Night of the Fallen (Dark Tides, Book Two) (3 page)

She had spent half the night fighting sleep, drifting in and out
—and then dreaming about the rabids every time sleep came. Just before dawn, she decided she’d had enough and got up, waving to Robert on her way to the bathroom. They had no running water in the farm, but there was a large plastic tank sitting on a corner, and she used some of the water inside to wash herself.

And
she found herself missing the comforts of the compound.

Not because she
thought she deserved them, but because they were a reminder of how life used to be. How life
should
be. It was heartbreaking how fast they had all gotten used to their new reality. No water, no electricity, no toiletries or washing machines or cooking facilities. For a while after the invasion, it was still possible to find food sitting on shelves at supermarkets or grocery stores. But when that started running out, the jump to breaking into houses and then factories and even hospitals didn’t take that long. In fact, abandoning civilized behavior took much less time than she had expected. Probably less time than everybody expected.

She guessed that those who had resisted the change
hadn’t stayed alive for long. Nobody in her group had ever killed another human being in a fight for food or medicine, but that didn’t mean the time wouldn’t come. After all, the survival instinct was a powerful one. If it was you or a stranger you met by accident in a dark corner, self-preservation would take over.

That could have been what had happened to Bruce,
who’d left on a scavenging round one day and never come back. Everybody in the house thought he’d run into a vampire somewhere on the roads, but the truth is that there were humans out there just as dangerous.

By the time she grabbed a towel to start drying off her hair, the first flakes of light were shining through the bathroom shutters.
And she started wondering where Marcus would be hiding, waiting for darkness to return.

~ * ~

Shawn didn’t make it back until noon. She had wanted to wait for her brother inside, so they could have their own private reunion. But when the engine approached and everybody stepped outside for the welcome, she couldn’t stay behind.

As soon as Shawn stepped out of the car and saw her, his face lit up. Only then did she realize part of her had been worried about his reaction. After all,
she’d left without saying goodbye, without so much as a hug. She’d taken a chance out on the roads, without knowing whether she’d ever see him again, so she expected her brother to somewhat resent her for it.

If he did, he
wasn’t showing it. He walked straight towards her, picking her up from the ground in an embrace that felt just as sweet as it was crushing.

“Ouch,” she said playfully.

He put her back down but didn’t let go for a few more seconds. When he finally did, the smile was still there. “I should kick your ass for leaving like you did.”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I thought it was the only way you’d let me go.”

He lowered his voice, the smile fading away. “I didn’t let you go.”

“Yeah, well, I figured it would be less painful this way. In case…” She sighed. “You know, in case I didn’t come back.”

He stepped back a few inches and gave her a quick look up and down. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she reassured him.

Then his eyes landed on her neck. Although vampire bites faded quickly, the ones on the neck were never really gone. They remained barely there, soft and faded, but there forever. The brand of the vampire who had first taken that particular human. For her, they were a constant reminder of who her body and her soul belonged to.

When Shawn’s eyes returned to hers, there was a hint of fury in them. It made him
look older, broken, the sweet younger brother she knew gone in a flash.

She reached for him, grabbing his arm. “I’m fine, Shawn, really.
Let’s go inside. I have a lot to tell you.”

Eric patted her brother on the back. “Good to see you, man. Wait till you hear what your sister has to say.”

She gave him a curt look but said nothing.

And then
got ready to repeat the rabid story one more time.

~ * ~

“So did you kill him?”

The words took her by surprise. Not because she
wasn’t expecting the question, but because of how cold they sounded. Or maybe because they rattled her to the core, sending an icy chill running down and into her.
Kill him
. The one she would die protecting.

“No, I didn’t kill him, Shawn. Things turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected.”

Shawn studied her carefully. “But did you meet him?”

She felt a knot forming in her throat. “Yes.”

“And?”

“He’s not a monster,” she said instead, the words coming out soft and slow as she tried to keep her heart under control. “Nobody at the compound was.
They’re trying to find a cure for the rabids, maybe find a way to feed themselves so they don’t have to depend on human blood. The ones I talked to, they’re smart and…”

The disgust on her brother’s face told her to stop. “You talk about them like they’re people.”

She sighed. “They’re not that different from us.”

Her brother pointed to her neck. “What about that?”

She desperately wanted to tell him everything, but it just wasn’t the time. It was a lot more important that he understood what they were up against and who the real enemy was. Everything else would have to wait. “It’s not what you think. Besides, I had to blend in, accept the rules of the compound. What would’ve been the point otherwise?”

