A
NIGHT
WITHOUT
STARS
JILLIAN EATON
A WAR TO END THE HUMAN RACE…
“Do you think there is anyone else left?” I asked quietly. “Any survivors, like us?”
Maximus’ shoulders lifted and fell beneath his leather jacket. “There are always survivors. You know what they say about cockroaches, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“If the world was destroyed by a nuclear blast, cockroaches would find a way to survive.”
The corners of my mouth tightened. “Are you comparing us to cockroaches?”
“What if I am?”
“Then I would say you’re crazy. This isn’t some kind of nuclear blast or a war or something.”
“That’s where you are wrong, Lola.” Maximus stepped closer, crowding me back against the edge of the sidewalk. I could have easily stepped down over the curb, but I held my ground. I found I liked being close to him, a dangerous thing to discover when you were supposed to be running for your life. “This is a war,” he said softly, so softly I had no choice but to lean towards him. He angled his body to mine. We were as close as two people could physically be without touching. My breath caught in my throat, refusing to go up or down.
“What kind of war?” I managed to croak.
“A war to end all wars.” His eyes burned into mine. “A war to end the human race.”
A Night Without Stars is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products
of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © by Jillian Eaton 2015
ISBN-13: 9781507888360
ISBN-10: 1507888368
All Rights Reserved.
Except for use in any review, the
reproduction or utilization of this work in whole
or in part in any form is strictly forbidden.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
ABOUT LOLA…
“Lola is in it to stay alive.” (XO Reads)
“I feel like a lot of books I read are about timid, shy girls, but not this time. Lola is a fighter.” (Great Imaginations)
“She’s reckless and headstrong.” (The Book Junkie)
“Lola can take charge of a major situation and kick some serious butt as well.” (Jess Time to Read)
“A sassy lead female character…fiercely loyal to her best friend and her father.” (One Book at a Time)
“Lola is your everyday misfit, hellbent on
pushing the limit.” (Devon Ashley)
“Awesome start for a series, loved Lola! She was gutsy, sarcastic, (and) smart.” (Unraveling Words)
“Lola is a character you want to gobble up with every turn of the page.” (Page Eight Hundred Ninety)
“Death is when the monsters get you.”
STEPHEN KING, Salem’s Lot
PROLOGUE
The End of Everything
I can smell the blood.
It tastes metallic on my tongue and I close my mouth tightly, clamping my teeth together until my jaw aches. Still the scent of it invades my nostrils, sweet and ripe as an apple left out to rot in the sun. My stomach cramps, a knee jerk reaction to what the smell of blood has come to signify: death.
A drinker has been in the hotel. I can see the claw marks running down across the woodwork of the main desk. What little furniture remained in the lobby has been completely wrecked, as if the drinker went into some kind of mindless rage, destroying everything in sight.
With my heart in my throat I sprint across the lobby and fly up the stairs, screaming their names with every step. But they aren’t in the hall. They aren’t in their rooms.
They aren’t anywhere.
I search the fourth floor. The third. The second. The first. I’m out of breath by the time I’m done. Out of breath and almost out of hope. Except there’s one more place I can still look. One more place I have never gone. One more placed I have been warned never to go.
The basement.
I walk slowly down the steps, as though the bogeyman is going to jump out at any second. Except what waits for me in the dark and the damp is far worse than any bogeyman, and if given the chance it will do worse than frighten me.
It will rip out my throat.
When I see light spilling out from underneath a door at the end of a long, narrow corridor my knees nearly buckle with relief. I have found them and they are hiding away, just like they should be. Just like we practiced.
A breathless laugh forces its way past my lips. I have worried myself to death for nothing. Except the scent of blood is stronger than ever, and I cannot shake the terrible feeling of dread that has followed me down into the basement. It wraps around my throat with cold, merciless fingers, making every breath harder to draw than the last.
I push open the door and instantly cover my eyes, blinded by the light after running so long in the dark. For a few seconds all I see are two blurry shapes. One sprawled lifeless on the ground and another hunched over it.
My vision refocuses like a camera lens. Sharpening slowly around the edges before spiraling in towards the middle until everything is clear. Clear as crystal. And I see who is on the ground. And I see who is standing over him. And I see what I have chosen to overlook for far too long.
“Is he dead?” My words come out flat. Emotionless. It is a rhetorical question. I know he is dead. No one can lose that much blood and survive. It seeps across the tile floor in a spill of dark red and I am forced to step in it as I walk across the room, leaving wet footprints in my wake.
At the sound of my voice the survivor lifts his head and I double over as shock and betrayal deliver a one-two punch to my gut. I had not thought… I had never imagined… But the blood cannot lie and his face is covered with it.
