by Maxey, Phil
The boy was between eight and ten, had blonde hair and snow-white skin.
Corvin smiled. “You made the right choice.” The captain walked into the kitchen, picked up a jug of water from the counter, and drank some. The boy stayed in the hallway looking up at Joel. “We have been following you all the way from LA.”
Joel tried to ignore the small eyes that were examining him.
“Oh, meet Jasper. Jasper has a special gift. He can track those infected with the scourge.”
It was Joel’s turn to examine the small human in front of him. “He’s like me?” he said, looking back at Corvin.
Corvin shook his head. “The lab geeks don’t know what he is. What we do know is he doesn’t need blood like your kind.” He nodded to a nearby soldier, who got to his feet and took the suitcase. “So how did you end up with the case?”
“I was part of the CDC team to try to get it out of LA.”
Corvin smiled. “Great job you did then—” he noticed the slight change of expression on Joel’s face. “—Ah, you felt guilty. Your duty to protect it and all that, which is why you carried it with you across the country?”
“Something like that.” Joel’s eyes watched the soldier who was holding the suitcase. “What’s inside it?”
Corvin smiled, then nodded to another soldier. This time a soldier took Joel by the arm, and started to pull him back out of the doorway. Joel looked at the boy still watching him.
You’re going to kill a child…
Joel held his ground in the hallway. “Hey, Jasper how do you track the infected?”
Corvin frowned, and waved Joel and the soldier away.
Think, Joel, think.
He looked at Corvin. “I’m half vamp, maybe I can get the boy talking…”
Corvin looked down in thought, then sighed. “Sure, whatever. Just leave and take him with you.”
Joel beckoned to the kid, who followed him and the soldier outside. Joel carried on letting the soldier pull him across the yard towards a quiet part of the largest barn. Jasper quietly followed. Just as the soldier reached for the warped wooden door the night briefly turned into day, and the air filled with flying glass and a deafening explosion.
Screams and shouting replaced the silence, and the soldier who was now crouching up against the wall of the barn suddenly remembered his prisoner. He whipped around, but before he could stand the fangs of a dark-eyed being sunk into his neck.
As the blood flowed into Joel’s throat he could hear the familiar clatter of semi-automatic firing, and even though most of his thoughts were eclipsed with a primal rage, he knew the fight had begun.
Soldiers and flames burst out of the house, the former staggering forward and falling to the ground. Others ran in all directions, trying to get a fix on the blurs that were moving around them.
“It’s vamps! They’re here!” shouted one of the soldiers.
Joel leapt forward, bounding over a Humvee and slammed into two soldiers at once, slicing across both of their necks, while others fired into the constantly shifting shadows around them.
He spun and then became a blur himself as he felled three more soldiers one after the other. Neon streams of bullets split the air around him which he deftly avoided, then crashed into another group.
In the back of his mind, he heard the sound of a vehicle’s engine, and then his world filled with an intense violet light.
He smelt his skin burning before he felt it. Instinctively, he threw himself into the back of the barn behind hay bales. Searing pain cascaded through his mind, but it was not enough to block out Anna’s screams.
Trying to shake the burning sensation that reverberated across his body, he staggered forward into the main part of the barn. Anna was on the ground in front of a Humvee, bathed in a purple light. Her skin was boiling.
Despite the blackened skin and burnt red skull, he recognized the man at the helm of the strange telescope-looking device. It was Corvin.
He survived?
Joel went to leap onto the back of the Humvee, when bullets slammed into his back. He fell forward to the side of the vehicle.
Anna’s blood-curdling screams filled Joel’s mind as he forced his spine and legs to work, and clung onto the side of the Humvee, desperately trying to pull himself up.
He looked up at the man he already hated, at the satisfaction he was taking in killing his friend, and rage surged through Joel. With one final push, he heaved himself up to the back of the Humvee and pulled his clawed hand back to bring it across the back of Corvin’s neck, when the head of the man in front of him exploded, and Joel’s face was sprayed with blood.
Just before the pain became too much, and darkness almost completely overwhelmed his vision, he saw a group of humans running up the path to the farmhouse, their guns leading the way.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The thing that Daniel Copeland had become glided majestically on the warm air currents. If there had been anything alive below him, looking up, they would have just seen a shadow passing overhead in the night sky. His anger had meant he had drifted for almost an hour across the hills and canyons east of San Jose looking for those that would pay for what happened six hundred miles further east.
The last message he received from Corvin was that they had obtained both packages. The former Naval Captain went to talk again but the phone went dead. Copeland knew what that meant, and fifteen minutes later most of his priceless artwork and antiques were laying in pieces across the mausoleum-like space that was his apartment.
He contacted the new default head of security to confirm what his gut was telling him, and a few moments later he took to the air from his balcony.
The first to die were vamps. He lost count how many, but when his wings pulled him skyward again, the ground was littered with the remains of distorted bodies. Those that had been scouring the streets for their own prey were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. What he really wanted though, were humans.
