The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood (15 page)

He embraced his brother.

The energy emanating from Julian’s every pore astounded Ian.

When they parted, Ian turned to Julian’s followers and made sure his face did not have a hint of menace. He now believed that their sudden appearance prevented what would have been a futile attempt to avenge his mentor.

Chapter Twenty Five

Matt kept time with his watch as the truck left the concentration camp. He knew of the perfect spot where the three could bail from the cadaver van.

He unzipped his body bag and looked around.

The cargo hold was closed off from the front cab, so they did not have to worry about the driver seeing them. Matt shivered, realizing for the first time that the back of the van was refrigerated.

“Okay, guys, let’s go, this is our exit…”

Immediately both zippers started moving, as both Tyra and Juarez squirmed out of their bags.

“That experience might have put me off on ever breathing again,” whispered Juarez.

Matt had told himself to expect a lot of blather from Juarez, and not to let it get to him unless his bullshit threatened to get them caught.

He moved to the van’s back doors to have a look, and as he suspected, the moment they opened the doors, there was no doubt it would trigger a light on the dashboard of the truck.

“How are we doing?” whispered Tyra.

“Right on time,” answered Matt as he looked at his watch. “Are all three bags sealed?”

“Yeah, exactly like they were before we got in,” answered Tyra.

“Wait, I didn’t read my goon a bedtime story; should I…?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Matt harshly whispered to Juarez. “No more of your bullshit until we get back to the camp. Are we clear?”

He nodded.

“Okay, it’s just like we talked about; as soon as I open this door, we’ll need to jump out and then move quickly to the side of the road. No excuses. There’s a good chance the driver will stop. Are we clear?”

Both Tyra and Juarez nodded.

“Tyra, you’re first, then you Juarez… I’ll be right behind you both.”

He did a silent countdown… then threw open the doors.

Tyra did not hesitate; she leaped out of the van the moment she saw daylight.

Waiting for Tyra, Juarez had some time to gauge the speed of the van, but when Matt waved to him, he rushed forward and jumped out.

Matt followed two seconds later.

He hit the pavement and pain shot through his legs. He tried to stand, but gravity pushed him forward and he went with it. Matt tumbled several times, then tried to stand again; this time his lower limbs responded and he began moving toward the side of the road. As he rushed toward the embankment, he looked behind him and saw no sign of Tyra and Juarez.

The cadaver van suddenly halted.

He leaped and landed into some tall weeds.

There was the noise of footsteps, then a door closing. Seconds later, the van started back up and the noise of the engine grew more and more distant.

Silence.

“Matt…?”

Tyra helped him up out of the bushes. Juarez was standing next to her.

“I can't believe we made it,” said Juarez.

“Well, hold off on texting your friends,” said Tyra. “We still have a lot to do before we make it back to the compound in time for roll call… right, Matt?”

She didn’t realize that Matt was already moving toward the woods.

“How are we doing?” Tyra asked when she finally caught up.

“None of us should relax,” answered Matt. He was jogging and looking all around him. “I’ve seen plenty of vampire patrols working during the day. They won't be at their strongest, but it doesn't mean they won't be here.”

“So you know where we are?” asked Tyra, almost out of breath after just running less than three hundred yards.

“I know exactly where we are,” answered Matt.

He then switched gears and moved off at the base of a valley and into the woods that lay adjacent to the road.

Tyra stopped to wait for Juarez to catch up with her. They both then took off in pursuit of Matt.

“Help me out here,” said Juarez, catching his breath in between every half dozen words. “Do we need to tip the guide who is leading us on a prison break?”

***

“Hey, Matt, can we slow down the pace a bit?”

Matt turned and, rather than feeling perturbed, he looked embarrassed. He stopped and waited until Tyra joined him.

She turned to see that Juarez was still about twenty paces behind her, but close enough that they both started jogging again.

“Sorry about that. I was caught up in my mind gaming out all of our moves.”

“Ah, a clue to how your mind works,” said Tyra, still catching her breath. “So when you say ‘gaming out all of our moves,’ are you talking from start to finish?”

“I wish,” Matt answered, but that was all he said.

After they continued to run in silence, mostly because Tyra still needed to regain her breath, she finally followed up with another question. “I guess what I’m asking is, do you try to work out everything to the final outcome?”

“I used to try and do that,” Matt said. “But there are too many variables.”

“So you stop at a certain point?”

“No, I just mentally follow the path until it divides into several options.”

“Then what do you do?” she asked.

“I make sure there are no other options besides the ones I’m considering.”

“And then what?”

He stopped running.

“Did you ask your father and brother all these questions?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did.”

