The Lola Chronicles (Book 2): A Day Without Dawn (11 page)

I Owe You One, Golden Boy

I opened my eyes slowly
. Then I sat up so fast my head spun when I realized I wasn’t in the alley anymore. Instead of sitting on the ground I was on top of a narrow exam table. White paper crinkled as I scooted to the edge. The sound was deafening in the tiny, windowless room. My heart started to pound. Where the hell was I? And how had I gotten here?

Take a deep breath,
I told myself.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Like saying it three times would somehow make it happen. Who did I think I was, freakin’ Dorothy?

Dark hair slid over my shoulders as my gaze darted around the room. There was something oddly familiar about my sterile surroundings. It looked like any other hospital room, but I was pretty sure I’d been here before. When I caught sight of the kitten poster taped to the back of the door I was sure of it.

My entire body sagged forward as I breathed a sigh of relief. I was back at the middle school. Someone – Hunter? – had carried me all the way from the alley into the nurse’s office. He’d even bandaged me up, I noted when I glanced down and saw the white gauze wrapped neatly around my knee. Bracing for pain, I gingerly slid off the edge of the exam table…and was pleasantly surprised when I felt nothing more than a mild ache. Who knew Golden Boy had a degree in medicine?

He’d also managed to find a sling for my wrist. I was guessing it wasn’t broken since I could still wiggle my fingers and thumb, but it still throbbed.

Limping to the door I turned the silver knob. The door swung open with a tiny creak and I stepped out into the hallway. It was lighter out here than it had been in the nurse’s office, but the shadows creeping out across the plain beige carpet indicated that sunset wasn’t too far off.

Jeez. How long had I been out? Three hours? Four?

I seriously needed to get a watch.

My ears pricked when I heard the muffled hum of voices. They got louder and clearer as I approached the gymnasium, but stopped all together when I shoved open the double doors and hobbled onto the basketball court. I did a quick head count and breathed another sigh of relief when I reached seven. Everyone was here. They’d all made it.

Thank God.

If I had to carry the weight of one more death on my shoulders…

I didn’t even want to think about it.  

“Lola?” The shock in Rose’s voice mirrored the shock on her face. “You came back!”

Oh yeah. In all the excitement of trying not to have my throat ripped out by a crazy drinker zombie I’d completely forgotten about my dramatic exit.

When I’d walked away from everyone I had felt so self-righteous and powerful.

Now I just felt like a bitch.

“Um…yep.” Shifting my weight from my bad leg onto my good one I looked to the side, avoiding Rose’s stare. After the way I had treated her I didn’t deserve her excitement or her relief. “I’m back. Did you get Hayley?”

“No.” His green eyes intent on mine, Hunter started to take a step forward only to stop short and fold his arms across his chest instead. I bit the inside of my cheek. Hard. I hadn’t really expected to be forgiven so easily, had I? Maybe by Rose, but not by Hunter and certainly not by the rest. I’d left them when they needed me the most and now I’d have to do a little work to get back in their good graces. I wasn’t that great at groveling, but for the good of the group I’d suck up my pride and give it my best shot.

“Listen guys, I just wanted to say–”

“But we found where she’s being kept,” Hunter finished.

My eyebrows shot up. “Where she’s being kept? You meant she’s still alive?”

“Told you,” Livy said smugly.

“There’s a farmhouse on the edge of town,” said Hunter. “The old Dower place. We couldn’t get in, but we’re pretty sure that’s where they took her.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

As a unit, everyone except for Hunter suddenly looked like they’d eaten bad tuna fish for lunch. Since people generally didn’t turn green without a good reason, I braced myself for the worse.

Hunter didn’t disappoint. 

“Because of the screams.” His jaw clenched. “They were coming up from the basement. It was bad, Lola. Really bad.”

Well it definitely didn’t sound good. “How do you know it was Hayley?”

“You think I can’t recognize my own best friend’s voice?” Becca bristled.

“Whoa.” Not wanting to get in another catfight, I held up my hand. “That wasn’t what I–”

“We’re pretty sure she’s down there,” Hunter interjected. “There are others too. At least half a dozen. We couldn’t get close enough to get a clear look, but we think they’re holding them in cages.”

“We don’t know why,” Stevenson said.

Hunter and I looked at one another. We both knew why, but if he wasn’t going to say it out loud then neither was I. There was only one reason drinkers would want to keep humans locked in a basement. And it wasn’t to throw them a birthday party. 

Half a dozen prisoners… My mind reeled from the implications. That meant there were half a dozen people still alive. Half a dozen people –people that I most likely knew
– being kept against their will. Half a dozen people being tortured and drained and God only knew what else.

And my dad could be one of them.

My body turned hot and then cold. If Dad wasn’t dead, then chances were pretty high he was locked up in that basement. It would explain why he’d disappeared from the hotel without leaving so much as a note. Why I hadn’t been able to find him. Why I’d seen no signs of him around town.

I closed my eyes as my empty stomach turned over and all the blood drained from my face.  

“Lola?” Hunter’s footsteps echoed on the gym floor as he hurried over to me. He gently closed his hand around my upper arm, thumb rhythmically circling over the sensitive skin on the inside of my elbow. “Are you okay?”

I opened my eyes to find him standing over me, his green eyes filled with concern. “My dad,” I whispered. “Do you think…?” My throat tightened as I swallowed. I couldn’t make myself say the words out loud. 

His expression grim, Hunter nodded. “It’s possible. I can’t say for sure, but I heard – I heard a man.”

You mean you heard a man screaming
, I said silently. My stomach did another slow, greasy flip. If my dad had been a prisoner all this time…I couldn’t even fathom it.

