by Maxey, Phil
Joel moved to the basin and turned on the tap. A steady flow of water appeared and he splashed it across his face and looked up. His appearance made him judder. The left side of his face was covered in a series of reddish brown groves and ridges, while a patch of hair was completely missing from the same side on his scalp. He slowly traced his fingers over the scarred tissue. Whatever they did to him, his hybrid abilities were not strong enough to fully repair it. But that was okay, there needed to be some kind of permanent record of the damage he had done. Of the people he, Joel had gotten killed.
From the moment he became conscious on the cold concrete surrounded by the corporation’s forces, guilt had been a constant companion. He led everyone right into the lion’s open jaws. And now some were dead or probably wished they were.
Wasn’t thinking straight… needed to save Anna…
He turned away from the mirror and leaned back against the counter.
Have to save them…
Would Galloway care? Whether Jankle stood or fell, he doubted she would give him any people from what was left of the battle to go on another rescue attempt, especially how the last one finished.
Corine…
The young woman who escaped the ‘blood farm’ was the most powerful Alkron he had seen, and he had to have seen, to have believed. Anna had no explanation for how it was possible. ‘Beyond any science she knew of,’ was what she had said to him. But more important than how her ability worked was how much she hated the corporation. Her entire family had been taken from her. Used and disposed of for the pleasure of hybrids and other Alkrons.
When he first learned what Corine had told Anna he was shocked, but the surprise only lasted seconds. Of course the corporation would industrialize the harvesting of blood. Humans were the new cattle to be farmed. The human thinking section of his brain thought the idea disgusting, but couldn’t completely quieten the vamp part, which contained a tinge of excitement of the idea of rivers of blood.
He heard the boots before the door swung open.
“Oh…” said Corine. She went to turn around.
“No, it’s fine. I just needed to freshen up. A splash of cold water always gets rid of the cobwebs.”
She smiled awkwardly.
“Umm… I know I did this earlier, when my brain was mush, but thank you for what you did. You didn’t need to intervene, and… that was some intervention. You saved Anna and myself. And Dalton by the sounds of it.”
“Dalton?”
“The wolf guy.”
“Okay… So you feeling better now? You going back to that town?”
Joel let out a slow breath. “Anna told you that it was going to be attacked?” Corine nodded. “I don’t know if there’s anything left of it. They might have all been evacuated and be on a ship by now… that’s if they made it…”
“But the town might still be there?”
Joel could see where the line of questioning was heading. “You want to go to Jankle?”
“Well… yeah. Where else can I go? It seems the corporation is everywhere.”
“Okay. Well from where we are, it’s maybe three hours’ drive. When do you want to leave?”
“Now.”
*****
The SUV bumped up and down, its headlights giving glimpses of trees bordering a narrow country road.
“Are you sure there’s no better route?” said Shirl driving.
“Not if we don’t want to be spotted by the corporation,” said Joel seated behind her.
They had been on similar roads for almost three hours, crossing from Mississippi to Alabama and apart from the occasional wandering vamp, which they quickly left behind hadn’t seen any sign of the corporation. Conversation was at a minimum with Joel and Anna giving the two in the front seats a highlighted version of the past several weeks. Corine and Shirl gave scant information in reply but kept exchanging looks.
Joel picked up the tepid odor of smoke in the air before all of them saw a faint orange glow beyond the distant tops of trees.
“Looks like fires…” said Shirl.
The others remained silent. For Joel and Anna it was a sign that extinguished any hope they had that somehow the town survived what the kings had thrown at it, but for Corine it dug deeper. She needed to find somewhere, anywhere that hadn’t already succumb to the corporation. She needed to know the good guys could stand up and fight back. That hope now was threatening to become despair.
She looked out of her passenger’s window at the landscape they were moving through. “What… what happened to the trees?”
Joel and Anna had both noticed the flattening of the forests, the broken branches and splintered trunks but kept it to themselves.
“Vamps…” said Joel.
“Oh… that must have been a lot of them…”
“Yup.”
As they drew closer to the town the landscape became even more deconstructed, with piles of rubble indicating buildings. The mangled and twisted metal wrecks out front explained what the ruins behind them used to be.
“These were homes…” said Corine.
“They were probably empty before the vamps came through here…” It was the best solace Joel could offer the young woman, who was seeing the result of what a horde could do for the first time. “Everyone watch the shadows and dark places carefully, the vamps might still be out there.”
The stench of smoldering remains was now so intense that everyone kept their windows closed, but some inside the vehicle were already starting to cough.
Orange sources of spluttering light were now visible at different spots ahead of them.
Shirl slammed on the breaks at a junction, where their small road joined a much larger four-lane freeway. Masses of bodies lay in front of them, stretching the entire length of the road the headlights illuminated.
