Blood Run (9 page)

“It was a town a lot like this one, but in Pennsylvania. Just outside Bethlehem. But that seems like a long time ago now,” he said and settled onto the empty cot. For Promise, it completed the image of camping. The lantern’s glow was steadier than a fire, but it colored everyone in the same warm, orange tones. At their backs, the gloom was deep, hiding the walls and corners of the classroom. They could have been sitting anywhere. Almost anywhere.

“How old are you?” Lea asked.

“I’m twenty-five,” he said. “How old are you guys?”

Promise did the math quickly.
Seven years
, she thought.
Just seven years older than me. That’s not a lot
.

“Nineteen,” Mark said, pointing to himself, “eighteen,” he said and pointed to Promise, “and seventeen.” He pointed finally to Lea.

“Almost eighteen, though,” Lea said. “Only a month and then I’ll be eighteen.”

Peter turned to Promise. “I thought you were older than eighteen. You look older. You seem older.”

“I feel like we’re all older, don’t you?” Her smile was sad, and her eyes full of shadows.

He nodded and dropped his eyes to his hands. “You wanted to know…about the scar. About being bit.” He looked up at Promise first and then glanced at Mark and Lea in turn. He looked back to Promise. “Do you still want to know?”

She nodded.

Peter dropped his eyes again, and his hands tightened on each other. Promise had an urge to reach for his clenched hands, but she suppressed it, a little embarrassed in front of her friends. Then she wondered briefly if having Mark and Lea here was a good thing or a bad thing…probably good in terms of giving her time to sort out her feelings for Peter.

“Like I said, our town was a lot like this one. We even had a Main Street,” Peter said and grinned briefly. “I worked in the closest good-sized city–Bethlehem–at an advertising agency. I went to college for marketing and communications. Bishop, the town I lived in, was about a half-hour outside Bethlehem, and we had some businesses, restaurants, shopping…our claim to fame, though, was the Bishop Center Mall. It was the biggest mall in a hundred miles or more,” he trailed off.

“My wife worked there,” Peter said finally, without looking up.

Promise felt a jolt at the word ‘wife’; it hadn’t occurred to her that he was married. All at once, she felt both younger and older. It was an odd sensation.

He continued. “In other places, trouble started in the more densely populated areas first, and in our case, that should have been Bethlehem–except we had that mall. That giant, people-magnet of a mall. The way it was built, every store had a back utility room that was accessed from one of two main corridors, and the back rooms and corridors had no windows, no light penetration at all. The rest of the mall had big skylights, almost the entire roof was glass, but not the back rooms or the utility hallways. It was the best arrangement for infestation that anyone could ever have imagined.” He took a very deep breath as though to steady himself. “The mall stayed open until nine on weekdays. Even though we all knew by then about the vampires, it was like we couldn’t imagine it happening where we were. I guess that wasn’t so uncommon at the time.

“Trisha, my wife, was working at the Woolworth’s. It was one of the biggest stores in the mall, and she mostly looked after the fish and hamsters and guinea pigs they kept in the back. She was in school to become a vet tech, and she just…she loved all kinds of animals. Snow was hers. Her pride and joy, actually. She’d raise Snow from a foal.” He pressed a hand to his eyes and paused again. “The night the mall fell, she was on the noon-to-nine shift. I got out of work a little early that day. I was feeling anxious. I’d been nervous since leaving for work that morning, and I’d just felt
off
all day. I stopped by the mall on the way home. I thought Trish and I could get dinner in the food court if her break was coming up. It was just after five, and of course, the sun had set. There hadn’t been anything in the parking lot to indicate that something had gone terribly wrong inside, but when I got to the entrance–there were only two to the mall, one at either end–a lady came running out. She slammed into the door and nearly knocked me over. She wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t screaming or…” Peter trailed off again, and his eyes had taken on a distant cast as he recalled the events of that night. “She looked terrified. As though she were frightened beyond screaming, beyond the ability to think straight. Her eyes were huge, and they–I remember thinking they were rolling like a horse’s–have you ever seen a panicked horse? When they roll their eyes?”

Promise nodded, and Peter swallowed.

