Pitch (14 page)

The gun went off again. Her stomach exploded outwards as the bullet tore through her spine and came out her front, tearing a fist sized hole in her beautiful gown.

Angelique fell beside me and for an instant our eyes met. Her mouth opened and closed, trying to force out words that would not come. I said nothing. Did nothing. I was frozen in place, forced to watch in horrified silence as the life ebbed from her body.

Then Maximus was between us, his hands clutching Angelique’s shoulders and shaking her. “Where is the boy?” he shouted. “What have you done with him?”

Her head lolled to the side. With blood running down the corners of her mouth she smiled. “Hotel… But… Too late… Was always… too late.”

Travis was at the hotel? I pushed myself up on one arm and leaned weakly against the lockers. Maximus released Angelique. She slumped to the blood stained carpet. Her eyes closed, her long lashes spreading across her white cheeks like silk fans. One last, shuddering breath lifted her chest and flowed silently from her mouth before she simply… faded.

“She’s dead.” The words sounded hollow. I staggered to my feet, then sagged sideways, unable to support my own weight. I was pretty sure some ribs were broken. My ankle too. Courtesy of Angelique’s bite marks on my hand the pain I should have been feeling was nothing more than a dull throb. Ignoring it, I focused on Maximus.

He stood before me, his head bent, staring down at the spot where Angelique had fallen. “Lola, I –”

“Save it. There is nothing you could say. I’m tired of your secrets and your lies,” I said bitterly. “You said you would protect me, and instead you haven’t done anything but hurt me. I’m going to get Travis and my dad and we’re leaving. I don’t want to see you ever again, Maximus.” The words burned in my throat like acid. Tears threatened to spill, but I blinked them back. I couldn’t believe I had actually
liked
this guy. And the entire time he had been lying about… well, everything.

“Did you know they were going to come here? Did you know they were going to do this?” They weren’t questions I wanted to ask. They were questions I
needed
to ask, even if I was terrified to hear the answers.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

A mewling sound escaped my lips.

“Lola, there was nothing I could have done. I –”

“GO AWAY!” I shrieked, striking out at him with my fists. They bounced harmlessly off his chest, which only served to increase my fury tenfold. Even when I wanted to I couldn’t hurt him. The bastard.

He captured my wrists with ease. “Stop it,” he ordered, blue eyes flashing. “You don’t understand. There was nothing I could have –”

“If you say there was nothing you could have done
one more time
I will kill you. Do you hear me, Maximus? I’ll kill you!” And at that moment I really would have. He was lucky Angelique had knocked my one remaining gun out of my hand. “How could you let this happen?” I stared hard into his eyes, trying to see what I had missed. Trying desperately to figure out where I had gone wrong. “All those people… You could have done s-something.” My voice broke. I sagged against the lockers, defeated. “Just go,” I mumbled, twisting my head to the side. “Just leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”

He released my wrists. “You have to stay here tonight. It’s too dangerous to go outside.”

“What do you care?” I shook my head, no longer able to believe anything he said. “You could care less if I lived or died.”

His laugh was oh so bitter. “I care
too
much. You’ve made me forget things, Lola. Things I have no right to forget. Since the first moment I met you you’ve been under my skin like some disease I can’t purge, crawling inside, infecting me bit by bit.”

“You’ve been watching Lifetime, haven’t you?” I said dryly.

Maximus smiled, fast and fleeting. “I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

His lips parted, as if he wanted to say something else, but with a small shrug he turned and walked away, leaving me alone with my thoughts and one carpet badly in need of stain cleaner.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The End of Everything

I woke at dawn. My muscles were cramped from sleeping curled in a ball inside the janitor’s closet and I stretched my arms high above my head as I race walked out of the school, pausing only to retrieve the gun Angelique had knocked out of my hands. During the melee it had skittered across the hallway and slid under the drinking fountain. It was a little dusty, but otherwise no worse for wear.

The other gun, the one I had fired first and dropped, was no where to be seen. I assumed Maximus had taken it with him when he left.

Maximus. I shied away from even the thought of his name, and banished him to the far corners of my mind. I couldn’t afford to think about him. Not now. Perhaps not ever again.

Did you know they were going to come here?

Yes.

I started to run. Despite being exhausted both physically and mentally, I didn’t slow down as I sprinted headlong through the town, retracing my steps from last night. The need to find Travis, to make sure he was all right, was like a drug pumping through my veins, filling me with a sort of frantic energy. I didn’t stop until I was through the hotel’s spinning doors.

The smell of blood hit me immediately. It tasted metallic on my tongue and I closed my mouth tight, clamping my teeth together until my jaw ached. Still the scent of it invaded my nostrils, sweet and ripe as an apple left out to rot in the sun. My stomach cramped, a knee jerk reaction to what the scent of blood had come to signify: death.

A Drinker had been in the hotel. I could see its claw marks running down across the woodwork of the main desk. Our stockpile of supplies had been shredded. What little furniture remained in the lobby had been completely wrecked, as if the Drinker had gone into some kind of mindless rage, destroying everything in sight. With my heart in my throat I sprinted across the lobby and flew up the stairs, screaming for my Dad and Travis with every step.

The green and gold carpet muffled my footsteps as I raced down the hall, bypassing door after door until I got to the one Travis and I had shared. I threw it open and catapulted inside, nearly falling face first onto the bed. The scent of blood was stronger here. There was no mistaking it. Not point in convincing myself I was imagining things.

The shades were still drawn tight. My pounding heart counted off the seconds as I searched the pitch black room, just like I had less than twenty four hours ago, except this time I was filled with an even deeper sense of dread.