After her answer, the two continued running along the path through the woods in silence.

Tyra figured it was either because he didn’t have an answer to her original question, or because she shut him down with the way she answered his question.

Finally, he spoke again.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something, but I haven’t had the right opportunity,” said Matt. “What happened with Murphy… is not what I intended.”

“Are you saying you didn’t game it out?”

He looked at her to see if she was joking with him or taunting him.

“I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t think long and hard enough to come up with all the options.”

“So you’re saying you would have done things differently?”

Matt went silent again. For a while all there was between them was their breathing.

“I’ve done things,” he finally said. “Obviously things I’ve been able to live with. And this could have been one of those things. That’s why I should have been the one… not you.”

She was looking at him as he spoke, wondering how much he himself believed was true.

“Well, it’s done,” Tyra said. “So there’s no use talking about it anymore.”

He suddenly stopped running. They stood there catching their breath.

Matt looked at her, but she knew it was not with eyes that were checking her out in a good way. He was evaluating her to see if she had recovered from what happened in the dairy building. His eyes ended up locked on her eyes only so he could see if she was up for the task at hand.

“Hey, Mom, Dad, the movie is over. Are we there yet?”

Tyra wanted to scream when she heard Juarez’s voice, but before she could respond, Matt turned and said, “Yeah, actually, we are…”

***

Matt had made sure they approached the farm from the back. They looked all around the compound, but there was no sign of anyone around.

He made his way to the front entrance of the barn and gently opened the doors a crack. Matt looked around and, strangely, it was like everything that he once remembered in the barn had been kept perfectly as it once was.

Juarez pushed open the door behind him, and the noise triggered two birds to emerge from their nest in the rafters. They both made a quick beeline for a shattered window near the barn’s loft.

Tyra peeked in and said, “How are we doing, Matt?”

“We’ll find out in a second. My mother and father had some ATVs they used to move around the farm.”

Matt grabbed a large, beige, canvas tarp and yanked it toward him like he was unveiling a new statue to patrons at a museum.

Underneath the tarp were four ATVs, two of which had trailers behind them.

It took a few tries, but Matt was able to get the first one fired up.

Juarez got the second ATV started with just one kick.

Matt reached out a hand for Tyra to join him on his ATV.

“Don’t I get one of my own?” she asked.

He turned to look at the older ATVs.

“Those are the ones my brother and I used to ride on when we were kids. I can’t trust they’ll make the trip to Halcyon Ridge and back.”

She took his hand, swung her leg over the seat, and sat down behind Matt. Tyra then wrapped her arms around his waist as he released the clutch and eased the vehicle of out of the barn.

As they moved through the back road to Halcyon Ridge, Matt eventually realized, after looking at their faces, that there was a huge difference between what he was feeling, and what Tyra and Juarez were going through.

Sure they were only going twenty-three miles an hour, the top speed his parents’ ATVs could go while pulling trailers. But for two people who had been locked down in a concentration camp for more than six months, used to getting chased for two pints of blood twice a week, the breeze on their faces and the open road ahead of them still added up to something that was close enough to qualify for a feeling of… freedom.

Chapter Twenty Six

They parked both ATVs in the main square of Halcyon Ridge.

“I bet this place was dead even before the takeover,” said Juarez”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Are you all right?” Tyra asked.

“Concerned,” said Matt as he looked at his watch. “About the time.”

“I hear you,” she said. “So why don’t we prioritize? Weapons first; food and drinks second; then more weapons third.”

“I love the philosophy,” said Matt. “But we’ll need to squeeze in one more thing on the agenda.”

“Lead the way,” said Tyra.

He pointed across the street.

As they moved closer to the Bulls-Eye Gun Gallery, Tara noticed the confident swagger in Matt quickly dissipated. When Matt reached for the handle of the front door, the wind actually brought it toward him.

Entering the place, the three stepped on a floor covered with shards of broken glass as they looked all around them and saw the firearms shop had been completely cleaned out. Every glass case had been broken into and was empty. All the gun racks lining the walls were polished-wood veneer, looking barren and pointless without the rifles meant to complete them.

“Ooops…”

Tyra punched Juarez in the shoulder.

“Why do you have to be such an asshole!”

“How is ‘Ooops’ being an asshole?” protested Juarez. “I wanted to say, ‘Maybe I should check in the back room just in case someone left behind some slingshots or boomerangs,’ but I pulled back because I know we’re working as a team here.”

She was almost afraid to look over and see how Matt was reacting, but he suddenly turned to them.

