Until Dawn: Last Light

by Simas, Jennifer Nicole

  There wasn’t time to think. The rear of the hotel building began caving in.

  “Move!”

  Ryuu stood in the doorframe, making sure everyone got out. I snatched up my sword and darted into the hotel courtyard, car alarms and snapping asphalt screaming in my eardrums. The exterior walls buckled and the building collapsed into a pile of rubble behind us. A thick layer of soot hung in the air and I struggled to catch my breath.

  “Ryuu’s still in there!” Annie exclaimed.

  William wrapped an arm around her before she could make a break for it. I thought I saw just a hint of a smile on his face as their skin made contact. He pointed a steady finger at the pile as it started to shake.

  Chunks of concrete and rubble floated into the air. A blood-covered Ryuu stepped free of the debris, blood oozing from his arms and legs. As he made his way toward us, the concrete slabs smashed back into the ground with a loud crash. In the time it took him to get from point A to point B, his wounds had already sealed shut. He took his place beside Jade, popping his neck back into place. Samantha cringed.

  “Ouch.”

  “Nice trick,” I muttered. “So, what can you do?” I asked, turning to face Jade.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me and I glanced over my shoulder. It was Jade. My head spun as I looked from one Jade to the next. “Right. Of course. Just what the world needs – more of you.”

  “I think it’s over,” Max panted, “I don’t feel anything.”

  “It isn’t over, I-I can feel it. We need to get somewhere safer.” Annie wiped the soot from her face. Filthy tears ran down her pale cheeks. Lucky her, still able to cry.

  We stood in the rain. No one noticed us in the chaos. Everyone else was far too busy worrying about the safety of his or her own families, many of which were still trapped in the rubble – most of them dead. The smell of blood was already strong in the air.

  “Max, I need to use your phone,” I extended my hand in front of his nose. I wasn’t asking.

  He groaned and dug the device from his pant pocket. “She might be hot, but your girlfriend is one demanding woman, Alec.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but stopped myself. It wasn’t the time for relationship talk. Was I his girlfriend? I didn’t exactly remember agreeing to anything. Alec flashed his friend a wide grin.

  Max placed his cell phone in the palm of my hand with a grunt. I dialed so fast that I got a wrong number the first three times. I took a deep breath and attempted to dial the number once more. It rang and someone answered, panting.

  “Cindy?”

  “Zoë, is that you? Where are you?” She was in hysterics, sobbing between shallow breaths. “The floor above mine collapsed! Everyone’s dead! I don’t wanna die!” Cindy broke down. I heard her knees hit the ground.

  “Cindy, you need to calm down. Listen to me,” I paused. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” she sniffed.

  “Where is she at?” Tony asked over my shoulder. “We’ll go get her.”

  “Where are you, Cindy?” I relayed his question.

  “I’m heading to the beach. I didn’t know what else to do. I have nowhere else to go.” Her sobbing resumed. “Please, come get me. I’m scared.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone, do you understand me? Don’t stop or talk to anyone. We’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

  “Okay,” She whimpered and the call ended.

  I sighed and handed Max his cell back, mumbling my appreciation.

  Josh rested a hand on my shoulder and my muscles relaxed slightly. “Is she alright?”

  “No. Her apartment building collapsed. She’s heading to the beach.”

  “I am sorry, Zoë,” William started, “but you know I cannot permit you to go. This is not a priority. If it is her time to d–”

  “William,” I stopped him. “I’m going. I have to. She’s part of me. She’s counting on me. What’s the point of being who we are if we let everyone we know die? It isn’t her time, not yet. I refuse to accept that.”

  William searched my face. “You are so much like her,” he said.

  “So I’ve been told,” I mumbled.

  “Annie, Jade and Ryuu will come with me. We will find proper transportation before the final attack,” William announced. The three he listed stepped to his side.

  “The final attack?” Josh choked on his words. “You mean, this isn’t over?”

  “Far from it,” Ryuu replied.

  “Alright, let’s go. Jade, give me your keys,” Alec demanded.

