Night Plague: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (15 page)

His kin had no mercy.

He braced himself for another impact – each could be the last – but it never came. Another thud took its place. He slowly unclenched his eyes to see Dale standing over him, buried somewhere in his pulsing vision. There was a rock in his hands, something slick and wet coating its surface.

Mason jolted up with gaping eyes and gaping mouth, finding his attacker’s still body lying beside his own.
Skull shattered. Dead. He grasped his aching head as shouts and jeers rose from nearby.

That’s right…the woman!

His heart sunk into his stomach when he turned around.

She was dead. The woman was dead, lying on the ground with
two red holes in her throat. Her rake lay next to her, broken in two. The second vampire had killed her.

Something stung behind his eyes. He’d saved her! He’d saved that woman’s life!
But now…

Why did he even bother trying? Nothing he did ever
worked out, anyway. He met her limp eyes, apologetic. She’d been innocent. Surely innocent! Just a bystander in her own backyard. If he'd been different, if he'd been
better
, if he'd been more than a bystander himself for the whole of his human life, then...

Dale put a hand on his shoulder.

“This is your fault, you know. Yours and Errol’s!”

He
looked up just enough to see the vampire who'd killed her shouting from the rooftop.

“If you
hadn’t given Swalow the opportunity to make his move, we wouldn’t have been forced to make ours! Take some responsibility, why don’t you? Don’t leave us to clean up your mess!”

The hair on the back of his neck bristled. He opened his mouth to speak, to shout, but a firm
squeeze on the shoulder stopped him. Dale. “This is no one’s choice but yours.” His leader’s voice was solemn, steady.

Two more vamps from his group charged the one on the roof, but Mason’s eyes stayed on the muddy
yard, flickering from corpse to corpse.

If this continued, they had nothing waiting for them but the scene in that bloodied backyard.
The humans and the vampires both. Hah. Some heirs they were! Hadn’t the disaster in Rocher taught anyone anything? It was just the same!

He clenched his fists.

The dead woman’s dimming eyes stared at the sky in shades of green. They almost looked like…

Merril.

He jerked away from Dale, slipping down the street and towards his home before anyone could stop him. Forget about Sorrel. Forget about all of them.

If this was the seed they’d planted, he wanted no part in the harvest.

Chapter Twelve: Pale Lips

The door was locked when Mason bounded up his porch. He yanked a spare key from his pocket, but while the knob turned, it surrendered little more than a crack. He blinked, craning his neck to peer through the living room window. All he could see through the curtain's green veil was a vague mess of shapes. A barricade?

He
abandoned the knob and tapped his fist on the door. “Martin! Merril! It’s Mason – I need to get in!”

“Mason!” It was Merril who answered, her
quiet voice coming clearly through the walls. Suddenly, they seemed far too thin. “Come to the back door.”

He did as she said, hurrying across the deck. This time the door pulled open when he unlocked it with the usual key.

Merril waited on the other side, hands wrapped around an upturned coffee table. They passed each other relieved grins. One smile mirrored the other, but who it originated from was too close to call.

He
bolted the door behind him, and she was quick to push the table back up against it. He helped her pile up a few more boxes from the kitchen until they had a decent barrier. Whether it would be enough to keep out a vampire truly determined to break in, he doubted, but even if it was false protection, it felt better than nothing.

Merril wiped her dusty hands on her jeans, her smile
drooping to a frown. “You picked a fine morning to go for a walk.”

He scratched the back of his head.
“Y-yeah. I didn’t think…”

“Honestly, when I woke up and found both you and Martin gone, and then
heard everything going on outside…”

He stiffened. Had he heard that right? “Wait, Martin’s not here?”

She chewed her lip. “No, I was alone when I left my room this morning.”

Martin…wasn’t there?

He scanned his home, although it hardly looked like a home anymore. A thicker barricade enlisted the living room’s padded chairs and end tables to hide the front door, while dining chairs blocked the lower windows. Molly circled about the kitchen, whimpering and sticking close to her masters. The cat hid from the chaos beneath the couch, eyes wide. On the counter laid the same fire iron that’d pierced Sorrel’s neck. Mason couldn’t help a grim smirk – apparently, Merril had come up with the same idea.

At least she’d been wise enough to fortify the place as best she could. Why would Martin have gone and left her alone? He’d been the one who so fervently insisted they all stay home and stay together
. He ground his teeth. Always there when he wasn’t needed and never there when he was. Utterly useless!

