Hunger Chronicles (Book 1): Life Bites (13 page)

And I guess that’s why Marine keeps Brice on as team lead. Whatever else, Convict knows how to use his soldiers.

We start across the field, a band of skittering gazes and tense trigger fingers. Even I’m keyed up. Though I know there isn’t any immediate threat. There’s something off here, and I don’t just mean the lack of the greeting party. Damned if I can figure out what it is though.

Blaine slows, his head tipped back, star counting. “God damn that’s a gorgeous full moon.”

John’s hands shift on his rifle, his lips white as he gazes into the sky. “No, not full.”

I glance up, squinting to see the almost negligible sliver carved out on the one side. I have to agree with Blaine, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a full moon. Not that it matters, the sky is not where our attention should be.

“Where are the bodies?” Roy asks.

I stop, my gaze snapping around to the scrawny computer geek at the back of our group.

That’s it. That is the something I’ve been missing. We haven’t seen a single zombie corpse out here. As if those within the base didn’t even bother to try and defend their safe zone. I could buy that standard practice would probably have those inside the base removing and disposing of the corpses to keep down both the smell and the threat of disease, but if this had been a last stand resulting in a lock-down of their facility, then no one should have made it out here to clear the bodies yet.

I’m not the only one shocked to a halt by Roy’s rather innocuous question. We’re all staring wide-eyed at him.

I blink, trying to slow my racing thoughts. “Could it be like what happened back at base? That they had a breakout on the inside?”

“Maybe,” Convict replies, but his mouth thins into a doubtful line.

Juanita seems to buy this theory with a sort of gleeful menace. Her gaze has fallen on the entrance to Nellis’s command center, an unholy light gleaming in the depths of her dark brown eyes. “What other explanation could there be?”

Convict shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

He gestures us forward into the abandoned streets. Not once do I hear a heartbeat other than our own and soon enough we are at the doors of the building Marine had mapped out for us.

Convict depresses the intercom button “Base, this is Team Leader Harold Brice out of Edwards, please respond.” This is met with static silence. He tries again with the same results. Not that any of us had expected differently, but hey, as my dad would say: hope springs eternal.

Off to the left Herbie lets out a long whistle, his left arm lifted, sleeve pushed back as he studies his Velcro watch. “Oh my, look at the time. Guess since nobody’s home we should be heading back...”

“Really, Herb?” John snaps.

Herbie lifts his hands quickly, shifting back a few inches. “Hey. Just joking.”

John takes a step toward him, jaw tight and shoulders rigid as he invades Herbie’s personal space. “And I’ve just about had it.”

Wow. Unflappable John is flappable. Guess I knew that, just hadn’t expected it now. I mean, yeah things are tense, but that seems to be the sort of situation John thrives under.

“Enough, boys,” Convict says then turns his back on them, his gaze honing in on Roy. “Come on, kid. Time to earn your keep.”

I take another look at Roy. A good long one. I’d pegged him as a young computer geek, figuring him for somewhere around twenty, but now, taking in the downy tuft of hair on his upper lip and the fresh breakout of acne across his chin, I realized that I’d misjudged. He can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. All of a sudden his whole I-don’t-want-to-be-here attitude makes a lot more sense. He
doesn’t
want to be here. He’s not one of Marine’s kickass recruits. He’s probably some poor kid from C-level who’d gotten too old to justify the free ride any longer. In a world gone mad, everyone has to earn their keep. And now its Roy’s turn. Poor bastard.

Roy’s wide eyes catch mine for a moment, his throat bobs. I look away, afraid he’s going to see the pity there. I don’t want to feel pity for Roy. I want to be able to count on Roy. Just like I want to be able to count on Convict to not order us into an impossible situation, Brian to not stake me between the ribs, and John to have my back. Maybe I’m asking a lot, but this is why I joined this gig. Forget the safe-house excuse; the truth is that I just don’t want to go it alone.

Roy edges past Convict, sliding in between John and me.

It doesn’t take him nearly so long this time and within seconds the lock is clicking off, the door sliding open. Roy scrambles back as the first waft of stale inner air hits my olfactory senses.

