Amplified (17 page)

Soot and Sand

“Hey, space cadet!” Elijah slapped a cold, wet hand on my back and brought me out of my reverie. I was
still sitting on the sand, almost dried off from the warm sun hovering above. “Where’d you go?”

I smiled as he sat down next to me, dripping and messy.
“Just thinking.” I had to admit, at least it didn’t bother him to be all wet and caked with sand. He made things look so easy. Sarah was out of the water, too, but had run back to the jeep and was now bringing back three towels and some water bottles. She dropped one of the soft towels on me and handed me some of the water, winking as she plopped down next to Elijah. I hadn’t even noticed how thirsty I was until the first gulp passed my lips, and I downed half the bottle in just a few swallows.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime. Isn’t this awesome?” She hugged the towel around herself, her lips a pale tint of purple as the cold sucked her heat away.

“Yeah, it
’s really great.”

“Almost makes you feel normal
, doesn’t it?”

I nodded, sadly peering across the shore and into the blue horizon. “Yeah.”

“Did you feel them, too, April?”

“The p
ier?” I asked.

Sarah nodded, taking another sip of water. “Yes. There
’s someone in the shops up there. Want to check it out?”

I shook my head. Wis
ps of my dark hair slapped my face. “I don’t think the ones we need would be holed up on a beach pier.”

“You never know.”

I turned toward her, giving her a stern stare. “I know. I need people who’d find a more secure location. They won’t be easy to find.”

Sarah didn
’t look convinced. “You don’t know that. One thing about an apocalypse, people don’t think clearly. But when it the world has fallen apart, where would you want to really be in the end? I’d choose paradise over a hole in the ground and surviving in the dark. Wouldn’t the beach sound better than the bloody hills?”

“That
’s ridiculous.” I sighed. Leaning forward, I pressed on my thighs and traced a swirl into the fine sand with a finger. Dusting off my hands when I was done, I looked up to find Elijah and Sarah watching me.

“What?”

“When did you get to be such a downer?” Sarah toweled her hair and looked away, disappointment written all over her features.

“I
’m a downer? Being logical isn’t a downer. It’s called thinking with my head on straight and not in the fucking clouds like some people are all the time.” I stood abruptly, threw the towel over the crook of my arm and stormed off toward the Jeep. Her words made me furious. Who did she think she was? She never had any concerns or worried about anything. She’d lived above ground only briefly. I’d lived over a year in the elements. The only thing she’d ever worried about down in the City of Vida, the lap of luxury, was whether she’d break a nail practicing with her swords. It irritated me to no end, and I ignored her calling me back as I made my way to the Jeep.

I
yanked the backseat door open and jumped back as Randy’s body half fell out. He didn’t awaken, but his skin began to smoke and sizzle under the intense afternoon sun reflecting off the white sand. I tossed the towel onto his face, grabbed him and started to shove him back into the Jeep. Finally, huffing under his weight, I managed to shove him back to the other side of the seat where the sun didn’t shine into the window. I peeled the towel off to find him flushed red from the exposure to the sun. His skin had tiny darkened lines on it that made me wonder what was going on. Something was definitely wrong, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

Was the
infection doing this, or was the antidote the cause? Either way, I was afraid it would kill him if I didn’t do something soon.

I reached
underneath the seat and yanked out the small cooler bag with the vials of the antidote. They were still cool but not cold. I hoped what Rick had said about the antidote staying viable at higher temperatures was true. Pulling out an individual use syringe and needle, I popped the top off one of the vials, screwed the needle and syringe together and plunged it through the rubber. After aspirating half a milliliter, like Rick had done with the initial dose, I dropped the vial back into the cooler bag and turned back to Randy, who was still sleeping.

His reddened skin looked angry and sensitive to the touch
, worsening with each minute. The sun hadn’t affected him this much the day before, confirming my fear that his feral nature was very much alive underneath it all. I hoped he’d forgive me if he was in any amount of pain, especially when he woke up. I ripped an alcohol pad open, rubbed it furiously on his bicep and aimed the needle toward the muscle while holding his arm down.

