Vicious (4 page)

I couldn’t watch anymore. I sat on one of the lower bunks and shut my eyes with my hands over my ears in a desperate attempt to drown out the screaming. That terrible, hideous screaming. This place was hell. I had been sentenced to a three-year term in hell, and I had been foolish enough to think this was some sort of break. I just wanted it all to stop. I prayed silently to make all the horrible screaming stop. Suddenly and without warning, the screams ceased just like they had before, and we were left with the even more disgusting silence.

Chapter Five

Anna, five years later

Alarms rang in my ears louder than I remembered anything ever sounding in my short life. The guard was rank with freshly spilled blood, and I struggled not to partake in its flavor. The others around me had inky eyes, so I knew it was hard for them too. We didn’t have time to stop.

Pushing through the corridor, we tore past a number of armed guards. All of their weapons, all of their training and loud shouts, it meant nothing. Half of them died before the orders to stop escaped their throats. No one could have stopped us.

We found the laboratory easily. It smelled sterile, like disinfectants and clean metal. Nothing else here smelled sharp and precise the way this room did. It wasn’t natural. That much was clear. I knew this must be the place.

The scientists were here. They were running around like frightened mice and burning every scrap of paper in sight. The collective thrum of their panicked heart beats echoed throughout the room. It sounded like a collective rolling thunder to us. My throat suddenly felt dry again and the urge to satiate it with the blood of these monsters was overwhelming.

We dispersed and didn’t hold back. The smell of ash and smoke from the burning papers was overcome by the tangy scent of newly splattered blood on the walls. These were the men. These were the eyes behind that camera that had watched us for years. They had made us animals, and now their pet dogs were rebelling. It would have been poetic had it not been so gruesome.

I cornered one skinny man holding a large folder in his hand. His eyes were wide and frightened, and the only thing between us was a wooden table. Any time I wanted, I knew I could easily flip that table away and he was mine. All the power belonged to me this time. Not the guards with the guns, not this man with his needles and lab coat. Me, I had the power. He was mine, and I was the agent of sweet revenge.

“Anna, don’t! I know that you don’t want to kill me.”

This stopped me in my tracks. He knew my name, my real name.

“You know my name? You know because you watched me?”

“Yes. I know a lot about you, Anna. I know you don’t want to hurt people anymore. I know you still feel for humans. Please, I can help you.”

I dug my nails into the table. “How can you possibly help me?”

“I can tell you the way out. I can help you.”

“We can figure it out.”

I moved to the left and he moved to his right, always keeping the table between us. He knew I could rip the table to shreds any time I wanted. Why was I waiting?

“I can give you this, Anna,” he said as he held out the file he was holding to me like a peace offering.

I looked at the worn folder and back at him.

“What is it, and why should I care?”

“It’s you. I mean, it’s your file. It’s how we made you. You’re different than the others, Anna. In here are the answers. I know you want this.”

I stared at this little man with the folder in his trembling hands. He was right, I did want that. The rage was intense, but so was the need to know who I was, what I was. Searching his face, I looked for a sign this was a lie or a trick.

I let him slide the folder across the table to me before I killed him. Conflicting feelings surged through me. Remorse was one, but at the same time I was glad he was dead because he had been one of the ones holding us here and watching us like vultures. It made me uneasy that one of these horrible people knew such intimates facts about me. Having that man dead was good, in a way. Yet it wasn’t. A deep hollowness poured down my esophagus with his blood, and I knew it was wrong.

No other files were saved but that one, and we helped the fire to spread. It licked along the sides of the laboratory, and several of us threw burning boxes into other rooms to feed it more. This place would burn. We would make it known to the world that it was Hell on earth.

I took his file and was going to head for the exit he had described with the others, but something felt unfinished. There had to be someone in charge of this prison who allowed all of this to happen. We would find him and make him pay. Our group made their way for the double doors that led to the prison on the other side.

What we found in the main holding area was chaos. All of the cells had opened automatically when the fire alarm had been triggered. We let the fire rage on and spread through the laboratories and on into the prison as we hurried through the hordes of frightened inmates. They all gave us a wide berth and cowered away from our gazes, frightened as we made our way upstairs and into the offices of the prison.

We found the warden’s office to be a lavishly decorated place full of expensive furniture and paintings. The warden had just opened his safe when we walked in, and he was quickly scooping money into a large silver briefcase. He turned to see us, vampires still wearing the tattered garments we had worn for years, covered in muck and dried blood. It must have been quite a sight for him, because he backed away from his money and went for his gun. He never got to pull the trigger. We were on him quicker than he could blink. He knew what we were, and the money in his safe was the money he’d been paid for allowing them to create and house us in his prison. For that reason, we devoured him ruthlessly on his desk and took the money with us.

We slipped out and escaped before anyone knew what had happened. The prison burned down in the early hours of the morning, and the fire cleansed any evidence of us or the scientists, except for the folder that I had stolen. We regrouped with each other before dawn, and after realizing that the sunlight was too painful to travel in, we all took shelter in an abandoned hunting shed until dark. Only one of us had been lost during our escape, and her name was Rose. A guard had tranquilized her, and we had lost her in the chaos. Death could have really been the only option for her.

“It’s over?” asked Lulu.

Her hands were trembling and covered in blood. She had dishwater blond hair matted to her face and stuck to her neck. Marshall placed his dark hands over hers to still them.

“Yeah, Lulu. It’s over,” I said with a whisper.

“Like hell it is,” came a raspy voice behind me.

