Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood (22 page)

Michael stares at him. “Now?”

“Let’s go.”

“We’ll let everyone know, right? Arm up as well as we can?”

“Goes without saying.”

Michael takes a breath. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Joel looks contemplative. There are sounds of others stirring around the library, quiet voices coming from other areas. Michael stands up and stretches, yawns expansively, watching the policeman.

“Listen, Mike …” Joel says, searching for words as he steps closer. “This situation … I don’t have to tell you things are out of control. It’s basically been chaos for four straight days. Nothing has been predictable.” He glances around, makes sure they’re alone. “We’re backed up against a wall here. I’ve just been counting everything off in my head, and it’s not looking good. We are unarmed.
Un. Armed.
If we can get to the store successfully, then I might try to get to the precinct immediately and arm up, but that’s thinking two steps ahead. I mean, these things are
aggressive
. And there are
thousands
of them. Hell, hundreds of thousands.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Christ, I don’t know—maybe I just want to make sure you’ve got my back.” He laughs mirthlessly. “I never had an assigned partner, well, except for when I was a rookie. I just had a one-man car for street duty, but I never really needed a partner, right? I mean, it’s Fort Collins. Nothing ever happens here. But … the fucking apocalypse? That’s a different matter.”

“I guess it is.”

“So can I count on you?”

“I’m your man. I mean, I’m also watching Rachel’s back. My little girl. But I’ll do what I can.”

“All right, let’s get this thing going.”

Within twenty minutes, the entire crew is assembled in the lobby, and their collective reaction to Joel’s idea is a study in conflict. It’s undeniably true that the level of hunger among the survivors is tilting toward a crisis point. For days, most of them have failed to consume decent food—most recently, they’ve persisted on pilfered crackers, spoons of peanut butter, half-consumed Pringles cans, the occasionally discovered apple, and quickly spoiling hospital food.

During the conversation in the lobby, Michael comes to the realization that he didn’t eat anything at all yesterday. He chooses not to share that fact with anyone, least of all Rachel or Bonnie, who would definitely get on his case about the oversight. The upshot is that there’s a noticeable decrease in the level of energy among them, and that’s unsustainable.

However …

“Daddy, you can’t go out there!” Rachel already has tears in her eyes.

“It’s too dangerous, isn’t it?” Bonnie puts in, glancing around. “Right?”

“That’s the thing—I don’t think it is,” Joel says. “Not at the moment.”

“Um, did you see what happened yesterday, when he went out there?” Rachel asks. “That thing was
barking
at him.”

“It wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t stumbled right into it, like a moron.”

“That’s right,” Joel says. “These things are programmed now to just drift south. They’re going somewhere, and it ain’t here.”

“But that could change at any moment, couldn’t it?” Rachel asks. “In an instant!”

“She’s right,” Ron offers. “From what we’ve seen, their instincts—for lack of a better word—can change at any moment, determined by that sound we’ve all heard more than once.”

“We go in quick and fast, armed with tranq guns and water rifles,” Joel counts off with his fingers, “barricade ourselves inside, leave the Hummer idling. In and out within five minutes, fill bags with food and first aid, whatever else. Back here within twenty minutes.”

“And if those things suddenly turn on you?” Rachel asks, near hysteria.

“The moment we hear that noise, we sprint back.”

Rachel is shaking her head worriedly, and Michael notices Kayla comforting her, placing a hand on her shoulder. He finds the gesture deeply affecting, and he can’t take his eyes off it. It’s a small movement, but it speaks emotional volumes. He contrasts the moment with what he knows he’s about to do—the danger he knows he’ll face—and it brings him an unexpected sense of calm.

“Well, I’m all for it,” Kevin says. “I could use a goddamn Ding Dong.”

“Don’t think it’s that kind of store,” Joel says, “but we’ll do our best.”

“You want company?”

“I think Michael and I can handle it. Easy in, easy out. I want a full crew barricaded here in case something happens.”

Bonnie is reluctant about the whole endeavor, but she ends up taking tallies of anyone who might need medicine or supplements, in addition to a first-aid list that she scribbles out for general purpose. Soon, most of the survivors are knotted around Joel and Michael, adding their needs to the community list until the idiosyncratic requests become too much to bear.

“Whoa, whoa, people,” Joel says, “all I can promise is that we’ll focus on protein and try to find all the fresh food that’s still viable, okay? We gotta be smart.”

