by Maxey, Phil
Nelson nodded. “Sure does. It’s not too wide though. We’re probably take some damage, so we won’t be getting back up when we land.”
“It’s going to have to do. Take us down. I’ll guide you in.”
Nelson extended the flaps, and throttled back a little.
“Slightly to the left… yup… that’s perfect, keep this heading.”
“How clear is it? Any vehicles?”
“Not that I can... Pull up!”
Nelson flicked his head towards him. “What? Why?”
Joel could see the ground was moving as if alive, and the lower they got the more clearly he could sense the thousands of vamps. “Pull up! We can’t land here!”
Nelson pulled back on the yoke, while pushing the throttle forward and they roared back into the sky. “What you see down there?”
Joel let out a breath. “Vamps…. thousands.” He looked at the fuel gauge, it was almost at the bottom of the red zone. “How much longer can we stay in the air?”
“We’re already flying on fumes. Five minutes max.”
Joel scoured the flat landscape below. The road continued, but he could still feel the masses below. Equally, the blood lusting things could hear and see the points of light sliding across the night sky and were drawn to it. Food used machines. A wave of vamps cascaded through the undergrowth following the plane.
Joel leaned forward. “Wait… there’s… a patch of land… it looks like a runway.”
“I was hoping we would see one sooner or—” One of the two engines to his left spluttered, then re-ignited, then coughed again, then cut out, the blades slowing.
Nelson pushed the yoke down. “Whatever is down there, we’re landing on it!”
The buzzing in Joel’s mind abated slightly, but was still there. “More to the left! More!.. That’s it. Put us down!”
An engine on the right died and they descended faster. Now even Nelson could see the dark forms of forests, roads and the rectangular shapes of small buildings, but more importantly he could see a clear strip between the trees. A runway. He flicked a switch on the control panel titled ‘landing gear’ and a motor below pulled open a hatch as the wheels lowered.
The dividing line between the lighter sky and black terrain could now be clearly seen and as the cockpit shook, both men held the yokes trying to keep the massive plane directed at the light patch of ground, stretching into the gloom.
Both remaining engines stalled then stopped and the sound of rushing wind was all that the night contained as they glided towards the ground.
“Get ready to pull back!” said Nelson. “We get one shot at this! Here we go!”
The ground rose up quicker and quicker. They both desperately pulled on the yoke.
“We’re coming in too steep!” shouted Nelson. “Keep… pull—”
The front of the plane tilted upwards but they slammed hard into the grass-covered surface, immediately bursting one of the tires, but they kept moving forward, the whole plane violently shaking.
Nelson pushed on the brakes while trying to steer but without engines they were just a heavy sled hoping not to run out of runway. Joel noticed the older man’s eyes were closed when suddenly the plane veered away from where the faded grass met the forest and they rapidly slowed, then stopped. Both men let out a breath.
Joel went to remark how impressed he was with what Nelson had just done when the buzzing surged back into his mind. “Open the ramp! We have to go! They’re coming!” He pulled off his headphones and safety harness.
Nelson flicked a switch above him, then did the same, following Joel descending to the cargo hold.
“Is everyone okay?” said Joel. They all acknowledged they were, but Copeland was pulling the five by five crate to the back of the plane. Joel ran forward. “You have to leave it!”
“No!” boomed the Drak pulling the huge box onto the downward slope. Outside was a sheer wall of darkness, but the hold filled with the fresh odor of earth and grass.
“Can’t you feel them?” Joel pointed off into the distance. “There are thousands of vamps coming this way. We can’t move with that thing! It’s too heavy!”
Copeland now had the crate, which was a struggle even for him at the bottom of the ramp, but it refused to be dragged across the uneven, overgrown runway. He heaved and roared pulling it a few more feet, then took to the air, his huge wings beating against it and the ground. His clawed hands gripped the straps but no matter how much he strained against the weight, it wouldn’t lift. He landed and let out a roar of frustration.
While the others grabbed what they could, Anna and Joel jogged down the ramp. “What’s inside it that you need?” said Anna.
For the first time since she had set eyes upon him, Copeland’s demonic looking eyes had a flash of humanity within them. He looked down, shaking his head. “I can’t leave his… things…”
“Whose things are—”
Joel put his hand on Anna’s shoulder. He knew what was inside. He looked at the box, then up at Copeland. “Is there something in here that belongs to Jasper that we can carry?”
Copeland nodded. “Yes… I think so.”
“Are we leaving?” said Corine standing with the others at the side of the plane, packs and rifles already across their backs.
Anna ran back up the slope. “I’ll get our things.”
As the constant drone inside Joel’s mind increased, with Copeland he tore the straps off the crate, then smashed the lock between them, and pulled the lid open. Inside, lit by the lights from the cargo hold was a young child’s life. Furniture, clothes, toys, large and small, books, and other boxes. One of which Copeland reached in and pulled out.
Anna ran back down the ramp handing one of the backpacks to Joel, along with a rifle which he put over his shoulder. He moved to the Drak. “Will that do? Because we need to go.”