“You.” I swallow convulsively and cannot help but wince. It feels like the inside of my throat has been lined with ragged shards of glass. “How could it be you?”
His mouth opens and closes. He’s quick, so quick, but this time I see the flash of telltale silver before he can conceal it. He stretches his hand out towards me. A silent plea.
Blood drips from his fingertips.
“This is not what it looks like,” he says. “Lola, you don’t understand. Let me explain.”
“Isn’t what it looks like?” I repeat dully. I know I should yell. Scream. Fight. But after all I have endured, after all I have lost, there isn’t any fight left. “You’re one of them. You’re a… a… drinker. You’re a monster.” Tears burn in the corners of my eyes as the shards of glass in my throat sharpen and twist. “And you killed him.”
He says nothing. What can he say? There are no words he could use, no explanations he could give, that would ever make up for what he has done. For the pain he has caused. For the life he has taken.
His gaze darts to my right hand.
The gun. It has become such a part of me I almost forgot I had it. I raise it now and point the muzzle true. His face pales. He takes a step back, then stops. Goes absolutely still.
“Do it then,” he says hoarsely. “One shot to the head, one to the heart. Just do it, Lola. If you think I could have done this I am dead already.”
“No.” I look at the body on the floor. “He’s the one who is dead.”
I aim the gun dead center of his chest. Aim it right at his black, lying heart.
“Lola, I love–”
I close my eyes and pull the trigger.
CHAPTER ONE
Fourteen Days Before
Yeah, that girl is not me. If you want to read a fairytale, go pick up another book. You won’t find any happy endings in this one.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
My name is Lola. My parents are divorced, my older sister hates my guts, and my dog got run over by a car two months ago when my drunken father forgot to close the back gate.
After the Big D my mom moved across the country to California and got married to some guy who rides a motorcycle and has a Fu Manchu (for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a really stupid looking mustache). I decided to stay with my dad because I love him so much.
Translation: my mom only bought one plane ticket because apparently “starting over” doesn’t include taking your kids with you.
Go figure.
Dad and I lived in a crappy apartment building on the wrong side of the tracks in Revere, Pennsylvania. It was where I’d been born and raised; a prestigious little town filled with old houses and family owned coffee shops and tree lined streets marked with signs like ‘have a wonderful day’ and ‘please pick up after your precious pooch’. It was the quintessential home of the free and the stuck up middle class.
Don’t even get me started on the hipsters.
Big Sis followed Mom out to California after she graduated in May and I haven’t heard from her since, which is probably for the best. It’s no secret we never got along. We were always too different. She was the type who spent her days worrying about getting her hair perfectly straight and matching her eyeliner on both sides.
I just worried people would figure out we were related.
I’ve never had a boyfriend. I don’t play any sports. The last time I got anything close to an A was in seventh grade English, and that’s only because I sat next to Patricia Clark, the smartest girl in the entire school.
But this story isn’t about me.
Not really.
This story is about them.
The drinkers.
No one knows where they came from.
In the end the government blamed the terrorists. The terrorists blamed the Americans. The Americans blamed the religious fanatics. The religious fanatics blamed the sinners. The sinners blamed the hippies. The hippies blamed the owners of gas guzzling SUVs. The owners of gas guzzling SUVs didn’t blame anyone due to the fact that they were the first to die. Turns out gas guzzling SUVs can’t go very far before they run out of gas.
Shocker.
Personally, I am of the opinion that the drinkers have always been here. Lurking in the shadows. Biding their time. Waiting for just the right moment to strike.
Curiously enough, they decided on a Tuesday in the middle of August to begin their attack. Just a normal day like any other. No holiday to speak of. Nothing to make the date significant. At least not then. Now we call it Death Day.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I wish I could say I was doing some great humanitarian deed on the day the world as I knew it came crashing down around me. Saving a life. Coming up with a cure for cancer. Rescuing a cat from a tree.
Instead I was stealing a car.
“Lola, are you sure you want to do this?” Travis Henderson, my best friend and reluctant partner in crime, peeked over the top of the dumpster we were huddled behind and quickly ducked back down. “I think it’s a bad idea.”
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and bit back a long-suffering sigh. Tall and thin with bright red hair, brown eyes, and crooked teeth, Travis hadn’t exactly won the genetics lottery. He loved Star Wars, Star Trek, and had every line of every Lord of the Rings movie memorized by heart. Suffice it to say he was a Geek with a capital G, but he was my geek and so I tolerated his chicken shit ways. Most of the time.
“Don’t be a such a little bit…jerk,” I said, amending my word choice at the last second. Travis was wound up so tight that any cursing had the potential to send him right over the edge. I gave his hand a reassuring pat. “It will be fine. It’s not as if we’re taking the car anywhere. We’re just starting it.”