Dad was a good man, but he wasn’t a strong one. He never had been. If my mom’s leaving had been enough to drive him to alcoholism, what would torture do?

Break him.

It would break him.

If he wasn’t broken already.

“We have to get them out.” Desperate, I grabbed Hunter’s t-shirt with my good hand, fingers digging into the soft cotton fabric and scrunching it into a ball. “Hunter, we have to get them out!”

“And we will. We will,” he repeated when I started to tremble. “Lola, look at me.”

His voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long, dark hallway. After losing Travis, I couldn’t lose my dad too. I just couldn’t. Before the drinkers came I would have jumped at the opportunity to walk out of our crappy apartment and never see him again, but now I would have given anything to look at his face one last time. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but he was the only parent I had left. The only one who had cared enough to stay. The only one who still remembered my birthday. Maybe he wasn’t the best dad, but I hadn’t exactly been the best daughter. It was something I planned on changing when – not if – I found him.

I took a deep breath, forcing my lungs to fill with air. When all of this was over I could fall apart, but not a second before. I could feel the pressure and the panic closing in on me. My skin felt two sizes too tight. I had an itch in the middle of my back I couldn’t reach. My chest felt hot and clammy all at the same time. But I couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. Because if I did I’d never be able to put all the pieces together again.

“I’m okay.” Needing to convince myself as well as Hunter, I made myself say it again. “I’m okay.” I darted a glance over his shoulder. Everyone was watching us, no doubt waiting to see if I was going to turn all raging bitch again. I forced myself to smile. I wasn’t used to playing nice with others, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Besides, I hadn’t exactly done all that great on my own. Sure, I wasn’t dead. Yet. But since when had not dying become the new standard of living?

Whether I admitted it or not, I needed this little group of misfits. And whether they liked it or not, they needed me. We were a family now – a seriously dysfunctional family, but that wasn’t anything new to me – and if this whole shit show had taught me anything it was that family did best when they stuck together. 

“We will get them out, do you hear me? Your dad, Hayley, and all the rest. We
will
get them out,” Hunter said firmly, his gaze intent on mine. He sounded so convincing I almost believed him.

Almost.

“Do you have a plan?”

He hesitated. “Sort of. It’s going to be tough. The whole farm is swarming with those things. The ones who can be out in the daylight. I don’t know what to call them.”

“Drinker zombies.”

Hunter lifted a brow. “Drinker
zombies
?”

“That’s what attacked me,” I said, lifting my sling. “In the middle of town. I didn’t recognize her, but she was definitely from Revere. She seemed…confused. I mean, don’t get me wrong. She would have totally eaten me if I didn’t shoot her. But I think she would have felt bad about it afterwards.”

Hunter looked doubtful. “Are you saying they have a conscience? Because the drinkers–”

“The drinkers are monsters,” I said flatly. “Every single one of them.”

Even you
, I thought silently when my thoughts abruptly veered to Maximus. If anything, he was worse than Angelique had been. At least I’d known she was a murdering psychopath from the beginning. But Maximus…Maximus had made me trust him. He’d made me
feel
things for him. And when I’d been at my most vulnerable he’d taken those feelings and crushed them into dust.

“Lola?”

“Sorry.” Realizing I’d zoned out for a second, I blinked a few times and returned to the present. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think the drinker zombies are fully turned yet. They’re still human. Or at least a part of them is. That’s probably why they can be out in the daylight without burning to a crisp.”

“But they’re still the enemy,” Hunter said with a frown. 

“Oh yeah.” I blew out a breath. “They’re still the enemy.”

Unless we can find a way to turn them back.
The thought settled uneasily in the back of my mind. I wasn’t a hero or a savior or Joan of freakin’ Arc. So what did I care? Monsters were monsters. Except try as I might I couldn’t get Mrs. Sniffer’s face out of my head. I pressed my lips tightly together.
If
we got everyone out of the basement hell of horrors and
if
we didn’t all die in the process then
maybe
I would try to figure out a way to turn Mrs. Sniffer and the other zombie drinkers back to normal.

That was two huge ifs and a big ass maybe, but it was all I could afford to give.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked again. “We charge in, guns blazing?”

Hunter smiled wryly. “Something like that. Except we only have one gun.”

“I know where to get more.”

“Can you teach us how to shoot them?”

“Yeah. I can teach you.”

“Good. We can start bright and early tomorrow morning, but for tonight we need to lay low. I don’t think any of those zombie things saw us, but I don’t want to take any chances. And we can’t risk going at night. Not with the drinkers still around.”

“Tomorrow? We can’t wait that long. They could all be dead by tomorrow. We need to–”

“What we need,” Hunter interrupted, “is a good plan. There’s no point in running off on some half-assed rescue mission and getting ourselves killed.” His dimples flashed as his smile widened into a grin. “Someone pretty smart told me that.”

I really hated it when people used my own words against me. Like,
really
hated it.

“She sounds pretty dumb to me.”

“Not dumb.” Before I could pull back Hunter reached out and captured a loose tendril of hair. He lifted it off my shoulder, rubbing the glossy black curl between his thumb and index finger. “Not dumb,” he repeated, his voice dropping to a husky timbre. “Hot-headed, maybe. But that’s what I like the most about her.”

My stomach muscles clenched again, this time for an entirely different reason. Hunter was
really
testing my no-boys policy. In theory I knew that his sparkling green eyes and thick tousled hair and perfect dimples were nothing but trouble. Unfortunately my brain and my hormones weren’t exactly on the same page.

“Don’t do that,” I warned before I grabbed my hair and yanked it out of his grasp.