  “They were in the hotel,” she snapped, as if he should’ve known.

  Alec growled under his breath and snatched the keys from Max’s pocket with little resistance from the shift. He marched toward the street, in the direction of a black VW Jetta, parked on a broken slab of asphalt with a pick up truck stuck to its rear bumper. His finger pressed hard on the unlock button. “Pile in, I’m driving. It’ll take way too long to walk.”

  It was a tight fit to squeeze six adult bodies into a car that only seated five. Alec sat in the driver’s seat, Max in the passenger’s. The back seat was crammed with Josh, Tony, Samantha and me, with me squished between the two men and Samantha on Josh’s lap. It was uncomfortable in many ways. The engine roared to life and we took off down the broken street, dodging fallen debris and screaming people.

  I stared out the rear passenger side window, desperate to distract myself. I counted the dead bodies. There was nothing else to do. Bodies hung from broken windows, overturned cars still held passengers prisoner, and the badly damaged roads made our drive feel more like a roller coaster ride. Only the newer buildings were still standing – barely. Everywhere my eyes turned I saw men, women and children scatter across the street like rats. Each person covered in blood; whether it was his or her own or someone else’s, I couldn’t say. No one was spared from loss. No one.

  “Um, Alec?” Tony sounded troubled.

  “What?”

  “Do you feel that?”

  “Feel what?” he paused, looking over his shoulder at us.

  The strained asphalt beneath us snapped and the car slid backwards down the hill, losing traction. The tires squealed as Alec stomped on the break pedal.

  The start of the second earthquake was loud, like an explosion deep within the Earth. Screams erupted from the already damaged streets, bricks raining down on the sidewalk. The VW bumped into the overturned vehicle behind us and, suddenly, as if nothing had happened, we stopped moving.

  We exhaled in unison, releasing an air of relief into the overcrowded car. The rain changed to hail, drilling tiny dents into Max’s car. The poor visibility made me uneasy. That’s when I saw the massive figure shift in front of us. I squinted, leaning over the center console.

  “Get out! Get out!”

  It was too late.

  The bus barreled down the street, bouncing off of smashed vehicles and rubble. There was no time to escape. We were doomed. Samantha screamed and we braced for impact.

  The sound of steel against steel made my stomach turn. I thought my eardrums might explode with the deafening screech. The bus smashed into us, obliterating the front end of the Jetta, swiping clean the vital internal organs of the car. The violent force hurled us backwards, off of the car behind us. We rolled in unison with the large bus, catching air between flips, demolishing anything that dared get in the way. After, what felt like, twenty-six flips the car rocked to a standstill on level ground before the back end of the bus crashed down on our small car.

  The silence was sickening.

  –

  A moist tongue ran across my cheek. There was a whimper and something cold nuzzled my face. My eyes fluttered open. I took a moment to regain my sense of direction. The golden retriever whined at me to move, trying to dig out the glass from under me. The top of my head had smashed through the rear window and one leg was tangled under someone’s warm body. I tried to pull myself free, crying out. Hot blood covered every inch of my skin. I couldn’t l
et myself think about whose it might have been.

  I heard sirens screaming in the distance. I peered through the shattered window as hail and fog clouded my vision. At the end of the street, red and yellow lights flashed, drawing closer.

  The distinct shape of the ambulance rushed down the street. I felt no movement apart from my own in the vehicle. The bus, well, I assumed it was out of commission after the first earthquake. Something didn’t feel right. The ambulance was moving way too fast. Its tires made contact with a broken slab of concrete and the vehicle catapulted into the air. I watched it as it sailed in my direction. It collided with the side of the car, its back tires missing my head by mere inches.

  Somewhere in the world a door slammed. Footsteps trampled over broken glass. “Get those kids out of there!”

  A boot kicked through the remaining pieces of glass still hanging around the back windshield. A bloody hand appeared in front of my face and I grabbed it, desperate to be free of the mass of twisted steel and human remains. The firefighter lifted me into his arms. He took two long steps away from the accident and set me down on the wet ground before heading back to the wreckage.