“It will.” Copeland beat his bat-like wings and took to the sky, taking the new box with him, while the others ran into the forest.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Marina looked at the military hardware sliding by past the humvees window, as she made her way to Alfredo’s home. It had taken her and Evan some time to escape from the forgotten buried temple in the heart of the mountain and then even longer to trek down the side of the sharp, slippery slopes, eventually finding their way back to the tourist trail and then Alfredo and the team. At first the archeologists refused to believe what they had found, but from the descriptions both the hybrids had given, even they had to accept they had found the final tomb.
Once they made it back to the base, Alfredo and Sophia rushed off but not before he invited Marina for dinner, later that evening.
She had managed to find a dress belonging to someone a few sizes bigger in the apartment she was in, and Evan, Shannon and Sasha had agreed to look after the two children for a few hours.
As her vehicle moved through the newly created living quarters of the camp, they passed a small nighttime market full of candle and oil lit stalls of people selling food and survival equipment. She had seen human society try to restart a number of times and wondered if this was the last chance it would get.
The humvee pulled up, pausing for the gate to open, then continued up the driveway, past statues almost lost to an entanglement of weeds. As the road emerged from the forest the true magnificence of Alfredo’s home became apparent. A balance of blended historic themes, from Greco-Roman pillars, gothic walls and windows to an overall colonel structure with hints of mesoamerican styling.
The ground-floor windows were brightly lit, including the area above a grand arched entrance. Its splendor made her gulp, feeling underdressed despite it being the first time in almost a year she had worn anything other than pants, a sports bra and any warm top she could find.
The driver opened the rear door and she stepped out, just as one half of the wooden entrance swung back and the archeologist, looking a lot tidier than earlier, stood in the doorway with a big grin. She walked forward over well wor
n-slabs of stone and they met halfway to the house.
“I wasn’t sure you would come.”
“I… wasn’t going to miss the chance of a cooked meal.”
He smiled. “You look—”
Now it was her turn to smile. “Different?”
“I was going to say lovely… But yes, different as well!” He turned and they both walked inside.
An entrance lobby larger than most houses she had lived in greeted her. Floor tiles with mosaics, covered by ornate rugs sat beneath pillars, with various glass cabinets in-between filled with an assortment of items she had only seen in museums. A central path led to a grand staircase, ascending past old paintings and photos. The scene almost made her miss another presence standing off to her left.
An old lady wearing a black and white uniform stepped forward from the shadows.
“Ah, this is Zelma who does all the cooking, and various other duties around the house.”
“Oh, Zelma, yes… I thought…”
The stern-looking woman briefly raised her eye-brows. “Dinner will be soon, what would like you like to drink?”
It was a question so formal that it almost made her chuckle with the absurdity of it. “Umm…” In a different life she used to like white wine. “White—”
“Wine?”
“Yes, if you have any?”
“Of course we do. Dinner with be in thirty minutes.” Zelma then turned and moved through one of several doors.
“This is a large place for one housekeeper,” said Marina quickly moving on from her obvious surprise at ‘Zelma’ not being Alfredo’s wife.
“It is. I have tried over the years to bring others in to help, but she won’t hear of it. This place is as much her home as it’s mine.” He noticed Marina standing near one of the display cases. “That’s a Kabuto Samurai helmet from the mid-sixteenth century, I picked that up on my travels through Japan.”
She marveled at the black and gold metal work and layers of leather. “It’s beautiful.” She looked at the seven other cases, each one seemingly holding a priceless object. “You have traveled widely…” A whisper of embarrassment moved across her face. “I did some tours with the army across the Middle East, but apart from that I haven’t been anywhere.”
“I was lucky that my job took me far and wide, allowing me to create this—”
She stood near the last case, the item inside it pinging a recent memory. “This looks a lot like—”
“The tablets we have back at the lab. Yes, that’s a Sumerian clay tablet. Not like the ones we have, obviously, because that really is just clay. Perhaps that and those similar were the Sumerian’s attempt at creating sometime similar to the technology that was dug up by Copeland.” He stood near Marina looking at the etchings made many thousands of years ago. “The humans of that time were brave and ambitious. Unfortunately, much of the breakthroughs they made were lost during the centuries following…” He sighed. “Eventually society caught up.”
Marina caught site of the rendered images on the wall at the back of the wide curved staircase. A large oil painting of a beautiful raven haired woman held pride of place.
He walked towards it. “That is Leola Cruz. The Cruz’s owned this house a long time ago. Some of these paintings came with it. It felt strange to remove them…”
Marina went to walk closer to them but he walked away and towards where Zelma had gone minutes before. “I can smell diner, perhaps we should move to the dining room.”
*****
Joel stopped on the road, putting his hand to his head. The others continued for a few steps then realized he wasn’t with them. They were surrounded by a rich dense wall of forest, which even their flashlights did little to penetrate.
“You okay?” said Anna.
He looked back along the miles of concrete they had just trekked along, and then up to the sky. The shadow appeared above, and then the gust of wind confirmed his suspicions.
Copeland landed, then placed the foot long box on the ground and kneeled next to it, taking deep breaths. “They are not following you any…. more… But I am not able to fly for some time.”
