City of Whispers (City of Whispers #1) (4 page)

We also asked for a lot of sharp stakes, and the man
on the radio did not seem surprised. “Of course,” he said. “We know how
essential
those are to your safety. We have already had special stakes
made that will be dropped off today. They were machine-made, you couldn’t get
tips this sharp making them by hand. We even dipped them in holy water, just in
case. We’ll also be sending you fresh garlic cloves daily.”

So they weren’t as clueless about the virus as they
pretended to be. I was pretty sure the holy water would be worthless however,
as I had seen vampires coming and going to and from the Greek Orthodox church
across the street. But, I didn’t want to burst the man’s bubble like he had
just burst ours, he sounded very proud of the stakes.

Just before signing off with promises of dropping off
our delivery in two hours, Scott crossed over to the radio. “Hey, could you add
a new hatchet to the list?”

“Oh me too!” James shouted, like a kid at Christmas.
Soon Paulo and a few others had added hatchets to their wish lists.

The man on the radio sounded like he was in great
spirits now and promised our packages would arrive shortly, and that we would
not be disappointed in the quality of the stakes they were sending.

There was an awkward pause, and everyone fidgeted.
Then, Beth walked up to the radio. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re more than welcome,” the man replied. “We’re
all rooting for you and we’ll have you out soon! Imagine how happy your
families will be to hear you’ve all practically come back from the dead.”

And it was true. We had been living in a sort of limbo
for the past couple of weeks, wondering whether we would be rescued or dragged
down to hell by the vampires. We weren’t saved yet, but maybe there was a light
at the end of the tunnel.

6

The supplies were delivered to us as promised, and it did feel like an odd sort
of Christmas. We finally had some fresh food, including fruits and vegetables.
I had never thought I could crave salad, but I did, and greens never tasted so
good. The military also sent a large case of fresh garlic, which I was thankful
they packed separately from everything else.

Although I had tried my Papa John’s sauce, I wasn’t
sure at that point if garlic would do anything, so I asked around. One guy,
Lee, said he’d put fresh garlic around his window when the virus started and he
thought it kept the vampires away. It couldn’t hurt to try.

Everyone was happy with their new hatchets, but the
stakes were the most impressive part of the care package. The man on the radio
hadn’t been exaggerating, those things were awesome.

The wood on the handles of the stakes was curved and
smooth with no sign of splintering and had little indentations that made for
easier gripping. The tips were needle-sharp, and I imagined they would go in
quickly and easily. The wood hadn’t been treated with any kind of sealant. It
was left rough so that stakes would leave splinters as they went in. The stakes
came in different sizes, numbered so that we could select a comfortable size
and then know what size to ask for if we needed more. The makers must have
thought long and hard about the design of our stakes.

As angry as I was that we weren’t being rescued, I was
grateful to whoever made those stakes. I thought about the stake-makers putting
their time and effort and maybe even some late nights into the design of our
stakes, our defense against the vampires.

There were plenty of stakes to go around and we
divided them up like the rest of the loot. I was excited about them and was
surprised at myself for wanting to try them out…for looking forward to trying
to them out.

“I’m ready to give this a test run on Seth right now,”
Scott said as he walked up to stand beside me.

I looked toward the park fountain. Seth was there,
surrounded by the father with the kids and two or three other people. He was
leaping and jabbing and making faces and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to
recreate some epic vampire battle he had fought or if he had a bee buzzing
wildly around in his pants. He looked foolish and I doubted he would be so
cavalier if he actually met a group of vampires, or even just one for that
matter.

“I was just thinking something like that,” I replied.

We were quiet for a few minutes as we watched Seth act
out his drama.

“Is it wrong,” I continued, “that I’m suddenly excited
for the sunset? That I actually
want
to go try these out?”

Scott raised his eyebrows, and I felt my face flush. I
thought he must be thinking of a quick way to get away from me, but after a
moment he shook his head. “No, to be honest I was thinking the same thing. I
just didn’t know if it was a guy thing.”

