Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (29 page)

There were private sessions that day, too, with counselors. During those, I sat in one of the common rooms with the other yellow suns. Yes, I wasn’t the only one. We all had our reasons for staying, and most were like mine, part loyalty, part survival. We sat and we played cards, and we enjoyed the break from being hugged and told how wonderful and empathetic and strong we were, when we felt like none of those things.

Night came. Before today, the locks had been internal, meant to protect us while reassuring us that in the event of an emergency, we
could
leave. Now the doors had been fitted with an overriding electronic system. Perhaps it’s a testament to how far things had gone that not a single person complained. We were just happy for the locks, especially now, in a building filled with dormant monsters.

I woke to the first shot at midnight. I bolted up in bed, thinking I’d dreamed it. Then the second shot came. No screams. Just gunfire. I yanked on my jeans and ran to the door, in my confusion forgetting about the new locks. I twisted the knob and . . .

The door opened.

I yanked it shut fast and stood there, gripping the knob.

Was I really awake? Was I really me? How could I be sure?

People who “turned” were not usually killed on sight, not unless they were caught mid-rampage and had to be put down. Studies said that when vampires woke in the night, they later had no memory of it. People took comfort in that—at least if you turned, you’d be spared the horror of remembering you’d slaughtered your loved ones. I took no comfort because it also meant there was no way of knowing what it felt like to turn. Would you be conscious in that moment? Did it seem real at the time?

I looked at the unlocked door. My gaze swung down to the yellow sun on the back of my wrist.

Another shot, this one so close that I ducked, the echo ringing in my ears. The shot had come from the other side of the wall. Katie’s room.

I threw open my door and raced to hers, and finding it open, I ran through and . . .

Katie lay crumpled on the floor. In her outstretched hand was a gun.

I ran to her and then stopped short, staring. She lay on her stomach, and the side of her chest . . . there was a hole there. No, not a
hole—that implies something neat and harmless. It was bloody and raw, a crater into her chest, just below her heart. I dropped to my knees, a sob catching in my throat.

She whimpered.

There was a moment when I didn’t move, when all I could think was that she’d come back to life, like a vampire from the old stories and Hollywood movies. Except that wasn’t how real vampires worked. They weren’t dead. They weren’t invulnerable. I grabbed her shoulders and turned her over.

Blood gushed from her mouth as I eased her onto her back. I tried not to think of that, tried not to let my brain assess that damage. It still did. I was pre-med. I’d spent enough hours volunteering in emergency wards to process the damage reflexively. She’d tried to shoot herself in the heart, not the head, because she didn’t know better, because she was the kind of person who couldn’t even watch action movies. So she’d aimed for her heart and missed, but not missed by enough. Not nearly enough.

I shouted for help. As I did, I heard other shouts. Other shots, too, and screams from deep in the dormitory, and I tried to lay Katie down, to run out for help, but she gripped my hand and said, “No,” and “Stay,” and I looked at her, and as much as I wanted to believe she’d survive, that she’d be fine, I knew better. So I shouted, as loud as I could, for help, but I stayed where I was, and I held her hand, and I told her everything would be fine, just fine.

“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait to turn. I couldn’t make you wait.”

“I would have,” I said, squeezing her hand as tears trickled down my face. “I’d have stayed for as long as you needed me.”

A faint smile. “Just a few more minutes. That’s all I’ll need. Then you can go.”

I told her I didn’t want to go, to just hold on, stay strong and hold on and everything would be fine. Of course it wouldn’t and we
both knew that, but it gave us something to say in those final minutes, for me to tell her how brave and wonderful she was, and for her to tell me what a good friend I’d been.

“There,” she whispered, her voice barely audible as her eyelids fluttered. “You can go now. Be free. Both of us. Free and . . .”

And she went. One last exhalation, and she joined her family and her boyfriend and everyone she’d loved and known was dead, even if she’d told herself they weren’t.

I sat there, still holding her hand. Then as I lifted my head, I realized I could still hear shouts and shots and screams. I laid Katie on the floor, picked up the gun, and headed into the hall.

