Disarming (2 page)

Chapter One

Outlined View

April

THE WORLD HAD
vacancies. It was a run-down motel flashing its broken neon sign—dusty and forever waiting. It would remain empty and hollow, arid and vast. No one was coming to save us. No one ever would. I had resigned myself to this already, but it was bittersweet when my eyes would wander to the horizon, always waiting, always wanting to see the dust clouds move like a welcoming mat to new arrivals. But the desert was silent. And with its silence came the tumbleweeds, dancing by in their apathetic roll across the valley, knowing almost nothing would or want to stop them.

The wind was my lone companion here, offering its caressing touch and rumpling my long black hair, raking its fingers through it and pulling strands to fly along with it. It was comforting, this careful breeze. It reminded me that summer was approaching and spring was readily here. It reminded me that there is rebirth, and the earth continued on its axis, with or without us humans. It reminded me of so many things I prayed I would never forget.

“I miss Disneyland.”

The sound of my brother Jeremy’s saddened voice pulled me out of the confines of my head. I turned to glance at his small frame and dark hair, growing and wild as the wind played with it, too. His face had a few freckles from all the sun we had been getting lately. Sitting Indian-style next to him, I threw him a small smile, knowing exactly how he felt. He yawned and sighed, looking a bit bored from lounging on the warm boulders of Red Rock Canyon.

I loved it out there. It was a small vacation from the never ending rubble of the city and the confines of the cement walls of our mountain bunker. He was fine with outdoor explorations, but preferred to read books, watch old sitcoms on the television—recorded of course—or play the Xbox endlessly.

“What’s wrong, squirt?” I reached out to give his hair my habitual rub, but he pulled away before I could get to him, shooting me a glare. This made me laugh, knowing that he was getting older with each day. He didn’t want to be treated like the little brat that he was. He was a big man now. Having survived a hive of evil vampires that wanted nothing but to experiment on his blood had made him feel like he could take on anything. I was sad to even try to reason with him that he was still just a seven-year-old, fresh past his birthday.

“I’m bored!” He fingered a smooth pebble on the stone before snapping it up and flinging it out over the edge of the cliff. He watched as it bounced against the rock, ricocheting as it made its way noisily down the incline.

“Nice throw, Jer. I bet you would have been a star player on a baseball team.” I leaned back onto my hands and enjoyed the midday sun. It was getting hotter every day, and the sun would be burning my light skin if I had not smothered it with sunscreen. I loved the warmth; it felt like life in a world full of withering death.

“Yeah, but I’ll never be on a baseball team now. It sucks!” He stood up and huffed away, hopping across boulders until he found a small overhang. He crawled under it and bunched his legs to his chest, looking perturbed. I sighed. I knew how he felt, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. Nothing whatsoever. The world was gone, his school pals were dead. Nothing was left. Nothing but the embers of the life we’d once had. Now we were alone. Alone with vampires and dust.

I stood up and lazily scanned the valley before me. The center was crowded with buildings and casinos. It had been so vibrant once, teaming with people and lights. Now it was as dead as the death it held onto. Houses rimmed The Strip in patched developments in varying states of neglect and decay. The valley was vast, so spread out, it was an eyeful. The view was breathtaking, and for a moment, it quiet and peaceful. But I knew otherwise.

“April, are we leaving soon?” My mother Helen’s voice carried softly on the wind from behind me. Turning to face her, I could see the stark circles under her eyes and her pale skin. She was standing in the shade of a wall of orange-red boulders. They blocked the westbound afternoon sun enough to keep her in the shade. Her long black hair lay in tangles around her shoulders, frizzy and unkempt. She refused to let me brush it. She refused to do a lot of things and didn’t seem to enjoy the warmth as much as I did anymore. This worried me greatly.

She was not the same person she had once been. My mom had been a strong woman, filled with determination and logical to a tee. After I’d saved her from an enemy hive of hybrid vampires, she had been returned to me, but she was not without wounds—wounds that would never heal. Helen had changed somehow, and I had yet to discover what had been done to make her this way. She was a shell of the woman I had known my entire life. An empty house where the lights were all on, but no one was home. Nothing was the same. She was shattered and fragile.

“Yes, we’re leaving. Right now, actually.” I replied. I sighed, jumping down from my perch and motioning her to follow. She was no longer the one giving commands or instructions. She had checked out of her duties when an enemy hive of vampires had broken her down. I wanted my mother back, but from this, there was no recovery.

“Come on, let’s go before we fry out here.” I stuck my tongue out, trying to joke with her as I held out my hand to her. She was steady on her feet but almost fearful of the surrounding area. Agoraphobia was making her come out less and less. Her mental deterioration was continuing, but it had slowed down at least. She slipped her warm fingers into mine and let me lead her down over the smooth sandy rocks until we reached the bottom of the trail where our Jeep sat.

Slipping into the driver’s seat, I waited until my brother and mother strapped themselves in before putting the car into gear. I was the only one who drove now. I liked to drive, but the silence in the car could become unbearable at times. We rarely talked anymore, unless Jeremy went off on a rant about whatever it was that he wanted to yap about. Usually it was about an episode of the Andy Griffith Show or the school work I had thrown at him. Helen had stopped teaching him his school lessons. She had been so vigilante to keep us at our studies even though it was the end of the world. So now I was the teacher. Though I had been a good student, long division, fractions and grammar were not my strong suits and I hated it.

It made me resent her a bit. She had abandoned us already, even if she was still here physically. How could she let herself go like this? How could she leave us behind as she withered inside her self-imposed prison? I wanted to slap her at times and shake the old Helen out of her. I held out hope that she was still in there somewhere, just lost in the crevices of the endless fields in her mind.

