Blood Run (39 page)

~ ~ ~

Promise turned her face up to where the sun hung at three o’clock, warming her skin. She was warmed inside, too, despite the cold of the wide, cement stairs she sat on outside the school. She was thinking about the things Miller had said this morning. Was it really possible that her discontent could be an asset? Maybe even her
greatest
asset?

A man’s voice startled her.

“I’m glad Miller let everyone stay on for the day.”

She turned in surprise, and Robert Allen, the man in charge of the Greenville outpost, stood at the top of the stairs. He was tall and bald and wearing a sheepskin coat, but it was open, and Promise could see that under the coat he still wore an old-fashioned looking wool suit. She felt somehow comforted by it.

He smiled at her. “Did I startle you? I’m sorry,” he said. “I saw you walk out here and wanted to see how you were.” He descended to where she sat. “Mind if I join you?”

Promise shook her head and smiled. “No, I don’t mind,” she said. She felt a little shy around Robert, a little dazzled by him, but in a good way.

“As I was saying,” he said. “I’m glad everyone got to rest. The people from the base looked traumatized when you got here yesterday. I’m sure a day of recuperating will do them a world of good. And then you’ll move on.”

Promise nodded agreement. She waited, sensing that he wanted to say something more.

He glanced at her, eyebrows raised. “And
you
? How are you feeling, Promise?”

“I’m okay,” she said and shrugged. “Although I guess I’ve been better.”

“Can I ask…what happened to your wonderful horses and your companion?”

“He’s coming,” Promise said, her voice soft. “Evans keeps telling me to believe that, so I’m trying, but…it’s hard.” She looked up at Robert, and her face was drawn in lines of tension. Without knowing it, she then echoed Evans’ fear about the returning Peter. “I just don’t know who he’ll be when he gets here.”

“What do you mean, Promise?”

“I think he might have gotten worse…that the disease may be taking more of his mind, sinking in somehow.”

“Peter is a…what’s the term? Half-and-half?”

“Yes, but he was more of an eighty-twenty. He’d survived a bite, but he had a natural immunity. That’s why they studied him at the base. To try and figure out how he was different.”

“He didn’t seem at all afflicted. I’d never have known if you hadn’t said something,” Robert said, and there was no accusation or judgment in his voice.

“You didn’t spend very much time with him,” Promise said. “He was sensitive to sunlight, and his eyes…sometimes I saw something in them…that glow.” She glanced at Robert. “You know the one I mean?”

“The fire,” he said. “The orange fire…but it looks deep down like it’s burning inside their brain somewhere.”

“Like a Halloween pumpkin with the candle in it,” Promise said, and Robert nodded.

“Yes, just exactly like that, but…meaner, poisoned…evil,” he said and then glanced at her. “Not that I meant that Peter was…”

Promise smiled. “No, I know what you meant. It’s okay.”

“What will you do? When he shows up?”

A cloud sailed over the sun, and Promise’s skin turned pale as the warm light disappeared. She looked south, her eyes searching the tree line. “I’ll just try and be ready, I guess. Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Robert felt a shiver run down his back at her words. There was something so oddly prophetic about her tone, but worse than that: she sounded doomed.

Chapter 4

Evans’ Humvee idled at the entrance to the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, Miller’s Humvee, the bus and the three other Humvees strung out along the road behind him. Promise watched Miller, Evans, and Lu where they stood at the front of the trucks and conferred. This was where they’d lost their commander, Riker.

Riker’s Humvee was, presumably, still sitting at the other entrance to the Refuge, two dangerous miles away. An enormous, downed tree had created cover for a vampire who had attacked them from the dark tangle of dead leaves and branches. He’d died fighting to protect a survivor they’d picked up along the way: a little girl who’d just lost her father.

Promise rolled down her window, concerned by the look on the soldiers’ faces. They looked jumpy and nervous, and that alone was enough to give Promise the jitters. Then her eyes slid reluctantly past them to the crowded entrance of the Refuge. This was where she and Peter had ridden Ash and Snow hard and fast once they realized that the Humvees were being attacked by vampires. The woods, although bare of leaves, were dense with pines and something more…something that sat heavy in her stomach and tasted like malevolence in her throat as she tried to swallow her anxiety.

