity and contracts to the size of a marble in a series of big bangs so God can watch the play over and over again. We are not special. We’re just next.”
“So you really believe all that? It justifies all you’ve done?”
Sinjin-Smythe lost focus for a moment. The gun was getting heavier as Shiva’s voice got stronger. “You killed my baby.”
“That wasn’t the plan. I went into labor. Misericordia tore into me and just…kept going.”
When she began to cry, Sinjin-Smythe was sure he was talking to the woman with whom he’d fallen in love. “I’m glad you’re crying, Ava. You weren’t always casually cruel. You must have been awfully frightened to do such terrible things. Underneath all terrible acts is fear.”
This Plague of Days OMNIBUS EDITION: The Complete Three Seasons of the Zombie Apocalypse Series Page 84