As the undulating hills flowed by beneath him, he scoured the landscape for any sign of civilization, until on the horizon he saw what he hoped would satisfy his fury. The dark blocks and grids of roads tempted him towards them, and when he got within a mile of the small town of Templeton, his blood rush increased when he smelt the odor of the living.
By now he had come to recognize the warm, salty smell of packs of humans. If only they knew how easy it was for his kind to find them, they would descend into caves never to emerge again.
As the sidewalks, former homes, and businesses sailed by a hundred feet below, he zoned in like an eagle looking for its meal. A faint glow came from the tiniest of gaps between a window frame and a wooden board that had been nailed across it.
He floated down, landing on the roof of the three-story early twentieth century apartment block. As soon as his clawed feet touched the concrete surface he could feel the accumulated body heat of homo sapiens. He walked across the roof using his heightened senses until he felt the tiny vibrations of disturbed air molecules, which he heard as muffled voices.
The building below was full of food, but a slaughter would be too easy. He needed them to run. They needed to be warned.
He ran and leapt off the side of the building, his huge wings beating the air to allow him to descend so he was level with the window the light was seeping from. Moving forward gently, he grabbed the wood covering it and ripped it off. Part of the masonry came with it, and fell twenty feet to the sidewalk, sending an explosion of noise into the night.
As the sound of anxious voices flowed from every window and door making him smile, he drove his fist into the glass which instantly shattered. A man, maybe in his forties appeared in the room. A look of horror froze upon his face, until he remembered the shotgun in his hands, but before it was even raised to be level with the demonic-looking creature outside, a blackened claw pierced his chest.
Copeland pulled his hand out, bringing the man’s still beating heart with him, and took a slow bite from the lum
p of flesh as the body of the man fell against the wall of the cramped bedroom, then slumped onto the floor.
He looked down at the shotgun, and for a fraction of a second was tempted to pick it up and use it, but that would make it too easy. Instead, with his wings retracting even further into his back, he walked through the doorway into a dark corridor and was immediately hit by a bullet from a handgun. It hit the armor-like scales that crossed his chest and ricocheted into the roof.
A young woman with long frizzy hair fired again, but this time she missed, and Copeland’s clawed hand was around her neck throttling the life from her before she could take aim again. After a few seconds of frantic kicking, her eyes bulged, and she fell limp in his arm. As he sunk his extended incisors into her neck, screams and shouts rang out from the rest of the building, and those that were once inside ran out into the night.
He walked into another room. This one was slightly larger and contained two unmade beds, and some children’s books which were open and laying on the frayed brown carpet.
Keeping his anger in check, he calmly walked to the window and punched through the glass and wooden board, breaking both. After a few more impacts, the entire window frame and board fell to the ground outside.
He heard the man before he even entered the room behind him but let him charge forward with the axe in his hand anyway. To make it even easier the man grunted as he brought the blade downwards through the air.
Copeland turned in a blur and caught the axe, stopping it instantly. The man looked up in horror as the thing in front of him grinned.
In one swift movement, Copeland grabbed the man by his neck and tossed him like a rag doll through the gap where the window used to be.
The man’s screams only lasted a second.
Copeland leaned forward, letting the warm night air wash over him. His eyes could see the human heat signatures scuttling like bugs into holes and other places they thought would protect them.
His grin widened, and he leapt forward, taking flight.
*****
Jasper sat on the wet sand and looked up at the midday blue sky. His sunglasses shielded his eyes from most of the sunlight, but they still watered slightly. He quickly looked back down at the lake. He rummaged his fingers through the sand until he found a stone, which he threw into the water. It landed with a satisfying plop, and he watched the waves ripple out. Something about the ever expanding circles reminded him of how he felt when he connected to the other scourge-infected minds.
“That’s not how you do it,” said Jess, standing behind him on the sandy shore. She walked forward looking for a better kind of projectile. “Look, you need one like this.” She bent down, grabbed a flat shiny pebble, and held it a few inches from his face. She then turned and, with a whip of an arm, flung it onto the almost flat lake surface.
The stone skimmed and bounced until finally giving up and descending into the depths, twenty or so feet from them.
Jasper smiled.
Jessica looked again and found one which she offered the young boy. “Here, you try.”
He took the stone, stood, then swung his arm around. The stone looped into the air and plopped into the water again. He looked at Jess and they both started giggling.
Not far behind them both, Mary sat on the grass just outside the garden of the large house and smiled. Flint was laying down panting at her side.
A mile away, Joel limped forward along a bland but clean corridor until he made it to the room which Marina was standing outside of.
His back was mostly healed but his legs still stubbornly refused to work correctly.
She, with bruises and lacerations across her head and appendages, looked through the large glass window at the figure in the room who was almost entirely covered in bandages.
Two nurses leaned over Anna, looking at the white cloth-like materials and monitoring her vitals.
Those outside turned to face the direction of the footsteps which hit their senses before Doctor Lee Kemp appeared. A tall man that looked younger than his sixty-odd years approached them, producing a quick smile.
“You vamps—”
“Hybrids,” said Marina.
