The moment I awoke, a panic surged through me. Where was I? My surroundings were completely unfamiliar, making me sit up with a gasp. The room was lit up by a dull overhead light that was a ways away from my bed. There were partition walls on each side of me, almost like the shower stalls had, but big enough for a twin-size bed, a night stand, a small desk and a small chest of drawers lining one side of the wall. My boots sat tightly together on the floor where I had left them the night before. There weren’t any windows, so I couldn’t tell what time it was. I was still in the hybrid vampire hive, in my own makeshift room.
I quickly pulled my watch out from my cargo side pockets and glanced at the time. It was a wind-up battery-dependent water-proof kind of watch and fortunately there were plenty of batteries to go around. I had raided and stored enough to last me a lifetime. It ticked quietly away and showed that it was six am. I slipped it around my wrist, something I didn’t get to do too often since the risk of blood and guts spattering all over it was high.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed; having slept in my clothes had made it convenient to just get up and go. My dirty clothes were now clean and folded in a neat pile on top of the dresser. I wondered who had brought them while I had slept and felt just a little more vulnerable that I had not even woken up to their presence. I sighed, lacing up my boots on tight and running my hand over my mess of a ponytail that no longer resembled one. I stood up and opened the drawers of the chest and spied a new brush sitting in one drawer alongside a new toothbrush, a bottle of lotion, some Band-Aids and antiseptic solution. I wondered what kind of place this was that had new toiletries provided for each occupant.
I heard murmurs of voices echoing quietly along the cement walls. I finished pulling my rat’s nest of hair into a pony tail and turned to walk out of my bedroom stall when Rye’s presence startled me. He had been watching me tighten the band on my hair and a slight spark of amusement danced in his eyes. He was as still as stone and never said a word until I managed to snap at him.
“You scared me! What are you doing standing there?” I shook my head, grabbing the toothbrush and tooth paste and storming past him, not realizing that I didn’t know where I was going. This thought made me stop just as fast. Groaning, I turned back to the steel-eyed vampire.
“I’m here to escort you through the facility. I assume you need to use the restroom, so I’d be happy to take you there first, miss…?” He lifted his eyebrow slowly as he waited for me to answer.
“Tate, my name is April Tate. Your name is Rye, right?” He nodded at me as I licked my lips, the harsh silence making me bounce on my legs back and forth nervously. “Well, you gonna take me there or not?” I felt like his slow-motion antics were meant to delay me in some way but his eyes never wavered from my face to give anything away. I felt a slight flush blossom on my cheeks and moved my eyes to the cool cement floor. It was porous and slick in some spots, laid in ginormous slabs all the way down the hall of sleep stalls. I didn’t have the only bed in this section and I wondered how many vampires slept here. I did not like that fact that I had slept an entire night oblivious to the presence of others.
Rye began walking down the hall and I followed silently behind him. I studied each stall and wondered why they were all quite unused. Mine had been near the end and I didn’t see any other people around to account for the murmur of voices I had heard earlier. Only Rye and I were here.
“Rye?” I asked.
“Yes, Miss April?” he answered as he continued down the hall toward a set of double doors.
“Who else sleeps here? I thought I heard someone else when I woke up. I don’t see anyone now.” I studied the stalls and noticed just about two or maybe three that had a few other items in them but nothing with a truly personal touch.
“This area of our bunker is sealed off to the rest of the hive. Only Blaze, Miranda, you and I live here now.” He pushed through the door and turned to his right and opened the door into a large locker room, like the one I had been in before. There was no one there either.
“Why is it sealed off from the rest of the hive?” My curiosity rose tenfold as we came to stop in the middle of the room, or rather Rye did. I turned toward him and waited for my answer. He was already watching me, sizing me up with a small squint to his eyes. He was extremely good looking; his pink lips were soft and beckoned a touch. I looked away again, wondering why I felt so stupid around him. It was not simple infatuation, but something else. I was hoping it was something else at least, some sort of vampire antics that I could not control.