Shaking his head, Shawn said, “They fed off you, Isabelle. Like animals. What else is there to say?”

She reached across the table and grabbed his hands. “I’ll tell you everything one day, Shawn, I promise. But right now, I think it’s more important that we come up with a plan. Because the rabids that attacked the compound, they’re still out there. And they might be coming this way. They move during the day and they’re unstoppable. If they find the farm, we don’t stand a chance.”

Shawn shook his head. “Are you sure about the daylight thing? Robert mentioned it but it just seems so… impossible.”

She tightened her grip for a second, then let go and pushed her back against the chair. “I’m sure. I wish it wasn’t true, but I’ve seen them up close.”

“How close?”

She fought the shiver trying to overtake her. “Close enough to touch.”

Her brother studied her with interest. “What exactly was going on at the compound?”

Careful
, she told herself. “Like I said, the vampires there, they’re trying to find a cure. And if they find it, it might end up being our salvation too.”

He scoffed. “What makes you think they’ll stop hunting us? They love the bloodshed, the destruction.”

“Not all of them do, no.”

He rubbed his neck, a hint of desperation showing in the intensity of the movement. “Whatever you saw back there that’s making you doubt their intentions, I don’t want to hear it.
They’re the enemy, Isabelle. They will always be that. Until we destroy them, we’ll never have a chance.”

She
didn’t want to tell him the most important part of the truth. That they had no chance anyway. Not on their own. What was left of humanity
needed
the help of the vampires if they were to survive. They had an enemy in common and an alliance was suddenly a very smart idea. The only smart idea.

Except that she
didn’t think Shawn wanted to hear that. At least not yet.

So
she took a deep breath instead. “I think we should look for another place to hide and–-“

Shawn cut her off.
“Where? It took us months to find this farm and make it safe.”

“That’s just it. This is not a safe place. It seemed that way before, until I saw… We need something stronger, something we can defend.
A silo or a bunker.” She pointed around the room towards the many windows. “Something without a million entrance points.”

Pushing the chair back, Shawn stood up and turned her back to her.
“Hiding underground like roaches.”

“It doesn’t have to be permanent.
Only until we can figure out what else to do.”

He turned around to face her, his gaze burning with resentment. “I don’t want to live like that. I don’t think you want to either.”

She got up and made her way to him. “No, I don’t. But I also don’t want everybody to die. Think of the group for a second. We have teenagers here. Tom is over sixty and I heard Jackson coughing half the night. These people can’t outrun the rabids. It’s not like we can either, but in the confusion of an attack, maybe we stand a chance. They don’t. We have to make a decision that protects everybody.”

“Like you did by leaving us without even saying goodbye?”

Her stomach hardened and she took a step back. “That’s unfair. You know I did what I thought was best for everybody.”

He reached for her but she twisted her arm away, avoiding him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” he said.

“Yes, you did.”

“Not the way it sounded,” he said and then took a deep breath. “Let’s just take a break, OK? We can discuss this later, as a group.”

She thought about arguing, but nodded instead. It was pointless to fight
at the moment. He’d be more willing to agree with her if she let him come to his own conclusion rather than push him to it.

She ventured a half smile. “Getting older is making you tougher.”

He wavered for what seemed like minutes. She could see the struggle flashing on his face. The need to fight her strategic decisions and the equally strong need to be just her brother, happy to see her back, alive. Just when she thought he was going to argue with her, he smiled too. “You’re not getting any younger yourself, you know.”

“Hey,” she said, punching his arm playfully.

He hugged her then. So hard she had to fight for air for a second. “I was so worried when you left,” he whispered. 

Her arms tightened around him. This was the brother she loved, the one
she’d risked everything for so many times. “I promise I won’t leave again without saying goodbye.”

“Just don’t leave again,” he said.

But that was a promise she couldn’t make. 

They were on the road before darkness had finished settling in.

Marcus had spent the day pacing inside the factory and checking the rooms for signs of rogue vampires. The place was silent, so he’d known the second they’d stepped in that it was deserted. Still, wandering from room to room gave him something to do while the daylight hours went by slowly.

The smell of the sun
filtered through the broken glass, bringing along the silence of the outside world. If he’d been stronger, he would have swallowed the pain and attempted to drive during the day. But the hunger was raging inside him and his strength was still nowhere close to being back. So he waited, hiding in the shadows until sundown.

As soon as the sky turned shades of pink and red, he ordered Miles to get in the car. 