“I need you to both go further up, about fifty yards, and on this side of the street you’ll see a knitting shop on the second floor above the town’s historic museum. When you enter the shop, go directly to the back room, but when you go in there, there will be two doors: one is the bathroom, but the other door leads to a small room where you’ll see a mess of shelves loaded with jars of jam and preserves. Grab as many as you can and load them into one of the ATV trailers.”

“I don’t understand; are we going to a bake sale after this?” asked Juarez.

Matt looked away and took a deep breath. It was either that or he might have taken a swing at Juarez.

“You know there’s a general store just down the block,” said Tyra.

“Beanes’ general store is going to look just like this. I’m sending you to a place that looters would not think to look. My ex-wife knew Katy Melton, and I’ve seen all the preserves she keeps in her far back room, because it’s completely out of the sunlight.” Matt looked at his watch. “You both just need to do what I say. We’re running out of time.”

Then Matt rushed past them. He was about to leave before Juarez shouted after him.

“So let’s say we get Aunt Bee’s preserves, what then? Is the plan to throw the empty jars at the vampires when they come after us…?”

“No,” answered Matt as he turned around in the doorway of the shop. “I have a backup plan, but it means making another stop when we head back to my parents’ farm. That’s why we need to move. I’ll meet you both back across the street in thirty minutes.”

He then dashed off.

Juarez took a few steps toward the door and mockingly yelled, “Nice to have met you. Call me, maybe.” He turned to Tyra. “We’re fucked!”

“No, we’re not,” she quickly replied.

“Barrett was right… he’s totally going to jackrabbit. I can’t believe you don’t see that.”

She stepped past him, on her way to exiting the shop. “Let’s go, we’re going to do exactly what he told us to do…”

Juarez shook his head, but followed. However, he needed to have the last word. “So what you’re saying is that you completely missed the cotton tail that was clearly pinned to his ass when he left…”

***

She looked at her watch. It had been thirty-five minutes since Matt rushed off.

Juarez had his finger in one of the jars – peach cobbler – and was tasting it.

“Stay here…”

He quickly sealed the jar and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

Tyra had been anxiously wondering where Matt was when she saw movement on the second floor of a building directly behind the parking lot where they had their ATVs parked.

“He’s in there…”

She started to walk away toward the red-brick building, but he stopped her.

“How do you know it’s not a vampire…?”

“Because it’s not. Now I need you to stay here. Go back over and crack open a jar of lemon-curd preserves, but be here when we get back. I mean it, Juarez.”

She stepped through the broken front glass of the main entrance to the building. Piled just a few feet away were several crates of bottled water and a stack of medical kits. It immediately made her feel better as she sprinted through the main lobby, up the stairs, and onto the second floor.

The official government offices of Halcyon Ridge had originally encompassed a pair of two-story buildings. But five years back, when the town hit hard economic times, the local principality was forced to lease out one of the buildings to companies in the private sector. It meant moving all the records for nearly three centuries into a single room on the second floor.

This is where Tyra found Matt, moving frantically from one filing drawer to another. She was about to go in and tell him that whatever he had been looking for he should give up on, but then he stopped slamming drawers and muttering under his breath. Whatever he was looking for, he found. Matt unfolded some papers and set them down on a table in the middle of the room and fell silent.

“What are you doing?”

“Hey… were the preserves there?”

She entered the room and moved toward the table. “Yeah, just like you said. We loaded a hundred jars of jams into one of the ATV trailers.”

“Great. And I found some water and medical kits…”

“I saw them when I came into the building.”

“People forget that every government office has to be prepared for an emergency.”

Tyra was now close enough to see that it was blueprints spread out on the table.

“This is where we’re being held prisoner…”

He nodded, clearly relieved that he had finally found what he was looking for.

“Yeah, the old Army training facility in Morristown, New Jersey.”

“Nice call. This will really help us in our escape,” said Tyra.

Matt suddenly blanched when he saw the time on his watch.

“Shit! We got to go…!”

***

“There’s something that I haven’t been able to forget. Something you said…”

“Yeah, let’s hear it…”

The three of them were driving back to his parents’ farm from Halcyon Ridge.

Once again, Tyra was riding behind Matt on one of the ATVs.

“It was when you told Tulliver and Chast that I grew up around here…”

She waited, but since she couldn’t see his face, Tyra had no idea Matt was finished speaking. So she said, “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, Matt.”

“When I first arrived at the concentration camp, and we talked, I never said I grew up around here…?”

She had her arms around his waist. Tyra tried not to let loose or squeeze any harder before she answered.

“Are you sure you didn’t say anything?”

“Positive. So how did you know?”

