He sat across from me, stumped. "d.a.m.n. I never thought of that."
Another thump reverberated through the vault. Thinking about the strength required to run into a steel room and shake it made me shiver. They seemed to grow stronger every day. I wasn"t sure that even the vault would be able to hold up forever. If that was the case a I was screwed.
"So what"s going on then? I mean, I know I"m out of the loop and s.h.i.t, but what was chasing us?"
"Vampires."
His mouth fell open. I expected his brain to fall out of it.
"Are you f.u.c.king with me?"
I looked around the room, trying to find the weapon I"d been working on. I spotted it under the pile of stuff I"d rooted through. It had started as a large, wooden cross that I"d found hanging on the wall in the lobby of the bank. For the past few days I"d been working to whittle the end of it into a sharp point. The entire piece had a length of about two feet, maybe three. I had no idea if it would work, but I didn"t have much else to do with my time.
"Does this look like a joke?" I held the cross up between us, showing him the end I"d been working on.
"Vampires? Like Count Dracula kind of s.h.i.t?"
"Yeah, the thing outside pounding on the door is wearing a cape and speaking with a s.h.i.tty accent," I said.
"Really?"
I made a huge mistake by bringing him back with me. His dumb a.s.s would eat all my food, drink all my water, and I could feel myself getting dumber with every pa.s.sing moment.
"No, you iggit. I"m not even sure that *vampire" is the right term for them, but that"s what the last few survivors were calling them before they died too."
I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn"t following me.
"Ok, you said you saw the reports about it being viral. Those were kind of right. It was a virus, but it spread from a bite by one of those things, not through the air. It takes a few days for you to change, a.s.suming they don"t just eat you outright. Oh yeah, that"s the other thing, they eat you, not drink your blood. Well, they do that too, but they do it while they"re eating you."
"Bro, that is f.u.c.king disgusting."
I ignored him and kept going. "In the days while you"re turning, you become sensitive to light. People can stay out in it for another three or four days, but their mind is eroding the whole time. So it isn"t safe during the day or the night. They come out at dusk, but those who are still converting are out during the day, and they"re half mad. That"s why I"ve been stuck in this d.a.m.n vault for so long. Today was the first time that I didn"t see anyone wandering the streets during the day."
"So that"s why you came back to your apartment?"
Yeah," I said. I didn"t tell him how much I"d already come to regret that decision. "These things are fast and strong as h.e.l.l. I saw one tear a man completely in half and it looked easy too. They don"t have any eyes, those fall out during the fifth day of the conversion, so they use that shriek that we heard as a kind of radar, like a bat. When you hear one of those cries, you"re f.u.c.ked."
"Dude, you"re blowing my mind hole right now."
"Just a heads up a all of the legends about vampires don"t seem to be true. If these things really are vampires, that is. Crosses and holy water don"t do a d.a.m.n thing. Stake to the heart will work, but only because it"s to the heart. Wood doesn"t have anything to do with it. Garlic is effective, but only because it seems to mask your scent. Light seems to be the best right now. It doesn"t set them on fire, but it really kicks their a.s.s."
"If crosses don"t work, then why do you have that thing?" He nodded toward my whittled cross.
"It"s the only thing I could find that I could sharpen. Fortunately, the vamps don"t seem to have any problem solving abilities beyond that of an intelligent dog. That"s the only reason we"re still alive."
We sat in silence for a while. I couldn"t tell if what I said had sunk in or not, and figured it probably didn"t matter anyway. Greg wasn"t exactly the kind of ally I could use at a time like this. I needed someone with engineering skills to rig some electricity, or someone who knew a lot about guns or explosives. Greg knew how to guzzle beer. Awesome.
"So what do we do now, bro?"
"If you call me *bro" one more time, I"m going to shove this cross up your a.s.s." I held it up again, letting my point sink in. "And now we"re going to sleep. There isn"t much else to do at night."
I balled up one of the shirts I"d taken from my apartment and tucked it under my head. I"d grown accustomed to sleeping on the hard floor so it didn"t bother me much anymore. Greg looked uncomfortable as h.e.l.l, which made me smile. I licked my fingers and extinguished the last of the candles.
"Out of curiosity, why did you come out when you heard me go into my apartment?" I asked. "If all of the screaming, shooting, death, and explosions didn"t bring you out, why did my keys. .h.i.tting the door do it?"
"I ran out of beer this morning," he said.
G.o.d d.a.m.n it.
The screaming woke me up.
Light blinded me when I tried to open my eyes. The vault should have been pitch black as usual. That, combined with the screams that were breaking the common quiet of the day time, had me beyond confused. I looked around the small area around me, trying to spot Greg, but didn"t see him. The front door to the vault stood ajar. What had that idiot done?