I felt slightly relieved. “I just don’t think of them
as human anymore, not really.”

Scott was still watching Seth. “Let’s get a small
group together and go out, but not tonight, that’s too dangerous. We’ll take
these new stakes tomorrow morning and see if we can find any vampires hiding in
your building. I’m sure you’d like to get rid of those first. And let’s take
some old stakes just in case these new ones aren’t as good as they appear to
be.”

“I guess we should talk to the others first?”

“Agreed. We should also make sure those kids are in a
safe place tonight. I assume they are since they made it this far, but I’ll go
talk to them and see if they need anything and you can talk to James and the
crew.”

Scott went to talk to the father and I walked over to
Paulo and Beth who were talking to a girl I hadn’t seen before. Beth introduced
her as Leila.

“This might sound crazy,” I said, “but Scott and I
want to go try out these new stakes in the morning. Would you guys care to
join?”

Beth looked horrified, but nodded slowly.

“Oh no.” Leila shook her head. “I’d be too scared.”

Paulo looked thoughtful for a moment as I waited for
him to respond. “Yes,” he finally said, “I was thinking we should clear out
your building and maybe move some more people in. It would be a good base so
close to the park, but I don’t want to make it a regular thing.” He paused.
“They were people once.”

I felt awkward. “Of course, that’s what I meant,” I
said quickly. “I’ll go find James.” I walked away.

James had wandered down to Seth and was casually
taunting him. As I walked up, he was asking Seth exactly how many vampires he
had killed and what they had looked like.

“James, can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

“Sure,” James replied, “but I was just learning about
how Seth not only survived the past two weeks, but took out a shit-ton of
vampires in the process.”

Seth beamed.

“Okay yeah, but I need to ask you something, it might
sound kind of nutty.”

“I’m in!”

“Seriously…” I started.

“Yeah seriously.” He looked excited. “You’re going out
tonight to kill vampires aren’t you?”

“Not tonight, tomorrow morning. And how did you know?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“I’m in too,” Seth said.

“I don’t think so.” I turned to him. “We don’t want
the whole group going...it would just be too cumbersome.”

“Oh let him come,” James said, winking at me. “He
claims he has all this vampire-killing experience, he’d be a great asset.”

“Not just claim, I’m serious,” Seth said, “You should
have seen the first night, there were half a dozen breaking down my door...”

I grabbed James by the arm and led him a short
distance away. “This isn’t a game,” I whispered. “It’s not some funny trick you
play on someone. He’s clearly lying.”

“Well yeah, obviously.”

“And even though he seems like a bit of a tool we’re
not trying to get him killed...or us for that matter. Who knows what he might
do to try to prove his supposed vampire-slaying skills?”

“Oh come on,” James said seriously. “It’ll be fun and
he’ll probably just hide in the middle of the group and let us do the dirty
work. Once he gets around real vampires he’ll be too scared to try anything
stupid.”

Scott walked up to James and me. “The man’s name is
Tony and the two kids are John and Rebecca. Tony said they’re fine for now, but
I think we should go over tomorrow and make sure they’re all set.”

“Well we’re all set here,” I said, crossing my arms.
“We have a group of six for vampire-hunting tomorrow morning.”

“Six?” Scott asked. “Our whole group and who else?”

“Seth,” I said, glaring at James.

“You’re kidding.”

“C’mon Scotty it’ll be fine,” James said, rolling his
eyes.

Scott shrugged his shoulders. “He’s a grown man, and
can do what he likes with his own life, but if he puts us in any danger I’ll
leave him in the middle of a pack of vampires.”

“Geez man.” James held his hands up. “I’m not asking
you to babysit him.”

“Whatever,” Scott replied. “It’s getting late and we
need to get inside soon.”

That was something we could all agree on. The guys
wanted to go back to their respective apartments and get some things, but
agreed to come back to our building before sunset. Having five people to take
turns sitting up was much easier than two.

