What Happens in the Darkness (16 page)

“But you don’t believe in vampires?” Janelle asked wearily.

“No! Of course not.”

Janelle dusted off her knees and rubbed her hands together. “I’d better get going.”

“Where?”

“South. Got family in Georgia. Do you know how to get there, by the way?”

The woman’s mouth fell open. “You can’t go by yourself, sweetie. You’re too young.”

“I’m not young, I’m twelve! Nearly thirteen.” She thought for a moment about the date, forgetting what day or even what month it was. October. But October what?

“I have to go look for my gramma.”

“Why don’t you stay with me?”

Janelle shook her head. “You can tell me how to get there, or not. But I’m goin’.”

“How? Do you plan to walk?”

“Well … I don’t know how to drive! And I don’t think the buses are running.” She grinned.

“It’s hundreds of miles at least.”

Janelle shrugged. “I’ll find a map. We learned how to read maps in social studies.”

“Wait.” The woman grabbed Janelle’s arm. “Please be careful, sweetheart. Make sure you carry a big stick. Or better yet, a knife. And a cross. And a stake. And keep off the roads. Keep away from the soldiers.”

“Wow. I will. I’ll be careful. You be careful too!”

“I really wish you’d change your mind.” She pulled Janelle close and hugged her. The blonde girl started crying again and stuck her pinky in her nose.

“I have to find my family. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

The woman sighed, releasing Janelle. “Get a map. I don’t know how to get there, unfortunately. My husband always made our travel plans. All I know is that you have to go through Jersey, which means going through one of the tunnels, or over the GW Bridge. I think. But I have no idea how else to get off this island.”

Janelle nodded. Island. She’d forgotten Manhattan was an island. Her sense of direction was good, something she’d picked up from her camping days. She’d make her way south.

“Why don’t you at least find a bicycle?”

“That’s a good idea.” She turned and started to walk away.

“Be careful, honey!” 

*** 

Patrick went out alone the following night.

He sat beneath a three-quarter moon, its thin light penetrating a few dark clouds. Closing his eyes he could imagine it was the sun, and he could almost feel its heat. But being anywhere near the sun would mean death for him. Or any vampire.

He harbored no hatred for Martin, who was responsible for Patrick becoming what he was. Occasionally he longed for his humanity but never shared those feelings with the others. He knew he was in the minority on that subject and discovered it almost taboo to fondly recall your past life. It was considered a travesty, an admission of sorts that your loyalty was misplaced because the only thing on your mind should be the one who shared his
gift
with you.

Ah, gift. This was how the zealots felt. That vampirism was a gift and not the dreaded curse Patrick felt it was.

He lay back in the tall grass, not feeling the chill wind, feeling instead the blades dancing on his skin, caressing his face. If he could feel remorse … if he could feel anger, or hatred … but he no longer felt these things. This thought pattern was destructive. Vampires didn’t
feel
.

That’s what he’d been told, anyway.

They didn’t feel love and hate and anger and jealousy and remorse or any other emotion. To feel was human. Vampires are feral; they survived, and they existed.

Yet …

He knew better. He could see, in Martin’s behavior alone, that everything he had believed to be true wasn’t. Martin chose friendships, something Patrick had always marveled over. Maybe that was the reason Martin kept the others away from Jeff … to protect himself, ultimately. So no one else would see Martin expressing his feelings.

Patrick had often wondered about that. Loyalty made sense, but friendship was foreign to him. He could recall that feeling from his childhood, now so long ago, the camaraderie among his friends. But those feelings were fleeting, if they’d been there at all, just phantom wisps of memory. If he were to actually call anyone
friend
, it would be Dagan perhaps, or a member of his small family. But not Martin. Theirs was not a friendship.

Hatred, however, was a feeling he remembered well. It was the one emotion he had never let go of, and one he practiced daily, knowing someday it would be useful.

Hatred for Jeff. A burning claw, hooking itself into his intestines, ripping around in his chest, buried where his heart once rested, beating a bloodless path through his veins. Now sat a coldness, consuming the echoing emptiness with its strangling hold.