“I can go in first and use the Humvee to push Riker’s vehicle off the path. We’ll never get the bus past it if we don’t,” Evans said.

“You’ll have to put it in neutral to be able to push it. It was still in park when I jumped out,” Miller said, and a brief memory flashed into her mind. She’d been covered in blood. Riker’s and the little girl’s. It had been horrific. She shook the memory away to keep her thoughts locked on the current problem and tried to keep her former commander out of her mind. “That means leaving your vehicle. It’s dangerous. Those vampires were hiding in that downed tree.”

“Today is different, though,” Lu said. “That day was overcast and raining, and today it’s bright sun. It’s just a theory, of course, but I think that makes quite a big difference as to when they can actually come out during daylight hours. The denser the cloud cover, the more protected they are from the sun’s rays. It’s especially true of the ones less affected by certain aspects of the disease.”

Miller considered his words. Lu was right about most things, even just his hunches. Someone had to move Riker’s Humvee, and it couldn’t be her. She was the leader, and her job was to get the lab people–and the cure–to Mr. West in Wereburg. They couldn’t all ride in and take a chance of bottlenecking while Riker’s Humvee was pushed aside, either. Smart or not, Lu’s theory was just that, a theory. She couldn’t put everyone in jeopardy.

“Okay, Ev, you’ve got the detail. Tell Promise to bring the cure and get in my Humvee. Then get going.” Even as she tried to clamp down on it, an irrational wave of fear made her turn and look at the woods. They were ugly and menacing, and she had a very bad feeling about this plan. She turned back to Evans, on the verge of telling him that they’d think of something else, when she stopped the words in her throat. She couldn’t put the entire mission in jeopardy just because she felt like Gretel and needed to hold Hanzel’s hand through the forest. Hanzel would be okay on his own. He’d have to be.

Promise, who’d heard every word, was standing by the door of Evan’s Humvee, the case of vials in her arms. “Be careful,” she said, but the words felt completely inadequate. “Be
really
careful.” That was even worse.

He grinned. “Don’t sweat it, Promise. I’ll be back here in less than ten. No big deal,” he said. “Go hop in with Miller and Lu until I come back for you.”

At his words, a presentiment of doom chilled her. His grin disappeared. “I
will
be back,” he said, and his eyes had darkened as he put a hand to her face. “Trust me, okay? Trust me on this.”

She nodded and smiled, then turned abruptly away and stumbled to Miller’s Humvee. She climbed in the back and prepared to wait. Miller–who’d gone down the line of vehicles, telling them to keep the engines running–came back and climbed into the passenger side just in time to watch Ev disappear into the woods, his taillights glowing dully. Lu checked his watch and then clicked a button on the side of it.

“Ten?” Miller asked.

Lu nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got him down for ten.”

Miller glanced back at Promise, acknowledging her but not trying to reassure, and then turned to face forward. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now we wait.”

Time ticked past slowly, and Promise dragged her eyes from the tunnel-like entrance and focused on the woods. The tree line pulled sharply away from the road, opening up more the further it got from the Refuge. The woods here were gray and black with bursts of an almost smoky green from the tall pines. It wasn’t a Disney forest by any means.

It was silent in the Humvee, the only sound the rumble of the idling engine coming through the unadorned, metal floor. Miller and Lu sat motionless, eyes fixed ahead. Promise envied them their patience. Then she saw a slight twitch in the muscle at Lu’s jaw, and she wondered if it wasn’t patience at all, but actually an almost paralyzing tension.

“How much time has gone by?” Promise asked; her voice was unintentionally loud in the echoing space, and Lu jumped. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean–”

“Three minutes,” he said, cutting her off, and her stomach knotted.

Three minutes?
she thought, incredulous, and her mouth dropped open. It felt like half an hour had gone by.
He must have read it wrong. His watch could be wrong or
…

Lu glanced back at her, his glasses flashing above the half-grin on his lips. “I’m not wrong,” he said and reached his arm awkwardly over his shoulder. “See?”

He had switched his watch to a timer function. It was counting down the ten minutes and stood at 00:07:35…00:07:34…00:07:33…

Promise pushed his arm back over the seat. “Okay, I believe you. But I don’t want to watch it…watch each second tick over…that would drive me crazy,” she said.

