Adrift 3: Rising (Adrift Series) (15 page)

He spat out rum and acidic bile and straightened, blinking away hot tears as the stinking gut-room swam back into focus.

Dan was standing in the doorway directly ahead of him, the entrance which led to the second of the supply shed’s two large rooms. His expression was impassive, like he didn’t even see the same horror that Herb and Mancini saw, and for a moment it was all Herb could do not to throttle the guy until he coughed up an explanation of just what the hell was
wrong
with him.

Herb took a deep breath through his mouth, doing his best to ignore the odour and almost succeeding, and tried to force his mind to think clearly.

There was nothing like
this
outside
, he thought, and his brain finally started to play ball, piecing together the events that had transpired in the supply shed.

Because it didn’t want to go outside. It refused to go out in the light. It couldn’t take minds out there.

The vampire had remained in the shadows offered by the windowless building, taking the minds of those who strayed too close; pulling them in and spitting them back out into the garden to kill for it. Killing those who didn’t carry weapons; who served no strategic purpose.

“It’s...gone,” Dan said, his tone tinged with irritation. He gestured at them to follow him into the adjoining room, and turned away.

Herb glanced behind him. The three remaining clerics were gone. He felt a bitter grin twist the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t blame them for fleeing. He wondered if it was the sight of the supply shed and the prospect of coming face-to-face with a vampire that had spooked them, or whether they had decided to run even before that. Maybe they had taken the chance to flee from Dan before he got a chance to send them to their grisly deaths.

Smart kids, after all
, Herb thought, and he set his jaw, refusing to dwell on the nightmare of the room around him any longer. He marched forward, following Dan.

Into the second room.

There was precious little light in there: barely enough to see at all. With no windows, Herb guessed the room had previously been illuminated by overhead electric lights which had, of course, been smashed.

Yet even through the thick shadows, he saw what Dan pointed at immediately: the floor of the entire building was wooden, thick planks elevated a few inches off the ground by stubby stilts. In this room, the wood had been punched through from beneath. The vampire had literally exploded into the building, and had torn apart everybody who had the misfortune to be inside, probably before any of them even had time to react.

Herb leaned over the ruined floor, peering down.

Beneath the vampire’s entry point, he saw a tunnel carved into the soft earth.

“It’s gone,” Dan said again.

Herb nodded. At least this room was relatively clear of blood. This was probably where the initiates had kept seeds and other supplies: he could just about make out the shape of huge sacks lining the walls.

“We need to follow it,” Dan continued.

“What?” Mancini sounded incredulous. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Bellamy. We don’t even have flashlights.”

“But—,” Dan started to say, but Herb held up a hand to stop him.

“Mancini’s right, Dan,” he said. “First time in his life, probably, but he’s right about this. It’s too dangerous.”

Herb leaned deeper into the hole, his nerves racing, trying to look and trying not to look simultaneously. It was almost impossible to see without light, but it appeared that the tunnel below ran off to the left
and
the right. The supply shed was an intersection.

He saw visions of the monster sitting in the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel, just yards away from his face, and stood upright quickly, shaking his head.

“We don’t even know which direction it went. You really want that thing creeping up behind us in the dark? In a space so tight you can’t even turn around to
look
at it?”

Dan opened his mouth.

Shut it again.

His shoulders slumped in defeat.

“I need to get into one of their heads, Herb.”

“I know you do. And you will. But not like this. We’ll find another way.”

Herb gestured at Mancini.

“Drop a couple of those grenades down there, Mancini. Seal it up.”

The American started to pull the pin on a grenade, and Herb turned away. Through the open doorway in the supply shed’s front room, he could just about see the roof of the main ranch house in the distance, towering above all the other structures around it.

His heart skipped.

“No, wait!” he cried, whipping back around.

Mancini froze, the pin halfway pulled.

“Christ, Rennick, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Herb darted back to the hole in the floor and squatted, squinting warily into the tunnel beneath it, trying to judge its general direction.

He looked up at Mancini, his eyes wide, and pointed down.

“That heads straight for the main ranch house.”

Before Mancini could respond, Herb pulled the radio from his pocket and depressed the
transmit
button. The tiny green
on
light flickered, casting an unnatural glow on Mancini’s confused face.

“Conny? It’s headed your way. If you’re still at the house, you have a vampire incoming. Get the hell
out
.”

Herb dropped the radio back into his pocket. There was no time to wait for a response.

“We need to go back,” he roared. “Now!”

“Get the hell
out
!”

Herb’s disembodied voice echoed in her ears, and Conny’s nerves blazed. She was still standing near the expansive porch, still ushering kids through the house toward the basement exit. She had just started to believe that things might turn out okay after all when Herb’s voice had rattled from the radio she had clipped to her belt.

Vampire incoming
, she thought numbly.
Like a torpedo.

All of a sudden, it felt like her mind was sinking into quicksand. She had sent Remy away. Her early warning system.

Idiot.

Her eyes lifted to the gate, a hundred and fifty yards farther down the main dirt track, at most.