They drove in silence at first, his mind focused on the goal ahead.

Find Belle.  

Find Belle before my brother does
.

He pushed that last bit out of his head and pressed down on the gas.

Over the next few hours, they drove the long stretches of road almost angrily. Every time they passed a potential hideout, his unease about finding Isabelle bit harder.

In the darkness, it was easy to spot movement that
didn’t belong there. An unexpected flicker. The soft growl of the four-legged predators roaming the fields for food. It would have also been easy to spot any human presence from a distance, but so far, nothing was calling. So the night ticked away softly as they drove past rundown buildings and ghost towns.

One of the towns took longer than the rest to check out, mostly because the many boarded-up houses all seemed to be makeshift hideouts.

They searched every corner, listening for breathing or errant steps, looking into basements and tunnels. The town might have been a suitable hiding space once, but now it was just a dead carcass. It had been ransacked over and over, the empty shelves and the tossed stores proof of the destruction.

At one
point they followed a wolf into a pharmacy as the animal searched for food in the darkness. Its ears perked up, its eyes landing on him and Miles as if trying to decide whether they were food or predator. Nose almost frowning into the air, the wolf stood frozen, calculating.

Then suddenly
it turned around and ran back out into the night.

After that, they found two other deserted towns and countless abandoned farms. It was all the same: desolation and destruction everywhere.
Remnants of the ultimate war and the world’s last dying breath. When the invasion started, Marcus had kept a map, adding red pins on the areas they had conquered. After just a few months, the entire world had become a sea of red and he had lost interest. Or maybe he had just been disappointed at how quickly humanity was falling. While he had always wanted to reign over the world, he certainly had not wanted the world to turn into a wasteland.

That was all it was now.
Dust and ashes. Deep down, he couldn’t help but feel it was somehow pointless to rule a world that was crumbling. He wanted the power, but he wanted the glory too. To be the master of a world that was worth ruling.

“We should keep moving,” Miles said in one of their many stops. “We don’t have a lot of darkness left.”

The next hour on the road was spent in silence. Marcus knew dawn was coming and he was dreading it. He couldn’t afford to seek refuge again and wait out the daylight for another day. Not with the rabids racing down towards the south and towards her. He had the feeling that time was running short and that another rabid attack was imminent. They had seen only a few rabids along the way, hiding out in the shadows of barren towns. The rabids moved slowly, barely aware of the vampires walking among them, ignorant to anything that didn’t awake their thirst.

And
it was that small number of rabids that worried him the most. Because there were thousands of them out there, stalking the darkness. If they had only come across a few, it meant most of them were somewhere else. Either waiting in hives until the time was right to attack or following Patrick towards his next objective. Marcus was more troubled about the second option, because the rabids alone were deadly enough on their own. Under Patrick’s control, they would be the end of everything.

Even the war that brought humanity to its knees would pale in comparison to what Patrick could do with an army of rabids. Marcus had already seen it destroy the
compound, the one fortress he’d thought was close to unconquerable.

He
didn’t want to think what else Patrick would be capable of. Or what he would do to Belle if he got to her first.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. The first glimpses of daylight were emerging over the horizon, the sky lightening into pinks and yellows in preparation for the sun. He could feel Miles scanning the surroundings for a hiding place.

“No,” he whispered and his voice came out dry, forceful.

There would be no rest. If he had to go into hiding again, it would only be when he felt his skin smoking under the blazing sun.
Only when the pain became unbearable and the burning too much for his body to fight. Until then, he would keep driving. He knew Miles wouldn’t fight his decision, regardless of how terrifying it was. Miles would follow him straight into the arms of death if he asked him too.

“Not yet,” he corrected himself to take some of the strain away.

And then he saw it. A farmhouse in the distance, the shutters sealed for the night, the door closed. Even from far away, the place seemed alive. There was no sound coming out of it, no light, but he could almost feel the heartbeats from behind the walls. In a world of ransacked buildings, a farmhouse still standing in all its glory was a dead giveaway.
Foolish humans
. 

He turned his head and saw Miles nodding. Rather than risk
being discovered by the sound of the engine, he turned into a dirt road and drove behind a series of outbuildings. They could walk the few hundred feet that separated them from the farm. And then find a way to search for her.

Belle
.

By the time the engine had died down, he could feel a current running through his body, his uneasiness getting tighter, growing more furious.
And the hunger was nibbling in his veins with a ferocity he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Every cell in his body was claiming for Belle
.