Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood (23 page)

They didn’t expect any survivors.

This thought fires through his damaged synapses, and Michael ponders it as he steers the Hummer onto the library lawn and drives toward the front entrance. Joel hangs on in the passenger seat, his weapons between his knees. The Hummer is filled with Felicia’s anguished gasping.

If this whole thing actually has an otherworldly source—if, to put it bluntly, this is an alien attack—and it was a partial failure because it didn’t affect every living soul … in fact, left five or six percent of the population alive … then that
must
give the survivors some kind of opening. An opportunity to exploit a vulnerability. And perhaps they’re already seeing that play out. Does the fact that all those bodies have suddenly disappeared mean that the things possessing them recognize a weakness? That they understand that the survivors have found a way to hurt them, even turn them back? Are they afraid?

Michael comes to a bouncing stop near the doors, and the men climb down out of the huge vehicle. The faces at the front doors appear celebratory, but Michael can’t hear what they’re saying. He surveys the empty land around the library, in all directions, and finds nothing. He beckons someone to join them and help with the groceries … and the body.

Ron, Kevin, Rachel, and the twins burst out the doors, and Rachel crashes into her father, embracing him tightly.

“We heard some kind of explosion up that way,” she says. “Thought you were done for.”

“Still alive,” he says. “I keep dodging bullets, huh? We have a passenger. Where’s Bonnie?”

“She’s with the—”

“Bonnie!”

In his peripheral vision, Michael sees Kevin and the twins already taking bags of food from the Hummer’s rear seats, but he goes to the door on the opposite side of the vehicle, where Joel and Ron are about to maneuver out Felicia. The young woman has fallen mercifully unconscious, and Michael only hopes she’s still alive.

Bonnie appears at the doors.

“Prep a morphine shot!”

“Okay,” she answers, “what did you find?”

“Someone at the store—go ahead and get that shot going.”

“Right.” Bonnie jogs back.

“Ready?” he says.

Joel has his finger at the woman’s carotid artery. “She’s alive,” he mutters, reading Michael’s mind. “Probably dehydrated and starving … multiple dislocations … other internal traumas we have no idea about … you know, the usual! But hey, at least she wasn’t chewing on trees!”

There’s a tinge of worry beneath the sarcasm—the notion that the only hope these turned human beings have of survival is if they haven’t been doing exactly what they’ve been somehow programmed to do. If they’ve had the bizarre luck to be stuck in a storeroom or trapped in a car. And what are the survivors supposed to do? Search the city for such oddities? All the while assuming they’re safe from the other bodies that might at any moment turn aggressive again?

As the men hurry Felicia inside to Bonnie’s care, those thoughts are underscored by the discovery that the young Broncos fan has died of his internal injuries. His corpse is in the corner, covered by flattened cardboard boxes.

“He had a pulse this morning, but then … nothing,” Chrissy says. “The old man hasn’t really improved either.”

Mai pokes her head into the room. “We need to get that body out of here.”

Scott pipes in behind her, “What if those things come looking for these bodies? You guys keep bringing them in!”

“Bill and Brian offered to wrap him up and take him out the back entrance to some shade there,” Chrissy says, ignoring Scott. “On the northeast side there. They’re looking for bags.”

Bonnie is examining Felicia and administering the morphine.

“We don’t have much of this left!” She takes advantage of the woman’s unconsciousness to have Ron and Joel help her pop her left shoulder and hip, right knee, three fingers, and jaw back into place.

“No wonder she was in pain,” Joel says.

“So lucky to be trapped in there,” Bonnie says. “No injury to the digestive system, obviously, but also no injury to the mouth and teeth, and no scrapes and cuts from running around out there.”

Rachel is staring at the woman, who now looks practically peaceful. “Dad, we know her, right?”

Michael nods thoughtfully.

“Felicia,” Rachel whispers, seeing the nametag. “Oh my God, I remember her. I talked to her about her classes.”

“How we doin’ out there, Liam?” Joel calls.

Liam is poised at the front doors, twenty yards away. “Nothing, no change.”

Joel claps Michael back. “Gotta say that went pretty well.”

“Did you see any—” Kevin starts.

“Just her,” Michael says, “and one other, trapped in a car. Nothing aggressive.”

“So where the hell are the rest? Where’d they go?”

No one has an answer to that question.

Bonnie says, “Okay, she’ll be out for a while. But she looks good. Cross your fingers, but she might be our best bet for bringing someone back. Better than that poor man.”

The group stands indecisive for a moment, then files out.