We all turned to Lea as she uncurled herself from her crouched position in the corner. The power in her reverberated throughout the room. The others cowered a little as she stood. It was the cell all over again.

“You think those bastards were the only ones? You think that this is really over?”

“Lea, we need to rest now,” said Cat in the corner.

“Oh, you can rest if you want to, but what’s the point? This is not over. This is a war now, that’s what this is.”

Her voice was sharp and piercing, like a knife.

“Lea, this isn’t helping,” moaned Cat.

“You can go hide. You go hide and wait for those monsters to find you again.”

“Enough!”

I stood in between them and silenced everyone. I looked into Lea’s eyes, and she softened just enough for her warm eyes to return to normal. Her back was still up though. She wasn’t going to lie down, not for me or anyone else.

“Lea, I agree with you. This is not over.”

She softened further. I did too. The last thing I wanted to do was fight her. I knew I would lose.

“Right now, let’s decide what we do next. We need shelter. We need a life.”

Lea tensed again.

“War is coming, and you know it’s true. This isn’t the end. They are not just going to let us go.”

“Again, I agree with you, but look at us,” I said as I swept my hand around the room. “We are worn and dirty and beaten.”

The scent of sweat and desperation was in the air. It was thick between us.

“We need to settle down somewhere and get our bearings. We need a life.”

“A life? How on earth do we do that? Look at us, we’re monsters!”

“But we don’t have to be. We don’t have to be what they made us.”

“So then what do we eat? We feed on blood, Anna. They made us to kill. What do you expect us to do? Drink rats in the sewer?”

“If we have to, but no more killing. We don’t have to do what they trained us to do. We’ve gone weeks without eating at a time.”

Lea stared at me skeptically.

“Skulking in the sewers and eating rats. That’s your solution? And you call that dignified? You call that a life?”

“I call it surviving without killing people.”

Silence leaked into the room. I knew that opinions on this were divided. I’d always known that, and now was the moment of truth.

“Listen, we don’t all have to agree. We don’t even have to all stay together. I’m going forward with a different life, a life where we don’t kill. If you agree with me, then we can set out together at dusk.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Go on your own way.”

That silence came again. It was the kind of silence that only made an appearance when huge decisions were being made. To my surprise, Harris spoke up first. He was against the far wall cradling frail, little Chloe in his arms.

“We are going at it alone, Chloe and me. Sorry, Anna, but what you are asking is hard, and settling down somewhere makes us feel trapped. I’ll feel better if we can move around and stay on our toes.”

I nodded.

“Understood, Harris. Promise to keep in touch?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, I’m not subscribing to this self-sacrificing lifestyle you are trying to sell,” spat Lea.

“I’m not surprised.”

“We are what we are, Anna. Nothing can change that. No amount of pandering will make us human ever again.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“Lea, I know what I am. I know what I’ve done. I have just as much blood on my hands as you. I just don’t want any more.”

“I won’t go hungry, Anna. I won’t. I want to live. We all deserve to live and have what we want after what we suffered. Anyone here agree with me?”

Bridgette and Jackson stayed in the shadows like they always did, but they made themselves visible at Lea’s side. I knew they would go with her, they always did. I nodded. We didn’t say anything else that day. We just waited around for the dark to come so that we might go our separate ways.

The money was disbursed evenly between us, and when the last glimpse of sunlight winked out behind the clouds, we walked out into the wide new world. The air seemed crisper somehow, like I thought an apple might taste. Chloe and Harris went one way, Lea and her group went another. The ones that were left went with me, off into our new lives together with my dirty folder in hand.

Chapter Six

Howard

Howard Mitchell plopped heavily onto his overstuffed, oversized arm chair in his study and flipped on his television out of habit. He had no desire to watch anything in particular. He looked lifelessly at the screen, and all of the images just came through as blobs of color and moving lights. This was just another step he took every day, and right now he was working on brain-dead fumes. He had been working twelve-hour days for weeks now, and today was his first night home before eight o’clock in an uncountable amount of days. His feet screamed and ached with the exertion of standing for so long, but the pain was nothing compared to the numb, worn feeling in his brain. It was as if his head weighed more than a ton of concrete, and his frail neck was too flimsy to hold its weight any longer.

He had long ago conceded the living room to his wife, his live-in estranged wife as he had taken to calling her only to himself. In order to make some sort of sanctuary, he had equipped his study with new, comfortable furniture and the largest television the salesman could offer. He had never been a huge television watcher until the last few years, but his current life had left him lonely and needing the camaraderie only countless hours of pointless sitcoms could provide.

He let out a loud and exasperated sigh as his body sank deeper into the chair, and he let his head fall backwards into the cushion. Why couldn’t he just sink farther and farther into the chair until he shrank and disappeared into the cushions, fated forever to live among the spare change and wads of lint?

He turned the volume up so that the scuffling noises his wife was making in the other room became inaudible. He had seen the latest flyers with the picture of his daughter scattered and spread across the floor of the living room. He had also seen the maps with thumbtacks placed in new cities hung up on the walls where family portraits used to be. She was planning a new campaign. He could tell. There had been another tip or clue or something. It wouldn’t matter. These things never amounted to anything.

His wife, once vibrant and creative, had become a manic depressive, emphasis on the depressive. Only when an anonymous tip or lead came about did she raise her head from her crushing depression to do anything, and when she did, she obsessed for days or weeks at a time at finding their lost daughter. A daughter who had been lost for almost a decade and one the authorities had finally considered dead.