There were still people coming through it, and many of them required Conny’s help. Minutes earlier, she had left her position on the porch itself and had begun to shuttle to and from the house, half-carrying those who had sustained the worst injuries, determined to get them all out. Every last one.

The majority of those she saw approaching were injured now, and their numbers were thinning fast, but if she turned and ran, she would be leaving them to die. Leaving
children
to die. Most were moving gingerly, pushing forward through the terrible pain of gunshot wounds or cradling limbs that looked to have been broken in the stampede, where their friends had trampled over them in their unbridled terror. Some had collapsed to the ground, reduced to crawling forward. Others were trying to carry their broken friends.

None were moving quickly enough.

Leave them.

You have to.

Conny turned away, sickness rising in her gut, and froze.

She couldn’t flee and leave the exit in the basement open behind her for these kids to use, not if a vampire would follow them down into Craven’s escape tunnel. Andrew Lloyd had said the entrance to the bunker in the mountains was at least three miles away from the ranch. Plenty of room for the monster to chase her down, along with everyone else. Even Andrew, Logan and Remy—the first of those to leave—wouldn’t have the time they needed to reach safety. If she left the steel door downstairs open, they would
all
die out in the wilderness. Nobody would reach the bunker. It wasn’t an option.

Lock the door and kill
these
kids, or leave it open and maybe kill
everybody
.

The scale of the choice she had to make locked her mind in place, like an engine without oil seizing up. Tears blurred her vision.

Only the sudden outbreak of frantic screaming ahead of her kicked her back into motion, and took the decision out of her hands.

Conny watched, aghast, as the vampire erupted through the open gate in the distance like a sinewy missile, lashing out with its fearsome limbs, tearing and rending, carving a path through the stream of fleeing teenagers like a combine harvester. Blood exploded into the air, great gushing fountains of it, and the line of kids heading toward the ranch house shattered apart.

The monster raced after the nearest of them, scooping him up before disappearing behind one of the buildings that lined the right side of dirt track. Conny heard a scream of despair that turned her blood to ice in her veins. The cry ended with a wet
snap.

She stumbled backward, into the house.

Unable to take her eyes off the horror unfolding outside, lifting the grenade launcher she had taken from the weapons locker, cradling it in arms that felt sluggish.

Her finger on the trigger felt numb, barely her own at all.

She took aim at the building, praying that the monster was inside, hoping that the kids nearest to the structure would be far enough away from the blast.

Fired.

The grenade fizzed from the barrel with a soft, metallic
whump
; a noise that under any other circumstances might have been comically underwhelming. A fraction of a second later, the distant building exploded, and there was nothing soft about the noise, now. It was the sound of crashing thunder, loud enough to make Conny’s ears ring even at a hundred yards.

For a moment, time itself seemed to stop as clouds of dust and debris rained across the path.

Did I hit it?

Conny waited a beat.

Another.

And the repulsive shape emerged from the dust cloud, streaking across the path from right to left, galloping on all-fours at bewildering speed before disappearing from her sight once more.

It left torn bodies falling in its wake. Kids’ bodies, spinning like tops, half-seen in the falling dust, staining the clouds crimson.

Conny let out a hoarse cry, and aimed the weapon again, but her hands were trembling wildly now. Each time it appeared, the vampire was closer to the house, and she had put herself squarely in the monster’s sights.

She tucked the launcher under her chin, trying to keep it stable. Peered down her own sights.

Her gaze fell on two girls, just twenty yards away from where she now stood: one trying to walk while half-carrying the other on her shoulder.
Sisters
, Conny thought. The girls looked alike enough that they could be twins. Neither looked much more than twelve years old, and one of them had clearly sustained a gunshot wound in her thigh; she could barely walk.

As Conny watched in horror, the injured sister fell to the ground, pleading with her companion to run, to go on without her.

She lowered the grenade launcher.

Couldn’t fire it again, even if the vampire stayed still long enough to offer her a target. Couldn’t pull the trigger.

Not without killing innocent children. Dozens of them, maybe.

A scream of frustration built in her lungs.

Behind the two sisters, the vampire was on the move once more, blurring across her field of vision, never standing still, always charging forward, but at an angle, ensuring she had no shot. It veered away to the right, behind another building, out of Conny’s sight, but she knew it was still coming, now. Headed right for her. It had streaked past a handful of the injured kids without pause, without even bothering to kill them.

It’s playing with me.

A game of
whack-a-mole
played with grenades and teeth.

Where will it pop up next?

The next time the monster appeared, Conny thought, could be the last. It was less than fifty yards from her now. When she next saw it, it might be charging straight at her, and she no longer trusted her trembling fingers to react in time to take a clean shot at a fast-moving target.

She focused on the two girls. The uninjured girl was leaning over her sister, pulling at her arm, tearfully begging her to get up.

I can still save one of them.

Conny ran forward, grabbing the uninjured girl’s frail arm, and yanked her back toward the house, ignoring her cries of surprise and fury. The girl was small and slender; no match for Conny’s strength. When she tried to pull away, shrieking that she couldn’t leave her sister behind, all Conny could do was grimace. The girl would never forgive her, she knew, but she would save her nonetheless. She had to.