Tyra thought about what to do, what to say, until she couldn’t wait any longer. She tightened her arms around him.

“It was that night in the Green Zone, in the basement of that hotel bar.” Matt shouted into the wind. “I told you where I grew up… right?”

She laid her head into his back and then nodded…

“That’s what I thought. Okay, you need to hang on because this is our turnoff…”

Matt raised his hand for Juarez to see. He then veered off the paved back road they had been travelling on to and from Halcyon Ridge.

Their ATVs rumbled onto a dirt road that cut through an area with huge lots broken up with dense woods. Most of the lots had one-story houses, each one at least forty or fifty years old, but there were a few with just a trailer parked in the middle of overgrown grass.

He motioned to Juarez, and they parked the two ATVs in front of one of the last houses adjacent to the base of a mountain.

Matt got off the ATV, and immediately turned to help Tyra off.

She was holding his hand when he said, “Let’s go inside.”

The three stepped onto a wooden porch. As Matt checked to see if the door was unlocked, she noticed that there was nothing on the porch except a bucket filled with several inches of cigarette butts.

The living room had been ransacked, just like Beth’s house, but Matt didn’t take long to digest the mess before he was moving toward the back of the house.

With Ty and Juarez closely behind, he entered a room that looked relatively undisturbed compared to the rest of the house, perhaps because there wasn’t much to the room – no closet, and only two pieces of furniture: a desk and a chair.

There was also a rug in the corner of the room. A Muslim prayer rug. Matt went straight for the rug and pushed it aside, revealing a trapdoor in the floor. He saw Ty and Juarez looking at the prayer rug with curiosity.

“It’s nothing,” said Matt as he grabbed the handle and lifted the access door to the cellar. “Just Rocco’s sense of humor.”

He led the way down a flight of stairs that unfolded with the opening of the basement door. Lights automatically switched on when Matt moved past a sensor built into the wall.

He led the way down a flight of stairs that unfolded with the opening of the basement door. Lights automatically switched on when Matt moved past a sensor built into the wall.

As soon as he confirmed that what they had come for was actually still there, Matt turned to look at Ty. He knew that she was walking into what Jay used to call: a “classic bad news, good news scenario – Your beautiful daughter comes home at 3:00 a.m., but she’s holding a Bible in her hand. How do you react?”

The entire 60 X 80 basement was filled to the gills with weapons of individual destruction. Firearms lined the walls, some stretching through the ages, but mostly just the last ten years – automatic weapons bought, traded for, stolen, taken off a dead body, all now hanging on hooks like trophies from a big-game hunter.

And not just guns.

There was an entire wall taken up with axes, knives, swords: so many sharp instruments, that after viewing half the collection, a Benihana chef would have to sit down before he fainted from too much excitement.

There was even a corner of the room completely devoted to explosives. Grenades of every kind, from World War One to the Korean War. And plastic explosives were on display. Some in the original packaging, several on a table with the wires dangling from the clay.

Matt was surprised that neither Ty nor Juarez said anything as they walked around, like they were being courteous to the other visitors enjoying the exhibit at the museum.

Finally, Ty spoke. “You knew this guy…?”

She asked her question while staring at photos that adorned the wall next to the weapons.

Before he could answer, she pulled a photo off of the wall, one depicting Rocco hoisting a huge stein of beer, while the pub table in the foreground had two pistol machine guns next to a pack of cigarettes and a mobile phone.

She handed the picture to him and Matt saw that Rocco wasn’t the only one in the photo. His arms were wrapped around Matt and Jay.

***

By the time they were back with their haul of weapons and supplies it had become drafty in the barn. Matt tried shutting both of the doors, but the broken windows above were still allowing the wind to rush from the rafters to the ground.

“We’re going to need something to hold this tarp down if we’re going to hide some of the weapons in here,” said Tyra.

She was obviously asking for Matt to come up with a solution, but Tyra wasn’t looking at him.

“What about a staple gun?”

He waited for Tyra to look up, but finally realized that was not going to happen. She had not looked him straight in the eyes since they left Rocco’s house. Tyra even chose to ride with Juarez on their way back to his parent’s farm.

“Yeah, that should work,” said Juarez, but he didn’t bother to make eye contact with Matt either.

They had food… water… an armory of weapons… all because of his effort. Now neither could make eye contact with him.

He moved to his father’s work bench and opened up several drawers. Finally the contents of one of the drawers got his attention. There was a bottle of booze, several packs of cigarettes, a framed photograph… and a shotgun.

Matt picked up the photograph. It was a picture of him, Ian, and his father. Everyone was mugging for the camera with big smiles.