Dead by Dawn Page 23

  “A little warning might have been nice,” Matt complained.

  “Are we stuck?” asked Chip. He had his arms around Sherry to shield her from the mud. Her head was tucked against his chest.

  Keith jumped out of the passenger side and walked around. His boots sank deep as he went.

  He whistled. “This is not good.”

  Joe stepped out to get a better look. At least the frame hadn’t bottomed out, that had to count for something.

  Adam and Sarah were off the bike and walking over.

  “That was a pretty good rooster tail,” said Adam. “We got hit with mud way back there.”

  Joe glanced up at the horizon; the sun was making its final dip.

  “I need you to drive,” he said, nodding towards Sarah. “Move the wheels to the left and right for more traction, but keep the truck pointed for the shoulder.”

  “I can do that.”

  “The rest of us are going to push. Come on, let’s go, we don’t have much time.”

  Sarah ran up to the cab and hopped in, slamming the door behind her. Everyone else formed up at the tailgate. Even Lindsay came up and placed her shaky hands against the truck. Joe was glad to see the girl trying to help, maybe there was hope for her yet.

  Adam took a step to his right to make more room for her. “Let’s see what you got.”

  “I only way a hundred and ten pounds,” said Lindsay. Her voice was weak, like somebody who is sick.

  “You’re already making excuses?”

  Joe slammed his shoulder into the tailgate. “Go!”

  The truck roared and they were hit with a mixture of mud and exhaust. Joe pushed, feeling everyone crowd around him.

  The truck didn’t move, at least not at first. It took over ten seconds before they gained any ground at all.

  They moved an inch, and then two; it was almost unnoticeable, but it was there.

  Inch by inch they pushed, fighting against the mud that was spraying them.

  At one point Sherry slipped and fell. Joe worried she might hit the wheel. Chip grabbed her before she could.

  When the right front tire finally reached the shoulder the truck lurched forward. Sarah went a good four or five feet before hitting the brakes, meanwhile everyone but Joe and Keith fell forward.

  “Everybody in, let’s go,” yelled Joe running up to the driver’s side door.

  Sarah hopped out and he took her seat. It wasn’t long before everyone was back in their places and they were moving again.

  Joe continued driving even though Adam and Sarah had to stay back and walk the motorcycle through the mud. His calculation paid off and they caught back up a minute later.

  At the other end of the road was a town. Soon, the fields on either side gave way to houses and small businesses. They passed a large church with a towering steeple on their right.

  The malevolent clutch of twilight was falling over the land. The vast majority of the sky was still blue, but the shadows were growing long. The temperature was also beginning to drop. Joe’s truck said it was in the lower eighties.

  Joe eyed the houses as they passed, wondering how long they would last if they had to stay in one.

  Is it really true that vampires can’t cross a threshold unless they’ve first been invited in? That’s how they’ve acted so far. In that case how many of these houses have they already been welcomed into? Hell, how many of these houses don’t already have vampires living in their basements?

  In the end it wouldn’t matter. The time for decision making had passed; the vampires would be waking up soon.

  Joe was beginning to think they should have stayed back at the school.

  “There!” Keith yelled, pointing out his window.

  Joe turned to see two long buildings lined up perpendicular to each other. Both buildings were covered in rows of ten-foot wide metal doors. The doors were all painted orange and designed to slide up and down.

  It was a storage unit facility.

  “I think that’s the best we’re going to get Joe,” Keith went on.

  “Unfortunately I think you’re right.”

  Joe whipped into the lot and parked in front of the main office.

  Keith jumped out and didn’t even try the front door. Instead he pulled out his pistol and fired through the glass.

  Joe watched him through the front window. He went straight for a lock box behind the front desk and fired another shot. A few seconds later, he came out with a ring of keys. He handed them off to Joe.

  They worked fast, not knowing when the vampires would come out. As far as they knew, the vampires could have been awake already.

  Each key was numbered. Joe began jogging for the storage units.

  “Let’s go let’s go,” he shouted behind at the others.

  He chose a storage unit in the middle and began thumbing through the keys. 12B was the key that matched. He stuck it in the lock and twisted, then heaved the door up.

  The storage unit was pretty big. It went fifteen feet back and was ten feet wide.

  It looked as though somebody had placed their entire living room inside. There was a large, gray wrap around couch, a loveseat, and a recliner. Three lamps were lined up near the door and a coffee table was to the right. There was a carpet rolled up against the wall, leaning against the box of a 40” flat screen TV.

  Joe ushered the group in, waiting until the last one, Matt, passed before closing the door. The glow of twilight disappeared with the door and they were wrapped in darkness.

  Joe took a step and knocked over a lamp. He heard the bulb pop against the floor.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Keith.

  A few seconds later two lights turned on. At their source the lights were bright, but faded as they went out. As a result, the room was still full of shadow. It was hard to make out faces.

  The lights were coming from both Adam and Sarah’s phones.

  “I don’t know how long my battery’s going to last,” said Adam. “I only have ten percent.”

  “I have thirty,” said Sarah. “But it drains really fast when I use the flashlight.”