Chrissy and the twins have taken to laying out the food atop a large table at the edge of the lobby, categorizing and itemizing it. Scott is there, too, and he’s the first to speak.

“The cop is back in my good graces. He brought soda.”

“You guys did good,” Chrissy says. “Lots of good protein and some fun stuff, too. Thank you.”

Joel appears frustrated, watching everyone standing around. Michael already knows that the cop is a no-nonsense leader, but he’s also gathering that Joel has no patience for inaction. Even immediately after completing a risky trip, he’s obviously thinking about the next move—and exasperated that not everybody else is thinking that way.

“God dammit, I wish I had a radio.” He’s pacing. “We need to know what’s going on. Whether those things are gathering somewhere, or if they’re up to something new and we’re hiding in here while they couldn’t care less. We should be talking with those damn brothers. The Thompsons. I betcha anything they know what’s going down. I mean what if we’re strongholding here, putting up a defense for no reason?”

“Better safe than sorry, right?” Scott says, twisting open a soda bottle. “Are you really suggesting that we not protect ourselves?”

“Hey,” Chloe says, “we should be rationing this stuff, shouldn’t we?”

“She’s right,” Kevin says.

“There’s plenty,” Scott says, tilting up the bottle for a long pull.

“Chloe,” Joel says, offhanded, “you’re in charge of rationing. Can you put together a schedule with portion control and all that? Assume we’re gonna be here a few days, at least.”

“Um … sure.”

Kevin shakes his shaggy head, watching Scott finish off his soda. “Anyway, Joel, who says those brothers are still alive?”

“They’re alive. Those guys are survivors.”

“They’re up in the foothills, surrounded by those things. They were right up there in the thick of it, when the bodies became aggressive. Hell, man, you saw what happened to that kid, that Danny, out on the street—and he was protected by the equivalent of an armored truck.”

“Well,” says Michael, still standing with Rachel, watching Felicia through the open door of the book-return area, “do you think we’re safe enough to go get a radio? And weapons? How far is the precinct?”

“Farther than the store.”

Bonnie speaks up. “If we’re just making trips willy nilly now, we really ought to be getting supplies from the hospital.”

“We’re not making trips ‘willy nilly,’ Bonnie,” Joel responds, perturbed.

“You realize,” Scott says, “that this is exactly the conversation those little green men
hope
we’re having in here.”

“What are you talking about?” Rachel says, exasperation in her voice.

“Okay, if it’s true that those things can sense what we’re up to—like you said earlier—then don’t you think they might just be waiting for us to lower our defenses? They’re just itching for us to fuck ourselves over. Hell, maybe you’ve unknowingly brought in a couple of spies there.” Pointing at Felicia and the old man, who is on the verge of expiring.

“Plus,” Mai puts in, “we’re not the only survivors, you know. We’ve all seen others out there. There are probably a bunch of other groups just like us, doing what we’re doing. Maybe they’re the ones getting attacked.”

“And next time is our turn,” Scott finishes.

This is met with silence.

“Since when did Scott start making sense?” Kevin says.

Rachel looks at Scott with an expression that isn’t quite as exasperated as before. “I think he’s been working through some things.”

“I’m hungry,” Scott says, ignoring their comments. “Chloe, what can I eat?”

“Yeah, let’s eat.” Joel takes a deep breath, stops pacing. “I think we’ll all feel better after we get some food in us.”

Michael watches from a distance as the survivors descend on the table, already deferring to Chloe, who has found some paper and a pencil and is marking down items on-the-fly. Zoe and Chrissy, under Chloe’s direction, use knives found in the library break room to divvy up the larger foods.

“You got beef jerky?” Bill asks Michael as he approaches the table. “I love you, man.”

“Okay, I’m taking on the role of den mother,” Bonnie says, and in her expression is the relief of being able to talk easily. “Balanced meals for all. Everybody get your protein along with the carbs.”

Rachel leaves Michael’s side and joins Bonnie at the edge of the table. After looking over all the food, she tosses her dad a grateful smile. Then she takes half an apple from Chloe, savors it.

In a moment, there’s actually laughter coming from the general area, and the sound of it fills Michael with uneasiness. This light moment doesn’t feel right. Not yet. He can see it in Joel’s face too; the cop has also kept his distance.

Someone takes his hand, halting his thoughts. It’s Kayla, looking up at him. She’s chewing something.

“Thank you for going to get the food,” she says. “You should have some.”

And Michael’s misgivings soften under a flood of warmth. He kneels in front of her and embraces her.