H
ow many times had I sat in front of the TV, rolling my eyes at the brain-dead characters running
toward
obvious danger? Now I did exactly that and understood why. I heard those shots and those screams, and I had to know what was happening.

I got near a hall intersection when the guy who’d shown me the news of the first reported deaths two years ago came barreling around the corner. He skidded to a halt so fast his sneakers squeaked. He stared at me, and there was no sign of recognition because all he saw was the gun. He dropped to his knees and looked up at me, and even then, staring me full in the face, his eyes were so panic filled that he didn’t recognize me. He just knelt there, his hands raised like a sinner at a revival.

“Please, please, please,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt anyone. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I need to say good-bye. My mom, my sister, my nephew . . . please just let me say good-bye. That’s all I’ll do, and then I’ll do it, and if I can’t, I’ll go away. I’ll go far,
far
away.”

I lowered the gun, and he fell forward, convulsing in a sob of relief, his whole body quaking, sweat streaming from his face, the hall filling with the stink of it.

“Thank you,” he said. “Oh God, thank you. I know I should do it—”

“Where did the guns come from?”

He looked up, his eyes finally focusing. “I know you. You—”

“My friend had this gun. I hear more. Where did they come from?”

He blinked hard, as if shifting his brain out of animal panic mode. Then his gaze went to my yellow sun. “You aren’t . . . So you don’t know. Okay.” He nodded, then finally stood. “When the black stars had their private counseling session, they gave us guns. Access to them, that is. They told us where we could find them, if we decided we couldn’t go on. Except . . .” He looked back the way he came. “Not everyone is using theirs to kill themselves first.”

“They’re killing the other black stars?”

He nodded. “They think we should all die. To be safe. They’re killing those who didn’t take the guns.”

Footsteps sounded in the side hall.

“I need to go,” he said quickly. “You should, too.”

I lifted my hand to show my tattoo. “I’m not a threat.”

He shook his head but didn’t argue, just took off. I waited until the footsteps approached the junction.

“I’m armed,” I called. “But I’m not a threat. I’ve got the yellow sun—”

“And I don’t really give a shit,” said a voice, and a guy my age wheeled around the corner, blood spattered on his shirt, his gun raised. “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

I dove as he fired. He shot twice, wildly, as if he’d never held a gun before tonight. When he tried for a third shot, the gun only clicked. I ran at him but didn’t shoot. I couldn’t do that. I smashed the pistol into his temple and he went down. Then I heard running footsteps and more shouts, and I raced down the hall, taking every turn and running as fast as I could, until I saw the security station
ahead. I fell against the door, banging my fists on it. When no one answered, I held my wrist up to the camera.

“Yellow sun!” I shouted. “Let me in!”

A guy opened the door. His gray hair had probably been cut military short a couple of years ago, but no one enforced those rules now and it stood on end like porcupine quills.

“Get in,” he said.

I fell through. When I got my balance, I saw a half dozen military guards watching the monitors. Watching students killing each other.

“You need to get out there,” I said. “You need to stop this.”

The gray-haired guy shrugged. “We didn’t give them the guns.”

“But you need to—”

“We don’t need to do anything.” He lowered himself into a chair. “You want to, girlie? You go right ahead. Otherwise? Wait it out with us.”

I hesitated. Then I turned away from the monitors and slumped to the floor.

I
was released the next day. That was their term for it:
released
. Cast out from my sanctuary. They escorted me back to my room to get my belongings and gave me a bag to pack them in. Then they walked me to the college gates, and for the first time in over a year, I set foot into the world beyond my campus.

It was fine in the beginning. Better than I dared to hope for. The entire college town had been tested, the black stars already rounded up and taken away, and while families grieved and mourned their loved ones, there was a sense of relief, too. Was it not better that their loved ones be taken somewhere safe . . . so the remaining family members would be safe
from
them, if they turned? That’s what it came down to in the end. What left us safe.

I boarded with an elderly couple who’d lost their live-in nurse and declared that my medical experience was good enough for them.

It was four months later when we heard the first report of a yellow sun turning into a vampire.

