The Blood Bargain (5 page)

“
Shh
.” He put a finger to his lips. Eyes wide. Before I could ask him what the hell, I heard why. The dull moan called from behind us in a choir; the scraping sound of something moving against the pavement. Turning my head slowly I saw how many.

The loud roar of the motorcycle had called out our presence like a dinner bell.

In the road behind us a far spread group of four lurched forward. These were older ones, brittle skin and hollowed eyes. If you wrapped them in gauze someone could probably shout mummy and be accurate. A few deadheads were nothing we couldn.t handle, it was what I saw to the far right that caused my heart to stop.

Across the divider in the jam packed lanes, the rusted vehicles stirred with their former passengers. Skeletal hands flecked with skin started to rap against windows in a slow methodical fashion.

It was a metal to metal montage of destruction, with no visible way through...and the dead were hungry.

Chapter
3

“Get on the bike
Liv
! Get on!” Cole shouted at me, turning the ignition key. His eyes were wide, I could see his hands shaking as he fiddled with the key. Somehow he managed to start it and off we went.

I didn
’
t waste a beat. I climbed back on and held tight. I admit I was worried on what would come next. Cole could barely drive that thing, now we have to bob and weave through the dead. Images flashed through my mind of us skidding into a ditch, knocked unconscious.

Free buffet.

“What are you doing Cole?” I yelled in his ear over the engine roar.

“Getting us home.” He hollered back, the first in the road was to the left by a sideways sedan. We veered hard right to get around, came so close I could feel the disturbance in the air where one tried to grab at me. There were more, ahead. Who knew where the hell they were all

coming from. I counted fifteen just along the inner wall and twice that across the barrier attempting to climb over.

“If we go back now those things will follow us all the way.” I shouted at him, his sword hilt kept hitting me in the face as he turned in and out of the growing obstacles in the road.

“They won.t make it to Junction before nightfall.”
He countered. Which was probably true, they were slow moving and it was almost a fifty mile stretch. Could we count on those bloodsuckers to go this far north and clear? They apparently hadn
’
t thus far. What if the deadheads

trickled in, not at night but during the next day? Or days later?

“You want to risk it?” When he didn
’
t answer I continued. “Exit 97. Let
’
s do what we came here for.” Cole didn.t respond as we rode on, the exit ramp was fast approaching on the left.

Along with three more in the center road ahead; a dragger and two uprights. One of which had lost both of its eyes, but still turned toward the sound of the bike.

Suddenly, he took a hard turn towards the off ramp.

“
Damnit
...” He grumbled so low I could barely hear him. “You are going to get us killed.”

The exit we took dumped us south of the city, a good five miles from where I figured the distress signal had originated. Bloody hell. If the freeway had been so inundated, what were the side streets going to be like?

We followed the two lane road north till the cornfield met its first houses; a set of modest fifties two bedrooms in cheery colors. Cole pulled into the driveway of the yellow one and killed the engine. He gestured for me to get off the bike with a shaking hand.

“To the left!” Behind the line of long since trimmed shrubs the sunken eyes of the first deadhead came into view; followed by two more. They had been in their twenties and attendees or fans of the local college from their tattered and stained attire. The skull of the first
one showed
through where the scalp had been peeled back, the weight of its long thin hair dragging it down the side of its head. That was the least amount of its facial damage. It looked like it had offered its face up for lunch during the outbreak.

I raised my bow and fired. A direct hit through the temple of the closest aggressor.

Cole moved in for the other two. With the finesse of a seasoned fighter, Cole lunged toward the first one. His corded muscles flexed as he pushed his blade through the chest with his left, while removing its head with the katana in his right. The black congealed blood of the long

dead seeped from the neck wound in a steady flow down its torso. With a kick to the chest, Cole dislodged it from his blade before it
’
s disgusting fluids rained over him. His timing was perfect, the body of the beheaded fell into the reaching arms of the smaller one. Under the weight, it fell

to the ground. Still moaning and snapping its jaws it reached out to us, up until the point that Cole drove his katana through its skull. With the thick crunch, it was silenced.

Cole didn.t appear to be done however, he beheaded the thing with a curse, kicking the now detached head into the front bushes of the chipper cottage home.

“Look
Liv
, I know you were all about this, but it's time to face facts. We are not going to make it that far into town.” He barked at me. “Hell, lo
ok what we’
ve seen so far.” Cole slid his katana back into their holster on his back like some sort of action hero.

“I don
’
t understand. I thought the vamps were supposed to be clearing further and further each night? They should have green lighted these areas years ago.”

“Yeah well obviously their work ethic is questionable. Whatever you heard…it couldn.t have been right. Even if it was…they are dead by now. I
’
m sorry.” I really wanted to argue with him. Opening my mouth I tried to put the words together three different ways but I couldn.t. Damn him. He was right.

“We can
’
t take I-5.” We
’
d have to go past the now hungry commuters, it would lead them right back to Junction.

“
Countyline
Road is up ahead about a half mile. Won.t it run us into Rural Route 55?”

“Cole?” I didn.t quite know how to phrase what I was about to say.

“What?”

