Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood (25 page)

Midway through the draw, Felicia opens her eyes. They remain wet and streaming, and new tears seem to flood out of them upon waking. She turns her head left and right as if searching for something, and Michael can see her jaw working in some kind of convulsive motion that confuses him—not quite gagging but an intake, a sucking.

“Almost done?” Michael asks Bonnie.

“Yep,” she says, finishing his eighth small draw and slipping the needle out. “Pressure here,” she instructs, holding an alcohol-soaked paper towel at the entry site, and letting him go.

Kneeling next to Felicia, he notices the woman trying to focus. It reminds him of what he spoke to Bonnie about earlier—about the lingering effects of the radiation inside the skull. The survivors have seen firsthand that the glowing orb can wreak hideous damage outside the skull it inhabits, but it appears that it’s protective of its host body. It wouldn’t do much good to those bastards if the flesh surrounding the inhabitant suddenly started melting at the moment of possession. But had the orb displaced tissue? Had it moved anything roughly out of its way? Or was it purely energy?

Possession? Inhabitation?
Michael shakes his head.

Felicia’s eyes settle on his, and she looks at him pleadingly.

“I—I—I ….” Her mouth contorts.

“Do you need pain relievers?”

She shakes her head quickly despite obvious discomfort. Her hand snakes out and grabs his—the grip is sweaty and desperate. She closes her streaming eyes and concentrates, dealing with inner turmoil.

“They …” she says quietly. “… life.”

“Life?”

“D—d—dying.”

Michael is listening intently, and he’s gradually aware of a great commotion coming from the south section of the library, some shouting. He tries to tune it out, but then Ron is bounding into the lobby.

“Truck!” he calls. “Coming fast!”

There’s a flurry of movement around him, and Chrissy bumps him roughly on the shoulder on the way out, but he stays rooted to the spot. He squeezes her hand gently. “Life, death … which one?”

Felicia shakes her head in agonized frustration.

“Inside,” she warbles, eyes shut tight. “D—d—dying.”

He says, “And the trees have what they need?”

Michael can hear the horn of a vehicle now, coming in aggressive bursts.

Felicia opens her wet eyes. She looks scared out of her mind.
“Neeeeed.”

“Pain relievers now?” Michael whispers.

Her head moves in a trembling nod.

He searches behind himself, finds the cup of liquid ibuprofen, and manages to get it down her throat, and Felicia turns away, still in apparent pain.

“Neeeed.”

Michael still has the shouting in the lobby tuned out, hoping Felicia will turn back to him and tell him the answers he wants, but she won’t. He feels a hot frustration, deep inside, and he isn’t even sure why he needs these answers. He wants to help this unfortunate young woman, of course, but there’s something else. It’s maybe as simple as wanting to belong to this group, to which a part of him still feels like an outsider. He woke up too late, he defied them early with his trip home, and he’s been on the periphery for too long. They’ve accepted him, yes, and yet a small part of him feels like a fraud.

But now Felicia is unconscious again, and the shouting at the front doors has become too loud to ignore.

There’s a throng of survivors at the front doors, watching a big American truck hop the curb, bounce loudly, and come tearing across the grass.

Michael arrives next to Joel in time to hear him say, “Jesus, man, we are vulnerable here. We have plenty of weapons for those things, but nothing against, you know, assholes.”

The truck fishtails briefly on the grass, then rights itself on the wide concrete path leading toward the front doors. It slows to a halt next to the Hummer, and it’s at that point that Joel breathes out a ragged sigh of relief.

“Holy shit, it’s the Thompsons.” The cop actually has a smile in his voice, his tension easing away. “Never thought I’d be so happy to see those good ol’ boys.”

“The Thompsons?” Scott says skeptically, arriving behind them.

Joel is already on his way out the front doors, striding toward the big steel-gray truck. It’s a battered behemoth. A huge man descends quickly, awkwardly from the cab—then what appears to be his twin exits the passenger side. The Thompson brothers are wearing matching blood-spattered camouflage that’s almost hilariously large, and big black boots. They’re wobbling a little on the path, looking stunned but purposeful, and they’re glancing around the entire property, paranoid.

“Hey Jeff … Pete …” Joel calls.

“What the hell happened to your radio, Officer?” the out-of-breath driver, Jeff, says. “We’ve been trying to get you on the horn.”

“Lost it with my cruiser—things got crazy back there.”

“We saw that for sure. Been keeping tabs on you from the ridge.”