As my apartment building was closest, we took most of
Paulo’s, Scott’s, and James’s rations and promised to keep them until they
could take them to their apartments.

We also agreed that Paulo would keep one of the radios
and Tony and his kids would take the second. Paulo showed Tony how to use the
radio both to communicate with the outside and to communicate with us. 

Paulo tried, but was unable to communicate with anyone
else. We promised the rest of the group we would ask for more radios with the
next helicopter drop. Maybe we could find other radios in the city that could
reach the outside world. I suspected, however, that the government would try to
prevent independent communications.

About thirty minutes before sunset the guys came over
to my apartment, re-checked the boards on my window and the locks on my door,
and settled in for the night.

That night was uneventful and the most restful I’d had
since the outbreak.

7

The next morning, we met Seth outside my building as planned. Leila showed up
too, even though she insisted she didn’t want to participate. She said that she
was too afraid to go in the building, but wanted to help. I appreciated this
and I think the others did as well. I didn’t want to risk my life clearing the
building out for people who didn’t care to help out.

Leila had brought fruit and water from our supply drop
the previous day. She said she would have everything ready for us when we
needed a break. She was bubbly and smiled a lot, which I thought was a strange
attitude to have considering the circumstances. I wondered whether the events
of the past couple of weeks had affected her mind. I also thought she might be
flirting with the guys a little, maybe looking for male protection. I couldn’t
blame her. These were times for making friends with as many strong, smart
people as one could find.

We were also joined by a tall man in his late thirties
named Dwayne who said he could help us clear out the apartments. Dwayne had
been in construction and also did handyman work. He told us that he could get
us into any locked apartment in the building, which, if true, would make him a
valuable asset. I made a mental note to ask him to check the boards on my
windows before sunset that day after we finished breaking into apartments and
boarding up the apartments we cleared out.

Neither Beth nor Paulo talked much. Beth seemed
nervous, but that was natural considering we were about to break into
apartments that likely contained vampires and dead bodies. Scott was being his
usual serious, business-like self. James was acting excited until he saw that
Beth wasn’t, and then he started acting more subdued. I saw through the act: he
was anxious to try out his new toys.

I was excited myself. I felt like I was finally taking
control. After hiding out like a hunted animal for over two weeks, I was
becoming the hunter. I was taking charge.

Excited as I was, I was nervous at the same time. It
was like that feeling I usually got right before getting on a big roller coaster
that’s supposed to be bigger and faster than all the rest...eager, but scared
too. Unfortunately, I feared my chances of being killed by a vampire that day
were far greater than the chance of dying on a roller coaster.

Seth was practically bouncing off the walls, and he
made no effort to hide it. He couldn’t stop talking about the vampires he
planned to kill and how he would do it. He even tried to give us instructions
on how best to go after them. He reminded me of one of those yappy dogs New
Yorkers used to love. “Yap
yap
yap
,” was all I could hear Seth say. I was glad we
were outdoors, because I thought he might wet himself.

“Is he seriously this excited?” Scott whispered.

“That’s what I thought at first too,” I whispered
back, “but I think he’s just nervous and trying to cover it up. Look, when he
holds the stake he can’t even keep his hand from shaking.”

“He could be on drugs.”

“Being a banker, you would know all about that,” I
teased.

In between his yaps, I could make out that Seth was
asking for a plan. I really hadn’t thought of one, I just assumed we’d walk in
the front door and work our way up. Scott suggested that we do the opposite and
work our way down from the sixth floor—the top floor. My apartment was on the
fifth floor and Scott suggested that we should make sure we got to it as soon
as possible after securing the floor above me.

We all agreed working from the top down made sense. I
thought it made even more sense to save the basement for last. I figured that
would be the most likely place vampires were hiding, and we should have our
skills honed by the time we got down there.  