  “That’s alright,” said Keith. “We’ll figure out how we’re going to sleep then shut them off.”

  Matt stepped forward; his eyes were two black holes in the limited light. “Hang on a second, we can’t lock ourselves in here and then shut the lights off, I’ll go insane.”

  “Even if the batteries could last we can’t risk the light being seen from outside,” said Joe.

  “Let’s just try and get some rest,” said Chip. “Sleeping in the dark will be a lot better than under a bright light, don’t you think?”

  “Yea, I don’t think I want to go back to that,” said Matt.

  “The women get to sleep on the couches right?” asked Sherry.

  Joe shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Shotgun the recliner,” said Keith.

  Sherry and Chip began moving for a couch, Keith for the recliner.

  “If you want you could sleep with me on one of the couches,” Sarah whispered.

  “Thanks,” came Adam’s reply.

  The next voice to come out of the shadows was Matt’s, “What do you say Lindsay, you beautiful rose. You wouldn’t make a guy like me sleep on the hard floor all night would you?”

  “You can sleep on the couch if you want, I don’t really care,” said Lindsay.

  This meant Joe was the only person sleeping on the ground. As the others all took their places on the couches he rolled out the carpet.

  He had just lain down when Sarah and Adam tossed a few pillows off their couch. Along with the pillows they also threw a small blanket. Joe was thankful to have them.

  It wasn’t ideal, but with the new accommodations he thought he might actually get some sleep.

  “Ready?” Asked Adam. A few seconds later both his and Sarah’s lights went out.

  Joe embraced the darkness as he tried to sleep. It didn’t help; even on the carpet the ground was unforgiving.
>
  “See you guys in the morning,” said Adam. He was the last one to talk as they all settled in.

  It couldn’t have been long, maybe ten minutes, when one of the couches squeaked against the cement. This was followed by the sound Lindsay moaning.

  Joe couldn’t believe it, the disrespectful son of a bitches were banging. Did they not care that they were in a crowded room full of people? That everyone else has to listen to them?

  They were only growing louder too. Joe did his best to roll over and ignore them. He heard suppressed laughter as well. Was that Adam and Sarah? At least they were getting a kick out of it. He doubted anyone else was.

  He knew he would put an end to it if he thought the vampires could hear. For now they at least pretended to be quite, so he wouldn’t interfere.

  Eventually the night rolled on and the storage container fell silent again. In the calm of the night everyone was able to fall asleep. Even Joe, with the hard cement floor pushing against his body.

  Sometime hours later into the night, she made her move. She must have been lying there biding her time while she waited to condemn them.

  Lindsay snaked her way out from under Matt and slipped over the edge of the couch. She tiptoed through the room, careful to avoid bumping Joe.

  She bent down when she reached the door, getting a firm grip at the bottom.

  On her first pull the door stayed in its place, refusing to budge. Lindsay took a step closer to the middle and tried there.

  The room came alive with noise as the metal door clanged its way up into the ceiling.

  Light from the full moon fell upon Lindsay as she stood up.

  A soft breeze blew in from outside. They were fully exposed to the world.

  She began to yell, “Vampires I welcome yo-“

  Her words were cut short in a gasping squelch as Joe kicked her in the back.

  Lindsay took one desperate step out into the night before face planting into the pavement. When she turned back, blood was pouring from her nose.

  Joe stood in the doorway, a murderous glare on his face. Both of his hands were above his head, gripping the door.

  “Please,” Lindsay cried. “I need help.”

  Joe slammed the door closed.

  Chapter 34

  Darkwood military base, WA - July 26

  Dr. Bennet stared down at his tray of food in deep thought. It was a plastic tray, painted red with different sections to separate the food. One of the sections was filled with canned corn, another with chocolate pudding. The largest section had two pieces of flat ham lying on top of one another. All of it looked bland under the fluorescent lighting inside the cafeteria.

  Dr. Bennet took one bite of the corn, then set his spoon down and pushed the plate away.

  He didn’t eat much lately and didn’t know who would under the circumstances. His life now turned on endless hours of work and bad news.

  So far the war against vampires was in a ceaseless tailspin that nobody could get a grip on. Every battle plan had failed, everyone. The mass evacuation had caused an unimaginable amount of chaos. On top of that, the vampires were showing a unique and impressive ability to get inside and break down the safe houses. The body count was rising to staggering numbers.

  Dr. Bennet closed his eyes and once again saw the map imprinted in his mind. Someone in his staff had brought it to his attention only fifteen minutes earlier. They displayed it on the computer in his lab.

  It was a map of North America with a red line drawn down the middle. The line stretched from Saskatchewan Canada, down through North Dakota, all the way into Mexico, catching the panhandle of Oklahoma and cutting Texas in half along the way.

  The map was a rough estimate of where the vampire front line was, and it was four days old. Dr. Bennet was afraid to imagine how much farther the line had gone in the days since. The thought put a knot in his stomach.

  In the same instant he was shown the map, he was also presented with another horrifying picture. This one was of the world.

