Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood (29 page)

“NOOOO!!”
she cries.

At that moment, father and daughter share a glance at the center of hell.

In the space of perhaps a full second, everything in their shared life hangs in the humid air: every mistake, every joy, every laugh, every tear. The image of Rachel in his hands, tiny and fragile at the hospital, surges forward, pressing at his eyes—washing over him and through him. Holding his hand at the mall, giggling like crazy at some shared game at the arcade. Jumping into his lap at Christmas and hugging him hard. Twirling with him in the back yard under the evening sun, as Cassie watches from her chair on the porch. Eyeing him mischievously over a game of chess. Proudly sharing a graded essay. Crying with him, her head at his shoulder, at the hospital while Cassie lies dying. And yes, the yelling, the defiance. Waking to find her hefting that shotgun, there with him at the end. At the beginning.

And shrinking now to a tiny dot, behind all this, is his crime. His betrayals. He was never destined to survive this thing. His punishment was preordained.

Michael feels a peaceful warmth overtake him. He finds the courage to smile at his daughter one last time.

He bends to the INGRAM box, pulls out two full syringes, and rushes the window, climbing over the wildly twisting bodies. He thrusts his head into the gap, coughing and vomiting out whatever is inside him, spraying it into a claustrophobic chaos. He thrashes his whole upper body about, raging into the spindly, jumbled mass, feeling another rush of blood jet away from him. The bodies around him gasp and scatter. Bodies writhe beneath him, facing him in their thrust-back poses, and to these he delivers short stabs of blood, pumping bursts of it into every body he can reach, and the air fills with screams.

They squeal horridly around him, as his hands find their targets, stabbing, pumping, stabbing, pumping. They lunge and recoil, they gasp and screech, their dead eyes blinking, streaming, retaining agonized life as if reluctant to receive it. He climbs farther out, vomiting again, using his lips to fan out a fine mist, and the cries of tortured animals fill his ears. He buries the syringes in body after body, using them to creep forward now into the teeming mass, and finally they’re emptied of blood. The bodies envelop him then, stabbing with their heads, and he vomits again, sending them screaming again.

The sky boils with an angry crimson, and as Michael stares upward, he feels he’s at the eye of an alien tornado.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been angled out of the window, but it seems an eternity. He can feel his life literally rushing out of him, and the world begins to halt and stammer around him, like film jerking from its sprockets.

There are bodies everywhere. The sight astounds him.

But he can also see something else.

Even before an alien thunder rips open the sky, he can see fear.

He can see it in their expressions. The inexplicable, relentless anger in their collective faces, seeming just a moment ago to seethe and burn from behind their human features, is faltering into distress.

Fear.

The sky bursts.

Michael feels himself falling to the ground as the bodies beneath him dissemble. He watches the sky shift and stutter. The alien thunder crashes upon him like an endless wave.

He can sense a multitude of bodies scrambling over him, shifting underneath him, away from the library, wounded, frightened, trembling under the din. Disorganized. Others—those struck by blood dart, and those stabbed with the syringes still in his hands—wail and twist on the ground, their noises obliterated under the roar.

The bodies climbing over him watch him warily with their flung-back gazes, their eyes flat and dark, their expressions intense. They stab at him still, tentatively, defensively, the energy of their inner light straining somehow. He can feel fear in the light, even as their radiation clutches at him.

Have I done this? Have I caused this fear?

Because it is definitely fear he senses.

And something else there.

An image, flickering in the viscera. He grasps at it, fumbling slowly.

He can’t focus.

His breath moves in and out of him raggedly. There’s no pain. He can barely move his uncooperative, damaged limbs. Everything is muffled chaos in his peripheral vision.

He tries to form Rachel’s name on his lips. He can’t feel his mouth, although now a new torrent of blood comes gurgling up his throat, erupting out of him and pouring down the sides of his face. He coughs involuntarily, barely able to breathe in the aftermath. He feels impossibly weak.

More bodies shift past him, their breath like vinegar in his nostrils. One of them stabs at his right ear, buffeting him, and the radiation feels like sharp cold.

The image again.

What is that?

His consciousness feels sluggish, and the question occurs to him one syllable at a time, stretching out to infinity.

At some point, he’s aware that the sound from the sky has ended, but he can still hear only a deep, claustrophobic rumble, as if he’s underwater.

To his right, he sees the great piles of bodies at the library’s perimeter, a war zone of injured humans leading up to the blasted entrance and bruised and shattered windows. Framed in one of those windows, Mai is staring out at the retreating bodies, a tranq rifle still at her shoulder, a tentatively triumphant look on her pretty face.

There’s another figure, a hunched figure at an adjacent window, glaring out at the departing bodies as they race onto the streets in all directions. A figure he doesn’t recognize at first.

In a numb daze, focusing as best he can, Michael locks onto this figure, trying with his lethargic consciousness to read her expression. Bodies scurry away from her, like a breaking wave.

Felicia.

She’s the one they’re afraid of.

He sees it now.