Swallowing down his anger, he dug into his
pockets and pulled out his cell phone. A chuckle nearly escaped – a cell phone, how dull and utterly normal compared to everything else. It seemed strangely out of place. Dismissing his bleak amusement, he tapped out Martin's number.

Ring
ring ring. The chime rose and fell hollowly – no answer.

“I’ve already tried that, of course!” Merril crossed her arms. “I tried calling you
too, but you didn’t answer!”

He took the phone from his ear and looked at the screen – a voicemail with Merril’s number was in fact waiting for him. He hadn’t even noticed. “Sorry; I never heard it ring. I
guess with everything going on outside...” Not a lie, although a prickle of guilt nipped the back of his neck. He’d been so concerned about Sorrel and the others that for a window of time, he’d almost forgotten about Merril and Martin.

“Just…don’t
disappear like that again, okay?” She wore an irritated mask, but her voice shivered. “Stay here, with me.”

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She didn’t resist, letting her head rest on his chest. Her fingernails dug into the cotton covering his back. She sobbed, her wet cheeks dampening his white t-shirt. He let his eyelids droop and stared at nothing but strands of her blond hair. “…I
will.”

Something felt wrong. The words were heavy on his tongue. They
tasted like a lie, leaving that same bitter aftertaste in the back of his throat, and felt removed from his lips like sounds spoken in sleep.

But this time he didn’t cry. This time he felt nothing. He was empty. He listened to the ticking clock. Time refused to stop. If only he could make it stop, if just for a short while. But it didn’t, it just kept dragging them along towards whatever conclusion was waiting for them. He couldn’t help but believe the ending wasn’t going to be a good one, but it was coming, stepping closer and closer with every tick and every tock.

Merril pulled away, just enough to let her eyes find his. “We’ll be okay, right? As long as we stay together, then we’ll be okay.”

Tick tock tick tock. Another minute passed by, occupied by nothing but silence.

She reached up and pressed her lips against his.

His body stiffened and shivered, before he leaned down and let himself relax into her embrace.

He felt a peculiar kind of warmth that he hadn’t in a long time, almost able to believe that he was alive again if only his heart had beat alongside hers. Her rhythm pulsed beside the place where his should’ve been, but she didn’t notice the absence. She pulled him closer.

The relationship between them was a strange one.
They'd been partners – intimate partners – for a long time now, but it was an odd, relaxed sort of partnership. It oftentimes shifted and changed by the day. Some days they were something like siblings. Some days they were simple childhood friends. Some days they really were lovers.

They were always there to fulfill the role the other most needed. It was odd – they both knew it was odd – but neith
er of them cared.

They were simply Mason and Merril, just as they’d always been, and, at one point, had believed they always would be. He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore.

He tried not to let the uncertainty reach his face as she pulled back, a sweet aftertaste tingling on his pale lips. She smiled. “Even if it’s just us against the world, like always.”

Them against the world… Sometimes it felt more like they weren’t a part of that world at all. They were just observers, outsiders, watching from a lonely world of their own that belonged to no one but the two of them.

He smiled even as a strange sadness gnawed away the warmth, looking for the right words to say, when a shrill bark broke the reverie.

They jump
ed, their gazes whirling. Molly howled and scratched at the front door. They watched wordlessly, tense as the knob twisted and the door pressed against the barricade.

“…Martin?” Merril’s voice cut through Molly’s howling.

Mason winced, tightening his grip on her shoulders and gesturing for silence. She stiffened with a sharp breath, realizing her mistake.

There was no answer. The person at the door wasn’t Martin.
Heavy footsteps plodded around to the nearest window. Molly snarled with teeth bared and ears back. Mason’s ribs curled in his chest – he’d seen something like this exactly once before.

Merril pulled away from him and snatched the fire iron. Her thin knuckles turned white,
a ferocity he’d never seen before hardening her frail features. Fear and love were alike in that they did strange things to people.

He just stood and listened as the footsteps continued to the next window, checking them one by one. Everything was playing out just as it had the night he’d lost his
human life. He needed to do something,
anything
, but he couldn’t move.

He managed a shaky glance around
- he needed to grab a weapon, himself - when the sound of shattering glass crashed into the rear of his skull.