“We are the leaders of this Hive. We do not sleep where the others sleep for safety purposes. We have had traitors among us before and this ensures that we remain safe when we rest and can monitor the hive without interruption.”
I paused, darting my eyes back to his face, which was still as serious and unchanged.
“Leaders? I thought Blaze was the leader. You mean Miranda and you are also leaders?” I was very interested in discovering the hierarchy of this vampire hive. My ears were practically at attention to hear what he had to say.
“Yes, but Blaze is first in command, Miranda is second in command. I am third. Blaze is my cousin. We were in the military together, stationed at the Air Force branch here at Nellis Air Force Base. This was our top-secret facility where we both worked prior to the outbreak. We were the only ones who made it safely back here.” He paused, watching for my reaction. I gave him none to work with so he continued. “We discovered that we had changed too but not like the wildlings. We were different. As we found others like us, we had to create order, to secure ourselves from the outside threats, so hence, the start of our underground home.” He smiled and waved me toward the sinks and stalls. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
I nodded and watched him turn and leave. I wondered if he had to use the facilities like humans did. Maybe they didn’t; they didn’t seem exactly dead, even if the history of the vampire deemed him to be so. I wondered what made them different from the feral vamps. There was a major difference, of course. There was also an extreme difference between him and me for that matter. I swallowed down a dry lump in my throat, feeling suddenly alone once again. I was one of the last humans. What was to happen in this world when humans were finally extinct? The world would belong to these mutated beings. And they were as close to human as anyone would ever be again.
After brushing my teeth, washing my face and using the facilities, I walked out to find Rye patiently waiting. He was leaning against the wall and bouncing a small rubber ball off the opposite wall over and over. He pocketed it and turned toward me, smiling. That was a refreshing change.
“I’ll lead you back to the sleeping quarters so you can change and put your stuff away. Breakfast is almost ready, are you hungry?” He seemed amused, watching my face morph into shock.
“What? You guys don’t eat food…I thought….”
“You thought we just drink blood?” He gave out a laugh and shook his head as we continued to walk toward my “room.” “No, we can survive on human food too, but if we forgo drinking blood for too long, we become very ill and weak.” He stopped when we reached my area. He motioned that he would wait at the doors and left me to change, full of questions.
I felt stunned; Miranda had feasted on the feral vamp’s blood quite eagerly. She could eat human food too and had not mentioned it. I got a feeling that human nutrition was not the favorite food group around here anymore. There was more iron at the top of the pyramid now. I shuddered at the thought and peeled my clothes off, putting them on a neat pile on the bed and slipping on my now clean outfit from the prior day. They felt good and soft against my skin, like a glove. I tossed my weapons on and belted the straps, feeling more like myself once I had finished. I quickly made the bed and headed out to meet Rye.
His face lit up a bit when he saw me coming. It made my stomach flutter, making me slip on my confidence. He seemed more human when he smiled, not the still, statuesque façade he had been parading on his face since I
met him. Something told me to not underestimate him; he was a deep well full of life and knowledge of many things that he hid well. It obviously made him a good leader, to be still as stone and dependable as a leader could be. Blaze had more presence than Rye but this man was not a fool. I could feel his strength swirl around him like an aura. He could probably kick a lot of butt out there if he had to. I wouldn’t doubt it one bit. And I wouldn’t doubt that he had done so already, many times.
We followed the long, closed-off hall and entered the large warehouse room once more. Along the farthest corner, long tables were set up and many a vampire was seated, eating up greedily and chatting amongst themselves. The echoing voices quieted some as we approached. Rye grabbed two trays off a pile at the end of the buffet-style line and a couple of plates. He handed one set to me and motioned for me to pick what I wanted. I kept one eyeball on the many vampires that now had their faces firmly glued on me. Their eyes felt like tiny little needles pricking me in the back as I tried to focus on plopping food onto my plate. I was starving but being the center of attention in a room full of fangs made my appetite diminish as my stomach twisted into a nervous knot.