“And we gotta get moving,” Michael adds. “I want to get this done.”

At that moment, he catches Rachel’s eye. At the edge of the group with Kayla, she’s watching him sadly. He gives her a wink, trying to effect an unworried air, but he’s pretty sure he has failed at that.

By 6:30 a.m., they’re armed and at the front doors, poised to break for the Hummer. Joel has the weapons—two tranq rifles and a single Super Soaker filled with O-negative—slung over his shoulder, and Michael has the vehicle’s key in his fist. Not a single body has been spotted in the vicinity of the library in the past hour. In fact, nothing of any consequence has been seen for perhaps seven hours.

“Clear?” Joel calls behind him.

Mai’s voice comes from the north side of the library. “All clear!”

“Scott?” Joel yells after a moment.

“I don’t see anything!” Scott says from the south.

“Ready?” Joel whispers to Michael.

“As I’ll ever be.”

Michael takes a last look behind him at the clutch of survivors who are watching them, nods, then pushes his way outside. Joel falls into step right behind him. As they make directly for the Hummer, a thin layer of ash breaks from Michael’s footfalls in rhythmic drifts. He wonders—in a sickening moment of clarity—whether there are human remains in there. He’s sure there are.

The morning is comparatively cool, but the sun already has a thin hardness, streaming through the high smoke. He reaches the vehicle and pulls the front door open, climbs up. In a few seconds, Joel is seated next to him, the tranq rifles secured at his feet and the Super Soaker cradled in his arms.

“Let’s do it,” he says. “Still clear.”

The Hummer rumbles to life, and he shivers violently for a split-second. He’s looking in all directions, anticipating a rush of bodies from all corners. The demise of young Danny, through the window directly behind him, is far too fresh. The shattered remains of that safety window are still scattered across the back seat. But the entire area surrounding the library is deserted now.

Michael maneuvers the Hummer to the street. In a few moments, they’re out of sight of the library’s front entrance, moving toward Matthews, and their collective breath is taken away by the sight on the western horizon—a view unattainable from inside the library.

The burning continues unabated and appears to be at the edge of the city limits, at the foot of Horsetooth Reservoir. Michael wonders seriously now if a fire like that could actually jump into town and begin crawling through subdivisions. Depends on the wind, he guesses, and thankfully there’s none of that. But the fire is the less remarkable phenomenon. All along the Front Range, wide columns of throbbing luminescence reach from the ground into the sky, and beyond. The crimson light is clear even in the bright of day.

“Fuck me,” Joel whispers.

“Yeah. It’s stronger. It’s everywhere.”

Michael watches the columns, horrified but curious. It’s as if light is stabbing through the smoke—well, not light, but a physical manifestation of light: solid things in the midst of the ephemeral smoke. They don’t look like anything he’s ever seen in his previous life.

“What the hell is it, man?” Joel says, voicing Michael’s own confusion. “What are they doing?”

Michael can only shake his head. He tears his gaze from the skies and makes the turn onto Matthews.

“Hate to think of what happened to those damn Thompsons,” Joel breathes.

“Those are the brothers? The hunters?”

“Right—up there in the foothills, last I talked to them. Couple of assholes armed to the teeth, even before this fucking thing happened. They probably started most of those fires. And believe it or not, they’re on our side.”

Matthews is deserted. There’s still white, smoldering smoke coming from College, but no active flames. Joel watches the area with regret slashed across his features.

“Goddamn jet crash,” he mumbles.

“No kidding? My god. Right into Old Town?”

“A FedEx cargo plane. Took out a few blocks before we commandeered a firetruck from the station on Remington. I only knew some basics, but we got the water flowing.” He sighs. “Where it all started for me.”

“Yeah?”

“Met your daughter right over there.”

Eyes darting left and right for any sign of danger, Joel tells Michael his story: from when the world stopped in the middle of his early-morning shift, through the crash of the cargo jet and the fruitless attempts to save the businesses there, to the hospital, where it seemed they’d make their final stand—only to discover that nothing was as it seemed. The bodies wanted something very different than human flesh.

“We thought they were zombies, you know, like in the movies—fuckin’ zombies, man. It’s like, that’s what we were programmed to expect, somehow, by TV shows, movies. Hell, I’ve even read a few zombie books in my time, although I’m more of a sci-fi guy. I don’t know, maybe
anyone
who saw those bodies twitching back to life would jump straight to
‘Braaaaains
.’”