“Is that…”
Joel answered Corine’s question. “Vamps. At least that’s what my nose is telling me. You can’t smell them?”
“No, all I smell is burned stuff.”
“Looks like some kind of barrier or something up ahead…” said Shirl.
“That was one of the entrances to the town.”
“Well unless you know of another way in, I don’t fancy driving over all these biters and getting stuck in the middle of them.”
Joel looked at Anna, both thinking the same. They didn’t need to go any further. The town was dead.
Corine looked to those in the rear seats. “So what do we do? Are there other free camps?”
“There were a few weeks back,” said Joel. “But I don’t know if they haven’t been overrun like Jankle.”
The young woman raised her hands. “Well… Where should we go?”
Anna looked at Joel. “We could try getting to the coast. Its only a few hours from here.”
He shook his head. “They would have left by now.”
“Where are they going?” said Corine. “Maybe we can find a boat, and...” She stopped on seeing Joel’s reaction.
“Too far.”
“Then what then!” A creak came from the metal roof above them. Shirl frowned at her, but her anxiety continued. “I just want to know how we’re going to survive! I’m not going back to one of those blood farms!”
“And you think I want to?” said Shirl.
As the old and young woman argued, Joel looked out at the mounds of corpses. Some no doubt soldiers who defended the town, and he tried to resist an emptiness opening up within him.
What now.
“Umm… head north,” said Anna.
Corine and Shirl stopped arguing, both looking over their shoulders to the doctor. Joel joined them.
“North? Why north?” said Shirl.
“That’s where one of the camps is, that we knew about before.”
Joel racked his brain to think of what Anna was referring too but came up blank. It didn’t matter. She had stopped the bickering and it was more than what he had to offer.
Shirl looked in the rear mir
ror to Joel. “You still want us to stay off the main road?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Fine. Then we gotta go back the way we came.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Carla sat up in her rack. Her watch said it was close to midnight, but her brain wasn’t letting go, constantly replaying the moment she saw her dead friend in the warehouse. She knew she was suffering from PTSD but that didn’t mean she had any control over what her mind was doing.
Need air.
She swung her legs around, her boots hitting the deck. Then stood and made her way past other racks full of soldiers, opened the door and made her upwards, until finally she was outside on the main deck. Shipping containers blocked any sight of the bow, so she made her way along the back of them until reaching the port side of the ship, and allowed the night air and the occasional spray from a large wave to make her feel something. It was only physical but it would have to do. Ever since she had made her way out of the textile factory and back through the town’s wall, avoiding the fires, vamps and collapsing buildings, a part of her had shut down. She figured it was the part of her that cared… about anything. As the town literally burned around her, she had one and only one final wish, to be incinerated with it. There was no stopping the corporation, the kings or whatever came next from swallowing the entire world.
The scourge had won.
She had sat in the center of the town square, at the base of the statue, paint on cars blistering, glass windows shattering around her due to the heat, then remembered something. Tyror… the young misfit of an ancient king could still be breathing, if his older brothers hadn’t got to him yet.
Turned out they hadn’t.
She didn’t remember much of what happened after she pulled open his cell door, other than being surprised at how bad he looked. That was something of a disappointment, but it was short lived because he still put up a fight to live. He was a hybrid after all.
Sixty seconds or about is all it took to reduce a king to a stain on the wall. And then she was done. She slid downwards, her legs being of no use to her and waited for the inferno to make its way to the basement.
The general beat it.
Galloway was shocked, even angry at what had happened, but then explained the plan to leave for the island. She even told Clara what they hoped still existed deep within the cave system there. That on the island there might be something which offered a way to stop the scourge once and for all.
A fourth asshole… king.
A sudden sigh almost made Carla jump. She turned around. Marina was leaned up against the guardrail a few feet behind her. She never even knew she was there.
“Can’t sleep too?” said the hybrid woman.
“No…” She returned to the nighttime sparkles across the ocean. “Sorry about Mary. She seemed a good woman.”
“She was.”
“How did, umm, Jess and Jasper take it.”
“Took an hour to get Jess to stop crying and fall asleep. Jasper… I don’t know. He stayed silent… but I think he’s—” A brief choking sound came from Marina, which quickly became sobbing, her body shaking. She covered her face with her hands. Carla, momentarily unsure of how to react, moved forward and put her arm around the grieving woman.
*****
Shirl turned the steering wheel suddenly, causing most in the SUV to slide in the opposite direction.
“Hey, what’s happening,” said Corine. Sleep heavy in her eyes.
The vehicle drove from the four-lane road and into the parking lot of a group of stores, coming to a stop alongside three other cars. Shirl switched the cabin light on and looked around those looking back at her. “It’s 2 a.m. And I’m not one of you vamp types. I need sleep! No one’s going to know this SUV is any different from the ones next to it. I’m going to head into that dollar store, find some food, then find somewhere to sleep for some hours. Do not wake me until the sun comes up!”