He hated that Jeff had left them in that cell to rot, concerned only with his own survival and that of his kind.

Martin was calling him. He could hear it, even at the great distance he had traveled. Could feel Martin’s voice on the wind. Patrick stood, stretching his arms overhead. The trip back would only take minutes, even though he was miles away.

Patrick would never be allowed to harm Jeff in any way. Martin had already warned them all that Jeff was the one human none were allowed to touch.

But there had to be a way. Had to! His hatred for Jeff was so tangible he wanted to chew and swallow it. But he couldn’t hurt Jeff … couldn’t tear a hole in his throat and watch his life’s blood pour out of his body … couldn’t eviscerate him and watch his intestines puddle to the ground like a rope of chain link.

He wasn’t allowed to harm Jeff. But he suddenly realized the best way to exact his revenge.

Chapter 12 

Now there were thousands … men, women, even a smattering of children, all devoted to Martin, waiting to follow his commands, willing to sacrifice themselves for him. There was no love but there was a strong sense of devotion, of unity.

Martin had made many speeches before this crowd and felt confident they were ready. Time for speeches was over. Time for action had come.

Their living quarters were well hidden in a building now leveled by another attack, and the entrances were strategically concealed beneath the rubble. Martin had been concerned they would be discovered by the enemy at a most inopportune time, but he thought that even if soldiers discovered the underground barracks and offices, they would have virtually no reason to go spelunking, and even if they did—Martin was a light sleeper.

Beginning that evening they were to fan out and would encompass the perimeter of the states. Their orders were to kill the enemy as they found them. Simple, except for the fact that many would travel too far from home base to return in time and would have to find shelter. Before sunrise. And they would have to make sure their movements went undetected, that no one discovered where they were hiding. This was the reason Martin had instructed them to change locations nightly. He hoped his training had been thorough enough.

Jeff stood at Martin’s side as Martin addressed the massive crowd. He listened to Martin’s instructions, to learn how the attack would be handled, to see how it would be worded.

“You forgot something,” Jeff whispered.

Martin slowly turned his head and met Jeff’s eyes. “Have I?”

“You know you have.”

“I have no intention of adding anything.”

Jeff swallowed, and his hands clenched into fists.
“No new recruits,”
he said through gritted teeth. “You promised.”

“Yes, well.” Martin crossed his arms over his chest. “We all make empty promises, don’t we? You promised Walter you’d always watch out for us, keep us safe.”

“And I have!”

“We nearly
died
because of you,” Martin yelled, inches from Jeff’s face. “Because of your ignorance and prejudice we almost starved to death. It was your selfish need that freed us, nothing else.”

“I gave you freedom!” He stepped closer, his nose almost touching Martin’s face.

Martin had always been impressed by Jeff’s nerve. A man who stood up for his beliefs, even now when he was so possibly close to death. But Martin’s annoyance was quickly exceeding his patience.

“We based this on a verbal agreement, Martin. You promised me—”

“Go to hell! There’s
nothing
you can do about it,” he snapped.

“I thought you were a man of your word.”

“That’s just it, my friend. I’m not a man at all. You just can’t accept what I am.”

“I know what you are, but I expected honor and respect to be part of it. You owe that to Walter, if not to me, dammit!”

Martin finally dropped his eyes. He realized suddenly how quiet the room had become, how silently the crowd stood by and waited. No one shifted or even dared clear their throats. He could hear light whispers of air sneaking through hairline cracks in the stone walls.

“I can’t do that,” he said quietly. “But I can offer this—” He turned again and spoke to his vast audience.

“I won’t tell you not to sire others along the way. Some of you will feel the burning desire for companionship. If this happens, I won’t deny you. But under no circumstances are you to choose the enemy. If in doubt, don’t select that person at all. Is this understood?”

There were nods and murmurs.

He said to Jeff, “That’s the best I can offer you.”

Jeff’s cheeks were spotted with flecks of red, and the beaded sweat on his forehead trickled down his temples, despite the chill in the cave.
“This is not acceptable.”
He slammed his fist into his thigh to emphasize the words. “Do you know what this means? Do you know what’ll happen out there?”

