Blood Run (31 page)

“The commander detoured. At that point, I was feeling better–being on the move was having a good effect on my mind, and the dreams has lessened–but I still had this nagging sense that Bishop was my
end
, not just my end goal. I told the commander not to detour. I told him I preferred to move ahead on my own. He agreed,” Peter said and laughed, one quick huff, and shook his head. “Or so I thought.

“They let me take a quad they’d been trailering. I went to the mall first. I don’t even know why…I guess just because it was the last place I’d seen Trish. I drove through the parking lot, and it was surreal because if you didn’t know anything about what had happened, it looked as though it could have been any other regular day at the mall. The parking lot was about half-filled with cars. When you got closer–when you
looked
closer–you could see that a lot of the cars sat on flats and were covered in dirt and bird shit. Windows had been busted. There must have been a hailstorm at one point because some of them had some heavy dings on them, already starting to rust out.

“I drove the quad right up to the main entrance. I think I had an idea that I would go in and find her; get her out and bury her or…” Peter cleared his throat. “The entryway doors had bodies stacked against them on the inside. It must have been from that night, from the massacre. But it had been a year, and they looked almost like they were…like they were melting into each other. It was so…I could
smell
them, even through the glass. There was no way I was going in there. I just couldn’t.

“I drove away, and I kept picturing Trish in there, just cooking, really; that’s what all those bodies were doing–cooking slowly in the heat and…it was making me feel…like I was going crazy. I couldn’t get rid of the thought that I had abandoned her again. Her and…her and the baby, both.” Peter scrubbed his hands across his face and shook his head.

“Peter,” Promise said. “There was nothing you–”

“I know,” Peter said, cutting her off. His tone was not impatient or unkind…merely resigned. He gave her a small, one-sided smile. “Yeah. I know that now. I knew it then, too, but it just…there were times when everything got to be too much. I don’t know how else to explain it.

“I thought about the back corridors that let onto each store’s utility room,” Peter continued. “The back corridors ran the length of the mall without windows or outside light of any kind…that’s why the vampires had been able to colonize the area so quickly. There were only two ‘back doors’ on each side of the mall. Those gave onto the area behind all the stores, including the Woolworth’s where Trish had been…been killed.

“I decided to try the back way in. I know now how crazy that idea seems, but at the time…it seemed almost like a revelation. I thought I could just slip in, find her, and slip back out. I wonder now if I had some kind of subconscious death wish. I wonder if that was why I couldn’t picture anything beyond Bishop.

“I parked the quad and turned it off. It was so quiet. You know what I mean, right? The kind of quiet we never had before the plague: no cars in the background, no muzak from the outside speakers, no airplanes…even the birds were quiet that morning. It was like an omen, but I ignored it.

“The door swung open with no resistance. I had been worried about that part. Those doors had been for maintenance only and had always been locked. They were the crash bar kind of doors, and when the locks weren’t engaged, there was nothing that held them shut save their own weight. The one I went to opened without a problem. It didn’t even squeal. Which should have told me something, but I ignored it. I hesitated for a second because it was black in there, pitch black. Even the sunlight I was letting in seemed to stop dead after about ten feet. I wanted to prop the door open, but there was nothing within reach. I could have gone back to the front parking lot and grabbed something from a car or a stone from the landscaping, but it was like I was possessed. I had started this and was determined not to derail myself. Something like that. But like I said, looking back on it…I’m not sure what was
really
going through my head.

“I stepped into the corridor and let the door close behind me. It was so dark. You can’t even…there’s no way to express that kind of darkness, is there? It was just black. Nothing. My breathing seemed ten times as loud. I could even hear my heart.

“I remembered my flashlight and turned it on. I flashed it up and down the corridor. It was tight in there, only about four feet wide, and there were pipes and runs of wires and every so often a door with a store’s name on it. Nothing fancy, just stenciled on. Each door led to the store’s utility area. There were no bodies in the corridor, which also should have tipped me off, and I was uneasy, so I guess part of me intuited what was going on…but I ignored it. I headed in the direction of Woolworth’s and Trisha.”

