by Maxey, Phil
“You and I. We can survive out here. We find animals and feed on them—”
“Eww, gross.”
“Okay, humans then, whatever.”
“Ewww, even worse.”
“How did you even survive this long? You know you really can’t last eating candy, right?”
“I find medical centers. I find the blood, and I’m good to go.” The toilet flushed in her stall. The door opened. “And I doubt there’s any of them in the middle of nowheresville.” She walked to the exit. “If you want to play children of the forest, be my guest.” And left.
Amos sighed.
*****
The sun hung low on the horizon just above the heads of thousands of kernels of wheat. On the edge of the field, Joel, Evan, and Kirk tied off the last of the fencing they had brought back.
He waved to Donnie at the bottom of the field who in turn waved to Max to turn the generator on.
A mild buzzing came from the metal cords between the posts.
“Even I can hear that,” said Kirk.
“Yup. You might want to keep it turned off during the day, and just use it at night. It’s not going to stop vamps getting through if they want to, but it might slow them down enough so you got some warning.”
“I appreciate… all this,” said Kirk.
“We need farmers to keep on farming if we’re going to get through this. You’re helping everyone by keeping on,” said Joel.
Kirk looked out over his fields. The lights of the farmhouse sparkled in the distance. “We’ll keep going for as long as we can.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll get these crops in then we have to hit the road. Still some way to go to the border,” said Joel.
Inside the house, April sat with a shawl across her shoulder in the living room. Marina sat with Jess and Jasper on the sofa nearby. The latter two were giggling over a children’s book April had given them. The others were spread out across the house. Three or more to each of the family’s three spare bedrooms, and the others bedded down in a sun room at the back of the house.
After Joel and the others had returned earlier, Kirk had taken April aside. Ten minutes later they reappeared. April did a good job of pretending nothing was different, but Marina and the other Hybrids picked up the slight smell of sweat on her from then on. Joel could also hear her heart beating faster than it needed.
Marina smiled at the woman sitting nearby, and April returned the gesture. A part of the bookshelf was covered in photos of a young girl. Marina didn’t need to ask to know what must have happened.
“Harper. My youngest,” said April, noticing Marina's interest.
“She’s very pretty,” said Marina.
“She is… umm… yes.” April sprang up, slightly taking Marina aback, walked to the shelf, and picked up one of the photos. “This was her first prom.” She handed it to Marina.
“She looks like a princess,” said Jess.
Marina smiled and handed it back.
April went to talk, but instead no words came from her mouth as it opened. She silently walked across the room and placed the photo frame back in its original place. “I think I’ll bid you night.” She looked at the nearby group of blankets. “Do you have what you need?”
“Yes, that’s plenty. Thank you.”
April moved into the hallway and ascended the stairs.
Outside, as the last vestiges of day slithered into night, Joel stood inside the largest of the four outbuildings which made up the Bradley’s farm. He dropped the pack of tools back into their rightful spot and went to turn when he sensed a presence standing in the doorway.
“Does your father know?” said Joel, without turning around.
“Damn, usually I can sneak up on folks, and they don’t know I’m there until I tap them on the shoulder. But you’re not most folks. Or vamps even.”
Joel turned around. “I’m guessing he doesn’t.”
Behind Donnie the world was awash with a pink glow of the setting sun. The young man stepped over the wooden threshold and closed the door behind him.
“He killed my sister!”
“From what I understand, your sister became like most do when they turn. There was nothing that could be done for her…”
“What are you saying! You’re a vamp! If you don’t take me with you, he’s going to kill me!”
Joel examined the young man in front of him. He could tell he wasn’t like him. He was something else entirely. “How old are you?”
“What’s that got to do with anything? You don’t get it. I’ve managed to keep it from him up until now because of the cattle—”
“You’re the one killing them?”
“Mostly. Some were vamps also. But he’s going to figure it out sooner or later!”
“What kind of vamp are you?”
“You not seen my kind before?”
Joel went to answer, but stopped when the sound of footsteps came from outside. They both froze. The door then opened.
“Everything good in here?” said Kirk.
Joel smiled. “Donnie’s showing me where everything goes. A guy could get lost in here!”
Kirk smiled and stepped inside. “In the dark, yeah. But, umm, the farm’s been in my family for three generations. There’s equipment in here from the great depression era.”
“Yeah, I told you to sell it online. Now it’s too late,” said Donnie.
“You never know when you’re going to need tools like those, son. Now we can’t use the machinery much they are coming in handy… literally.”
“Now we got fuel, I don’t have to plow the field, right?”
Kirk laughed, pulling Donnie in close. “Maybe, we’ll see.”
Joel noticed the reluctance for Donnie to be hugged by his father, but the young man smiled nonetheless.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Insane sexy body!’ said the sign opposite the bank just visible in the moonlight.