Halfway up Matthews, on the east side of the street, they come upon a VW bus. A body is trapped inside it.

“Look, look,” Michael whispers, slowing the Hummer.

He and Joel watch it curiously. The vast majority of the bodies that were stricken in their vehicles or in their bedrooms were able to maneuver themselves out of those spaces, to somehow manipulate door handles and escape. To disengage from seatbelts, even. But this one, for whatever reason, never did.

Its limbs claw at the driver’s side window, feebly, and it’s clear to Michael that it has very little energy left. It’s gaunt, and its features are slack, expressionless. The body is that of an older woman, long gray hair like a crooked curtain, mouth open and dry, cheeks hollow and sunken.

“Why’s it stuck?” Joel asks.

“That’s what I was wondering.” Michael watches, feeling a combination of resentment and pity. “Maybe its foot is caught … maybe the door is stuck. Hell if I know.”

It barely acknowledges them as they slowly pass, staring momentarily with its dead, flat eyes.

“Gives me the friggin’ creeps.”

Michael makes the turn onto Mountain Avenue, and the two men hold their breath, not sure what to expect along this major downtown artery. There’s no movement, only abandoned vehicles and an unnatural silence under the light of the new day. Smoke drifts from the storefronts directly to the west, heaviest midway up the block to the northwest, in the separate block of buildings where the FedEx jet crashed.

The Fort Collins Co-Op, unassuming with its quaint and colorful storefront shade, appears on the right, and Michael pulls up and shuts off the engine. Fortunately, this section of Old Town has been spared, although just a block away the facades of businesses are crumpled and black.

They sit in their seats, in breathless silence, listening. Ahead of them, reaching into the sky, the red luminescence throbs. White smoke drifts northeast. Ash continues to drift like light snow, some of it touching the window with an audible click. At least twenty cars and trucks in the near distance sit abandoned in the street, most of them jammed against the gutters. One of them is wedged straight into the Coopersmith’s dining patio.

“Too quiet,” Michael says.

“Let’s do it, huh, before it’s not so quiet anymore?” Joel takes a Super Soaker in his grip and slings one of the tranq rifles over his shoulder. “I’m leaving the other rifle here. You’re gonna be the primary shopper, okay? We get in there, you grab some bags or boxes and we’ll both start filling ’em up, but I’m also gonna be on lookout. I got your back. Clear?”

“Yep.”

They open their doors simultaneously and hop to the ground. Michael lets Joel take care of all surveillance and goes straight for the glass doors. Expecting to push right through, he finds them locked.

“Shit.”

“Great. Okay, let’s break the glass.”

“You sure?”

“Do it.”

“With what?” Michael searches the area for something heavy, a rock or a piece of metal—there’s nothing in the immediate vicinity.

“Use your heel.”

Michael looks around superfluously, guiltily, feeling like some vandalizing asshole, and backs up against the door. He kicks backward with the heel of his shoe, but the rubber just bounces off. He tries again, much harder—nothing.

“Oh Jesus,” Joel says, backing against the other door.

He gives it a good whack with the heel of his boot, and the glass shatters clangingly, falling to the ground in great shards and fragmenting. The shrill echo seems to blast across all of northern Fort Collins.

“Go, go!”

Michael ducks through the broken door, watching for any dangerous hanging glass, and enters the dimly lit store. It’s cool inside but smells vaguely sour. In another day or two, it will smell like full-on rot. He peers down the length of the three aisles, seeing nothing but cold shadows. He hears nothing. He goes straight for the counter and grabs a small pile of paper bags with sturdy handles, calls out to Joel that he’s ready to start loading up. Joel ducks through the door, keeps an eye on the street.

“Are we clear in here?”

“No movement.”

Satisfied, the cop hurries to the counter and grabs his own bag, both weapons slung over his shoulder.

The store is almost ludicrously small, a local grocery specializing in herbal supplements and remedies, all-natural fare, but it has most of what they’ll need, and the size will spare them from running the lengths of long aisles at a supermarket. Michael goes straight for the tiny produce area on the left. It has been five days since the electricity failed, and most of the items look wilted and on their way to spoilage, but Michael fills two entire bags with apples, oranges, peppers, bananas, berries, peaches, melons, and whatever else looks edible. The bags fill quickly, and he hustles back to the counter with the heavy bags, grabs two more empties.