Peter stopped talking, and Promise sat next to him on the weight bench. She put an arm across his back. He began again.

“I didn’t make it very far–three or four doors–when they began to open on both sides of me. Vampires filled the hallway. I dropped the flashlight, and it went out.” Peter shuddered against Promise’s arm. He continued. “I realized I could see…I could still see them in the dark. Even better, actually, than with the flashlight. The flashlight only showed a small portion of the space. In the dark, I could see everything. I guess because of what I am.

“They hesitated. I could see the confusion spread across their faces. Their noses were wrinkling like they were…scenting me. They must have had a sense that I was at least somewhat like them. They don’t feed on each other, but I have seen them kill each other for spite.

“They attacked me,” Peter said and then sat quietly, head down.

Dr. Edwards stirred and sat forward. He’d been still and thoughtful for Peter’s narrative. “If you can’t continue,” Edwards said, “I understand. Don’t tax yourself.”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind,” Peter said and shifted. “They attacked me, but because the hallway was so closed in, they couldn’t attack all at once. I fought them and, while fighting, realized I had two choices: turn and find the door to Woolworth’s, or fight them back to the outside door. I still wanted to find Trish, so…”

He trailed off again, thinking. How to explain the black horror of that brief but intense struggle in the hallway? The vampires that were attacking him seemed weakened in some way, not nearly as lively and wiry as the ones that had wreaked havoc in the mall the night Trish had been killed. He knew that part of being able to defend himself against them was his condition–he was stronger than he’d ever been, and his senses were acutely attuned to the darkness–but another part was that these vampires were weak. There were too many in this one area and the…food supply…was gone. The vampires were starving, and like any living thing, they required sustenance to live–although their tolerance to starvation seemed well beyond the scope of normal humanity’s.

Peter glanced from Edwards to Promise. He had done things in that fight that…he couldn’t recount them now and maybe not ever. No matter how much Promise loved or would come to love him, there were things he didn’t want her–or anyone else–to know. Deep in his mind, he could still hear the crack of tiny neck bones splintering as he twisted heads halfway around; he could recall the sudden, hot pulse of blood turned loose through holes dug by his fingers and teeth. It had been savage. It had been inhumane. And Peter had relished every second of it; fighting for his life but also fighting for Trish, hoping that the one who’d killed her was still here. Was lying at his feet, bleeding.

Eventually the vampires had hung back, confused and finally frightened, the smell of their own kind’s blood beginning to overwhelm the enticing scent coming from Peter.

“…so I decided to continue on to Woolworth’s,” Peter said, omitting the things he didn’t want them to know. “I fought them down the hall, and they were weak, so it wasn’t as bad…as bad as it could have been. They seemed confused as to what I was, and that helped, too. Then I found the door.

“I figured I’d have to keep fighting them once I was in the store, too, because the stores themselves had no outside light. Closer to the mall entrance there was sun from the skylights in the main hallway, but the back of Woolworth’s should have been almost as dark as the maintenance corridor. But when I went from the back corridor through the utility room and into the store…it seemed like some kind of miracle…it was as bright as the day outside had been. A huge section of the roof had collapsed. Maybe from snow. Maybe from the same hailstorm that had beat up the cars. I don’t know. But it was a reprieve. They couldn’t follow me into the store, so I was free to…

“I was free to look for her, and…” Peter stopped again and shuddered. “She was still there.” His voice had dropped to a horrified whisper, and he shook his head. “She was still leaning against the cages, but everything about her had…had sunk in…it was…she was…” He shuddered again, jerking violently against Promise’s arm. “I couldn’t bring myself to…to touch her. I don’t know how I thought I would take her out of there and bury her. She would have…fallen apart…if I’d laid a finger on her. I fell to my knees, and then I don’t know what happened, whether I blacked out or just…” He’d gone crazy, he wanted to say, but couldn’t. He’d felt his mind closing in on itself, folding over and telling him to sleep. Just sleep it away. Even as it was happening, he knew he shouldn’t. He knew movement was the antidote to this kind of shock.