Blood, rotting flesh, and something else, something that it is so familiar that I almost miss it: Sweet almonds.

Someone says something behind me, but I don’t know what or who. I’m staring into the yawning opening into the dark hall beyond. My hands tremble on my Glock. The urge to turn and run is overwhelming and for a moment I think I’m going to. Then Convict’s hissed question finally penetrates.

“What is it? Do you sense something in there?”

I swallow, looking over at John who’s drawn up to flank the door beside me. His nose is pinched, his eyes practically glowing as he stares at me. Waiting, like the others, for me to answer.

“I, uh…” the words stick in my throat. Maybe I’m wrong. The scent is faint, even more now that the first back-draft of air has passed. And, it could just be me, though I’ve been told I have more of a chocolate covered almond smell. I draw in another deep breath, this time through my mouth. I can taste it: the death, the gleeful violence that occurred here, and there, across the back of my tongue is the candied almonds. He was here. And if not him, then the Queen herself. They both have the same unmistakable scent. Why were they here? This is far afield from the hive’s area of control. Were they searching for me or were they simply hunting? Maybe both. I’d come this way. When I was running I’d zigzagged across much of the southwestern states in an attempt to hide my trail. I never came into Las Vegas itself, but I’d come close. Could they have been following my trail and stopped off here to look for me? Heck, for a snack? Did I bring destruction down on these people simply by passing by?

“Eva,” John says, drawing my focus back to the here and now. “There’s nothing alive in there, is there?”

I shake my head. No, nothing alive. Not even anything undead. Even if I’m right about what happened here, the ones who did it are long gone. No heartbeats, and as I’ve said before, even a vampire’s heart beats.

John shifts, his shoulders squaring as he faces down the hall again. “Let’s go then.”

I don’t want to follow. Even knowing that there is no actual danger, I don’t want to have to face what “my kind” has done. More so, I don’t want my teammates to see what a group of vampires bent on blood can do.

I trail along behind John. The lights flicker on, bathing the hall ahead of us. Motion sensors, of course.

I’m all but numb as we trudge through the halls, knowing that I should say something, tell the others what I already know. If nothing else, brace them for what is to come. But I can’t seem to do it. Let them find out on their own.

And then watch out for Brian’s knife.

I shudder, looking around at the universal gray walls of the airfield’s command building. Halls and doors. Why are these places always mazes? We continue on, following the map that my heightened senses provide. Always deeper, closer and closer to the harshest scent of blood and death. I know that behind some of these other doors lay a body or two but that’s all they are, bodies, no heartbeats. And besides, Marine said the control room would be in the center of this building, so that is where we go.

We come to a set of double doors. These doors don’t need Roy’s doohickey. It automatically slides open revealing the command center within. John and I step in. I stop just inside the room, the light—activated by the activity—flickering on as the others file in behind us.

“Holy shit,” Blaine exclaims. “What happened in here?”

I don’t answer. I’m too busy taking in the violence of the room. Blood stains the grey interior. Bodies, torn and shredded, are draped and splattered across work surfaces and floor. It is a massacre. These people never had a chance.

Something in the back of my mind is ringing an alarm. This is not right. There is too much blood. Even if angered, a vampire wouldn’t waste so much of a precious commodity.

My gaze flits through the room. Over there is a body that’s not torn up. I swallow hard. The corpse is pasty white and there, in its neck, two telltale pricks. I scan the rest of the corpses, counting up the “whole” bodies. Six, out of maybe thirty. Who, or what, killed the rest?

John is moving through the room, his nostrils flaring as he stares down at the shredded corpses. He’s not the only one. Brian is bending down over one of the mostly whole bodies.

“Brice, look at this.”

Convict moves over alongside Brian, looks down at the two small holes in the neck that Brian is pointing out. His gaze immediately flashes to me. Hard, cold, lethal. I’d freeze if I wasn’t already, but I’m still stuck just this side of the door.

Brian looks up at me too, his brow cocked in a disdainful manner. “Friends of yours?”

“No.” I shake my head adamantly. Not friends. Enemies.

“Are you denying that a vampire did this?” Brian asks.