The store is small enough that it’s lit by ambient window light better than a supermarket would be, but still, the aisles toward the back, in particular, are cloaked in darkness and shadow. Michael glances back there again and feels a small spurt of fear in his chest.

Beyond the produce, Michael starts shoveling cheeses and some select precooked meats into the next bag, then he turns around to more shelves and finds crackers and some cookies. He knows the store almost intimately, having shopped here for years with both wives and Rachel. He even remembers the clerks cooing over Rachel when she was a baby. Now he’s essentially stealing from the shelves, and no one left in the world would care.

Michael notices Joel dropping items into a bag closer to the front of the store.

“You find the first-aid stuff? It’s next to the—”

“Just found it,” Joel says. “Vitamins … bandages … pain stuff.”

“Grab any ointments you can—”

Something clanks in the rear of the store, and both men freeze. Joel drops his bag to the floor, grips and aims his Super Soaker. Then with his left hand he grabs at the flashlight in his belt, frees it, and directs a cone of light in the direction of the noise. Michael watches the shadows jerk around. There’s nothing back there.

A few minutes pass.

Finally a great shudder sounds outside, rattling the windows, followed by a booming crash that Michael feels in his ribcage.

“Aw shit!”
Joel yells, running for the front door. He expertly raises the Super Soaker while holstering the flashlight.

Michael’s heart is in his throat.

Joel darts his gaze west toward College.

“Nothing … nothing,” he’s breathing. “Wait, wait, here we go!”

“What?!”

“Something collapsed.” The cop hurries back toward Michael.

A cloud of smoke and ash rushes past the front windows then, some of it wafting through the shattered door. It sounds like a patter of dry rain. Michael experiences a dark rush of September 11 memories as the debris casts the entire store in further darkness.

“I think it was the restaurant on the corner, where BeauJo’s used to be,” Joel says. “That building. The FedEx plane might’ve clipped it. It’s probably been smoldering all this time.”

“We gotta get out of here, right? Like, now?”

“I still don’t see any bodies. Let’s just get what we need.”

Joel hurries back, slinging the Super Soaker and getting busy with his bags.

“Got bread,” he shouts, hacking out a cough as the debris begins to fill the store. “Okay, you’re right, we gotta split. Wrap it up and let’s go.”

“Just want to get some liquid.” Michael jogs to the cooler on the east side of the store and fills a new bag with water bottles and cans of soda and juice. The smoke and ash reach him, acrid and thick, and he sneezes violently several times, each one turning into a cough. “Damn!”

Joel, just to his left, is checking the final shelves, swiping items into his open bag, moving down the aisle.

A bright green door, just beyond the baked goods, leads into a store room or office, perhaps. Michael spots it just as Joel turns toward it. The cop reaches for the knob, twists it but finds the door stuck in the jamb. He yanks hard, and it flies open.

“Hey!” the cop blurts.

A possessed body flings itself out of the small room, crumpling Joel to the vinyl-tiled floor. It’s a young woman, not much older than Rachel, her casual work outfit torn at the seams, and there’s a nametag on her breast, partially loosened from its blue fabric mooring. Joel kicks at the body randomly, viciously, a string of curses flowing from his mouth. His bags of groceries go crashing across the floor, and he reaches for his weapons, but he can’t find leverage. The thing on top of him has little strength—it has that same look on its upturned face as the thing in the VW bus, perhaps because it hasn’t eaten, but it still manages to lunge its head at Joel’s body, attempting to inflict harm.

Michael throws himself at the body and shoves it off Joel, sending it colliding with shelves full of health products.

“Why’d you open that door?!”

Joel grunts and swivels on the floor, getting a handle on the tranq rifle, as the body moves almost lethargically back at him. The slow movements give Joel time to right the rifle and send a tranq dart into the body’s exposed flank with a solid
thunk
.

The woman twists and trips, and begins gasping. Her eyes are blinking spastically, her mouth contorting. In the small confines of the store, the sound is ghastly. Joel scrambles backward, away from her, and Michael helps him up.

The debris and ash are clearing at the door, but the two men continue to cough as they breathe heavily. Michael hears a cough from the woman, too, hacking, and then morphing into a helpless scream of what sounds like pain.