  “Are you okay?” A paramedic shouted at me as he rounded the ambulance.

  “I’m fine,” I replied, my voice a little shakier than I would have liked. “Get them out of there.”

  He hesitated and then gave me a quick nod, running after the firefighter.

  Rainwater washed most of the blood from my body. It seemed like the majority of it belonged to someone else. My bones were stronger and my skin was thicker and, at that point, most of my wounds had already healed. I yanked a long shard of glass from my leg. Blood gushed beneath my hand as my flesh fused back together.

  The golden retriever came to sit at my side, resting his head on my knee. I patted his wet fur before he trotted back to the vehicle, pulling a pair of bloody pants from the back seat and disappearing into a half collapsed department store. Tony emerged a few short minutes later.

  It took a strong stomach to look at the mangled mess that was once Max’s car. I felt fortunate to be free of it. The bus was hardly recognizable as it folded around the undercarriage of the Jetta. The front half of the car was missing along with three of the tires. Every window was smashed in and the roof, which was now on the ground, had sunken in three feet lower than car’s design intended. Blood stained the rough edges of broken glass and tattered upholstery.

  A number of emergency response technicians tugged bodies from the car. They didn’t have enough time for the Jaws of Life, there were still plenty more accidents for them to tend to after us. They’d be collecting quite a bit of overtime after today, not that money would hold any value in the new world.

  I felt a shred of hope when I saw Sam screaming in the arms of an EMT. She was grasping her arm, kicking her legs viciously. No doubt the bone had snapped. I stood to my feet and hobbled to the vehicle, kneeling beside the driver’s side door.

  Alec was lifeless, smashed between the driver’s seat and the car door. His face was flattened against the broken window, blood seeping from his cheek.

  “Alec!” I reached for his hand.

  He gasped for air, his eyes rolling around in his head until they focused on my face. “What happened?”

  “Don’t worry about that, we’re going get you out of there.” I sprawled out on my stomach and crawled into the vehicle, trying to pry him from the seat.

  Alec’s hand found mine. He looked up at me with hollow eyes. “Someone in this car is dead, Zoë. I can smell it.”

  My heart stopped.

  “Miss, don’t worry.” One of the firefighters pulled me away from Alec. “We will get him out.” I couldn’t see his face behind dirt and grime, but he sounded sincere. I retreated, withdrawing my hand from Alec’s.

  Someone in the car was dead. Alec’s words echoed in my mind as I rounded the car, searching for Josh’s face. There was so much blood. I heaved the mangled door open, thanking God for super strength. Sometimes being a monster came in handy. The door scraped across the pavement with a piercing screech and I cringed.

  Shaky fingers grabbed my ankle and I dropped to the ground, wrapping my hands around Josh’s face, trying to push away the blood from his eyes. I needed to know it wasn’t his. A cut on the top of his forehead leaked more blood down his temple.

  “I’m fine, Zoë,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Are you okay?” Josh stretched his free hand to my cheek, horror in those ice-blue eyes. He looked at me as if I were Death itself. I must have looked worse off than I’d thought.

  I didn’t answer his question, pressing my forehead to his. I cradled his face in both of my hands and breathed him in. He smelt of death – everything did.

  “How’s Sam? Is she okay?”

  I sighed, turning my face away from his. That shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. “She’s fine, a broken bone or two, nothing too serious. She’ll survive. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “It’s my left side, it’s stuck on something. I think it’s the passenger seat.” He winced as he tried to pull himself free. I went to investigate.

  It was the first time in years that I’d made a sound like that. I released a blood-curdling scream, stumbling back into a scarlet puddle on the broken asphalt. I’d found the source of the blood. My body convulsed as I vomited on the street. I’d seen a lot of gruesome things since my transformation, but that topped the charts.

  When I turned around, Josh was staring at me with wide eyes. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him so scared. I returned to his side with my eyes securely closed and kicked at the passenger’s seat. It wouldn’t budge under the dead weight – no pun intended.