“Yeah, I know what you mean, but we’re used to it,” Lu said, a note of breezy disregard in his voice.

“That’s right,” Miller said and looked back at Promise. “Lu only checks it every five seconds or so. That’s how cool he is.”

“I do not!” Lu said, and Miller chuckled.

“Didn’t think I could see you sneaking peaks at it, did you?” Miller said. “I see all, Lu. Get used to it.”

Lu shook his head but then looked at his watch again. He sighed. “I can’t help it,” he said. “This tension is killing me. Evans is kind of an a-hole, but he’s…”

“He’s
our
a-hole,” Miller finished for him. Then she grabbed Lu’s wrist and checked the timer herself. “Six minutes to go,” she said.

From the back, Promise said, “What will we do if the ten minutes goes by and he’s–”

A blur at her side window and a familiar rumble closed her mouth with a snap. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Snow…it had to be her. Snow had just run past the Humvee. Promise faced forward, shock making her slow. Snow, with Peter on her back, was framed in the front window of the Humvee. He dismounted and turned, catching Promise’s eye. She felt as though the world stopped…if she could see Lu’s watch now, it would be frozen, the minutes suspended as Peter gazed at her. His eyes glowed, and now she had a better term for it…they glowed Halloween pumpkin orange.

Before she could react–before any of them could react–Peter had turned again and slapped Snow on the haunch, pushing her back past the Humvees. Then he ran into the dark tunnel of the Refuge and disappeared.

“Ho…lee…shit,” Lu said, frozen with his hands on the steering wheel, and even that seemed like it was in slow motion to Promise. She breathed in a long breath that seemed to take forever to fill her lungs, and gray clouds began to gather in the periphery of her vision. She realized on some level that she was freaking out…veeerrryyy sloooooooooowwwllly…

Then Miller looked back at her, yelling, and time snapped into place. “Promise, get out! Get on the bus!” Then she turned and spun out the Humvee door. “Stay here,” she yelled to the driver behind them. Before the bus driver could even acknowledge her, she was back in the Humvee, and she looked back at Promise with exasperation. “Promise…Get!…Out!”

Promise stared at her, unmoving. She raised her chin and pushed herself back into the seat. Miller shook her head once, sharply, and then turned to Lu and yelled, “GO!”

Lu gunned the big engine, and the Humvee churned forward, bellowing. They should have caught up to Peter on the trail, but there was no sign of him as they blasted through the dense forest.

“Is he going after Evans?” Miller shouted over the engine noise. “Promise, is he going to hurt Evans?”

“I don’t…” Promise started and then stopped. She had been going to say ‘I don’t think so’, but then his face flashed into her mind as he’d stood in front of Snow. She realized that although her initial reaction was a swell of happiness to see Peter again, a deeper voice turned her attention to his expression. It was intense, but beyond that, she had to admit, unreadable. Maybe if she’d known him better, longer…maybe if she were older, but she wasn’t. And she just didn’t know. “I don’t know,” she finished, her voice barely audible.

Miller looked at her steadily from the front seat, her face hovering between anger and fear. “I hope not,” she said and turned to face forward. “For his sake…for
all
our sakes.”

Then they came around the last bend on the short, two mile road.

Peter was trying to pull Evans from the driver’s side door of the Humvee that sat smothered under the fallen tree–Riker’s Humvee. He had Evans’ legs and was heaving backward, the strain evident in the taut lines of his body and the fearsome grimace on his face.

Lu slammed the Humvee to a halt, and Miller rolled out the door before the vehicle stopped rocking. Lu was a split second behind her. Promise struggled with the latch, and then she, too, was outside the vehicle.

Miller and Lu had drawn their crossbows, and they sprinted the short distance past Evans’ Humvee to where the two men struggled. They had their eyes and weapons trained on Peter.

“Step away, Peter!” Miller shouted, the words snapping across the close space. “Drop him, and stand back! Stand back! Stand back!”

Peter’s eyes rolled to them, and he continued to pull back, his teeth showing as he growled and pulled.

Miller raised her crossbow.

“Wait!” Promise yelled, her voice panicked, near tears. “Look in the truck!”

Miller cut her eyes across the shattered windshield and then back to Peter, her finger tightening on the bow trigger.