by Alexia Purdy
The scenery turned crisp, bright, and I focused on the shoreline before me. The sun burned at my scalp, prompting me to glance around for a hat or towel to throw over it and keep the rays off my skin. I had a tendency to burn easily.
“April.” My mother’s voice echoed in my ears, far away, as though it was underwater or through a thick wall.
“Mom?” I spun around and finally laid eyes on the woman who I considered to be one of the most amazing and beautiful women I’ve ever known.
“Here.” She handed me a scarf, and I promptly wrapped it about my head and donned the sunglasses dangling from her delicate fingertips. Her nails were smooth, manicured to perfection, but with only a thin layer of clear coat to make them shine. Her hands were beautiful and strong.
“Thanks, Mom.” I gestured toward the tumbling waves and prepared to barrage her with questions. “What are we doing here?”
She plopped down beside me and let out a deep rushing breath. “Oh, my dear. Have you forgotten to enjoy things already? You have to look around sometimes, take in the beauty of the world. It can disappear without a moment’s notice. Look at the water. It’s strong, unshakeable. The sand, smoothed over from centuries of being tossed about. Notice how fine it is and it feels like heaven under your feet. Why is it so hard to see the simple things?”
I huffed and turned back toward the water, watching as wave after wave pummeled the shore like a raging beast.
“People die out there, Mom,” I said as I contemplated her words. I had always been too old for my age, or so she had said. An old soul trapped in a young body. It had prevented me from enjoying my childhood like any other ten-year-old, and it had stolen my innocence along with it, replacing it with the blatant knowledge of just how cruel and dark the world could really be. “Millions have died already. There’s no hope.”
I bit my lip, and the taste of coppery blood hit my tongue.
“Darling, I know it seems as if there’s nothing to care about anymore. It seems impossible with such a bleak horizon in sight. I know how you feel.” She sat quietly beside me, and I waited for her to continue. “Nothing I say can make you feel better. I know that more than anyone. Just promise me you’ll pause and look around now and then. Enjoy the burnt orange of the sunsets. Breathe in the crisp ocean air, savor the taste of wild strawberries and watermelons we find now and then treading through untouched greenhouses. You can’t forget these things. You mustn’t. Promise me.”
I peeked at her sideways and scrunched up my eyes. She had hers closed and was letting the ocean breeze rush past her face and ruffle the long fuchsia scarf she’d wrapped around her unruly hair.
But wait… she was dead, wasn’t she?
“Mom?”
“Hmmm?”
“Why did you leave me?”
She didn’t turn toward me but just stared off across the waves. I breathed in the faint smell of coconut lotion and waited for her response. When she didn’t move, I opened my mouth to speak again, but her image flickered.
What the…?
I scanned the beach and found it empty. My eyes swung back to my mother, but she too was gone.
No, no, no….
I jumped to my feet and felt the air turn frigid as I spun, searching for the birds, the few people who had occupied the beach just a few seconds ago.
“Mom?” I called out.
Only silence answered back to me.
“Mom!” I hollered and ran toward the shore, but there was no one.
No one but me.
I was still alone in the world, and everyone was dead. Everyone but me.
~~~~~
“What exactly are you saying?” Mercer’s voice came out snappy, as if the person speaking to him had irritated him for the last time and was in danger of being extinct.
“I mean… the girl. Her blood isn’t compatible with any of the antidotes.”
“Rick shot her up with all of them?”
“No, sir. He used them all on the samples of her blood he took.”
“None of them are working?”
“No, sir.”
I heard a smack and then the thump of something heavy landing on the ground. “Get the hell out of my face and tell Rick he needs to hurry up. I’m sick of waiting for results from that pencil-necked twit.”
“Yes, sir.” The other person got up and limped away. The scent of his sweat permeated the air, and a nervous charge hung in his wake like static.
“Maybe she’s the final product of the virus. Lethal and all powerful. Immune to any antidote because she’s not really infected per se, but the result of a human body’s perfected defenses against it via adaptation.”
Christian.
I resisted the temptation to jump off the hard mattress I was lying on to slam my fists into his pretty face. His dark red hair haunted my memories, as did his two-colored eyes. Brown and Green. Two different hues that so perfectly represented his duality. I loved his eyes, though. They called to me in dreams and tormented me whenever I met them face to face. The sadness over his betrayal hurt down to the core, and I fought to keep my breathing rhythmic and slow as my heart felt like it would burst. How could he do this? I thought he had wanted to win my heart and be my mate. Even though I wouldn’t have given in to him so easily, if he’d been patient, with time… maybe we could’ve been something more.
What was I saying? I flicked my eyes open and tried to move, only to find that my wrists and ankles were strapped to the metal frame of the bed. Great. Why hadn’t I noticed that before opening my eyes? I was a sitting duck.
“Hello, princess.” Christian’s voice was warm and welcoming, making me hate him even more. A chair scraped along the cement floor, and I focused my blurry vision onto him as he leaned in toward me. “I was hoping you’d wake up soon.”
I closed my eyes, tugging at the restraints to no avail. I’d been drained of blood, left weak. What had they done to me?