“You got that goddamn whole crew in there?” Pete says. He reaches Joel and pauses with his brother, wheezing, peering into the library.

“Yeah, that’s the hospital group you saw before, plus the group from the college.”

“Well, listen up,” Jeff says, “you gotta get the bejeezus outta here.”

Joel’s jaw clenches. “What do you mean?”

“Those things are gunnin’ for you, man. Y’all are in their sights.” He gestures southeast. “They’re all crowded up over there for something, and you are
too
close. Too close. Pete didn’t even want to come over here, he said we should—”

“What the fuck, Jeff, you’re talking outta your goddamn ass!”

“Wait!” Joel holds up a hand in a halt gesture. “What are you talking about?”

“Like I said,” Jeff says, “we’ve been trying to get your attention, right Bro?”

“Uh huh.” Pete is keeping an eye out across the acreage.

“Couple days ago, those assholes got all aggressive, right? That’s the last time we talked to you before you went radio-silent. You were goin’ out to search for someone—” Michael knows immediately that Pete is talking about him “—and we were gonna hightail it out of Masonville, which was pretty much flattened by fire anyway. But would you believe those things kept coming at us, even on fire? I mean, in full flame, the fuckers!”

“Craziest shit I ever saw in my life,” Pete says. “And I’ve been seeing some crazy shit.”

“I don’t know, been a lot of crazy shit.”

“Point taken.”

Survivors have been streaming tentatively out of the library as they perceive that the large men pose no harm. Kayla clutches Bonnie’s arm as they approach, and the girl’s eyes squint against the sunbeams streaming through the smoke. Pete nods to the survivors as they appear. He’s huge and fragrant. Kayla half-hides herself behind Bonnie as Pete takes off his hunting cap to wave at his sweaty face.

“You said there’s a bunch of those things south of us?” Joel says.

“We’ve been watching those goddamn things for days—for some reason, they’re assembling at that Udall nature area, you know, west of the Wal-Mart? Thousands of ’em. They’re just squatting there.”

“That’s where they were going!” Kevin says.

“Those bastards are a mile away, massing there just like in the foothills. One difference, though.”

“No trees,” Joel says. “No pine trees, anyway.”

“Bingo. They’re just … sitting there. No, they’re there for something else—and it might be you.”

“What?!” Bonnie yelps.

“They had us on our heels before, why would they—” Joel begins.

“Strength in numbers?” Michael says, and the group considers that.

“So I told you about Mike Richards up there at the Rod and Gun Club, didn’t I?” Pete says, turning to Joel.

“Yep.”

“Well, he croaked. They just swarmed over him. We barely got out of there ourselves, but we did manage to take half his arsenal. And we’d already cleared out Active Arms. I’ve got a crapload of AR-15 hardware in the truck for you.”

Joel is taken aback. “Hell yes!”

“And then we’re leaving, no offense. I know you need the hardware. I got boxes and boxes of 30- and 50-round magazines. You either gotta get the fuck outta here—sorry, young lady—or there’s a very real possibility you’re gonna have to defend this place like the fuckin’ Alamo.”

A wave of disquiet crashes across the open concrete, quiet cries of distress and gestures of alarm.

“Well, that settles it, let’s get out of here!” Mai says, pushing away from the exterior wall she was leaning against. “Screw this place!”

“This library is barricaded better now than any other place I can think of,” Ron says.

“Yeah, but there’s plenty of other places where there aren’t a thousand of those things nearby!”

“You’re assuming they’re going to attack?” Kevin says.

“Why shouldn’t I?!”

“Have you heard anything from Buck?” Joel asks Pete.

“He’s the cop south of town? Yes sir! He’s looking for you too. He’s managed to stay put down at the Harmony hospital somehow. He’s doing okay, he’s got a small group there, holed up.”

Ron says, “Good to hear. He’s a standup guy.” Michael remembers Joel mentioning the CB communication among all of them, before everything started getting worse—and worse.

“Well,” Joel says, “whatever we do, we can sure use the weapons. We have some defense here, but nothing metal, if you get me.”

“You’re talking about the blood, right?”

“Yeah, we’ve rigged up some tranq rifles with it, and it’s been effective but … a little weird.”

Rachel gives him a look.

“Tranq rifles?” Pete says. “Man, who was the genius thought of that?” He glances around, notices Zoe raising her hand in a modest salute, Chloe right next to her hugging herself in a state of alarm. “Anyway, Buck was talkin’ about the same thing, the blood, using it as a weapon. I don’t think he got as far with it, though. He’s still a Second Amendment dude through and through.”