I took a deep breath, watching my hand shake as I reached to pour some juice into a cup at the end of the food line. I spilled part of it and moaned slightly at my clumsiness. A hand reached over and took the pitcher from me. Rye poured the rest in, grinning slightly as he placed it on his tray.
“I’ll carry it to the table. You’re just a bundle of jitteriness this morning, aren’t you?” He winked and pulled me to follow him to an empty area at the end of one of the long tables. I sat across from him, darting my eyes toward the group nearest us. They whispered to each other as they glanced back to me every now and then. It was quite irritating and I focused my attention on my tray to avoid seething even more from their unwanted attention.
“Ignore them. They haven’t seen a human in so long they’re just not sure what to think.” Rye shoved a potato into his mouth and chomped down, smiling playfully back at me. I was quite intrigued with this new personality that now flowed across his face. His grey eyes were twinkling, as though he had plans for shenanigans that day. I hoped he wasn’t bipolar. I couldn’t stand an unstable person right now; I was as unstable as one got in a difficult situation.
“I don’t feel comfortable here. You don’t think that any one of them would attack me, do you?” I asked. I shoved a bit of egg into my mouth and chewed, barely believing they had fresh eggs here. I would have to ask Rye about the food supply and how it was acquired.
“No, not as long as one of us is with you,” he said coyly, winking at me, making me think he might be joking. I didn’t want to find out if he wasn’t.
I ate as much as I could with my stomach tensed up, which wasn’t as much as I had wanted to. I knew I’d be starving before noon for sure. Rye grabbed my tray and shushed me when I protested. He dumped them out and returned, motioning for me to follow him again. The stares had diminished since we had first arrived so I was beginning to feel a little more at ease. He walked over to the opposite corner of the warehouse and down another hallway to another set of double doors. I recognized it as the lab where they had drawn my blood the night before. I wondered why he had brought me here again, hoping that they didn’t need even more vials of my blood. I would be anemic pretty fast if they did.
“Why are we coming back here?” I asked.
“You want to see what they’ve come up with, right? Besides, Blaze has been here all morning, awaiting results.” Rye smiled again, making me slightly at ease with his explanation. “He wants a cure more than anything. But, we have to help our hive stay alive first.”
I crinkled my nose, wondering why it was that every question I had seemed to bring more questions. I sighed, following him through the doors as I glanced about the lab. The tables were full of vials, centrifuge machines and other machines that I was sure did the tests. There were fridges full of blood units on one wall, rack after rack of them. I wondered why they didn’t just drink that blood. I doubted it would last very long with the amount of mouths they had to feed. Why this lab was not in the protected locked down area of the bunker was beyond me. I quickly discovered that there was a whole other freezer at the back of the lab, a deep freeze room stuffed full of blood.
“It’s our emergency stash. If we’re unable to leave here for days, we could survive for a while without venturing outside,” Rye offered when he caught me staring at the clear glass doors of the freezers. I nodded, ripping my eyes away from the deep red blood inside row after row of bags. I wondered how they had acquired so many bags in one place. I shivered thinking about how many humans it had taken to fill freezers like that.
“Blaze, anything new?” Rye asked his huskier cousin. The leader slowly brought his eyes away from the computer he had been staring intently at to land on us. He smiled and gave me a nod before turning back to a person wearing a lab coat in front of him.
“This is Brian Sands, head hematologist of our hive.” Blaze waved toward the lab coated man. “Brian, this is April, the only human we have found so far.” Brian stood up, a scrawny and scraggly man with deep chocolate eyes and messed up, fading blonde hair. The ring of gold in his eyes seemed to almost clash with the deep brown of them. He reached out to shake my hand and sat back down.