  “Zoë, get me out of here,” Josh pleaded with me. Panic was setting in.

  I pressed my back against the jagged frame of the door, placing both of my feet on the back of the passenger’s seat. It took all of my fleeting strength to shove it forward. I cried out as the mangled steel dug deep into my skin, ripping through my muscle. Adrenaline kept my heart pumping. The seat slowly rose and Josh squirmed free, crawling over me. My legs snapped back into my chest and I tore myself away from the vehicle.

  I rose to my feet and headed in Alec’s direction. It took two firefighters to pull him through the window. He stood straight, as calm and collected as ever. He was wise to the pain by now, his wounds nearly healed. He scanned the street, counting each body. “One, two, three, four, five,” he mouthed. Someone was missing. Alec turned to lock eyes with me.

  “I’m sorry.” I shook my head.

  “No.” His eyes grew wide. “No!”

  Alec dropped to his knees and stared into the car at what used to be his friend and guardian. The bulk of the bus’s weight landed on the passenger’s side of the car. Max no longer held any human form.

  Chapter Eleven

  I pitied Alec. I looked at him the same way Josh had looked at me after my “accident.” Yet, somehow, I felt like I was getting a glimpse into my own future. It could have just as easily been Josh or Tony in that passenger’s seat. I had to come to terms with reality. One day, they’d all be gone. Everyone died at some point; that is, everyone except me. There was nothing I could do to change that.

  We staggered down the busted sidewalk, less than five minutes away from the coastline. The rain was relentless, beating down on us as we rounded the last corner to the beach. No one spoke, not even Barbie. Drops of blood formed a splattered trail behind us that fizzled away in the rain. Alec seemed different, defeated even. His golden eyes had faded and his face became hard. He appeared as hollow and lifeless as a statue. In fact, he was starting to look a lot like William. That worried me.

  Every few minutes, Alec clawed his fingers through his hair and over his neck, trying to remove Max’s blood from his flesh. He was toying with the “what ifs.” It was written all over his face. He was replaying the day in his head. Having Max stay with William, letting someone else drive, not insisting on driving a
t all.

  I was all too familiar with the “what ifs.” I used to constantly wonder what would have happened if I’d let someone walk me to my car that evening, if Josh hadn’t called 911 or, better yet, if the doctors would have just let me die. Maybe then I wouldn’t have become the monster I was today.

  Samantha staggered between Josh and Tony, clinging to her broken arm. She whimpered with each step she took. Sadly, our broken and bloody bodies were like a camouflage in the scarce crowd. No one was without injury. I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to block out the damage. It didn’t work. The world as we once knew it was long gone, and it was only just beginning. The future was paved with death and despair.

  The ocean air didn’t hold the same pleasing scent it once did. I could taste no hint of salt in my mouth, only the permanent taste of blood. The water looked murky, waves crashing violently against the shore. It was hard to imagine that it was ever beautiful once.

  As our toes hit the sand, Alec stopped suddenly. He turned toward me and pulled me into his hard chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around him.

  “I knew Max for over three hundred years,” he said sadly. Alec leaned back, looking at me long and hard. There was a fire in his eyes. “Baldric will pay for this,” he swore. “He will pay for what he’s done.” Alec ran a rough thumb along my lips before kissing me. Neither of us flinched as a bolt of lightning struck the teetering remnants of the boardwalk ferris wheel.

  Sam was clinging to Josh’s side, holding onto his hand with her good arm, when he tore away from her. Someone was coming.

  Cindy.

  She limped in our direction, arms wrapped tightly around her body. Her makeup was smudged over her cheeks and her hair was ruffled and tattered with blood. I never thought I’d see the day that Cindy would be so unkempt.

  “Zoë,” she whimpered.

  She collapsed into my arms and wept. I patted her on the back, mumbling some there, there’s. Eventually she’d recover from the traumatic events she’d witnessed, the pain would pass and there’d be no more tears left for her to cry. But, for the moment, all I could do was let her get out her unending pain.