But how could I find her? What would make her return to this place, so empty, hollow and filled with loneliness. Maybe she had found peace some other way, deep inside the vast nothing inside her. Maybe she didn’t want to return at all. Even though I understood her reasons for escape, how could I make her see what this was doing to us?

The thing was, I didn’t think I could save her. Maybe no one could.

Chapter Two

Promise Me This

April

“
WE FOUND MORE
of them.” Rye slipped down onto a park bench that sat just at the edge of the property where our bunker-slash-cabin was situated. He looked tired and rubbed his face as his gold-rimmed, grey eyes hovered near my face. He was devastatingly handsome and constantly made me avoid his gaze for fear that I’d get lost in his disarming looks. I didn’t want to be in love with anyone. Love was a foolish, pre-epidemic notion. Love was not a necessity; it was a luxury I refused to indulge in.

Rye made it so hard, though. The way his presence sent shivers through me was irresistible and impossible to ignore. Sometimes I wondered if pushing him away would be foolish, especially when he looked at me with those steel-colored eyes of his. How could someone make me feel like an idiot with no words whatsoever? It made my chest arrest for a moment before I’d violently shake it off. No time for that. No time ever.

“More ferals?” I stopped cleaning my weapons as I waited for him to continue. “Were they burned up?”

“Yep. Not so many now, but a lot. They were lining the streets in heaps, like they had been pushed out the windows of some of the hotels.” His lips thinned into a firm line, making him appear overly serious. I sighed, turning back to sorting my blades out across the table I had set up outside. There were ten blades, all sizes. Sharpening and cleaning each one took time, but it was an activity I saved for days like this, when too much was tumbling in my head and peace avoided me like a plague. It was soothing and calmed my frayed nerves.

I felt his fingers slip over my shoulders, giving them a tentative squeeze. My skin tingled with his touch, sending tiny sparks down my arms. I closed my eyes, and tried to control my breathing as he slowly kneaded my muscles, melting my tension away.

“What do you think is causing this?” I flung my eyes open, feeling slightly dazed yet relaxed. I continued to wipe down one particular machete, the one that I had chosen to replace my two favorite and now long lost weapons. I had grieved the loss of those blades, lost over the precipice of the Stratosphere Tower. It helped me turn my focus back to the conversation before I became a stuttering idiot from his touch.

“I’m not too sure. It’s the weirdest thing.” Rye’s hands slid away as he propped himself on a chair across from where I sat, his eyes twinkling as though he knew how distracting he was. “Who would go out at night to shove the wildlings out the windows? It’s suicidal.” He ran his hand through those thick, black locks that never seemed to stay put. “And it’s not like the windows are shattered. They look they were either never opened or shut after they did the deed.”

“Hmmm,” was I could muster as I thought things over. I wouldn’t dare hang out in a hotel after dark. The risk of becoming dinner to hundreds of ferals was way too high. Who would be that crazy? The possibility of there being something else at work was unnerving, Despite the massage I tensed back up as I thought of there being another supernatural mutation out there. I really hoped there wasn’t; there was enough stuff already lingering in the shadows, craving flesh and blood. “Nothing else has been discovered out there? Footprints? Blood?”

“No. Whoever is doing this knows what they’re doing, and they’re damn good at it.”

“Have they come after any hybrids?”

He sighed as he shook his head, his frustration painted on his face, making the knots in my shoulders tense up even more. “No, not yet at least.”

“Well, that’s pretty strange. Not sure how to even go about seeing who is doing it unless….” The idea came to me suddenly as I stopped what I was doing and smiled, excited about the thought. “We could put night vision cameras out there, where there the feral pileups are occurring, and see who shows up!”

“No electricity, remember?”

“Duh! Battery operated of course.” I rolled my eyes at the obvious and returned to polishing my weapons. Sometimes he was so stuck in the now that he didn’t want to think outside his little box. Rye sat still, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t smiling. Guilt suddenly ripped through me for being so insensitive. I wasn’t used to apologizing, and I found myself frozen, my mouth uncooperative as I tried to voice an “I’m sorry.” Instead, only a squeak leaked out as I watched him stand up.

“You’re probably right. I’ll run it past Blaze and go from there.” Rye readied himself to leave, tucking away the few weapons he had also been cleaning, and brushed off the particles from his clothes. I paused and watched him, knowing my sarcastic remark had rubbed him the wrong way. I longed to tell him not to go, that I wanted him to stay and chat some more. I loved his voice, the little gestures he made while he spoke. But I couldn’t. The words just never formed, and I didn’t know why.

“Leaving already?” I mustered enough in me to ask him, jumping up and laying my hand on his shoulder. His warmth radiated through the material, enveloping my fingers and making me long to have his arms around me. Rye jerked slightly from my touch, and I pulled my hand back to my side. His face was no longer calm. A burrowed frustration lingered in his eyes.

“Yes, I got loads to do back at the hive.” His solemn voice made my insides twist as I nodded, saddened but not wanting to upset him further. He gave me a wave as he said his farewells to my mother and brother. As he turned away and made his way down the drive, I let my eyes linger after him for a few moments. He was my best friend nowadays, but I didn’t know how to let him in. Even though he and I had felt an instant connection, I had put my walls back up straight away after the battle at the Stratosphere Tower, not wanting to focus on anything but keeping my family safe again. I didn’t know if he understood that. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing either. It felt forced and unnatural to keep him away. Even though my heart was being ripped into pieces, I didn’t have enough willpower in me to let myself love him completely. Maybe one day. But right now didn’t seem to be the time.

I sat back down, exasperated, but tried to shake it off. I missed him when he was gone, but his presence sent me into a tense state that I didn’t want to tolerate for too long. I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I wasn’t sure I even had the energy to try and figure it out. If he was going to mean more to me, he’d understand. He’d wait for me, surely.