“Good day, April,” Brian said as he turned back to the computer screen in front of him. I waited as I craned my neck to see what he was looking at. The screen was full of gibberish and numbers that made no sense to me. I gave up staring at it and scanned the room, interested in all the equipment when Blaze yanked me out of my thoughts.
“April, we have isolated a compound in your serum that very well could hold the key to the immunity you’ve developed against the virus.” I turned to look at him, his eyes studying me as if I was a very interesting item on display. The twinkle in his eye made me feel a bit guarded. He didn’t make me as nervous as Rye did but he had a certain air about him that made me think twice before I said anything.
“That’s good then, you don’t need more blood, do you?” I asked nervously, feeling a bit dumb for asking. Being around others was not comfortable to me. I realized how familiar my isolated lifestyle with my mother and brother had become. The cocoon we had created had apparently kept my social skills at bay. Now I felt like the new kid at a school full of people that weren’t one bit like me. I wasn’t quite yet sure how to feel about it.
Blaze gave a short laugh as he grinned, nodding as he stood up and pointed at the screen.
“No, we don’t. Not yet. These are your antibodies here, the red are your blood cells. They are usually spherical and concave in a human, something we don’t see anymore. Vampires like us, our cells are more like round spherical balls, bouncing around in our vessels, full of nothing but fluid, we have to ingest massive amounts of blood to keep our hemoglobin attached to our cells or we die.” He paused, looking gravely serious for a moment. He waved me over to another monitor where another kind of blood was on display.
“This is a sample of a wildling’s blood. See how withered it looks? This one had not fed in a long time. But they have the ability to fill their cells up once they feed and they look similar to yours but the surfaces of the cells are a bit rougher, like they’re encased in a muck that sticks to them. These are the differences between the three of types of ‘beings’ left.” He straightened up and sighed, looking a bit worn out for a moment as he rubbed his brows.
“So why do you need my blood? What can it do for you?” I asked, curious to hear an answer, if they even had one, to this outbreak that had ended the world.
Blaze’s eyes rolled up to meet my stare. His eyes were now cold and a dark blue, like an ocean before a storm, no longer twinkling as they studied me. This made the hair on my neck stand on end as a chill passed through me. I rubbed my arms as he averted his eyes from my face.
“We are reproducing this antibody you carry in hopes that it could help us stay alive longer.”
His voice came out dry and rough as the room stared at him in silence with only the hum of the machines to interrupt the awkwardness. I pressed my lips together, realizing that whatever he was going to say next would change many things.
“What do you mean stay alive longer? Does that mean…are you guys dying?” My voice came out slightly accusatory. I sucked my breath in as I waited for an answer, fighting my impatience with every ounce of my strength. I had to wait for him to answer. I knew I didn’t want to hear it, but what choice did I have?
“Yes, some of us. Not all.” He turned toward Brian and gave him a nod. The hematologist nodded and hit a few keys on the keyboard to bring up another screen of blood cells. This was a time lapsed film that repeated over and over again. The red blood cells appeared spherical like their blood had, little balls bouncing around the screen. Eventually those balls changed colors, morphing into a sickly green that rippled the balls on their surface as they collapsed into themselves and then lay suspended like crumpled green bits of paper scattered in green fluid. It was sickening and I suddenly knew what was coming next.
“Some of us disintegrate, wither in a sense. We have no way of knowing when it will happen and the end comes quickly, usually within a week. We start to feel feverish, turn pale and sickly green. Then we bleed, our blood turning into a green sludge, pouring out of every orifice right before death. So far it seems only one in five of us suffer from this disease but we don’t know how to track who is vulnerable. We have already lost about one hundred and fifty people. We bury them in the nearby water containment ditch, which has been dry for a long time. We usually set them on fire to disintegrate what is left.” He shifted his weight, for he was still standing, his words wearing on him as he spoke. I soaked it all in, still waiting for him to bring up my own blood in all this.