“That’s what I thought when I saw her. I tried to help her up, asking her what was wrong, but I don’t think she really heard me or saw me. She popped back up and ran out into the parking lot, not even looking for cross traffic, and then she was gone. That’s when my stomach started to
really
tie itself in knots, and the bad feelings intensified. I went into the mall.” He trailed off again and was quiet for several long minutes. He rubbed his hands together and then scrubbed them over his face. Then he began again.

“It was chaos. Just pure, rampant, screaming chaos. The main lights were out–at the start of the panic, one of the security people had pulled the wrong switches, that’s what security told me later–the emergency lights were on, but they were dim. The floor was shiny and black with blood. Slick with it. I stood there for a second, dumbfounded. Then I could only think about Trish. I had to get to her. Save her. But the Woolworth’s was dead center in the mall, and she worked in the back, closest to the utility room. Of course, I didn’t know then that that was where the vampires had come from. That part was figured out later, after they talked to some of the survivors.

“I ran through the mall, trying to stay calm and avoid the store entrances. That’s where most of the killings were happening. It was…” he paused, shuddering, then continued. “It was really bad. Really bloody. When I got to the Woolworth’s, I didn’t stop, I was feeling weird by then, numb and crazy and…I guess I was in shock. I ran right through a tangle of people and vampires, I think I knocked some of them over. A hand grabbed my coat, so I slipped out of it and made my way to the back. It was a lot darker back there. I didn’t want to yell for her because I didn’t want to bring attention to us. Then I saw her and…” he paused again, breathing heavily.

“She was right under the hamster cages, and I could see that some of the small animals–guinea pigs and a few gerbils–were on the ground, dead and…chewed looking. Like a vampire had tried eating them, and…” Peter lifted his head, and his eyes were horror-struck and staring. “Trish was sitting with her back to the cages, she had her arms crossed over her…” his voice hitched, and he shook his head as if in denial of some hidden truth, then continued. “…she had a dead rabbit cradled in her arms. Her throat had been…just…torn out. I knew she was dead, right away I knew. You couldn’t look the way she looked and still be alive. I think she died protecting the animals.” His voice failed him, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “She was still warm, and her eyes were open. I picked her up. I had this thought about getting her buried, it was just this crazy idea that I couldn’t shake…my mind was saying ‘gotta get her buried, gotta get her buried, or her folks’ll be mad, gotta get her buried,’ over and over until I felt–I felt like I’d gone crazy. I decided to go back to my car and get the blanket we kept in the trunk, and I had this idea I could put the blanket around her; carry her out in it. It was a blanket we used on picnics, and she always said it was too nice to be on the ground and that we should–” He stopped abruptly and took a deep, sighing breath. Then he continued.

“I was almost back to the mall entrance–I don’t even know how I made it that far–when one of them grabbed me from behind. It had me by the hair, and it pulled my head back, and it was biting me before I even knew what was happening. Then I…I got so angry, I was furious, I’d come this far…I yanked myself away, and the vampire had what looked like half my neck in its mouth. It looked so stupid and mean, like some kind of rabid dog. I nearly passed out. Then its head just…disappeared. One of the quicker security people–a guy who’d been paying closer attention to the news than the rest of us–had knocked its head almost clean off with a five-pound sledge. Garlic and prayer may have no effect, but nothing can live without a head. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me out, and I was already feeling dizzy from the blood loss…he was saying, ‘Come on man, I can get you out of here, come on, come on,’ and I was protesting, or I thought I was, and then everything started to go gray, and I fell forward, and by then we were outside on the sidewalk. The blood from my neck was pouring down my arm and onto the concrete, and it looked green. I knew I was dying. I kept seeing Trish in my mind, her empty eyes, and I was thinking, ‘Okay, this is okay, I’m going; wait for me, Trish, I’m right behind you,’ but then that guy, the security guard, he pulled me up. He threw me into a van, and I remember yelling for Trish, I wanted to go back and get her, but…” Peter stood again and turned his back to the Coleman. He went to the window and looked up, past the plywood, to where the first stars were coming out.