“Water,” I managed to whisper, but I couldn’t do much more. It hurt to speak, to breathe. Only dizziness greeted me, even though I was lying down. So cold.
“One moment.” I heard him rustling about followed by the distinct sound of liquid pouring into a plastic cup and a crinkle of paper before he returned to my side. “Here, love. Sip from the straw.”
I blinked as I felt the plastic touch my cracked lips. I let it past my teeth and sucked in the fluid, my stomach clenching with waves of nausea as I paused to breathe past it before I could sip some more.
“Where am I?” I croaked. How long had I been out? It must’ve been a while because my throat felt like it had been dragged through sandpaper, and my lips had a layer of dead skin that cracked as I spoke. I licked them and tasted the taint of blood.
The memory of the ocean came rushing back to me, and I tensed up, remembering my mother. Tears blurred my vision again as I gulped back a sob.
“Now, now. You’ll be fine. I promise you.”
“Where am I?” I hissed it this time and managed a nice frown as I focused back onto Christian through the tears that I fought to restrain. I had the urge to damage that pretty face of his like I’d stabbed up his stomach. One day, I promised myself, that would be on my to-do list, right at the very top.
“We’re still in the same facility. We’ve quarantined off the area where Blaze’s group is. Don’t worry. They can’t get in here like we could get in there. They’ll never find the way in. They’re trapped there. There’s no way out from that quad. It was a way to trick them into closing themselves in. They fell for the false sense of security.”
“Bastard.” I closed my eyes, feeling a bit better, but my head was still aching fiercely.
“April, let’s not be so harsh. It’s for all our good that we did this.”
“Fuck you, Christian.”
A haughty laugh echoed from behind my head. I couldn’t see him, but I knew it was Mercer.
“My, my. She is a feisty one. Just like you said. You lucky bastard.”
“Go to hell,
Mercer.”
His hot breath flared across my cheek, and his face appeared right next to mine.
“Come on, Mercer, back up,” Christian said, looking annoyed.
“Listen here, precious. I don’t care if he’s your mate or not. I’ll still kill you with the first wrong step you take. And for your information… we’re already in hell, if you haven’t noticed, bitch!”
“Back off,” Christian said again. He put his hand on Mercer’s chest, throwing him a look of warning.
“Temper, temper,” I said, laughing at how quickly they had begun to bicker. Maybe I could use that against them. I let my head rest against the flat pillow under my head. “I need to pee.”
“Pee yourself.”
I laughed again and shook my head. “What? Afraid this little drained human is going to beat you up? Aww….”
Mercer stomped away, cursing under his breath. Feeling a tickle at my feet, I looked down to find Christian undoing the restraints.
“Sorry, he’s sort of insensitive.”
“No kidding.”
“Come on. I’ll take you to the showers. There’s a toilet, towels and fresh clothes there. You stink, by the way.”
“You smell like a rose, too.” I scrunched up my nose up and eyed him straight on. “How long was I out?”
“A full seventy-two hours.”
“Geez….” I let my head drop back as he slid over to undo my wrist restraints. “Is that true? Can the others not get out?”
“Oh, they can get out. It’ll take them forever to do it, but it’s possible. This place took years to complete. It was built before Vida was.”
He helped me sit up, and I rubbed my sore skin. The grime under my nails and my cracked skin made me frown. “How do you know of all these secret projects?”
“I used to work for the government. It was my job to oversee the labs and chemicals being shipped into these places. There’s dozens of fortresses, all across the country.”
“You’re kidding, right? Do you think humans made it to them at all?”
He shifted on his feet, still bent at the bedside. He stared hard at the cement floor. His long, dark red hair framed his features, making his eyes shine in the dark.
“I don’t know. Probably. Quite a few made it to the ones here in Vegas, surprisingly.”
I stood up and waited. He stretched up before me. His height was always impressive.
“All right, then,” I said, looking up at him, “lead the way.”
Chapter Ten
Where All the Things Meet
Rick was tinkering with an assortment of vials and liquids bubbling over Bunsen burners. In his protective glasses, lab coat and gloves, he was the epitome of a chemistry teacher, lost in concentration and every so often jotting down notes in a notebook splayed open on the counter nearby. Slipping onto a stool the next table over, I watched him with curiosity as he mixed the chemicals, siphoned drops out and dropped the fluid into trays filled with other fluids and gel.
This lab was much smaller than the other, but it had clearly been stocked in advance. Several vials were obviously blood specimens, some the rich red color you’d expect them to be while others were the dark black-red of feral blood. Blood was the new gold in this day and age. There was nothing more precious or more fragile than the red, viscous life sloshing about in our bodies.
The urge to grab one and tilt it into my hand to watch the blood flow back and forth in small, tiny waves was overwhelming. My fingers itched to touch the glass containers, so I stuffed them into my pockets and remained seated on my stool. Besides, it was easier to not reach over and snap Rick’s neck if my hands weren’t available.