  The map’s key said it went from green, through yellow and red, after that the red grew darker until it reached black. The darker the country was shaded, the higher the percentage of vampires that had overrun it. What Dr. Bennet didn’t see was any green at all. New Zealand and Iceland were yellow, but that was it. The rest of the countries were varying shades of light and dark reds.

  As a whole, most of the countries in Africa and South America tended to be a darker shade of red. Asia and North America took on a raspberry hue while Europe and Australia were maroon.

  Brazil, Finland, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Malaysia, and Iran were all completely black, meaning communications from these countries had ceased.

  Dr. Bennet hated the fact that this picture was also four days old. He couldn’t expect anything more up to date however because the internet had crashed. Those two maps were some of the last things to ever be posted. The military still had a rudimentary internet up and running, but that was nothing like the internet he knew and loved. What they were calling the internet was some awful nightmare that belonged in the late eighties.

  Dr. Bennet was finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that everything he had ever known or loved was slowly eroding right before his eyes.

  What I wouldn’t give to go back one month, he thought. We’re living in the worst time in history I can think of. Everything is coming to an end. We’re all going to be dead in a few days, a week tops. I think I would give anything, if only to save the human race from extinction.

  Someone sat across from him at the table, pulling Dr. Bennet out of his reverie.

  It was one of his staff members, though he didn’t know the man personally. Dr. Bennet’s staff had grown substantially since he first started working with the vampire. He now had an assortment of scientists from almost every field. He believed the number was somewhere around three hundred people. They filled labs all across the army base.

  They worked in teams, only contacting Dr. Bennet when he requested, or when they made a discovery that was deemed worthy of his attention.

  They were allowed to experiment directly on the vampire only when they wouldn’t be in Dr. Bennet’s way. Usually this was in the early hours of the morning when he was sleeping.

  The nametag on the man sitting across from him was Ben Underwood. He was a fiery-haired fellow who looked fresh out of college. His face was covered in acne scars, but other than that, he was somewhat attractive. Even sitting he was a half a head’s length taller than Dr. Bennet.

  “Excuse me Dr.,” he said. “Might I borrow a moment of your time?”

  “I have a few minutes before I have to get back to the lab, what do you need?”

  Ben pulled a notepad from his lap and set it on the table. “I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m one of four virologists working in building three, near the front of the base.” He paused and Dr. Bennet assumed he was waiting for a confirmation.

  Dr. Bennet nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ve been working hard to discover how the Esuriensanguis Nocturnus virus functions.”

  “Haven’t we all?” asked Dr. Bennet.

  “Yes well I believe my team has developed a deeper understanding and I would like to share it with you. I thought it might help with your research.”

  Dr. Bennet sighed. At that moment he felt very old and tired. “Alright, share this deeper understanding with me.”

  Ben Underwood flipped open his notepad and read for a moment before looking back up and talking. “Okay um, my team and I have been studying more than just the vampire specimen in the lab. We’ve spent a good deal of time going over hospital reports of early patients with the virus. We’ve even recently been granted our own specimen, a bitten soldier, to study.”

  “You’ve what?” Dr. Bennet sat up straight.

  “We were granted our own specimen. Watching the transformation first hand has been invaluable.”

  “I never okayed that.”

  Ben glanced around,
looking unsure of how to respond. He looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “We filed a request as part of your team. No one gave us any trouble over it.”

  Dr. Bennet rubbed his hand against his forehead then sighed. He felt slightly betrayed that people on his team were going over his head. But what did he expect, times were getting desperate and it wasn’t about him. He found it disturbing that they were treating a human being like a lab rat. Sure he had a live vampire locked in his lab, but that was different.

  “Alright, what did you discover?”

  “We watched the virus taking over the body firsthand,” said Ben. “It was incredible. The specimen was only recently bitten, so we were able to observe the entire process almost completely from the beginning.”

  “Let’s not forget that this specimen was a human being,” said Dr. Bennet. “But anyways, what are the details of what you discovered?”

  Ben glanced at his notes again before speaking. “We saw a large number of bacteria near the area of the bite, attacking and killing other bacteria. This killer bacteria spread through the body over the course of twelve hours. The body’s immune system didn’t recognize what was happening and by the end of that time every single human cell was dead.” He cleared his throat. “Every cell except the killer bacteria of course. The specimen, excuse me, I mean our patient was dead as well. Exactly one hour after his death, the cells inside the patient began coming back to life. As they did, they carried the characteristics and traits of the killer bacteria. When enough of the dead cells came back to life, so did the patient.”

  “Interesting, but we already knew the virus worked through bacteria,” said Dr. Bennet, crossing his arms.

  “Perhaps,” said Ben. “But we also discovered something else.”

  “And?”

  “We couldn’t understand why it was acting in the way that it was.” He shrugged. “What we soon discovered was that the virus was not killing the cell as a normal bacteriophage would be expected to do.”

  “So you’re implying that the virus is actually not a virus by definition?” asked Dr. Bennet.

  “Could be, but what I really want is for you to think about another aspect of it. Think about the bacteria inside the brain and the fact that the virus is in complete control of it.”