Here goes
nothing
, I thought. Clenching my jaw, I stabbed the needle into his arm and shoved at the plunger. As I pulled it back out, I watched a drop of darkened red blood seep from the puncture site and trickle down his arm. It wasn’t blackened yet, a good sign. He hadn’t responded at all to the shot, not one flinch, not one movement. I had to observe his chest moving to verify that he was still breathing. His shallow breaths reassured me, but I had expected something to change in him with the second dose. Anything would be nice.

Several minutes passed before I
fell back against my seat and let out a frustrated breath. Nothing was happening, and I was running out of time. If he was frying under direct sunlight, he’d be full feral much too soon and would probably rip us to shreds if we didn’t extinguish him first or tie him up good. The stupid antidote was supposed to work. It was supposed to! How could such a thing be presented to me and be taken away so quickly? It pissed me off to no end, and I smacked the chair if front of me until my skin stung with angry sparks of pain.

I focused my sight
out toward the shoreline to find Elijah and Sarah still sitting where I’d left them, deep in conversation. Elijah was even making hand gestures up in the air as he told his story. Sarah’s high-pitched laugh echoed across the drifts, joined by several seagulls who’d hovered and landed next to them in the hopes of a snack.

There used to be thousands of seagulls
along the beach. Now there were still a few, but much fewer than before, when the beach was thriving with morsels of food for them to steal. It made me laugh, because I’d had my sandwich stolen by those flying rats before.

The thought of food made my stomach jerk in an angry growl.
I reached into the back where the food cooler was and dug around in it for something palatable. I came up with a can of tuna and a couple sealed packets of Ritz crackers. Using the can opener we’d stashed with the cans, I squeezed the fluid out onto the sand and used the crackers to scoop the bits of tuna into my mouth.

I missed having
sliced bread, mayonnaise and mustard to slather all over the sandwiches. Sometimes we got lucky and found some mustard or ketchup, but most of the time the mayonnaise was always going bad from sitting out in the heat for far too long. I swore if I found a good jar here in Cali, I’d enjoy it to the max and take it back to Vegas with me.

I sighed, washing down the food with
more water as I watched the birds bantering with each other along the sand. Some of them would occasionally dip into the water, fishing for food. I wondered if they found any. We could try to catch some fresh fish if we were going to stay here for an extended amount of time.

Glancing over back toward the pier, I felt eyes on me again. It made me uneasy
, but I didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I had before, just curious. Who was in there? What did they think about us showing up on their beach and just making a day of it?

I sighed. The old me, before my mother died, would
’ve thrown caution to the wind and jumped at the chance to check it out. What had changed so much? I sat there, just thinking about things and not acting irrationally as I once would have. Maybe my mother’s death had killed a lot more of me than I’d originally thought. No sense of adventure anymore whatsoever. It was one of the few things that had kept me going when I’d lost her and Jeremy all those months ago. That determination and impulsive behavior had been both my bane and savior before. Now I felt like a shell of myself. Empty… hollow… dead. I had to find that part of me again somehow.

I swung
back toward Randy and let out a yelp, gasping for air as I found him watching me with deep, blood red irises. It was hours from sunset, and he was wide awake and very feral in appearance.

“Randy?”

His eyes darted around the vehicle, focusing outside for a moment before finding me again. His pupils were tiny, showing so much red it made me wonder if I was speaking to Randy or the feral monster inside.

“Are you al
l right?” I moved slowly to grip the knife sheathed on my hip. He was tied up, but I didn’t trust him to not lunge forward and take a decent chunk out of my flesh with those razor sharp fangs. Better to be safe than sorry.

“What
’s happening?” He closed his eyes, breathing rapidly while his eyelids fluttered madly. Suddenly, his body began to twitch and tiny grunts escaped his lips. “It burns.” The ropes held his arms and legs together, but his back arched as he bucked and fought against the movement.

“Randy!”

I tried to keep him from smashing his head into the window as his body convulsed underneath mine.
Crap, Crap, Crap!
What if this was an adverse reaction to the second dose of antidote? What if it killed him this time around? I wished I’d been smart enough to have asked Rick what would happen if a second dose was given to a feral. Now I was getting a front row seat, and it was horrific. It could have even been some anaphylactic reaction, and I didn’t have anything to counteract it. What if the first dose hadn’t really worked well enough and this one was just going to send him over the edge and kill him? I regretted giving him the second dose as his seizure continued.