I wondered which vials held my blood as I craned my neck to read some of the labels. When I’d mentioned to Mercer about being a drained, little human, I wasn’t kidding. The effects of the anemia made me overwhelmingly exhausted, thirsty and lightheaded if I stood up too fast. After taking a shower and wiping the steam off the mirror of the bathroom, I’d found an unfamiliar pallor of yellowish gray to my skin, replacing the previously healthy pink glow. It had made me wince as I took in my reflection, my lips a dusty pink, pale and delicate. It had flared up a bit of resentment toward Mercer and Rick, but I shook it off momentarily, promising myself they’d get their just desserts in due time. These freaks had to slip up sooner or later, and I had to recover from the draining before I could even think about fighting with anyone.
I hated feeling helpless. Already so used to being a hybrid human, which had given me so much strength and agility, I felt a sense of utter loss at being drained. At least I was sure to recover fast. Still, if only I had some vampire blood, it would speed up the process.
I cleared my throat. Rick didn’t even look up. “Rick.”
“I’m quite busy.”
“I don’t care.”
He put down a vial and smiled as he finished dropping a couple tablets into it, causing it to fizz up. “I knew you were stubborn, but you really need to let me work.”
“Worst of the worst.”
He peeked over his glasses, shiny blue eyes framed with tiny crow’s feet wrinkling around them as he continued to grin. “Helen would chat with me sometimes, when I was able to see her, and she spoke highly of you and your wild ways. She had so much respect for her wayward daughter. She was very proud to be your mother.” Was that a hint of sadness in his voice?
It only caused the anger to resurface inside me, and my mood darkened at the mention of my mother. I flicked my eyes down to the black counter, willing the bubbling resentment away.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” But it did. “Did you find anything in my blood that makes a difference?”
Moving his eyes down in shame, he swirled the vial in his fingers until the fizzy liquid turned a pale violet and then morphed into a deep maroon red.
“Well, I’ve found several differences between your blood and your mother’s.” He lifted the vial and poured it into several test tubes he had propped up in a rack. “I’ve isolated several red blood cells that defy the definition of a blood cell. It’s like they’re super red blood cells, filled with energy and resistant to injury. Your T-cells are abnormally large, too. In fact, the entire makeup of your blood is mutated compared to a normal human’s blood. It’s not very obvious, but I see the differences.” He peeked up at me again, a serious but excited twinkle lingering in his eyes. It only made me shift in my seat even more. “It’s like you’ve adapted to this virus, assimilating it, and it has enhanced your entire body.”
“The Hulk. That’s me. I’m relieved I don’t have to turn green, though.”
He laughed, and so did I. As much as I despised Rick, I was glad the somber mood was gone.
“Well, not quite, but not too far off. You could very well be the answer to the antidote problem.”
My ears perked up at this, and I waited, impatiently, for him to tell me more. My knees knocked under the table, and I buried my hands deeper in my pockets to hide my fidgetiness. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the antidote was having some issues working without any side effects.”
“What sort of side effects?”
“Well, some people… err… vampires… died from it. They’re body couldn’t separate from the virus without tearing up the person inside.” He wrinkled his nose and dipped a dropper into the vial he’d just mixed, letting one fat droplet ease onto a slide.
I gulped. “So why in the hell were you were going to shoot me up with that crap?”
“Well, we hadn’t tried it on a human hybrid yet. Your mother’s blood hadn’t converted to hybrid, and it was impossible to test how well it would work.”
“I could’ve died, and you didn’t want to test it on my blood first?”
“I wasn’t given a choice. Mercer wanted it tested on you immediately.”
“And if it had killed me?” He didn’t answer. “Who would you test it on then?”
<
br /> “I don’t know, April. I’m working blind here. I really didn’t want to do it.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll have to show you what it can do later.”
He was silent as he worked and didn’t look up again. I was left stewing at his words. Moments later, I was still steaming, tapping my fingertips furiously on the black tabletop, but he’d decided I’d calmed down enough.
“Look, I know that would’ve been the better route to take, get a sample of your blood and test it on that first. But Mercer is very impatient and even convinced Christian to help wrangle you up. I didn’t know what his real intentions were until I got to your door. It was only then that he ordered me to inject you with it. I’m really sorry.”
“You can shove that apology where you know it will hurt most, Rick,” I hissed and pushed off the stool, sending it toppling over. Bad idea. The room spun, and I grabbed at the table to steady myself.
“Whoa, there, cowgirl.” Christian’s hands were on my sides, holding me up. I wanted to hit him in the chest with my frustration and hurt, but I just let him hold me instead. I was tired, and it was making me think all screwy. It wasn’t a good position to be in. Weak, vulnerable.
“I’m going to lie down.” I shoved his arms away, but he didn’t let go.
“Did you eat anything?”
“Yes, breakfast.” I glared at him, but his twinkling eyes found it amusing and not dismissive as I had wished it to be.
“It’s lunchtime already.”
I hung my head and closed my eyes. I decided the fatigue might fade some with food. I relented. “Okay. What’s on the menu?”
“Steak.”
My eyebrow lifted, questioning the choice. “You have steak?” My question would’ve been unusual before the end of the world. Now it was so foreign to talk about meat. Fresh meat, at that.
He nodded. “Yep. Fat cows and sheep in the underground pastures. Just like the City of Vida.”
I grinned. A steak might be good for me. Iron, protein. I was game.
“Got any hamburgers?”