“You’re more than welcome. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

After a while, she leads him to the food, after everyone else has moved away into small groups. Rachel joins them, as does Bonnie, and the four of them feel the healing energy of nourishment in their bellies.

The rest of the day finds a strange indecision settling over the survivors. A feeling of safety behind barricaded walls, freshly satisfied hunger, an aura of restfulness following the first real sleep that the group has enjoyed in days—it all adds up to a general sense of health but a nagging feeling that they could be doing more. That they
should
be doing more. That, essentially, they’re spinning their wheels.

Despite all that, the entire group convinces Joel to put off an immediate trip to the precinct, which is significantly farther away than the store. There’s still plenty to do in their effort to barricade this place, and one more day might bring more information.

Joel agrees with only some reluctance, but a few times during the afternoon, Michael spots the cop gazing out on the empty world with jaw-clenched anxiety.

A few feet away from Felicia, Bonnie has created a station where she collects blood from the survivors, storing it in the small refrigerator there. Every once in a while, Bonnie calls out a name, and that person responds dutifully, rolling up his or her sleeve. This goes on for a few hours in the afternoon, giving a certain rhythm to the uneasy day. In the middle of it all, the old man finally passes, never having regained consciousness.

Later, Michael looks out on a quiet, motionless night for the second time. He can’t argue with Joel—or his own feeling that something vital is happening beyond this library. Something that they should be paying attention to. Somehow.

The homes along Peterson are all lightless, seemingly dead in their lots—brick-and-mortar corpses in the center of well-tended landscapes. The lawns haven’t even had time to overgrow, although some are starting to brown under the heat. Lifelessness pervades, and yet the fingerprint of humanity remains vivid on everything. Michael wonders what this street will look like next month. Next year.

What will Fort Collins look like in ten years?

He glances up at the sky, sees the same vague ribbons of light coming from the southeast, sees the haze of smoke drifting under starlight. Nothing new.

If the people gathered here can get beyond this, a whole new life awaits them, he knows. A survivalist’s life. He’s not well-versed in such things, always preferred the creature comforts of modern technology to the rugged outdoors. And yet his thoughts flit toward the first thoughts of a new, makeshift family … Bonnie and Kayla, fellow survivors he has known for mere days and hours, are a part of this flashing foreshadow—even Joel, a brother he never had, and Scott, the asshole cousin. He frowns, feeling grief and bewilderment but also an anticipatory comfort at the thought. A new beginning, in some sense.

It’s too soon to be thinking this way, isn’t it? Why are these thoughts even occurring to him?

Ah, Suze
. He bows his head.
I wasn’t there. I should’ve been there.

It’s nearly 4 a.m. when Michael hears a small cry from the book-return area where Felicia is recovering. Bonnie has charged him with administering pain medication in the event Felicia requires it—preferably in pill form if she wakes with manageable pain. Thanks to Joel’s efforts at the Co-Op, they now have several boxes of ibuprofen.

He scans the lawn and street one more time, then moves silently into the book-return room, where he sees Felicia moving sluggishly on her crude pad assembled from cardboard boxes. She’s in the center of the room, possibly exactly where Kayla slept when she was all alone here.

Felicia’s eyes are open and appear to register confusion. Her head moves back and forth, taking in the foreign surroundings. As he gets closer, he can see tears leaking down the sides of her face. She’s uttering a stream of whimpers, even though she’s obviously still somewhat lulled by morphine. Her expression is a mask of dull fright.

“You’re okay,” he whispers, coming to her.             

Her head lolls in his direction.

“I’m Michael,” he says softly.

“I … I ...” she manages, and confusion clouds her expression again. “Who …?

“Are you in pain?”

She nods, trying to form words.

“Can you swallow a pill?”

Another nod, and another whimper.

“Wait here.”

Michael takes a moment to check the front door again, survey the area, then he goes for a cup of water and six ibuprofen capsules. He carefully helps the young woman down all six pills. She even reaches up weakly with one shaking arm—an arm that had to be roughly twisted back into its socket following its dislocation—to help guide the cup. Quiet sobs of pain issue helplessly from her throat.

“Let me know if that doesn’t help.”

“Huuuurts.” She cringes. “F—feels wr—wro—wrong.”

Michael is stunned to hear so many full words come out of her.

“What feels wrong?”

She brings up a wobbly hand and touches her head, grits her teeth.

“You’ve been through a lot,” he says. “Just keep as still as you can, let yourself heal.”