The screaming stopped then, followed by a fit of laughter. I would be lying if I said that closing the door and locking him out hadn"t crossed my mind. Over the last few days I"d been doing my best to follow a pattern whenever I left the vault, so I went about following it. I changed my clothes, grabbed my bag, and left the door open. The vamps couldn"t move around during the day so I usually left my cross in the vault and found a different weapon to carry around with me.
I followed the occasional guffaws and chuckles. Greg stood outside, almost a block down the street, dancing. At least, I think that"s what you would call the spasms that were moving him around the road. Music of some kind, techno I think it was called, came from an open car door beside him.
Greg reached in the door and jacked the volume up. The blaring music made me wince. I hadn"t seen anyone in a while, but that didn"t mean people weren"t around. I didn"t want to think about what that s.h.i.tty music could attract to us. Greg continued gyrating, clapping his hands at random times that didn"t tie in with the music.
I broke into a run, desperate to turn the music off. Leaving the cross behind didn"t seem like the best idea all of a sudden. Several cars littered the street, their drivers having been pulled out of ripped off doors and shattered windshields. The vamps had struck hard and fast one night, wiping out most of the city in forty-eight hours. After the slaughter in the streets the first night, everyone stayed inside the next night. It didn"t work. People underestimated the strength of those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and they ran through doors and walls, dragging everyone off to G.o.d knows where.
"Hey, bro!" Greg yelled when he saw me coming.
I ran past him, practically diving into the car, and switched off the music. My anger was near the boiling point.
"What the f.u.c.k are you doing?" I spun around, giving him my best death glare.
"What"s wrong, br-"
"Why in the h.e.l.l would you do something so stupid? Everything within a three block radius just heard that!"
"You said everyone was dead. What"s the big deal?"
"I said I hadn"t seen anyone a that doesn"t mean they"re dead!"
"Oh. I hadn"t thought of it like that. I just missed music, ya know?"
"What were you screaming about? I thought you were being killed."
"I couldn"t find any cars that had keys in it a I was getting mad." He smiled at the car that had been playing music. "But this beauty had keys and a CD in it. Who the h.e.l.l listens to CD"s anymore? I couldn"t find any radio stations, so I got lucky."
I thought about explaining to him that you couldn"t have a radio broadcast without electricity, but that seemed pointless. My anger hadn"t abated. I took several deep breathes, trying not to strangle him.
"You left me alone, with the G.o.dd.a.m.n vault door open."
"Well yeah, you were still sleeping. I didn"t want to be rude."
"I was defenseless! Something could have walked right in and killed me!"
He looked a little dismayed at my rage. Or maybe the expression on his face was shock a I couldn"t tell. "Sorry, bro! I was just trying-"
A wail came from behind us.
"What was that?" Greg asked.
"It"s a convert." I would recognize that awful sound from anywhere. It sounded like a banshee.
Right before the news went off the air, some egghead professor had guessed that their wailing was a bridge between their human speech and the vampire"s sonic screams. My thoughts on the subject had been along the lines of *who gives a s.h.i.t?" I just wanted to stay away from anything that made a sound that awful.
"We need to get back to the vault." I turned around and started toward the bank.
I only made it a handful of steps before I spotted her. She stood between us and the bank, howling up at the sky. Though she was a good fifty feet away from me, I could see how beautiful she had been. Her long blonde hair flowed over her shoulders, reaching halfway down her back.
Her skin had seen better days, however. Blue veins ran across her face like a spider web. Judging from her insane behavior, she was far along in the conversion process. I doubted she had any kind of rational thoughts left at that point.
"What"s wrong with her?" Greg asked from beside me. He had his messenger bag over his shoulder and he shifted it.
"She"s gone mad."
She stopped howling and lowered her gaze to us. Her eyes were still in place, but they"d darkened, making her look demonic.
"Oh s.h.i.t," I said, taking a step back. "We"re going to have to run around the block and lead her away from the bank."
"I"ve got sandals on, bro! I can"t run too good!"
"That"s because you"re a r.e.t.a.r.d." I sprinted in the other direction. If he got left behind, there wouldn"t be much I could do. The two of us might be able to kill her, but her strength would have already increased exponentially. I didn"t really feel like getting my arms ripped off because Greg the Moron was wearing flip flops.
I didn"t even make it halfway down the block when I spotted another one. A man stood on top of a car, hunched over so far that his knuckles were down by his knees. He let out a wail when he saw us and jumped from the car.
I skidded to a stop. Greg clopped up beside me, panting already. Another man jumped onto the same car, howling at the sky. There was no way we could take on three of them. I looked around, trying to find another way off the street. Most of the businesses were shuttered, having been closed when the worst wave of the vampires had struck. There weren"t any alleys close enough to get to either.
"Oh s.h.i.t, bro!"
Some stairs leading to the subway sat off to our right. I ran past Greg, heading straight for them. I didn"t really feel like going into the tunnels, but there didn"t seem to be much of a choice. A trash can was on its side at the top of stairs, blocking the middle of it. I had to slow down when I got to it and work my way around.