But he didn’t care.

He’d fallen over and curled into as tight a ball as he could and closed his eyes, shielding himself from the sight of her hanging jaw, empty eye sockets and the bulge of her stomach that had also shrunk almost to nothing…

Nothing.

He’d drifted in and out through the day and into the afternoon. He noticed the light starting to fade and part of him had cried out in despair, telling him to move, move, he was losing the light. A second battle with the vampires would not be won in open territory with the energizing moon to enliven them.

He could hear them as they crowded against the door, whispering, moaning…waiting for darkness.

He wanted to go–knew he
should
go–but he was soothed by the lethargy, the shock. He found he didn’t care. He was willing to let what was about to happen, happen.

That’s where the Guard found him.

They had doubled back, the commander uneasy with the way Peter had been acting, his strangeness and quiet resolve. His inability to meet the commander’s eyes.

The commander–who knew Peter’s story–had known to check the mall first. A detail had gone in with gas masks and crossbows at the ready, and they had dragged Peter from the Woolworth’s. He didn’t realize it, but he’d lost a good deal of blood through his own wounds. That blood loss was partially to blame for the lethargy that almost got him killed.

The day had been growing short, and Peter managed to give them directions to the small house he and Trish once shared. The Guard worked quickly to make it defensible to the coming dark, and they’d settled in. That night, the air had been filled with the howls and gibbering cries of the vampires. The house shook under the assault as they battered themselves against doors and windows. No one slept except Peter, who drifted in fevered dreams, the infected part of his brain desperate to be out with his kind, drawn by the cries of his dark kin. The Guard had had to restrain his hot and flailing limbs.

They’d gone the next day to a closer outpost, one the commander hadn’t been intending to visit this time around. Peter needed medical attention, and the soldiers needed rest. The outpost was in a town called Hamlet. It was there that Peter found Snow.

“They’d been taking very good care of her in Hamlet,” Peter said and smiled, remembering. “She was the pet everyone had lost, you know? Hamlet’s outpost was a school, too…smaller than Wereburg. But they had a classroom just for Snow, and people took turns grooming and feeding her. Exercising her. They told me later that when we showed up, the Guard and I, she became very agitated. She couldn’t see me, but they said she started whinnying and stomping. She’d broken away from the person who’d been holding her bridle. I had been brought into the gym, and Snow ran in there. I didn’t see it, I was too in and out, but they said she came right to my cot and nuzzled me up and down. They knew right away that she was my horse,” Peter said, and his voice broke. He ran a hand over his eyes and smiled. “It seemed like a miracle.”

Peter had started to heal–inside and out–in the time he’d stayed at Hamlet. He’d been told by the people there of another horse rumored to be in an outpost way in upstate New York. As luck would have it, the commander told Peter, they were already headed upstate. They would make another detour to Wereburg and see if they could find the other horse.

“That’s how I found Ash,” Peter said. “And you.” He looked at Promise, and they stared so solemnly at each other for so long that Edwards shifted and cleared his throat.

“It’s an amazing story, Peter. And you did the right thing. By leaving here, I mean.” Edwards stood. “The body knows things, sometimes, that the mind seems late to catch up with. In your case, especially, considering your condition,” he said. “I really want you to know how sorry I am for how we ended your time here. It was uncalled for on my part.

“Now let’s head to the labs, and I’ll show you what we’ve accomplished in your absence. I hope this can help restore me to favor in your eyes,” Edwards said, turning. His voice lowered, became self-deprecating. “It is, I think in its own way, another amazing story,” he said and opened the door.

Then he flinched back in surprise.

Evans stood filling the doorway, arm raised as if to strike.

Chapter 8

“I don’t think Edwards likes me very much,” Evans said and shrugged.

“Not that you care,” Promise supplied, narrating his shrug. Her voice held a gentle scold. They were sitting together on the lip of concrete that surrounded a fountain in what was once the front lobby of the hospital. The plants were gone, and the fountain had been dry a long time, but it was still a pleasant space, more open than Promise was used to. It made her realize again how life–and certain expectations–had changed.