She gives him a long, wet look. “Wh … what h—h—h—”

“Uh,” he says, quieting her and trying to determine the best way to answer her inevitable question. He decides not to upset her further—yet. “You’ve had an accident.”

She struggles with something. Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out.

“Do you need morphine?” he asks, knowing that Bonnie has already warned him not to use any, if at all possible.

She frowns, shakes her head sluggishly but reluctantly, as if drifting toward unconsciousness but needing to say something crucial. She looks at him very seriously.

“What is it?” he whispers.

“They—they—they—” She shows frustration, and her mouth moves in fits and starts, painfully. “They c—c …”

The room feels abruptly very small, claustrophobic, and Michael can smell Felicia’s sweat. She’s dripping with perspiration, not just from the humidity of the room but from her internal struggle. He wipes at her brow with a towel.

“They …” Michael urges.

Felicia closes her eyes, concentrating.

“C—c—c—c—”

She’s struggling mightily with her speech, and Michael leans toward her, lifting a hand as if to coax the word out of her.

“They …” he repeats. “They what?”

Her eyes begin to unfocus.

“No, no!” he pleads.

And then she’s out.

“Damn it!” he hisses.

He checks her pulse, and finds it strong. She has a low-grade fever—to be expected. He sets her head gently to the floor and studies her face. She’s still wearing makeup that she probably applied the morning of her shift at the Co-Op. Her life before this moment means very little anymore, but he’s proud that he’s been able to return it to her, for whatever that’s worth.

What was she trying to say?

“Everything okay?”

Michael jumps a little.

Bonnie is leaning against the doorjamb, watching him. She’s sleepy-eyed and drawn.

“She was awake. Talking.” He stands, frowning, keeping his eyes on Felicia. “She tried to tell me something. And I think it was important.”

“What did she say?”

“She’s scared. Doesn’t know where she is. And I think … I think she wanted to talk about ‘them’.”

“Them?”

“I mean, she called something ‘they.’ Like she was talking about those things … whatever was inside her.”

Bonnie watches her. “But she fell asleep again?”

“Yeah.”

Bonnie approaches Felicia and kneels. She touches the young woman’s flesh, gauges the temperature, checks her pulse and her pupillary response.

“A lot of moisture coming from her eyes,” she says, concerned. “I’ll give her a small dose of morphine in case that’s pain. We’re running on morphine fumes, though.”

She sets to work, and Michael excuses himself to the front doors, where he scans the area almost superfluously. There’s no activity at all.

After a while, Bonnie joins him at the doors, yawning and stretching, and Michael studies her.

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

“I’ve never been a great sleeper,” she says. “And now? Forget it.”

“Still …”

“Can I get you anything?” she asks, ever the caregiver. “Water?”

He shows her the bottle he’s been nursing. “I’m okay.”

She pulls up a folding chair and sits right next to him, looking out onto the early morning. She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

“Not much to look at,” she whispers.

“I know, it’s so … so blank. And yet so menacing.”

A pause.

“I can see now where Rachel gets her bravery.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way you ran out to help those men earlier … the trip to the store …”

Michael stays quiet, acknowledging her words with just a small smile.

“Listen, Michael, I’m sorry about your wife. And I’m sorry I’m only saying that now. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s so difficult.”

He shakes his head, formulating a response, and emotion surges up, startling him. He finds he can’t speak for a moment. He feels Bonnie’s arm at his shoulder, and he nods gratefully.

After a few silent minutes, he composes himself.

“Did you lose someone?” he asks.

She only nods.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Mmm, not really.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, yes, eventually I’ll need to talk about it, but I feel like I can’t yet. It’s all so surreal. You know. I can’t process it.” She smiles humorlessly. “I feel like I’ve been crying about everything
except
that.”

“I haven’t had a chance to thank you for taking care of me, back there at the hospital. I probably owe you more than I realize.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Michael.”

“Except maybe my life.”

“No,
that
you owe to your daughter.” This time, her smile is genuine. “You would probably have woken up in that building, disoriented. Confused. Walked out onto the streets, wobbly, dizzy. Crying for help.” She’s teasing him now. “And sooner or later, you would have fallen in with the wrong crowd. I’m sure of it.”

There’s a long moment of silence while they watch dawn gradually paint the horizon with the first hints of tarnished gold.

“She really did save me,” Michael breathes. “And I think you did, too.”

She accepts the compliment wordlessly and just sits with him. After a while, her head leans toward his shoulder, and he accepts the weight of it. It’s not long before she’s breathing in deep, even breaths, and he’s afraid to move a muscle, just wanting her to sleep.