“I used to live off of cherry and south fifth, just north of there.” My mind filled with the adorable ranch, the perfectly manicured lawn. The little frogs Mom had
put in the flower beds. I’
d never really felt homesick, through everything. I had my Dad, I had my life. At this moment however, I thought of that place. Of cookies on the counter, the quiet hum of a sitcom from the living room, laughter on the forced board game night and the dreary practice of my piano. I knew I would never be this close again.

His perfect brows dipped into a frown. He cursed. “I don
’t like the way you’
re thinking.”

“If it
’
s not bad…could we?” I pleaded. He cursed again, starting to pace. Cole ran a hand over his short hair as he walked, as if he was trying to jump start his brain. Subconsciously, I wrapped my arms around myself. I wasn.t cold that I registered, so what was going on with

me? Blinking hard and
fast, I found myself fighting
blurred vision. Oh crap, I had gone and pulled the female card. Determined not to hold it against myself, I wiped my eyes. We didn.t ask for this. Nobody did.

As the tears rolled down my face he stopped moving. His frown subsided a little bit as though he had read my mind. Of course he understood. Who of us these days didn.t have those little scars in their psyche? With a final barrage of swears that would make a sailor blush, he

climbed back on the two wheeled mechanical joy and motioned for me to join him.

A sad, too knowing, smile crossed his face when answered me. “Only if. I mean that.”

The drive down country line road was disheartening. Some of the houses held deadheads; I saw hands and faces pressing against the glass as we rode past.

None were out in the streets however. My thoughts were the infected that had the liberty to move about had done so in search of food. It was obvious they hadn
’
t been cleared out from our so called protectors. If so, they would have cleaned out the houses.

At the corner of South Fifth and Country Lane Road someone had built one heck of a fortification out of a massive Tudor home that had belonged to some doctor. Steel sheets had been bolted over the ground floor windows. Barbed wire on wooden spikes across the yard.

Cars parked in front of the large iron gates to slow the progress of on comers. A place that definitely did not look abandoned. I tapped Cole on the shoulder and pointed at the militarized home. He simply shrugged and continued up fifth.

Rounding onto Cherry I caught sight of my home. The yard was overgrown, the bushes were huge from years without trimming. The house however, was the same; white ranch with its covered deck and two car garage. The bright red door withstood the test of time, the oversized

planters on either side of it did not however. Whatever pretty flowers had once occupied its body were now gone leaving nothing but half empty dirt piles that had been invaded by weeds.

Under the weather worn welcome mat, the spare key still lay awaiting our return.

The door opened like an old friend with a welcoming creak. I stepped into the foyer and

immediately my senses were overwhelmed with the
familiarity and memory of a life forgotten. Shoes discarded to the left. The key drop bucket filled with loose change and various receipts. Everything was as though life had frozen in time at that point; then drowned in dust.

Turning around I found Cole lingering at the edge of the porch, his eyes glued on the street.

“Are you coming?”

“Nah. You do this, I
’
ll be out here keeping watch.”

I paused. “Hey Cole?”

“What?”

“Yo
u are a badass with those kitchen knives
.”

“Shut up.” He did blush though.

“Do you do sushi too?”

“Just get
in there already.” With a half-
smile and a nod, I walked through the front hall into the dining room. Just as I had remembered it, the pale green walls and thick oak table were an inviting setting. In the curio cabinet were my grandmother's dishes, a wedding present to my parents more than twenty five years earlier.

On the kitchen counter the paper from that day was still there; dated April 10, 2012.

I picked it up, reading the headline.

Health-Care Law Will Add $340 Billion To Deficit, New Study Finds

In the bottom corner in smaller text read a warning from the CDC about increased flu cases in the spring, story continued on page 4R.

Flu. Yeah that
’
s what it was.

You
’
d think with all the reporters, websites, social media and word of mouth we would have had more warning than a high chance for fever and the sniffles. Not that anyone who still talked had an earthly idea what had caused this. We all had our theories of course. There were

the biblical types who saw this as the apocalypse. Those that thought it was a government experiment gone wrong. Some blamed the vamps. Some thought it was some natural illness or a comet. In the end, none made any more sense than the other.

I didn.t spend much time in the living room, it was just a pass through to my destinations.

My room. My lilac and turquoise girl haven. The quee
n canopy bed, from pottery barn’
s teen collection of course. The white “antique” dressers, the pictures of smiling friends in my pin board. The designer lamps, piles of shoes, dolls on display shelves. The small stuffed polar

bear my mother had gotten for me at the mall when I was four. It was the only item in the room I picked up. It was the only thing I really saw.

I wish I would have brought a bag.

With a sigh, I put my bear back on my bed and whispered him a little goodbye.

Seeing all I needed, I closed the door to my room and to the life I left behind.

My parent
’
s room was right around the corner. It looked the same as it always had. My father's dresser organized and uncluttered. My mother
’
s lined top to bottom with small knickknacks and things I had made throughout my childhood. My handprints, pictures littered

the mirrors edges abov
e the dresser. After Mom died, D
ad left all her stuff alone. Everything was still as though she was right there with us.

I opened her jewelry box.