Joel and Anna were smiling, but Corine did not seem amused.
“There could be vamps around here!”
Shirl pushed open the door. “That’s for you and your friends to take care of.” The door slammed closed.
“I guess we’re staying here till the morning then,” said Corine. She shook her head, then got out, closing the door behind and ran after the old woman heading to the set of smashed double doors.
It was the first time Joel and Anna had been alone since the fast food restaurant.
He looked at her. “Why North?”
“At the time I just needed us to leave that place. North was as good a direction as any other.”
He nodded.
“But over the past four hours I’ve had time to think. We can’t rescue the others until we know where they are, right?”
“Correct.”
“So we need someone from the corporation to tell us.”
“That’s—”
“And a place we know, where there are a lot of corporation is the town you took Tyror from, which is—”
“North.”
“Yup.”
She went to talk again, but he had already moved close enough to feel her breath on his face and kissed her, gently at first, then with passion. As heart rates increased and clothes become unnecessary, Anna pushed him back down, causing him to hit his head.
“Oww,” he cried out, rubbing the back of it then started laughing. Anna joined him, both not hearing Corine returning from the store. She knocked on the window, causing clothes to quickly cover parts of their anatomies.
Anna slid the window down. “Err… yes?”
Corine frowned. “There’s a pharmacy on the other side of the block. Looks fully stocked… anyway seeing you a doctor, I thought you would want to know.”
“Yes…”
Joel tried his best to stifle his laugh.
Corine rolled her eyes. “Tomorrow. ‘North’, ain’t going to cut it. I need to know a plan. Got that?” She looked at both of them. Joel nodded. “Good.” She turned and disappeared back into the store.
They both sat back, the interruption suddenly making their previous behavior seem even more inappropriate.
“If we’re going back to that town… we’re going to need her,” said Anna.
Joel leaned in again. “I’ll tell her in the morning.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Joel looked down at Anna’s head on his chest. A blanket they found in the trunk covered most of them. Their moment of passion had been intense, and despite not completely removing his memory of the day before, was something they both needed. Something human. He put pressure on the door latch behind him and pushed the door open, then slid backwards, taking his clothes with him and trying to stop the woman on top from waking, but just as he had one leg out of the door, her eyes flicked open.
“Is there danger? Are there vamps?”
“No, it’s fine. Rest more. I just need the restroom.”
She smiled and closed her eyes.
He gently closed the door, then clothed, finally putting his boots back on. He listened into the night, which was completely lacking in sound. A silence which made the other convenience stores and restaurants appear fake. As if behind their glass fronts was empty space. The world had become a movie back lot, and he and everyone else were just actors playing out roles to the story’s end.
He looked back through the window at the shadowy curves of a woman in the backseat and smiled.
She’s real.
He wasn’t sure what had come over him hours before. Why he felt the need to be with her. It was the first time he had felt anything remotely like that since the start. Those kinds of feelings he thought had been put on permanent hold. Locked away never to be seen again. But being alone with Anna in that moment, he wanted her more than he had wanted anything in his life.
Now you can have a vamp marriage.
He briefly let out a laugh, then sighed as more serious thoughts returned.
Need to convince the kid.
He g
uessed Corine was early twenties. But had an innocence which could have only come from being from a good family. Her bravado was an attempt to hide that, but to anyone who bothered paying attention, it was obvious she was terrified.
Need to get her to trust me.
He looked at the store, then to the similar places either side of it, but was unable to get a read on where she was.
He walked to the entrance, crunching the glass remains of the doors beneath his boots, and peered inside an icebox which was empty. Moonlight pushed the shadows back from the inside, near the front, where most of the shelves were empty, but the occasional item still lived on the rest of them. He walked into the gloom being able to see adequately and spotted a door to the back. Pushing it slowly open he walked into the narrow corridor, then stopped. The sound of drips told him the door nearby was where he needed to go. He moved into the restroom, wishing there was even the slightest of light sources to enable him to see, removed some of his clothes, then fumbled for the faucet. Quickly washing, he used his clothes to dry, then put them back on and walked back into the corridor.
A distant noise came from somewhere to his left. Maybe a vamp had picked up on their scent and wondered towards them from afar.
He walked to the end and listened beyond the door, but only received silence. He went to walk away when the noise happened again, but this time it definitely sounded like crying. He pulled the door open to another part of the lot.
Sniffling with mumbled words was coming from inside the pharmacy to his left. He crept forward and immediately saw Corine beyond the large glass windows. A flashlight was on a nearby shelf, illuminating a display stand of some kind in front of her. She hadn’t seen him being more interested in what was in her hands.
He thought about backtracking, but then her head whipped around, her red eyes just visible. She wiped her face and placed a card back on the stand.