“I woke up in the hospital, and the first thing I remember feeling was hot. It felt like I was being cooked in an oven. The doctor told me later that he didn’t know how I withstood the heat my body was generating. I should have died. I remember being tied down and breaking through a few times, anyway. People on me, holding me down…it seemed like eight guys, at least. I was changing. The dreams I was having were fever dreams. Senseless and full of bloody violence. Waking up was like swimming out of filth. But I finally fought it off.” He turned and looked at the three around the lantern.

He was a dark mass, his head outlined by the nighttime sky, and Promise thought she saw a mild flicker of heat in his eyes, deep within…there and then not there. But she might have imagined it.

“I was in that hospital for two weeks, and then it was compromised, and I was moved to another, and after that another, and finally to a base hospital in New Jersey. That’s where they’re doing a lot of the work on cures and vaccines. After that, I began moving around with the Guard. I was just lost, I guess, and I’d made friends with a few of them. Eventually we came back through Bishop, and I found Snow. It was like a miracle.” He glanced at Snow who stood with one hoof cocked, her eyes closed. Ash stood next to her, like her shadow. Peter’s eyes glimmered, and he seemed about to say more about finding Snow, but then he looked away from her. “One of the Guardsmen who I’d made friends with had heard there was another horse out here, and they were coming this way, so I decided to come, too. It kind of became an obsession,” he smiled, “to see the other horse. I was going to ask if I could have him; it just seemed like, well, like they should be together.” He hesitated, and Promise had the feeling he’d edited something out of his story. Maybe a lot of things.

Promise looked across to Lea, and Lea was crying. Mark had grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

“I’m really sorry about all that, man,” Mark said to Peter. “Sorry, too, for being such a dick earlier.”

Peter shrugged and rubbed his face again. He came back to the circle of light. “It’s okay. I can’t blame you. And my story…well. We all have a story now, right?”

They doused the lantern soon after and bedded down. Promise was exhausted, wrung out from his narrative and her growing feelings for him. Her throat tightened and ached as she fought back tears. She huddled onto her side and pulled the blankets over her shoulder. She pictured the last camping trip she and her family had been on, trying to pin her mind to the happy memory. Her mom and dad kissing when they thought she and Chance weren’t looking. Chance dropping his s’more in the fire. He’d toppled off the log he and Promise sat on, kicking his legs in mock fury, and she’d laughed until she choked. Then they’d shared her s’more. It had burned her mouth, but she hadn’t cared.

Falling into sleep, into the good memory, she smiled. Somewhere outside, distant but never distant enough, came the loopy, whooping scream of a vampire as it cried out its hunger to the coldly distant night sky.

Chapter 7

“It’s weird, isn’t it? That he was married, I mean,” Lea said.

Promise and Lea were sitting together in the early morning cafeteria over cups of coffee. No one slept in anymore. Not when the light was so precious.

Promise shook her head and yawned. “It’s not weird. People get married. All the time they do.”

“That’s not how I meant it,” Lea said and quirked an eyebrow at Promise.

Promise tilted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “I know you didn’t, and yeah, it’s weird. I feel…I don’t know. Like a kid or not worthy or not mature enough or something.”

“He likes you, though,” Lea said. “I can tell.”

Promise opened her eyes and considered her friend. Lea looked younger than ever, her blonde hair falling past her shoulders, her big eyes pale and soft after sleep.

“You really think he does?” Promise asked.

“Yes, I do. And I think
you
think so, too.”

Promise tipped her head back again without answering. Yes, she had thought yesterday that she and Peter seemed to share a bond, that he was interested in her. It had seemed exciting. But today, she felt as if the last day had been a distraction from her real purpose; the brief foray into contentment undeserved because Chance was still out there. Suffering. She deserved no happiness until she’d kept her promise.

And yet, she couldn’t help wonder if there was something…if there
might be
something to look forward to after she’d found Chance and set him free. There had to be something that came after. This couldn’t be all there was. Wouldn’t the world, so drastically changed, change again?

It had to. It just had to.

“When he was telling us his story last night,” Lea said, “I felt so bad for him. He seemed so…” she trailed off.