He understands.

She’s angled at an unnatural lurch in the broken-out window, but it’s clear to Michael that she will not only live, not only survive, but make all the difference.

Then Rachel is in his line of vision—
Rachel!
—and she’s screaming at him, tears in her eyes, splashing onto his face. She’s grabbing his shoulders and pulling at him, and he can feel the movement of his body but can’t make it work under his own power. She’s wiping at his face, clearing it of blood.

“Daddy, no, please no, you can’t go!”

He’s aware of a body scurrying past her, and she gives it a furious kick. He catches fleeting glimpses of bodies retreating from the library, spidering away in random paths. They’re no longer a collective mass. That thought, solid and reassuring, surges through him.

His blurred vision locks on his daughter, and he feels tears flood his eyes.

Rachel.

My little girl.

He knows she’s going to be safe now. She’s going to survive. A feeling of heat spreads through him. She’s going to live on. He reaches up a trembling hand, finds her cheek. She grabs his hand, sobbing. Her sound warbles away, down a tunnel.

He should never have been surprised by her tenacity, by her bravery. Even here at the end. He knew that strength was inside her. It didn’t come out of thin air. It didn’t come from nowhere. It came from him. He instilled that in her.

Rachel is his daughter.

His flesh.

His blood.

“Please don’t leave me, Daddy, please!”

The words are so far away.

“I love you, Daddy, I love you so much, please don’t leave!”

Rachel is cupping his face with her trembling hands, turning it toward her, but he can’t seem to focus on her. Now she’s hugging him fiercely, but he can barely feel her. And Kayla is joining her, her little face anguished. The two young women appear in his dimming vision larger than life, hovering there as if they’re the whole world.

Someone is pounding at his chest, trying to bring life back to him—Michael can feel it as if from a distance—but he knows it’s too late. The faces move in a flurry.

He feels the warmth of Rachel’s touch, trying to help him, even as his body relaxes into death.

He focuses on a final thought.

I saved you.

Back in 1998, with the help of Robert Devereaux and Darin Sanders, I started a small press called Dark Highway Press. We published a beautiful limited-edition hardcover of Robert’s wonderfully naughty
Santa Steps Out
, and we achieved a small measure of industry acclaim. In 2000, bringing on Kirk Whitham, I edited/published the weird western anthology
Skull Full of Spurs
, to further positive recognition. Those were great times. It felt like the sky was the limit. But … then it was time to raise a family, and my little publishing house moved to the back burner.

Cut to 2014.

My first published novel,
Blood Red
(the first book in this trilogy), was accepted by Jacob Kier at Permuted Press, a small house devoted to apocalyptic horror. Definitely a highlight of my writing career. The lead-up to
Blood Red
’s publication—and the debut—consisted of some of my proudest moments as a writer. Unfortunately, those great times were short-lived as well, and ultimately I dissolved my contracts with Permuted for
Draw Blood
and the concluding novel,
Blood Dawn
. One broken heart later, I realized that now, 15 years later, was the perfect opportunity to rev up Dark Highway Press again. Which is why you see that new logo on the spine.

This is an exciting, precarious time for the
Blood
trilogy. I feel as if my child has now left its first nest, on shaky wings, still full of pride but a little unsteady. Trying to find its way in the world. It will need the support of family and friends to nudge it confidently into the open, and in that respect, this second book is already on its way toward a bright future.

Big thanks to my family, as always: to my first-reader wife Barb and my daughters, Harper and Sophie, who are my models for strong young women in this series. To my uber-supportive sister, Missy, continues to be my most fervent cheerleader on the left coast. My mom, to whom this volume is affectionately dedicated, is proving to be my most effective salesperson and biggest fan. And again to my late father, John Bovberg, whose shadow falls long and proud over every word I write. Even the naughty words.

Huge shout-outs to James W. Powell and Kirk Whitham for help getting this book in shape. And to all my other early readers, Darin and Sally Sanders, Corey Edwards, Justin Bzdek, Alli Oswandel, Dawn Cyr, Bob Kretschman, Dan Kaufman, Lavon Peters, Jeff James, Mike Parish, and my tech advisor, Michael Dragone.

On the publishing side, thanks to Lisa Péré for her exceedingly sharp proofing skills, Christopher Nowell for the cover art and design, and Kirk Whitham for his layout expertise. And finally, big thanks to the authors who took precious time from their own writing schedules to read these first two books and provide generous cover blurbs for
Draw Blood
: Jonathan Maberry, Joshua Gaylord, Grant Jerkins, Craig DiLouie, Robert Devereaux, David Dunwoody, and Robert Beveridge. You’re all my heroes.

Jason Bovberg is the author of
Blood Red
, the sequel
Draw Blood
, and the forthcoming concluding volume in the Blood trilogy,
Blood Dawn
. He is also the author of
The Naked Dame
, a pulp noir novel. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife Barb, his daughters Harper and Sophie, and his rabid canine, Cujo. You can find him online at www.jasonbovberg.com.