“Umm… thanks,” said Corine.
Joel nodded to him. “Did you see any villages or vehicles around here that we can use?”
“There is a bridge, then some buildings just beyond. Maybe five miles or so.”
Corine and Barry almost groaned in unison.
“That’s not far,” said Joe to them. “We should be there in around an hour. Lets keep going.”
“What if the vamps pick up our scent again?” said Corine.
He walked past her to the front. “We better hope they don’t.”
As they trekked forward Kizzy looked at the young man in front of her trying to judge whether his abilities had come back to him. She wanted to know if the freedom she had been enjoying within her own mind had come to an end, but couldn’t bring herself to ask. She wanted him to be back to his old self and did not, at the same time. But if he could read minds again, he would know how she felt. She sighed and kept on walking.
The river crossing came sooner than they thought. They stood at where the bridge began, their cones of light only pushing the shadows away by ten feet or so. Lost in the gloom below came the sound of rushing water. In silence they pushed on, each individual exhausted and focused on finding shelter.
“Stop!” shouted Joel to Corine and Nelson ahead of him.
Nelson’s flashlight turned to him. “Vamps?”
Joel nodded beyond them. “No, look…” Nelson did, his beam revealing a gaping hole where one of the two lanes used to be.
“Shit, I was too busy thinking about resting my legs.”
Joel walked to the edge of broken concrete and steel and shone his own light down tens of feet to the tumbling waters. Amongst the stones and rocks were smudges of bodies.
“Vamps,” said Nelson observing the same pit of death.
The group pushed on and it wasn’t long before rectangular shapes appeared amongst the dark forest canopy around them.
Nelson’s flashlight illuminated a turnoff which ended at a gate, and a mailbox on a small post. “There’s a house here!” he shouted back to the others. With a thought he broke the chain and pushed the flimsy wooden beams, edging back the gate and directed his light up a short drive to a single-story cream colored house. Its small garden was bursting with large-leafed plants with rotting fruit below. The six of them walked around the side past boarded up windows until stopping at the entrance.
‘VAMPS INSIDE’ was painted in white across the red door, which had a length of chain across it.
Joel listened against the wood. “Not sensing anything.” He turned to the others. “Be ready in case.” They raised their weapons and he snapped the rusting links and leaned on the wood breaking it open. Old decay drafted out, making some cover their mouths and nose, but he walked inside to a small hallway and followed the stench until he found the source. Things with skin stretched over bones lay across the tiled floor of a kitchen, one on top of another, their heads reduced to skulls with hardly any recognizable features.
Anna stood by his side. “They starved to death…”
“Ugh!” said Corine behind her. “That’s what happens if we don’t get blood?”
“Yes. I saw it happen once before, in the town I used to live in. It’s agony for them. The scourge infected cells look for blood within the body, eating the person from the inside out. Eventually the heart—”
The topmost beings hand twitched making them flinch and Corine yelp.
“It’s not—” A pop echoed around the walls before she could finish.
“It is now,” said Joel.
The sound of an engine broke the ringing in their ears, and Joel quickly moved outside, then to a garage where Dalton, Nelson and Barry were standing alongside a few decades old, pickup. The taller of the small group switched off the ignition. “Had to hotwire it. Got maybe ten miles of gas left. What was the gunshot about?
”
“Just a vamp.” He looked around the others. “Get your things in the truck, we’re leaving.”
“I’m tired,” said Barry.
Joel smiled. “I’ll make sure you get a comfy spot.”
The boy sleepily nodded.
After driving for a short while they found a car to siphon fuel from and kept on moving east. As the twin beams lit dusty roads, Anna in the passenger’s seat thought about what life on the island was like for those already there, and how an influx of ‘otherhumans’ would be a welcome addition or not.
“Can we live alongside humans…” It was a question whispered to her reflection but Joel who was driving, answered anyway.
“We have before. We just have to make ourselves useful, and hopefully in return we get blood…”
“But it never works… Something always pulls things apart.”
“It has to work,” said Corine seated behind Joel. Barry shifted a little in his awkward sleeping position by her side, while Amos continued to stare out of the window on her left. “I’m the last one left of my family. I didn’t ask to be… different. To want blood, to not be human. But that’s what I am.”
“Nelson told me his ability came in useful in the small town he was from. I’m sure it will be the same for you.” Joel smiled at the young woman in the back seat in the rear mirror, but she looked away. He looked back to the road. “But first we have to get there.”
“How you know where we’re going anyway? I ain’t seen you look at a compass or anything?”
Anna smiled. She already knew the answer for she could also tell which direction they were heading.
“I can feel the star…” said Joel.
“What… like the sun?”
“Yeah, even when it’s dark. I know roughly where it is, and from that can work out what’s east or west. Right now we’re heading towards where it’s going to come up. The east and hopefully the coast.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“And then the Bedouin tells me they only have camels! After we had paid them a thousand dollars for transport!” Alfredo laughed and Marina joined him. “Trust me, you do not want to travel across a desert on top of an angry camel!”