Another group of about eight or ten people had
gathered outside my building while we were planning. They didn’t want any part
of our mission, but like Leila, they wanted to contribute in some way. Some
volunteered to take away bodies if we found any, and others volunteered to help
board up the building after we cleared it, in exchange for a secure apartment.

The six of us who would do the dirty work climbed the
fire escape to the sixth floor and found that one of the windows was already
busted.

“Do you want to be first?” James asked Seth.

Seth didn’t say a word but shook his head.

“You’re the one with the dog collar, James,” Paulo
said. “Show us what you’ve got.”

“You all need to get collars,” James said, grimacing.
“I guess since Scott went into the bank first, I’ll go in first this time. But
next it’s going to be Seth.”

“We’ll all take turns,” I said.

James knocked away some of the broken glass with his
hatchet, and, clutching a stake, put his head and his right arm through the
window. “Hello? Anyone in here? We aren’t here to loot or hurt you, we’re just
looking for vampires.” The last thing we needed was to get killed by some
scared resident still holed up in his apartment.

There was no answer, so James climbed in and the rest
of us followed. The place was a mess and it smelled terrible. I suspected we
might find a body, and we did. She was in the bedroom lying on her bed, on top
of the covers as if she had been extremely hot. Her windows were covered with
blackout curtains.

The dead woman looked old and her nightstand held a
plethora of painkillers, including throat spray. When we still had power, the
television had informed us that the vampire virus started with flu-like
symptoms. I didn’t need the painkillers or throat spray to make me suspicious
though. The woman had a bandage on her neck, and dried blood on her arms and
lips.

Although I had almost gotten used to coming across
dead bodies in random locations throughout Midtown, this one made me
particularly sick. The smell was beyond terrible. Maybe it was worse because
she had been cooped up in the apartment, rotting.

“I don’t want this apartment,” James said.

“Me neither,” Seth quickly agreed.

I rolled my eyes. “No one has to take this apartment,
but let’s at least get the body out of here. Those people on the street can
make themselves useful and burn it.

Scott walked out of the room and came back with Lee—the
man who said he put garlic around his windows. They had a long plywood board,
perhaps from the bank where we had gotten our reinforcement supplies two days
earlier.

We started to wrap the dead woman up in the blanket
and roll her over onto the board when I noticed something. Her mouth was slightly
open and her incisors looked pointed, like fangs. I tapped James on the
shoulder. “Look at that, she was a vampire.”

Everyone took a step back and stopped what they were
doing. James went into the kitchen and came back with some rubber dish-washing
gloves. Very disrespectfully, he pried one of her eyes open. It was bloodshot.
Then he pulled her mouth open farther. Her fangs weren’t like the fangs I had
seen on Stella. They looked like they had barely begun to come in, but they
were definitely fangs.

Up until that moment, I had never thought much about
that part of the process. People had to lose their teeth in order for fangs to
come in. It must have been a painful process. Who knew what else happened? This
poor woman had painkillers all over the place. Did people actually go through
the process of death and then come back as vampires? I had heard them screaming
when they burned or when they were staked, but other than that, they appeared
to communicate in whispers. My eyes went to the throat spray. Did the
transformation cause so much pain that they could only speak in hoarse
whispers?

I felt sorry for the old woman. I had seen many of the
too-old and too-young drop like flies in the beginning. It must have been that
their bodies couldn’t handle the trauma. The ones I saw die were picked off by
looters and other vampires, but I supposed it made sense that many died in
their beds and were never able to come back as vampires.

“Maybe this will save us the trouble of taking her
away and burning her,” James said.

“Very nice.” Beth turned away.

“Let’s please just get on with it,” I said.

James, Dwayne, and Scott carried the woman out in her
blanket. They all wore gloves because some kind of liquid was oozing through
the blanket. It looked like thick dark blood. There was some rope on the fire
escape. Dwayne and Lee planned to tie her up and lower her into the street. The
people below could find out if she had turned enough for the sun to burn her,
or if they would have to cart her away and burn her elsewhere.