“But why?” Sitting hunched in a tiny ball with his shoulders bowed and his face so pale his freckles stood out like a connect-the-dot puzzle, he looked so miserable I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Because we can.” It was my new mantra for everything. Why steal one of my dad’s cigarettes and smoke it out behind the apartment even though it made me sick? Because I can. Why toilet paper Missy the cheerleader’s house even though we used to be best friends in the fifth grade? Because I can. Why make out with bad boy Everett James in the boy’s locker room at school even though he sucked at kissing and tried to feel up my boobs? Because I can.
The truth of the matter was, I was bored. Bored of high school. Bored of summer. Bored of my entire mundane, predictable life. I craved change like a drug. I wanted excitement. I needed excitement. And what was more exciting than stealing a car?
I mean starting a car.
Yeah, right.
Travis was so gullible sometimes.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing his pencil arm – the guy seriously needed to work out if he ever wanted a chance with the ladies – and hauling him to his feet. “We have to go now, before the street lights kick on.”
The car I had decided to hotwire was located on one of the quiet, tree-lined streets with the lame signs, ten blocks away from my suck ass apartment complex. On this side of town the sidewalks were litter free and every lawn in front of the elegant row homes with their fancy shutters and crown molding was mowed to perfection. Even the garbage bin we were hiding behind smelled nice. Like some kind of fancy organic food and Febreze. I took a deep sniff as we slowly scuttled out to the street and my empty stomach growled in reply.
“Shhh!” Travis hissed.
“I can’t help it if I’m starving.”
“What! We ate, like, half an hour ago.”
“I didn’t eat that much,” I protested.
“You had two cheeseburgers, an extra large fry, and a milkshake!”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “What are you, the food police? You know I have a fast metabolism.”
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘pig’ before he clamped his mouth shut. I let the insult pass. I had plenty of problems, but body image wasn’t one of them. I was more than content with my height to weight ratio and I’d always been able to eat whatever I wanted without having to worry about adding on extra pounds. Just lucky, I guess. That was me in a nutshell.
Queen of Luck.
Pulling my beat up cell phone out of the back pocket of my jeans, I thumbed to the page I’d bookmarked and consulted it one last time. It had been surprisingly easy to find out how to hot-wire a car on the Internet. One site even had step-by-step instructions complete with pictures. And my teachers said I didn’t know how to apply myself.
“Do you have the screwdriver and wire strippers?”
Travis reached behind him to pat the orange backpack he had slung over both shoulders. It took some effort, but I managed not to roll my eyes. I had told Travis to dress inconspicuously and what does he do? Shows up in a button down shirt, khakis, and a backpack that a blind person could spot from a mile away. A better friend probably wouldn’t have said anything. Then again, I wasn’t a better friend. I was a best friend. And best friends had certain obligations that needed to be met, no matter the time or the place.
“You do know this isn’t band practice, don’t you?” I asked, popping a hand on my
hip as I purposefully looked Travis up and down. “That’s on Wednesday. Or so I hear.”
“I wanted to blend in,” he said defensively.
“With who? Glee Club?”
“Lola…”
“Okay, okay.” I threw up my hands. “That was mean. I shouldn’t be teasing you. I’m sorry.”
Travis frowned. “Really?”
“No, not really.” This time I didn’t resist the urge not to roll my eyes. “When am I ever really sorry? Come on.” I cracked my knuckles, not because I had to, but because the moment seemed to call for it. It made me feel tougher. Meaner. More Vin Diesel-er. “Let’s do this.”
We’d picked out the car nearly a month ago. Well, at least I had. A glossy black sedan with a four star safety rating (according to Travis), it was owned by a man who lived in the third house down on the left, a three story semi-detached townhome with scary little garden gnomes scattered all over the lawn. A gold placard on the front door read The Livingston’s in fancy script. I knew some people might have thought the placard was a bit pretentious, but I didn’t. After all, how else were the Livingston’s supposed to know they were part of the wealthy upper class without a gold sign nailed to their front door?
Travis and I walked side by side down the sidewalk, just two regular teenagers out for a stroll at eight thirty on a Tuesday night. From somewhere across the street a dog was barking. A woman yelled and the dog shut up. Halfway to our destination – a short, narrow driveway only big enough for the sedan – a car pulled up behind us. I felt Travis tense and tightened my grip on his arm. There was no way I was letting him off the hook so easily. Not after we’d come this far. We both needed this; Travis even more so than me. The guy was a walking, talking rule-follower. He’d never served detention. Never been grounded. Never even kept a freakin’ library book past its due date.
The Lola Chronicles (Book 1): A Night Without Stars Page 1