Kizzy help up her arms, mimicking the female body builder in the poster opposite. Her muscles flexed and started to expand, stretching the fabric on her T-shirt until it started to rip. After a few seconds, she was an inch taller and just as compact as the older woman.
When the scourge hit Las Vegas she had just lost her job working at ‘Cob’s cuisine’ and was spending some time in her shared apartment scouring the web looking for something else. The restaurant gig was just meant to be temporary, and she had already saved halfway to what she needed to go to her dream city, LA. She hated the scourge for that. Her dream ended the moment a state of emergency was declared on the west coast. Most were moving in the opposite direction. Away from the densely populated areas of California, but hardly any made it to the Midwest.
It was her roommate who turned first. A friendly girl who worked as a magician on the strip. She had been plying her trade to some tourists when one of them suddenly freaked out and attacked. She came home crying, with her sparkling outfit torn, covered in splatters of blood. This was before the word ‘scourge’ had even been mentioned on the mainstream media. She hated those news corporations almost as much as she hated the government. In her eyes, they were all to blame for what happened to ‘Lydia the Mysterious’ and then herself.
Lydia was on a diet of chicken soup and oranges from that day onwards. She mostly kept to her own room, only appearing during the night as the sun hurt her eyes. But still she seemed mostly the same to Kizzy. Happy, fun to be around. The same Lydia. Until she wasn’t.
Kizzy had awoken one night to a burning sensation in her ankle. Lydia informed her that she thought if she only bit her there it would be ‘okay.’
After a few hours of freaking out, Kizzy calmed. By the time the media started to report that people should ‘watch their relatives closely,’ especially if they start to show any strange behavior, Kizzy and her roommate had already come to an agreement; Lydia would only take a small amount of blood from her roommate each day.
Kizzy had no idea she herself was now infected. When she turned, she wasn�
��t so pleasant as her friend. When the initial bloodlust hit her, she was consumed by hunger. Her body also transformed as if it were a child’s toy to be contorted into impossible shapes.
Lydia tried to run. But even with her extra vamp agility, Kizzy caught and fed on her until Kizzy no longer had a roommate.
She looked into the shadows in the parking lot outside the bank Hawkins had chosen to stay in for the night and sighed. Her body slowly reverted to its normal five-foot seven, athletic build.
Hungry.
It had been over twenty-four hours since Hawkins opened the secure cold box in the back of the Humvee and allowed her to suck on the blood bag. She hated working for Copeland. He was obviously insane, but blood is blood, and considering how difficult it had become for her to find supplies she was willing to go along with his crazy plan to find a boy and a suitcase… oh and kill some guy called ‘Joel.’
She turned around, her head rotating like an owl’s until she was looking at the others sleeping in the chairs. She wondered if any of them were trustworthy. She looked at Amos.
Definitely not him.
How could you trust someone who could read your mind?
She then looked at the big guy. Since she first set eyes on him, he hadn’t said more than three words. And all of those contained one syllable.
She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that Dalton wanted out. She had no idea what his vamp ‘abilities’ were though. She guessed, as he stood at over six-foot four, he already had strength to spare, but she felt there was something else up with him. She had already learned that even though most people became dribbling, bloodlusting idiots when they turned, some, a rare few, became something else. Something not human, but not completely vamp as well.
She sat down on the wide chair, and tried to get comfy. Amos didn’t realize that she could have probably escaped at any point she wanted, but for now, she was along for the ride.
*****
A hand tugged at Joel's own, and his eyes flicked open into the gloom. The sun hadn't made an appearance yet. Donnie was standing over him in the sun room.
“What?” Joel whispered, trying not to wake the few others around him.
Donnie nodded towards the back door that was already open.
Joel sighed then yawned, got to his feet, and followed the young man out to the yard. He closed the door quietly behind him.
“Have you given it thought? You have to take me with you.”
Joel shook his head. He didn't need to be in the center of family drama, but the boy did have a point. Kirk had killed his daughter once she had turned.
Would Kirk really kill his remaining child? Even if he wasn’t human anymore?
It was a question Joel didn't fully have the answer for. He stood in the chill of the early morning, trying to push his mind to come up with a solution.
“How about this. I'll talk to Kirk, and ask him to let you come with us to the camp—”
Donnie’s eyes widened.
“—But, you have to agree to return…”
“What? No! I can’t come back!”
Joel moved closer. “Keep your voice down!”
Donnie frowned.
“We’ll say you can bring back supplies for the farm in exchange for what we take up there… If you don’t come back, that’s on you.”
Joel could tell Donnie’s excitement was tempered by indecision.
“Sure, yeah. Talk to him, convince him to let me go with you.”
“I can’t promise anything. He’s your father.”
“He’s crazy.”