She pulled harder, damn near dislocating the girl’s shoulder, and dragged her bodily into the main house, slamming the front door shut behind her.

“No!
” the girl screamed, but Conny didn’t listen. She couldn’t hear anything, now: just her own pulse, jackhammering crazily in her ears.

She ran forward, almost carrying the struggling girl, refusing to look back, expecting at any moment to hear the clicking of talons on the hard wood floor. When she made it to the basement stairwell, she almost fell down the steps, reaching the bottom just as she heard a loud
crack
from the floor above.

The front door shattering off its hinges.

The vampire was in the house.

Above them.

Right behind us.

If it had seen her and the girl on the stairs leading down to the basement, it would be right on top of them in seconds—

Conny shoved the screaming girl through the open steel door, into the tunnel beyond, and turned in a single smooth motion, firing a grenade at the top of the stairs.

Whump
.

Boom.

The explosion was deafening in the enclosed space, and had almost certainly missed the target she had hoped to hit, but maybe it had given the vampire a reason to pause; to slow its attack for a few vital seconds.

The girl in the tunnel lifted herself to her feet, trying to dash past Conny, slamming into the older woman’s unyielding body. Still screaming.

Conny pushed her back roughly, sending her to the ground once more, and her eyes fell on the steel door, searching for the mechanism that would close it.

There was nothing.

Just that thumb scanner.

In desperation, Conny placed her own thumb on it, and almost spat out a hysterical laugh when the mechanism predictably glowed red and refused her.

There was only one thing left to do.

Whump.

Boom.

Conny fired at the stairs again, reducing the bottom few steps to rubble. Buying herself a few more seconds.

Somewhere beyond the explosion, the vampire shrieked, and the noise pierced Conny’s mind, threatening to unhinge it. It wasn’t screaming because she’d hit it; it was no cry of pain. If Conny had to guess, she would have said that the shriek was a cry of
delight
.

The monster was enjoying the game.

Conny tore her gaze away from the cloud of debris that the basement stairwell had become. The young girl she had saved was crying and screaming, yelling obscenities at the woman who had separated her from her sister, throwing her small fists in Conny’s direction.

Conny deflected the blows and grabbed a handful of the screaming girl’s collar, dragging her down the tunnel, away from the steel door. When she had made it twenty paces, a distance she hoped rather than knew would be safe, she turned back.

Heard that now-familiar, terrible clicking noise echoing in the stairwell beyond the door. Rattling toward her, rapid fire.

clickclickclickcli
—

She lifted the grenade launcher, knowing that she only had one shot: one chance before the creature would be upon her and her mind would be lost forever.

She took aim at the roof of the tunnel, just inside the doorway.

And fired.

The blast, as the grenade connected with the roof just yards from where she stood, was enough to punch Conny backward, depositing her on the ground hard enough to make her spine sing. Pinpricks of light speckled the edges of her vision. Her lungs filled with dust. She choked out a cough.

Just for a moment there, before the roof of the tunnel had collapsed, she’d had a brief impression of movement on the ruined stairs beyond the steel door.

It had been
that
close. Another second, and she just might have had a shot at killing the vampire.

Another second, and those fearsome red eyes could have connected with hers, and she might not have had a shot at all.

For a few moments, Conny laid still, letting the pain surging through her back subside a little.

It was pitch-black now.

The explosion and resulting cave-in had taken out the lights in the tunnel, but she could hear the girl she had rescued breathing. Wincing at the pain in her back, Conny reached out, patting around until her palms found warm flesh. The girl didn’t respond.

Unconscious
, Conny thought, and felt a flicker of guilt. She had saved the young girl’s life, but she doubted she would ever be thanked for it. In the girl’s eyes, Conny would likely always be the woman who had cost her sister a shot at survival. Maybe, when she woke up, Conny would get a chance to explain that there had been no way to save them both; that her sister’s injuries and inability to run had condemned her to die long before Conny had intervened.

Tap.

Tap.

Scccccraaaaaatch.

Thud.

The strange, muted noises froze Conny’s thoughts. The sudden, complete darkness had stolen away her sense of direction, but she thought she had been blown straight backward by the force of the explosion in the confined space. Which meant she was still facing the tunnel entrance, now—hopefully—entirely blocked by rubble.

The strange noise was coming from directly in front of her.

Scccccccccraaaaaaaaaaaaatch.

THUD.

This time, the thudding noise was
loud
, like something heavy being dropped onto a solid surface. Conny’s mind absurdly ran back to a mostly disastrous first date she’d had years earlier, when she had let a bowling ball slip from her fingers as she approached the lane, preparing to throw yet another gutter shot. The resulting crash as she had dropped the heavy ball on the floor had made everybody in the bowling alley jump, and then laugh riotously. In the end, it had turned out to be the best part of the date; the only part worth remembering. All that uncontrollable laughter.