“Sorry, hybrids sure are tough birds.” He looked at the frail woman through the glass. “From my understanding, those infected by the scourge are particularly susceptible to ultra-violet light, the fact that she’s still part human is probably what saved her.”
“How long will it be until she’s back to normal?” said Joel.
The doctor’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure what ‘normal’ is for your kind. She’s healing fast, but how long? I have no idea. If I were you, I would find something to do around town for the next few days.” He paused as if pondering how to phrase his thoughts. “You might want to keep your distance from the rest of the townspeople. Being a doctor, I have some idea of how you might have come to exist, but for the others, they will just see you as the spawn of the devil, and if enough of them get together…”
“We understand,” said Joel.
Inside the room, the nurse gestured to Lee. “Excuse me.” He went inside, closing the door quietly behind him.
Marina shook her head. “I wonder if Lucian’s told everyone he’s like us.”
“Didn’t they see from what he did during the fight?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see.”
“Well, that’s his problem. He did save our asses though.”
“Yeah… and we’re never going to hear the end of that.”
Joel smiled. “He also seemed pretty happy he has now got seven Humvees and a bunch of weapons and ammo.”
“Have they managed to get the ultra-violet weapon working again?”
“It took some damage, but I was talking to a guy who used to be an engineer who thinks they can get it up and running.”
Marina looked back at Anna in the bed. “If they do that, it’s sure going to make this place a lot safer from what’s beyond the walls.”
Joel joined her looking at the doctor examining Anna’s bandages. “Yeah.”
“She’s going to get better, right?”
“She better. Doctors are in short supply.” He briefly looked across to Marina. “How’s Jess?”
“She’s holding up.”
“Maybe she can get the boy talking.”
She looked at Joel. “You’re sure he’s not a vamp, right? Or even a hybrid?”
“Did you sense anything when you were with him?”
“No.”
“He’s definitely been through the change, but Corvin said he’s got no thirst for blood. Jess is safe with him, and if he does become something of a danger, Flint and Mary are with her.”
A noise further along the corridor made them both look in that direction. Bill appeared from the stairs, and beckoned.
They walked across to him. “Everything alright?” said Joel.
The words seemed to stick in Bill’s throat as his eyes shifted between the two in front of him. “We need to talk about what happened yesterday.”
Joel had completely forgotten what occurred when he held the tablet the day before. If it wasn’t for the man in front of him reminding him, he would have thought he imagined it. Joel sighed and turned away.
Marina looked confused. “Talk about what? The fight at the farm?”
“Umm… Joel had a… well…” Bill frowned, searching for words.
“When I picked up the tablet, the symbols on it changed, and then I dropped it because well, what the fuck.”
Marina’s expression grew even more extreme. “Changed? It’s a stone tablet—”
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to him about, but I guess we can have that conversation now.” Bill looked down the stairwell and along the corridor, then tugged on Joel’s arm to follow him into a small utility room.
Marina closed the door behind them.
“So, the stone tablet is not a stone tablet.”
“I figured. What is it then?” said Joel.
<
br /> “Oddly, the term ‘tablet’ is well suited. Myself and Evan think it’s some kind of computing device.”
Marina chortled, then stopped when she saw Bill was serious.
Bill’s eyes dropped and he briefly waved his hand. “I know. It’s crazy.”
“Then it’s not thousands of years old, it must be one of Copeland’s… like actual computing devices.”
“Well, it could be a modern device… but… we think it’s not.”
Images of the strange shadow-infused tomb, with the sarcophagi crept into Joel’s mind.
“But how can that be?” said Marina.
“We don’t know but—” Bill stepped closer to Joel who seemed to be deep in thought. “—We think if you could hold it—”
Joel’s eyes widened as he looked into the hopeful older man’s face. “Why would I want to do that? Maybe it’s some kind of bomb, that’s primed to explode when I touch it, we don’t know anything about it…”
Bill nodded. “And the only way we’re going to learn is by you touching it again, and this time I’ll monitor what—”
A knock at the door made Bill jump. An elderly woman wearing a white uniform looked through the small glass panel and frowned.
Joel opened the door before the nurse could. “We’re just leaving,” he said to her, walking out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joel stood in the spacious living room of the house they had all been offered to stay in and examined the strange tablet device which sat on the glass coffee table. He looked between Bill, who was behind him, and Evan, who was seated to the side, and then back to the tablet.
“Just lean down and pick it up. And this time, when things start happening, don’t drop it,” said Bill, holding a cell phone pointed at the tablet.
Evan monitored a laptop, which had it’s tiny webcam camera pointed at Joel and the strange artefact.
Joel took a deep breath. The object on the table looked innocent enough, but he had no time for what he regarded as magic, despite how excited Bill and Evan were when they told him of their theories. After thirty minutes of them trying to convince him to partake in an experiment, he finally gave in, if just to stop them from saying the words ‘Annunaki’ and ‘Alien technology’ again. All he was concerned with was the effect the tablet was going to have on his mind. The strange visions were increasing in clarity and he needed to be in the real world, the one where people died.