Joel couldn’t help but be reminded of his state of mind, or lack of, when his own life spiraled out of control. He put his hand lightly on Donnie’s shoulder. “I’ve not known him long, but I can read people usually pretty well, and your father is a good guy. I’m not saying I agree with what he did to your sister. But you need to accept as well that she wasn’t coming back. Once she changed she wasn’t your sister anymore…”
“I… I dunno.”
“At some point you’re going to have to tell him what you are…”
“Not if I’m gone. Then I never have to.”
“Anyway, I need to get some more...”
He felt the rays of the sun before they arrived.
“Guess not then.”
Noises came from the kitchen. April was already up, cleaning some dishes and fixing breakfast.
“Get your stuff ready to leave for later today or tomorrow. Depends on how long it takes to get these crops in, but don’t let your father see what you’re doing until I’ve talked to him.”
Donnie nodded and walked back inside.
Joel slid his hand through his hair then followed him.
Shortly after he was sitting inside one of three harvesters that the Bradleys used to bring their crops in with.
The world’s ended. I’m a vampire hybrid and I’m harvesting wheat.
He started laughing, but stopped when he noticed, a mile in the distance beyond the bottom of the field he was in, a curtain drop back down from the bedroom window of the house.
Marina?
Even though he had not seen who was behind the shadows, he felt it was her. For the last few days he had been able to put his confession behind him. He was thankful for the Bradleys for that, but he also missed the woman he had grown close to. The one person who seemed to ‘get’ him. His friend.
Friend.
The term hadn’t felt right for a while. They were perhaps more. He wondered if there was any way back to what they were becoming…
He shook his head.
“Don’t be an idiot. You killed her husband. There’s no coming back from that.”
He turned on the harvester’s engine. Leaned out of the windows to make doubly sure there was no one around him then eased the huge machine forward.
CHAPTER SIX
Carla Antos sipped on a cool beer. Her boots rested on a small metal chair opposite her and she felt more relaxed than she had in a long time.
The door opened behind her. A woman peered in her direction.
“Another beer?”
Carla smiled but shook her head. “Just one when I’m on duty. Do you mind if you don’t let anyone else onto the balcony, I need to contact my home base in private.”
“Err… sure, I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.” The woman closed the door.
Carla took the cell phone from her pocket and sighed. She couldn’t put off talking to him anymore. She dialed the corporation’s number, and after dealing with an intermediary was put through to Copeland.
“I’m letting you know we have arrived at the Jackson camp. There’s a few thousand people here, more than we thought.”
She heard his gravelly breathing, and her mind started to believe she could smell his foul breath.
“And?”
“No signs of any other Alkron types. But we have only been here a day, we need more time.”
“Keep in mind the clock is ticking, Carla. Ticking on all human settlements.”
“I know…”
The line went silent. Her phone displayed the amount of time she had just spoken.
She looked out over the town square. One of a few which were ringed by shops and bars.
The central area which had been a park was now a shanty town full of tents and stalls. Unlike Haven, Jackson did not have a protective wall to keep the vamps out, but it didn’t need one. The natural barrier of mountains meant when the scourge did hit the winter resort the residents were able to control its spread. Carla had been told though that there were plans for a wall of some sort.
Shame they never will have a chance to build it.
She looked at the fires burning and the people huddled around them. A chill wind coming down from the peaks meant that fall was on its way, and it wouldn’t be more than a few months before the ground would be peppered with snow.
No time to see the snow again.
She shuddered and rubbed her arms.
At the back of her mind a tiny version of herself, her conscience, pleaded with her to change course. It tried convincing her that the camps that existed around the North American continent needed her help. That with her skills, and the people with her, maybe they could keep the vamps from overrunning the refuges of hope. But then she remembered the thousands of vamps that Copeland dredged up from just a few cities on his way to Haven and knew that out there in the dark were millions more. All waiting to be sent like drones to their human targets. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see a way of preventing that.
Unless I killed…
She stopped her brain from finishing the thought. She still wasn’t sure what his powers were. His child had tracked Joel from across the country. Who knows what his dad could do?
She didn’t want to find out. No, for now she would follow orders and that meant searching the camps for any other strange varieties of vamps.
“Blend in. Gain their trust. Find who they are and bring them back to me. If they refuse, kill them,” Copeland had said before he left her on the hill outside Haven.
An hour after he left she was looking down at the grave of her second-in-command. She thought he would have liked the spot she chose for him despite the smoldering buildings of the small dead town below.
The door opened again, it was the same woman as before.
“Have you finished your call?”
Carla nodded.
“Good. Mayor Groves is ready to announce your arrival at the town hall if you are ready to come?”
*****
Joel dragged the trailer full of wheat to the side of the barn and emptied it into the small mountain of others inside. The other buildings contained corn and beans.
He picked up the grunt from a man working in the next building and walked towards it.
Making sure he and Kirk were reasonably alone, he stepped inside.
Kirk dropped the large sack of corn. “Last one?”
Joel smiled. “I sure hope so!”