“Randy, come on…
just breathe.” He finally slumped, his chest still and his eyes firmly shut.

“What the hell happened?” Elijah
’s voice boomed behind me, and I turned to find him and Sarah staring with mouths wide open as I pushed on Randy’s body. Sarah started running around to the other side to yank open the door.

“Pull
him out, we need to give him CPR.”

“No!” I yelled and
pushed her hands off him. “Don’t touch him! He’ll burn in the sun, that’s why he’s all red!”

She drilled her eyes into me when I smacked her hands away.
She shifted her gaze toward Randy, who was still, but his chest was finally moving with soft, shallow breaths. His twitches became more subtle, and his choked grunts had silenced.

Sarah stepped back, looking grim a
nd tired. “If he burns, he’s a feral. Let him burn.”

I clamped my lips shut, avoiding her gaze, knowing if I met her eyes I
’d want to smack some sense back into her. Maybe it was me who needed some sense smacked into me, but I couldn’t give up on Randy yet. I had to see this through to the end. There was simply no other option.

“I
’m going to forget you said that,” I managed to hiss past my frowning lips as I got Randy’s body to cooperate and maneuvered him into a neutral position so he could breathe more easily. He was motionless throughout the effort, confirming that he was out once more. I settled back in my seat and ran my hand through my hair. “I gave him another dose of the antidote.”

“Why the heck would you do
that?” Elijah was shaking sand out of his jeans and pulling a dry shirt out of his bag, as if nothing had happened. He had such an unconcerned attitude about it all, it made me want to slap him for being so insensitive.

After p
ulling off the half dried shirt, he yanked the new one over his rock hard body. He just had to go and do something like that in front of me. I closed my eyes to try and not think about how awesome he looked when I was so pissed at both him and Sarah. It made me miss Rye in more ways than one. Rye had always been a pretty sight to look at shirtless, and I knew he’d know when to keep his comments to himself.

The thought made me even more depressed a
s I opened my eyes once more when Sarah and Elijah hopped back into the Jeep. I turned toward Randy and found him fast asleep again, unharmed, as if nothing had happened. I wished he’d be able to tell me more about what was going on inside him, give some sort of clue to what kind of war was raging under his skin. Now I’d have to wait, and he probably wouldn’t awaken before the feral beast did.

Elijah
looked up and stared at me through the rear view. Even with sunglasses on, I could feel his gaze burning into me.

“If he so much as breath
es wrong, I’m offing him, April. No ifs, ands or buts. Got it?”

I nodded,
swallowing down the dry, sandpapery knot in my throat. “Got it.”

By Chance

“What about there?” Sarah’s voice echoed in my head, and I peeled my cheek from my arm, which had been leaning against the door of the Jeep. I’d passed out hard after Randy’s reaction to the antidote. We’d decided to locate a suitable place to spend the night, and we still had several hours before sundown but didn’t want to get caught by surprise. We needed time to fortify our hideout before the ferals came out. I was pretty sure California had more vampires than Vegas did. Maybe more toward L.A. or San Diego, but we were pretty near them. These beach towns weren’t exactly huge, but they ran into each other for miles upon miles without a break, blending into one another, making it seem like it was one long and endless city. That could be bad. Really, really bad.

The building
Sarah had pointed out was more of a lighthouse. It was off in the distance, surrounded by sand dunes and swells of scrubland. I wrinkled my nose at it as Elijah pulled off the road and headed down one of the sandy roads toward it.

“Looks good as any,
” he said. He grinned and slammed down a gulp of beer. He’d found it in a convenience store we’d scavenged which had collapsed from some heavy rains. Underneath the crumpled awning it’d been fairly intact, and he’d managed to pull out a couple of six packs of beer that had remained half buried in dirt. He’d dusted the cans off and pulled the tab on one, taken a sniff and then a nice, large swallow of the fluid. The smile on his face told us he’d found something he absolutely loved, and he’d practically launched himself into the damp earth to dig out as many as he could find.

“Pay dirt!” he
’d yelled as he shoved a couple six packs under his arms and lugged them to the Jeep.

At least someone was getting a treat. The other stuff we
’d found was akin to the same crap we’d found in any forage: beef jerky sticks, dented cans of Spaghettios, ravioli, some salvageable individual packs of fever meds, bags of chips and loads of candy. Tons of it.