The room was empty. I went through Dad’s the same way, looking under the bed, throwing open the closet door, screaming into the bathroom. It, too, was empty. But I know they had to be here. Somewhere. The blood was too fresh for them not to be. I didn’t let myself think about what so much blood could signify.  

Cursing, crying, pleading I stumbled down the hall and searched room after room after room, screaming until my voice was hoarse.     

 The further I went into the hotel the darker it got, until I was running blind, using the walls to support me. When I saw the light blossoming from the edges of a door at the end of the last hallway my knees almost buckled in relief.

I had found them and they were hiding away, just like they should have been. Safe and sound. A breathless laugh forced its way past my lips. I had worried myself to death for nothing. Except the scent of blood was stronger than ever, and I couldn’t shake the terrible feeling of dread that threatened to choke me with every gasping breath.

“Dad, Travis, I’m here! It’s me. I’m back.” I pushed open the door and instantly covered my eyes, blinded by the light after running around so long in the darkness.

Gradually my vision returned, refocusing like a camera lens, sharpening slowly around the edges before spiraling in towards the middle until everything was clear. Clear as crystal, because I saw who was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. And I saw who was standing over him. And I saw, I finally saw, what I had chosen to overlook for too long.

“Is he dead?” My words came out flat. Emotionless. My question was a rhetorical one. I knew Travis was dead. No one could lose that much blood and survive. It seeped across the tile floor, reaching all the way to the door and I was forced to step in it as I walked towards the body of my best friend.

Maximus looked up and my breath whooshed out to stain the air with shock and betrayal. Even now, faced with Travis lying bloodied and broken on the floor, even after everything I had learned last night, I had not allowed myself to imagine… I had never truly thought… But the blood couldn’t lie and Maximus’s face was covered with it.

“You,” I whispered in agony. “How could it be you?”

His mouth opened and closed. He was quick, so quick, but I saw the flash of tell tale silver before he could conceal it. He reached out his hand to me in a silent plea. Blood dripped from his fingertips. “This is not what it looks like,” he said quickly as his eyes darted from my face to Travis and back again. “Lola, you don’t understand. Let me explain.”

“Isn’t what it looks like?” I repeated dully. I waited for the pain to start, for even though I had denounced Maximus last night, some small part of me had still trusted him. Still believed in him. Still wanted to stand beside him.

Yet I felt… numb. Cold. Distant, as if this was happening to someone else. As if someone else’s best friend was dead on the floor in a pool of their own blood. “You’re one of
Them
, Maximus. You’re a… a… Drinker. You’re a monster.” My voice trembled with emotion. “And you killed Travis.
You killed him
.”

Maximus’s gaze dropped to my left hand.

The gun. I had drawn it when I entered the hotel and forgotten I was even holding it. Taking a deep, shuddering breath I raised it up and pointed the muzzle true. For the first time my hands did not waver.

Maximus took a step back, then stopped. Went still. “Do it then. I showed you how. One shot to the head, one to the heart. Just do it, Lola. If you think I could have done this I am dead already.”

“No.” I looked at Travis. Poor, sweet, gentle Travis. His eyes were still open, staring up at the ceiling. “He’s the one who is dead.” I aimed the gun dead center of Maximus’s chest. Aimed it right at his black, lying heart. This time I wouldn’t miss. This time I would hurt him, as much as he had hurt me.

“Lola, I love –”

I pulled the trigger.      

READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM THE NEXT DEATH DAY NOVELLA,
BLACK
. LOOK FOR IT ON AMAZON, FALL 2012!

They do not come for us on the first day, or the second, or even the third. It is worse that way, I think. If I am going to die I would rather my throat be slit from ear to ear than have my stomach ripped open and my intestines flop out. A death as quick and efficient as the five items or less lane at the grocery store. That is the best we can hope for now.

Like a cat toying with a mouse they taunt us from the shadows, letting us know by the flickering of their demon eyes and the slithering of their demon tongues they have not forgotten. They know we are here, cowering in the old abandoned gas station on Interstate 78. They know how many of us there are. They know exactly how much food we have left. How much water. How much hope. How much sanity.

Target breaks on the morning of the fourth day. Her tiny body contracted with hunger and desperation, she bursts through the doors and goes begging for her life in the darkness. They send her back in pieces.

I am tempted to go next. What do I have to lose? We will not survive this. With one rash decision I have damned us all. I know it. My companions know it. The monsters waiting outside know it. If I was a nobler person I would sacrifice myself. I would throw myself down on the flames of my sins and hope my death would appease the devils hiding in the dark.

Unfortunately for everyone else, I am far from noble.

So we keep waiting. We wait all day and we wait all night. We wait through the rest of the food and the last bottle of water. We wait until we are too weak to stand. Too weak to fight, which is funny, because we never would have been able to fight them anyways.

Sometimes they let you, though. It is their entertainment; to watch our puny bodies flail around as we try to defend our throats. Stupid. We are so stupid. Even now, when our numbers have dwindled from billions to mere hundreds, we remain dumb as rocks.

They say the fittest survive, but that’s not true. The lucky survive. And the lucky die. There is no rhyme, no reason. Nothing you can do or say to prevent what will happen to you.

On the sixth day I know what I have to do. I may not die noble, but I sure as hell am not going to die stupid.

“I am going out,” I announce to the group. They look up at me, their bodies trembling with thirst, the whites of their eyes bulging with terror.

“Out?” says Vivi, the youngest of us all. “Why?”

I shrug. Why do anything? Why cower inside a gas station that stinks of stale sweat and fear? Why go outside to be ripped apart and put on display, like poor, stupid Target?