“Your serum may be a vaccine for us to defeat this ailment. So, you see, that is why we need you, April.” Blaze was staring back at me, awaiting my reaction. My indifference surprised me. I didn’t care if it helped them or not. They were still vampires–killers and dependent on blood. Whether they came up with a cure or not, I didn’t care.
“Well, good luck with that. You got what you wanted. Now, are you still going to help me with what I want?” I narrowed my eyes at him, my voice spilling out icy and hard. I wanted to feel something for them, just to remind myself that I was still human, but I couldn’t–or wouldn’t. I wasn’t quite sure which it was.
“We might need future specimens to make this work; you have to be on board to help us every time we need more samples.” Blaze’s eyes were open in surprise; he had obviously expected a different reaction from me. “It won’t be much, I promise you that.” His voice cracked in a slip of desperation. I shook my head and turned, surprising everyone and even myself as I headed out the door of the lab. The air inside had started to feel thick and dry, suffocating me. I ran down the hall a ways until I realized I had run the wrong way.
I stood staring down another hall and turned to run back but had followed too many turns to be sure it was the right way. I groaned in frustration as I slid to the floor and leaned against the wall, smacking my fist on the hard, cold concrete floor. I was rubbing the soreness on my hand when I heard someone approaching. I scrambled to my feet and came face to face with Rye.
His statuesque face was still and his eyes had darkened over like a coming storm. He was obviously angry but I stood my ground, waiting for him to speak first.
“What’s wrong with you?” he snapped, taking a step forward, closing the space between us.
“What do you mean?” I growled back, my lips twitching at his disgust.
Rye tilted his head as he narrowed his steely eyes, sizing me up. “You think you’re so righteous, don’t you? This so-called mission of yours–killing the wildlings like animals–and for what? Just to find your family. Does that make you better than us?” He started shaking his head as he further closed the gap between us, a sinister grin dwelling on his lips. “But you’re not better than us, April. You, my dear, are just another kind of vampire.”
The heat of his breath seared my cheek as I pressed myself against the wall, pulling my head away from him, though my heart was racing. His warm nose brushed my cheek as he put his hands against the concrete wall and leaned in, surrounding me. I tried ducking away from him but he moved so fast I found myself pressed against the wall once more. My fear was mixed with want, fogging up my thoughts as I turned my head away, refusing to look into his gun-metal eyes. My hands pushed at his chest, but not with the force I would have used against an attack. My feelings were conflicted; I wanted to run, run so far that I would never see this place or his face again. And yet, I couldn’t run. I didn’t want to run, really. My feet would not budge and my heart longed for him to brush his lips across my cheek and press them against my own lips, with as much want as I felt.
He stepped away, breaking off a piece of my soul with every step he took. I let my eyes find his, my breathing fast and short, my heart in my throat, expecting to see malice and taunt dancing in his eyes.
But there wasn’t any of that at all.
He looked more serious than anything else. Rye’s eyes glinted bright like fire on steel, desire burning in them. He seemed as surprised at the feelings we had evoked as I was, if not more so. Sighing, his eyes lowered to the floor as he gathered himself once more. I could almost see his energy retract within himself until it no longer rippled about him.
When he was done, Rye glanced back up, once again sporting the stoic blank mask he’d had the first time I met him. I felt a twinge of loss without him near. I tried to shake it off but I knew the damage was done. I would help them, and not just because I wanted them to help me save my family, but because I could not bear to ever witness him wither and die.
“Come on, let’s go back,” he whispered, holding out his hand for me to take. I nodded, feeling slightly exasperated that the moment was over. Clasping his hand, I could see it shake before he curled his fingers over mine. He pulled me along, down the narrow halls and turns as if he could walk it in his sleep. I was pretty sure he could. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, a feeling of calm flushing over me as the warmth of his skin bled onto mine. I was glad to have met him. In a twisted sort of way, it felt right. I only hoped that no matter what, he would help me find my family.
Chapter Eighteen