Well, maybe we were getting some treats
, too, but real food would’ve been nice right about then.

“Should you be drinking and driving?” Now Sarah was
acting the mother hen.

“Oh, don
’t start. I can handle my alcohol. Besides, I won’t really drink that much until later. Need to get the place up to snuff before we can party.” He winked at Sarah, turning her scarlet as she bit her lip and turned away. Man, the girl had it bad for him, and she was so transparent. I almost laughed but held it in as I studied the dunes around us, hoping ferals didn’t like sand. If they didn’t, this was a perfect home base until I found what I was looking for.

If
I found what I was looking for.

We pulled into a spot near the lighthouse and studied the building, lonely against the horizon.

“Okay, April, you take to the back, I’ll go in through the front. Don’t forget to call out if you find something. This isn’t a solo mission, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. My reputation for working alone plagued m
e like a skunk attack. “Yes,
sir.
” I emphasized my words and threw him a dirty look before grabbing my machetes and a flashlight. I was ready to pummel anything that got in our way. One glance toward Randy reassured me he was out for the count. Still, I cracked the windows and locked the doors. If he woke up delirious again, he might inadvertently kill himself by opening his door and frying in the sun. Not something I needed right now. Elijah handed me the keys, and after he clipped his hunting knife sheath to his belt, he checked the rounds in his gun and strapped on his katana.

Sarah was doing
the same. Her long sword looked overbearing on such a svelte girl. How she handled herself so well with the weapons always impressed me. No matter how long I’d seen her fighting, it was like watching a stranger. She could probably say the same thing about me.

She caught me watching her and gave me a tentative smile that didn
’t reach her eyes. Okay, so she was still pissed at me for pitching a fit earlier. I sighed and headed toward the lighthouse, ready to take some ferals down if I had to. Sometimes it felt good to start a fight and make something bleed. I missed it. That was my mission, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

The bottom part of the l
ighthouse was like a small cottage. Tiny windows faced the ocean and the front where we’d parked. They were salted and caked with over a year of water spots, impossible to see through, especially with the sun still glaring behind us and reflecting off the glass. I groaned and kept on, hoping to find a second entrance in the rear, leading toward the beach. The deep sand was hard to trek through, and I could feel it filling my boots as I sank into it.

Cursing under my breath, I made it around to
a wooden pathway leading off the deck from the back door and down through an opening between the grassy dunes and off toward the beach. I stopped and studied the surrounding area. It was easy to hide there. The hills hid everything from anyone coming around the corner. It could be good or really, really bad. Good that I could sneak up to the door without being seen. Bad if anyone else did the same to me.

Walking up to the door, I took a moment to hold my breath and listen. The seagull cries across the beach mingled with the hollow sound of
the ocean. Even the slight breeze rustling the grasses intensified as I tried hard to filter the noises and listen for anything suspicious. When nothing stood out, I peered at the old wooden door before me. It was smooth and worn down from time and the constant assault of ocean air. I reached out and turned the rusty knob, cool and gritty from lack of use. It turned slowly, crackling as the rust flakes spilled out from it and flew away in the gusts of wind. I stopped and listened again, hoping there would be nothing here to find, either alive or undead.

No scratching, moaning or screeches. There was nothing human echoing
out either. If I was going to get this done already, I better just do it. I shoved the door in with all my weight, and it swung open, filling the dark atmosphere inside with a huge cloud of billowing. I hurried in, my blades in position as I scooted to the side of the door and let my eyes adjust to the dimly lit interior.

Nothing lunged at me, nothing came bearing arms or tumbled in my direction
growling with blood drenched fangs. I let out the breath I was holding and continued in, hoping it remained abandoned all the way through. The wind thumped on the door, and I worried it would make it slam sooner or later, so I reached out and pulled the door softly shut before continuing.

I
found myself standing in a small mudroom of sorts, converted to a tool and storage shed. Several tools hung from the wall, though for what they were for, I didn’t know. I didn’t see a garden around anywhere. I figured you could still rake the sand, so the long-handled tool with hundreds of teeth had some sort of purpose. The others—a trowel, shovel, fertilizing, pruners, a spade and what looked like a Japanese gardening knife—left me baffled. I hoped it would make more sense as I continued into the little house.