I know what he’s getting at. The implication is that if I’m a vampire and a vampire did that then… Anger heats my frozen muscles. I clench my fists, otherwise I’m afraid I’m going to leap across the room and prove him right.

“You think you’re so damn righteous, don’t you? Well I got news for you. You’re nothing but a bigot. I’m not like them. I’ve never been like them and I’ll never be like them.”

“You’ve never fed from a human?”

I snap my mouth shut on my retort, my anger chilling to ice. I have fed from a human. Once. I’d been starving, having refused to feed after the change. Would have died if the vein hadn’t been slit by another, the wrist held over my parched mouth. I can still remember the crazed need to feed, the blooming rush of pleasure as I sunk my fangs into the vein, the loss of self as I greedily sucked the lamb’s life giving fluid. If I hadn’t been stopped…

“There you go,” Brian says, turning his back on me dismissively as he moves to the next body.

Heat floods my cheeks. I feel them, the numerous sets of eyes staring at me. I want to explain, want to justify myself, but can’t do so. Brian is right. I can’t escape what I am and therefore am inherently at odds with those who I would call my team. But he’s also wrong about me, because I’d rather let him stake me through the heart than ever devolve into a creature who could have been part of the horror around us.

Needing something to do, I take the three steps necessary to bring me to one of the more gruesome kills in the room. A woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, has been gutted and dismembered, the core of her body lies on the floor, her glazed eyes staring up at a spray of blood on the desk beside her.

My stomach flips over and tries to take a one way trip up my esophagus, but I force myself to bend down and turn her head to see the other side of her neck. No bite marks. Yeah, a powerful vamp could close them if they wanted, but why bother when you’re going to rip your prey apart afterwards?

Clamping my teeth and breathing through my nose—yeah it smells bad, but better than tasting the bile that’s spilled out of her ruined abdomen—I do a cursory search over the less revolting wounds. Not a knife. Something more primitive.

I’m about to stand, chalk this up to a mystery I can’t understand when a matted tuft of loose threads on the jagged hole around her ripped out shoulder catches my eye. I pluck it off, and rub it between my fingers. Not thread, fur. I bring it up to my noise, sniff. Dog. Did this woman actually have a pet? Odd, but not impossible I suppose. Standard practice had been to set the family pet free and hope for the best, but there were some who couldn’t bear parting with their life-long buddy. If this woman managed to keep her dog alive both through the initial outbreak and then the general time of starvation afterward, then she had been one tough cookie. Too bad it had ended like this.

I stand, tucking the tuft of fur in my cargo pants. Somehow it seems right that I take it. A memento of this woman’s strength, a reminder of what I’m fighting for. Humanity and all the little illogical idiosyncrasies that go with it.

When I look up it is to find John staring at me. His gaze drops to my pocket, a frown marring his forehead. Again the thought to explain crosses my mind, but I shove this away too. He’s probably never had a dog. He’s too practical and dogs are messy, eat you out of house and home, and way co-dependent. An image of my Old English Sheepdog, Shaggy, with his wagging bottom, slobbery tongue, and fur covered eyes hits like a painful sledgehammer to the chest. Poor dumb dog. He died trying to protect mom and dad. Maybe I can’t know this for sure, but in my heart I know that’s what happened to him.

“Private Harper, is there any life in this building?” Convict asks from across the room.

I draw my eyes away from John and look into Convict’s scowling face. “No.”

“Can you tell about any of the nearby buildings?”

I shake my head. No, I can’t tell, they are too far, but I know. Nobody has survived this. Those that did have doubtlessly been taken; harvested, if you will. Or massacred by whatever other monster had a hand in this.

“All right. Let’s head out. There’s nothing to do here and Commander Derwood will be expecting our report.”

My gaze is drawn back to the bodies strewn throughout the room. It seems sacrilegious to leave them. In a more civilized world we’d bury them, or do something to mark their passage, but this world is no longer civilized.

I turn with the others, making my way through the sticky pools of blood back toward the door.

“Wait,” John says.

As a unit we swivel around. His arm is raised high, his head cocked to the side. I tip my own head, straining my ears. Damn, is that…?

There is a loud explosion that shakes the entire building. I reach out, steadying myself on one of the lone chairs that hasn’t been tipped over.