“Of course.”

“Jesus …”

“You haven’t thought this through, Jeff. What did you expect was going to happen? That when this is over, we would commit mass suicide? That we’ll all just roll over and die, or parade back into a cell? Survival means as much to us as it does to you.”

“You can’t kill us all.”

“Of course not.” His face grew hard, angry, his eyes somehow darker. “I’ve told you before—we need to eat.”

Jeff licked his lips and blinked repeatedly, as if stalling for seconds, trying to form his words. “You have to stop this.”

Martin smiled. It was a small smile, a reaction. He shook his head. Then he reached out and took Lana’s hand as she strolled in from the next room and now faced the crowd at his side.

Jeff grabbed Martin’s shoulder. “You said a few. You said you would recruit a hundred vampires. This is a mob, not a few! There are thousands here.”

Lana stroked Jeff’s cheek with her fingernails, and he jerked back his head. “I think maybe it got a little out of hand,” she said softly.

“A
little
?”

“Ignore him, my dear,” Martin told her. “We’re losing precious time. We need to get started.”

She nodded and stepped back, giving him full view of the cave. He had to shout to be heard by everyone, but his voice was strong and full, and the cave’s acoustics suited him well.

“You have your instructions! You know what needs to be accomplished. If you have any problems and can’t find help, you report back here as soon as you are able. Under no circumstances are you to jeopardize yourself.”

The mass of vampires began clambering to their feet, milling about, talking to one another, breaking off into groups.

Martin slowly dropped his hands from their raised position, as if he were finishing a blessing. “Be careful, each of you!”

The thousands filtered out of the cave, rushing into darkness under cover of night. Once outside they split into various assigned groups and began their trek across the countryside, headed toward cities and smaller communities to start their attack on an enemy they had yet to meet. 

*** 

Janelle was more afraid of sleeping in the darkness than she was of traveling in it. Besides, she knew vampires only came out at night, and she wanted to be awake should one ever cross her path.

Watching horror movies with her dad had taught her which few items she might need. So she found garlic in a bombed-out supermarket, otherwise picked clean by scavengers—furry and human alike—and gold crosses in a jewelry store, which were small enough to wear on a chain. She didn’t come across a crucifix, anything large enough to stick in her backpack, but she probably wouldn’t have wanted to carry one anyway. She stopped at St. Mary’s Church and filled small plastic shampoo bottles with holy water from the font, muddy from dust and dirt that fell into the water from crumbling walls. Janelle wasn’t a superstitious child, but then again, a few days earlier she hadn’t believed in vampires either. She wasn’t taking any chances.

New Jersey was on the opposite side of the Lincoln Tunnel. She stood and stared into the impossibly black maw, gaping at her like a toothless mouth. With a trembling hand she aimed into the darkness with the new flashlight she had picked up.

This wasn’t such a great idea after all, she thought, dropping her hand to her side. There was no way she could go inside there. Lines of cars filled the tunnel, some jutting at peculiar angles, blocking the road. She thought people might have died in their cars after a bomb hit. Chunks of tunnel—tiles and concrete and beams—lay across some of the cars.

Even worse, body parts were everywhere—arms and legs and limbless torsos and unidentifiable chunks of flesh were splayed across hoods of cars; headless bodies dangled limply from car windows. For a fleeting moment she wondered what had attacked here. It didn’t look like the bomb damage she was used to seeing. This looked like someone had attacked the crowd with an axe. She suddenly stopped moving, her mouth and mind unhinged, her body trembling at the sight of such carnage. Here was her real first taste of death. The deaths of her family members hadn’t been tangible, the deaths of her friends in the subway had happened in blackness, and she’d been able to somehow pretend it wasn’t real. Even the deaths of those in the bank vault didn’t have to be accepted. After all, they had stood up and walked away!

But here. Here was the proof, here was the result of the war and the bombs, and it stank far worse than she ever imagined or remembered. The odor here surpassed the smells of death she had already been subjected to. The stench of death seemed to claw its way into her skin, attach itself like a dark and poisonous perfume.