The next room was a hall that ran down to a back staircase leading up into the tower of the lighthouse. The air was stale and felt musty
, thick and unused for a long time. I wondered if Elijah had explored the front of the cottage yet. I didn’t want to run into him by accident and end up chopping a limb off. If he was in the building, he was remaining excruciatingly quiet, as was I. Making my way past the hall, where a small room lay to the left, I found nothing. Across from it was another short hall that looked like it ended in a kitchen where a small breakfast table sat under a dirty window.

I focused on the small room to my left and peered in, pushing the door slowly as I let the contents come in to view. A
n old rocking chair, a reading chair and several bookshelves lined with leather-bound books of all kinds circled the room. Piles of books lay on two side tables, and reading lamps sat amidst them. There wasn’t a desk, but it appeared to be a reading room of sorts. The two worn ottomans told a story of many hours of use. It made me smile. If I could, I’d check out some of those books later, see if there was anything I’d want to read for the long, restless nights I was anticipating.

With that room cleared, I headed toward the kitchen area.
The moment I turned into it, a creak of the floorboards made me freeze in my steps. I let out a breath when I found Elijah standing at the doorframe to the kitchen from the other side.

“Whoa…
it’s just me.”

I pointed behind me. “Staircase back here, I
’m going up.”

“
Okay,” he said. “First floor’s clear. I’ll heading up the front stairwell.”

We
threw each other a curt nod and turned back toward our destinations. The stairs looked foreboding and disappeared into the ceiling like a black hole without much to look at from down below. I swallowed. Going up there would be a great disadvantage for me; my head would be a tempting target for anything waiting up top. As I ascended, I decided to pull a small knife from my belt and stopped as I reached the top of the stairs, before I’d become visible to anyone waiting for me. I swung my hand back and tossed the small blade up onto the top step, waiting for movement. When none came, I crept up slowly and found the second floor, much more open than the first.

This opened to a circular livi
ng area where there was recliner with a lamp and small table next to it. Like everything else, it was covered in a thick layer of dust. No one had been through there in ages. Even the wooden floor lacked any sign of footprints. It was reassuring, but I still had more levels to check. Who knew how big this place was? There was one bedroom with a creaky-looking brass frame bed and a single light on a lonely table next to it. The sheets were flat, made up one morning and never turned back down, forgotten. I crossed out of the room to where the wall hid a small hallway of windows to the outside.

The view of
the ocean was impossibly beautiful, and I had to pause to admire its brilliance. I loved it and was so happy to be able to see it again. It made my heart jump with the excitement to have the beauty of the water so close. It was humid, but it didn’t bother me. My skin begged to be drenched in its richness. Nothing felt better than that. It was what I’d needed to feel renewed, even in the face of the unknown dangers to come.

I turned back to find Elijah watching me
. He’d entered the hall of windows from the other side. His nonjudgmental eyes twinkled as he followed my gaze toward the horizon.

“Gorgeous
, isn’t it?”

I nodded, s
miling that he understood.

“Come on, we
’ll have a few hours to enjoy it. The spiral staircase starts here, and the living quarters end. Both floors are clear.”

“Okay.”

I joined him at the base of a scary-looking spiral staircase. The stairs stuck out from the wall of the tower without a railing on the open side.

“Ladies first.” He smirked and wagged his eyebrows.
I gave him a dark look, readjusting the machete in my grip.

“You
’re going to pay for that,” I said before jumping onto the steps, not daring to look to the side. I wasn’t afraid of heights, I just didn’t want to know just how far I’d have to fall if or when I did fall. Okay, so I was a fiery pessimist. So what? I didn’t really care what others thought about my attitude. I focused on the task and made my way up the creaky stairs.

They seemed to go on for miles
, with no end in sight. I hated not knowing what I was heading into. Still, the call of the ocean outside was better than the arid desert I was used to. Nothing could dampen my excitement from being near the water, not even an imminent attack above.

The only thing missing was Rye. I gulped back the sadness that wanted to creep up my throat like rancid bile. I hated feeling guilty about so
mething, but I really didn’t know what else to do about it. I’d left him behind. That was the fact of the matter, and he and I would have to deal with the consequences when we saw each other again.
If
we saw each other again. I wasn’t so sure we ever would.