“Nooo-ooo! Noo! Neeeeee—”

Joel is venturing back, collecting the items on the floor back into their bag. “Let’s go, for Chrissakes.”

Michael steps backward, watching the body as it thumps onto its back, no longer arcing backward. It twists and writhes, one shoulder obviously dislocated.

“Huuuuuurts!”

Joel clambers past him. “Come on!” He stops at the door and searches the street.

“We’re just gonna leave her?”             

“Damn right.”

Michael turns for the groceries on the counter. He gathers all six bags by the handles and goes for the door. He keeps casting glances at the woman, who is still twisting and screaming on the floor. Her foot catches some boxed merchandise on the shelf, knocking a stack to the floor.

It’s at that moment that he recognizes her. Her name is Felicia. She has probably helped Michael with his groceries a dozen times, joked with him and Rachel. Perhaps even with Susanna. However casual, he has a history with this poor woman. He’s not sure if it’s the lingering effects of the concussion or just the stress of the situation, but the memories come sluggishly: bits of conversation, her demeanor at checkout, her genuine smile at seeing him and his family, occasional shared pieces of her personal life. Something about school. Some kinship with Rachel that they exchanged words about. Changing majors. From English to business, wasn’t it? She wanted to own a store like this.

Joel ducks out into the street with his bags, hurrying to the passenger side and tossing everything in. Michael, casting glances back at Felicia, is right behind him, curling around to the driver’s side, stepping up onto the running board, and dropping his bags through the broken rear window, onto the floorboards. His lips curl at the dried blood on the jagged glass.

Joel is climbing in when Michael pauses, looking east and west on Mountain. There are no bodies on the street, just the still-diminishing cloud of dust at College, where that entire corner seems to have exploded. It’s like a war zone.

Michael can hear Felicia crying in distress inside the store.

“We have to bring her back,” he says.

Joel glares at him.

Michael doesn’t wait. “I know her, I can’t leave her.” He breaks for the store again. He takes a moment to kick out a couple of larger shards of glass from the broken door, to give him room to carry her out. Then he’s through and going for the woman.

Her eyes lock on him. She’s still blinking exaggeratedly, as if trying desperately to focus.

“Helllppp!!”
she cries.

Felicia’s body reminds him only marginally of the bodies outside the library. Without the damage to the mouth, and therefore the throat and stomach, she seems simply human … not as grossly injured, and probably a more likely candidate for turning back. She has a pretty face—wide-set eyes and a pert nose, a mouth that he remembers as happy. Short blond hair.

He takes hold of her flailing arms and begins to pull her toward the entrance, trying his best to ignore her wails. She’s trying to make words, but the pain makes her incomprehensible. Michael wishes she’d just fall unconscious.

“All right, all right!” Joel shouts behind him, coughing. He comes around to her feet, takes them up. “Christ, you and your daughter, man! Cut from the same cloth!”

“Actually, I think I got it from her.”

The woman is beside herself with pain, her eyes bugged, turned up in their sockets, the jaw locked open and soundless now. The body is rigid. Michael and Joel carry her through the door and toward the Hummer. The street remains deserted.

“Let’s get her up into the back,” Michael says.

“Yep.”

The body writhes once, fish-like, in their grasp, the sweaty skin difficult to hold on to. Felicia finds her voice and brays a hitching, incoherent gasp. Finally, the two men settle the body onto the rear seats and close the doors. Michael bends over, planting his hands on his knees, and coughs smoky phlegm for twenty seconds while Joel scans the street. The woman continues to screech, threatening to reignite the pain of Michael’s concussion.

“You all right?” he asks when Michael goes quiet.

“Yeah, let’s move.”

The return to the library is uneventful. The woman in the VW bus is still weakly batting at the window, but otherwise they encounter no bodies. Michael is convinced that even if they had, the things wouldn’t have been aggressive. Felicia in the grocery office merely wanted out—perhaps at this point her body was desperate for any kind of sustenance, as it hadn’t consumed anything in days. Michael wonders fleetingly how long a human body might persist under possession without nourishment from food and water—or trees. Either way, Felicia merely wanted to escape after days of captivity, and search out whatever the thing inside needed for the body to remain workable. Joel and Michael were just in the way. It reminds him of what Rachel and Bonnie told him of their stand at the hospital—how the reanimated bodies simply leapt past them, out into the night.