No one panicked. The story came from California, which might only have been across the country but was now as foreign to us as Venezuela had been. The reports kept coming though. Yellow suns waking in the night and murdering their families. Then rumors from those who worked in the nearest black-star facility, that they’d had only a few occurrences of the dormant vampires turning. Finally, the horrible admission that the testing had failed, that the stars seemed to indicate only a slightly higher likelihood of turning.

That’s when the world exploded, like a powder keg that’d been kept tamped down by reassurances and faith. People had been willing to trust the government, because it seemed they were honestly trying their best. And you know what? I think they were. As much as my early life had taught me to trust no one, to question every motive, I look back and I think the authorities really did try. They simply failed, and then everyone turned on them.

I lived with the elderly couple for almost a year before their daughter came and kicked me out. She said I was taking advantage of them, pretending to be a nurse without credentials. The fact that her town had been taken over by militants had nothing to do with her decision to move home. No, her parents—whom she’d not contacted in years—needed her, so she’d be their nurse now.

The old couple argued. They cried. They begged me to stay. Their daughter put a gun in my face and told me to leave.

A month later, after living with some former classmates in a bombed-out building, I went back to try to check up on the old couple. I heard the daughter had turned. She’d killed her parents. Killed their neighbors too, because these days, no one was watching. Unless someone reported them, the vampires just kept killing, night after night. Some committed suicide. Some surrendered. Some ran off into the wilderness, hoping to survive where they’d be a danger to
no one. The old couple’s daughter just kept living in their house while her parents’ bodies rotted and a growing swath of neighbors died.

I thought about that a lot. The choices we made. What it said about us. What I’d do if I woke covered in blood. I decided if that happened I’d head for the wilderness. Try to survive and wait for a cure. Or just survive, because by that point, no one really expected a cure. No one even knew if the government was still trying. Or if there still was a government.

I spent the next year on the streets, sometimes with others, but increasingly alone. I was lucky—none of my companions turned on me in the night. I hadn’t even seen a vampire. That wasn’t unusual. Unless you spotted one being dragged from a house to be murdered in the streets, you didn’t see them. And even those who were hauled into the street? Well, sometimes they weren’t vampires at all. No one asked for proof. If you wanted shelter, you could cut yourself, smear the blood on some poor soul, drag him out, let the mob take care of him, and move into his house. Two of the groups I was with discussed doing exactly that. I left both before that thought turned into action.

I
’d been walking for six months. That was really all there was left to do: walk. Wander from place to place, seeking shelter where you could find it. The cities and towns weren’t safe, as people reverted to their most basic animal selves, concerned only with finding a place to spend the night and food to get them through the day.

It was better in the countryside. No one could be trusted for long, but that was the curse of the vampirism. That kindly old woman who offered you a warm bed might rise in the night, kill you, and go right on being sweet and gentle when she woke up. Until she saw the blood.

In the country, there were plenty of empty homes to sleep in and flora and fauna to eat. I met a guy who taught me to trap and dress
game. I returned the favor with sex. It wasn’t a hardship. He didn’t demand it, and in another life, it might even have turned into something more. It lasted six weeks. We would meet at our designated place to spend the day together, walking and hunting, and talking and having sex. Then we’d separate to our secret spots for the night, for safety. One morning, he didn’t show up. I went back twice before I accepted he was gone. Maybe he turned, or he met someone who had. Or maybe someone had fancied his bow and his knife and his combat boots and murdered him for them. He was gone, and I grieved for him more than I’d done for anyone since Katie. Then I picked up and moved on. It was all you could do.

I found a house a few days after that. Not just any house—there were plenty of those. The trick was to find exactly the right one, hidden from the road, so you wouldn’t need to worry about vampires or fellow squatters. Even better if it was a nice house. “Nice” meant something different these days, as in not ransacked, not vandalized, not bloodied. The last was the hardest criterion to fill. There’d been so many deaths that after a point, no one bothered cleaning up the mess. You’d find drained bodies left in beds, lumps of desiccated flesh and tattered cloth. But other times, you’d just find smears of old blood on the sheets and on the floor, where some squatter before you had been too tired to find other lodgings and simply dragged the rotting corpses to the basement and settled in.