He whirled
, reacting on instinct at the image of his bedroom window spraying glass on the carpet. He was just in time to see the chair in front of the window topple down, right on top of Molly. The dog crumpled beneath it with a final whimper before a figure leapt over it and through the broken frame.

It was a woman who appeared just a few years older than he was, with a man following soon after.
Two vampires. He didn’t know either, but he’d seen them at the prison. They both belonged to Alex.

Fear was a strange beast. It would rise and rise and rise,
then bubble over and melt away when its source was revealed as nothing more than paranoia or the bedroom light casting shadows in the corner. When its scenario turned out to be real, it became a different animal altogether. The climax changed. It was cold, stabbing him in the stomach and sending ice through his veins. It canceled every other emotion, almost like a drug. It could turn people into animals, too – creatures that existed as nothing but the will to survive and protect.

Perhaps that was why Merril charged the woman with the fire poker outstretched.

How well someone could process the ice and keep their head, how well they could channel it, changed from person to person. Mason had to swallow a thick burst of air before he could force his body to function.

He leapt just as the vampire dodged Merril’s strike and spun behind her. It tensed its muscles, preparing to pounce for the back of her
throat. One bite and it was all over.

He crashed into it from the side, pouring all the strength he had into knocking it
down. One strong blow was all he needed.

This time, it
was enough. The attacker fell over her ankles and hit the floor. He was about to leap down after her when fingers dug into his hair and yanked him back. He yelped, kicking at the carpet.

It was the other man. He leaned in closer, a smile
curling his lips and revealing his fangs. “Oh? Look who it is...”

Mason
shook his head, willing the vampire not to finish.

“Stop!”
Merril didn’t give him the chance. She spun and thrust the iron towards his chest. It hit, the metal tip ripping cold flesh.

His fingers shuddered and released Mason’s hair with a screech, but he managed to stay on his feet. No blood, no possibility of death from a wound near the ribs. His muscles
stiffened and prepared to bridge the distance between him and Merril’s neck.

Mason turned to stop
him, but Merril moved first. She leaned back, letting the vampire get closer. She thrust the iron out in front of its gaping mouth just as it was about to reach her throat.

It was too late for it to stop.
Its jaw met the sharp tip instead of her veins. Metal ripped through it and out the back of its neck. The thing seized, falling to the floor as she yanked the weapon out with wide eyes.

Mason expected her to shriek and run, but that wasn’t what happened. Merril raised the fire poker and slammed it full force into the vampire’s skull.
Bone broke with a sick shatter. It stopped moving.

Mason’s jaw fell open.

He was dead. She’d killed him.

“Monster!”
The woman behind him screamed. “Traitor!” Her eyes settled on Mason, not Merril. “Alex will have your head for this!” Her voice bristled with rage, but she threw herself at the window and fled, limbs shaking. He’d expected a go at revenge, but perhaps the shivering was as much in fear as it was in anger.

He dragged his eyes from the glass and found Merril. She simply stood, staring down at the body on the floor. The iron trembled in her
white knuckles, still stuck in the vampire’s ruined head. Her eyes were wide, distant, as if she didn’t really see what she was looking at.

He watched for a while, not saying anything. If nothing else, at least he could be thankful that she clearly hadn’t heard the
intruder’s words. She was somewhere else.

He reached out and gently took the poker from her quivering fingers
, letting it fall to the floor. He put his hands on her shoulders. “We have to go.”

They couldn’t stay there and wait for Martin anymore. Their home was no longer safe. He swallowed hard while the threat replayed in his head.

“We need to get out of here. We need to find somewhere safe.” He didn’t let go until she shuddered and looked up at him with wild green eyes. She stared right at him, but he wasn’t sure she saw him at all. Finally, she answered with an uneven nod.

He hurried to the kitchen
and snatched some food from the cupboards – he wouldn’t need it, but she would – and to the closet to take their thickest coats.

She
ambled a drowsy step towards him. “W-where are…where are we going?” She managed, her voice tight and quiet.

He paused. That was a good question. Could he take her to the prison? She’d just killed one of their own, but he’d been a follower of Alex, and Dale himself had said to stop them by any means necessary. There would be a whole host of other problems, though. He exhaled a bitter snort. It would take a miracle to convince her that the safest place was among the creatures she most feared, and then he’d surely have to explain his own connection… No. That wasn’t a possibility.

Could they flee to another town? Certainly not Rocher, but there were plenty of other cities nearby. Perhaps they could even cross the border and escape to Canada.