The darkness below was terrifying. Without any lights, the bottom of the stairs looked like a black hole. The steps were slick, as if it had rained earlier, though I was fairly certain it hadn"t. I slipped several times as I raced down them, trying not to kill myself by falling. Greg came up behind me, his sandals slapping against the ground with every step.
I jumped the last five steps before the landing that marked the halfway point. That turned out to be a horrible decision because my right foot flew out from under me when I landed, sending me head over heels down the rest of the stairs. I rolled into the darkness below, feeling the harsh edges of concrete slamming against me. My back hit the floor, bringing me to a sudden stop that almost knocked me unconscious. The world spun in circles before me as I stared up the staircase.
"You OK, bro?" Greg came down after me at a much slower pace. His careful steps made me think that he was concerned with losing one of his sandals.
"I think so," I said. My voice sounded small and tinny in the entrance to the subway, as if the dank environment swallowed it.
I reached up and grabbed the railing, pulling myself up. My head pounded from hitting the floor. I tried my best to ignore it as I looked up, expecting to see the converts racing after us. All three of them stood at the top of the stairs, wailing in our direction. Greg reached the bottom and followed my gaze.
"What are they doing?" he asked.
"I don"t know. Maybe the darkness scares them." That didn"t make any sense to me, but I didn"t have any other ideas. They had us basically trapped down there. Without any lights, we wouldn"t be able to run very far into the tunnels.
The woman let out a shriek that echoed through the tunnels, upping the creepiness of the dark. They sniffed at the air, but didn"t come down after us. They didn"t move away from the top of the stairs either. We had nowhere to go but further inside the subway.
A garbage can was behind us, standing in the middle of the hallway that led down to the tracks. I rummaged through my bag and found the pack of matches. We walked to the can together, with him yapping at me incessantly. My body felt like a baseball bat had been taken to it. I hoped I didn"t have any internal bleeding.
I grabbed a newspaper off the floor and crumpled the pages, tossing them into the garbage can. Greg kept yammering at me. I did my best to ignore him. After working the balled up pages into the trash, I lit one of the matches and set the contents of the can on fire. The outside layers of the paper were a little damp, but the rest weren"t bad, and the garbage was burning quickly.
The small amount of light provided by the fire was enough to help us see our surroundings a bit. I"d never seen the subway so empty. Then again, I guess no one else had either. The turnstiles were ahead of us, leading the way to the tracks.
"Let"s follow the tracks down to Thirteenth and go back up to the surface," I said. "Then we"ll walk back to the bank."
"I don"t want to walk back by those things, bro!"
"As long as you don"t decide to have a rock concert in the middle of the street, we"ll be fine."
"I didn"t-"
"How about we just stay quiet for a while," I said.
A janitor"s closet was on the other side of the turnstiles. I jumped over the barrier and opened the door to the closet, surprised that it wasn"t locked. A mop sat on the far wall. I carried it back to the fire and lit the head. It took a while to light and didn"t burn very well. Whatever chemicals had been used with it weren"t very flammable. It supplied enough light to use as a temporary torch though.
"MacGuyver would be proud," Greg said. He hadn"t been quiet for more than a minute.
We walked to the train and turned left, heading for the tunnel. I hopped down, trying not to roll my ankles on the rails. The darkness in the tunnel was all encompa.s.sing. You couldn"t have paid me to walk into it a month ago. I wasn"t a big fan of the dark. I was even less of a fan of crazy people that were turning into vampires though, so I kept going.
"I don"t know about this, bro..."
"You"re welcome to head back up the stairs." I wished he would a it would save me a lot of headaches.
Thirteenth Street was only a couple of blocks away so I figured it wouldn"t take us too long to get to the next station. Walking in the tunnel turned out to be a little more difficult than I antic.i.p.ated though, so our pace went slower than I"d hoped. The sound of Greg"s sandals started grating on my nerves right away. I thought about throwing them off into the darkness and making him walk barefoot.
The mop head burned down pretty quickly, so I took my shirt off and tied it around the end of the handle, giving the fire more fuel. The shirt burned better than the mop head did, so we had a bit more light for a few minutes. I found a pair of old pants on the ground that I picked up and took with us to burn a little later. I tried not to think about the oily, nasty stuff that covered one of the legs. G.o.d only knows why someone would walk on the tracks and take their pants off.
We"d been walking for about twenty minutes when I first noticed the smell. I"d describe it as rancid, but that didn"t seem strong enough. It reminded me of a time when I went on vacation for two weeks and forgot about the carton of milk in the fridge. This smell was like that, but worse, and it permeated everything.
"Did you fart, bro?"
"Yeah, it smells like an animal crawled up my a.s.s and died when I fart."
"d.a.m.n man, you should probably see a doctor about that."
"For the love of-"
I stepped in a large pool of water, breaking my thought process.
"Bro, that was a wet fart too. I can actually feel it in the air. This is f.u.c.king disgusting."
"Shut up," I hissed.