Kevin, peering into the back of the Thompsons’ truck, says, “I’d guess the Constitution doesn’t much matter anymore.”

“Constitution will transcend this,” Pete says solemnly.

“Not if there’s no one left,” Scott calls, combing his hair back with his fingers. He’s exiting the library cautiously, glancing up repeatedly into the heavens.

And then Rachel speaks up.

“Right, yay for guns!” Her voice isn’t exactly dripping sarcasm, but Michael can hear it, being a practiced soundboard for her sarcasm. “We need more out-and-out killing as opposed to efforts to help these people.”

“People?” Pete echoes. “Those things stopped being people a few days ago.”

“A point of contention around here,” Joel says.

“All I’m saying,” Rachel says, “is that I don’t think of the blood so much as a weapon as … well it’s the reason we’re alive. And it could be our best protection.”

“You might be right, young lady,” Pete says, “but there’s really no time to debate it. You use what you got, is what I say.”

“Anyway,” Joel says. “Thanks.”

“We’re all in this shitstorm together, right?”

“Maybe I had you guys pegged wrong the whole time.”

“Which is what we kept telling you all those years.” Pete winks broadly.

“Right.”

“All right, now listen,” Pete says. “I ain’t stayin’ here, and I don’t think you ought to either. You did us a solid a few days ago, and I’m just payin’ you back now.”

Michael follows them out just as commotion erupts behind him. Mai and some of the others—Liam and Scott among them—are already racing back to the library to gear up for an escape. Michael hears Mai ask, “Who’s going?” Bonnie is trying to reason with her. Most of the others are just standing around, indecisive.

As Joel, Pete, and Kevin stride ahead of him toward the truck, Michael observes the neighborhood again. It’s so quiet that there’s almost a
negative
energy to it. It’s as if he can feel it in his ears, like they’re on the verge of popping. He flexes his jaw, and in fact his ears do pop.

Probably the concussion still having its way with me.

He walks farther out onto the concrete path, Ron jogging past him to help Joel. When Michael has a view of the sky to the west, he cranes his neck to search the horizon. It’s still pulsating with a sickly crimson, the columns seeming at once to be flowing down and reaching up.

Wait. Sickly?

Is that how he would characterize this phenomenon, or is that just the suggestion of Felicia’s words coming back to him? He’s reminded of that old H.G. Wells story,
War of the Worlds
, probably the most famous alien-invasion book ever. In that story, a very healthy and aggressive alien species means to conquer Earth, but what they didn’t count on was that a foreign atmosphere would not sustain them. From the moment they arrived, they were doomed. Michael isn’t sure if he’s remembering the book or the movies. Either way, they arrived healthy and were undone by Earth itself.

If what the survivors are dealing with is indeed alien in origin, then it strikes Michael as the opposite of Wells’ vision. Perhaps what they’re dealing with is a dying species, somehow—remotely?—feeding off a very particular resource on Earth, and in the act of doing so, becoming slowly healthy again. And it’s using Earth’s own inhabitants to do its bidding. Anger burns inside him now, watching the skies.

He wonders again whether these things ever expected the likes of him to survive. If they did, what purpose was he serving in their ghastly plan? He forces the pessimistic thought away from him.

Michael turns back to the small clutch of survivors grabbing weapons out of the truck. They’re twenty feet ahead of him, apart from him. The library group is behind him, behind glass and stone.

He feels abruptly separate from all of them.

There’s that sensation again, that feeling of remove. If it’s true that the survivors have an obligation to fight back, to reclaim the world, how is Michael part of that crew? Maybe he should have died back at home, or at his office. That’s when the world ended, and that’s when
he
should have ended. He doesn’t blame his daughter for saving him from that fate, but it
was
his fate.

Maybe it should have been his punishment.

A small, bitter laugh escapes his lips, and he feels a weight of self-loathing overtake him.

He wonders if these people would have taken him in so easily had they known he was a fraud. Imagine Bonnie learning what he’d been involved in when these things struck!

He feels a pulse of that negative energy again, his ears popping.

At the same moment, Bonnie says from the library doors, “Do you feel that?”

The group stops, its members glancing around at one another.

Yes, they all feel it.

And that’s when the sky opens up with a roar so massive that it knocks the survivors to the ground.