I didn’t have time to stand around and watch. We still
had a lot of work to do if we hoped to clear even one floor of the building.
Besides, the stench was making me sick and I needed to get out of that
apartment.

After lowering the old woman’s body, Dwayne and Lee
stayed in the apartment and began boarding up the windows with some supplies we
had taken from the bank and some bits and pieces of wood they found around the
apartment. The rest of us moved on to the apartment next door.

The door was unlocked so we didn’t need to call for
Dwayne’s help. The apartment was in total disarray, but there was no one there
and no sign of death or illness at all. The windows were still locked and
intact.

The inhabitants must have escaped before the
government blew the bridges and blocked the tunnels, or maybe they had died
trying. This would make a good apartment for some survivors to live in. By the
time we were finished looking around, Dwayne and Lee had finished next door and
came over to help secure the windows in the new apartment.

We tried another apartment, but the door was locked.
Dwayne came over with some tools and had both of the door’s locks picked in
less than ten minutes. I thought that once I got back into the real world I’d
probably never feel quite as secure behind a locked door again. At least Dwayne
seemed like a nice guy.

“Does this mean it doesn’t have vampires?” Beth asked.

“Do any of us know whether vampires keep their doors
locked?” Scott asked.

“Good point,” Beth said.

“I don’t mind going first,” Dwayne volunteered.

“No way,” I said. “You didn’t really sign up for this
in the first place, and your construction skills are way too valuable for you
to risk getting hurt. I want to go first.”

“It really ought to be my turn to go first,” Paulo
said.

“No, please let me go now before I lose my nerve.”

“Okay, okay, let’s go,” Paulo replied.

I really was afraid I might lose my nerve if I
hesitated a moment longer, so I grabbed the doorknob and pushed my way in.

I immediately disliked the look of the apartment. It
was far too dark. I could see into the living room where a wardrobe had been
haphazardly pushed up against the window. Was it to keep vampires out, or to
keep light out?

Everyone behind me was silent while I stood completely
still. I could feel my heart beating in my chest and thought I might panic and
freeze up. A few fingers of sunlight streamed in around the wardrobe and after
a few moments my eyes began to adjust. I took a deep breath and started to
creep in as quietly as possible.

I could feel Scott behind me. I was glad to see the
hall closet was standing open because I wasn’t sure I would have had the guts
to open it otherwise. Scott clicked on his flashlight and shone it in amongst
the coats. There was nothing there. He turned the flashlight off again. We
didn’t know whether vampires could be woken in the day or not, so we didn’t
want to use a flashlight unless absolutely necessary. The next stop was the
living room. There was nowhere for anyone to hide except the wardrobe. Surely a
vampire wouldn’t hide there, right by the window.

“If you stay behind the door while you pull it open I
can be ready to stake anything that’s in there,” Scott whispered.

“No,” I whispered back. “You open it and stay behind
the door and I’ll be ready. Open the right side so I can come from the left.”

I appreciated Scott’s offer to do the dirty work, but
I also knew I had to face these tasks from the beginning or I would never be
able to do them. Scott and I walked to the wardrobe while James and the others
moved in behind to make sure nothing could creep up on us.

“Are you sure?” Scott asked.

“Yes, just do it.”

He stepped up to the wardrobe.

He took hold of the handle and looked at me. I felt my
heart might explode out of my chest.

I raised my stake in my left hand.

I nodded to Scott.

He stepped back, flinging the door open.

Empty. Just a bunch of shelves with some clothes.

I found myself relieved and disappointed at the same
time. The adrenaline had been running so high that I was almost hoping to get a
chance to face my fear and destroy it in the process.

But it wasn’t the time to let my guard down. I still
didn’t like the feel of the place. It was just too dark, and someone, or
something, had blocked the light on purpose.

We peeked into the bathroom, nothing.