Dead by Dawn (32 page)

The dark haired man behind the wheel looked to be in his thirties, wearing an army uniform. His wife was a similar age, with long blonde hair, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt.

The two toddlers in the back could have been mirror images of their parents.

“Are you two alright?
”
the man asked.

“I guess,
”
said Adam.

“You need a ride? It’s not safe to be on foot.”

The woman dug around and came up holding a couple water bottles. “Here, you look like you’ve had a long night.”

“Most nights are long these days,
”
said Sarah, taking the water. “But thank you.”

“Are you heading to the White House, did you get the text as well?
”
said the man. “You’re welcome to tag along if you want.”

Sarah and Adam hesitated, glancing at one another. Sarah shrugged.

“The text came through the other night,
”
said Adam. “We’d appreciate that a lot.”

“Are you two alright? You look pretty banged up,
”
asked the woman when they were climbing in.

The little boy and girl both dove into their mom’s lap when they saw Adam and Sarah climbing in. They peeked at them through the cracks in the seat.

“We got in a car accident,
”
said Sarah. “Our companions should already be at the White House, we think they killed the head vampire last night.”

“Already?
”
asked the man.

“That’s what we’re going there to see.”

Adam gave Sarah’s hand a squeeze that she returned in kind.

The Jeep went slow, swerving around piles of ash and burning bodies. The mother held her hands over her children's eyes.

With every mile the ashen bodies grew thicker, and Sarah’s hopes for her friends sank.

Chapter 47

              It was all covered in ash. No surfaces were spared. It looked as though a volcano had gone off. Washington D.C. had been turned into Pompeii overnight. Ash covered the roofs and windowsills, and hung on fences and filled cracks. The ground looked as though it were covered in black snow that refused to melt.

The Jeep they were in carved tire tracks right through the center of it.

Sarah found it hard to tell if they were even on the road. The only giveaway was the street signs and stoplights they drove through.

A few buildings were on fire. They drove past, feeling the heat against their skin. Large fingers of flame stretched into the sky, casting out dark smoke as though it were a spell.

Sarah discovered the names of the people they were riding with. The man in the army uniform was Bruce, his wife was Ann, and their two toddlers were Dylan and Dakota.

From what little time they were riding together, Sarah found them to be quite hospitable. Considering the circumstances, they were wholly welcoming and not suspicious in the least.

For them to offer a ride with little to no introduction, Sarah was truly grateful.

Their conversation had taken a lull as they approached the White House however. It was the ash; none of them could believe how much of it there was.

It smelled like sulfur and burnt hair. Sarah could taste it on her tongue, which made her cringe.

They pulled up to the black fence that surrounded the White House front lawn. The fence was torn apart and looked nothing like it did when they had left it the night before. The vampires had destroyed it.

Twisted bars of steel arched in thousands of different directions. Some laid on the ground, torn completely free.

The ash in the yard beyond was over a foot deep in spots. A few flames still flickered randomly.

Sarah was surprised to find the White House was still standing. Somehow it had survived the burning vampires without catching flame itself.

Bruce put the Jeep in park and turned to observe the White House. He pulled a CB radio from the dash and held the microphone to his mouth.

“Hey this is Bruce, anyone listening?”

After only a second’s hesitation, a man’s voice came out from the speakers. It sounded distant and slightly muffled.

-We hear you Bruce. What do you got for us?-

Bruce lifted the microphone back to his mouth. “I’m at the White House, it’s,” he hesitated. “I don’t even know how to describe it.”

-Have you eliminated the vampire yet?-

“I have reason to believe it’s already dead, but I’m going in to check first hand.”

-Okay, we’ll be standing by.-

Bruce clicked the microphone back into the CB on the dash. He killed the engine then turned to his wife.

“I have to go in.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Watch the kids, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Hurry and get back to me.”

Bruce turned to Adam and Sarah. “Either of you up for a little exploration?”

“That’s why we’re here,” said Adam. He unbuckled himself and climbed out of the back seat.

Sarah stared at the White House. The blackness of the front lawn contrasted so strongly against its white exterior. It looked evil, as though it could be alive. The front doors were bashed wide open like a mouth inviting her to be eaten alive.

She had no plans of ever entering that building again.

“I think I’ll stay out here,” she said.

“Okay, looks like it’s just the two man crew then,” said Bruce.

He got out of the Jeep and went with Adam to the broken fence. They squeezed through a hole in the steel and began wading through the ashes. Their clothes grew darker and darker with every step. It wasn’t long before they were covered head to toe in soot.

Sarah found it odd that Bruce would leave his wife and kids to company they had only just met. Their ability to trust was borderline dangerous.

That was when Sarah noticed the pistol resting neatly in Ann’s lap. She didn’t know guns, but imagined this one could kill just as quickly as any other. It was small and black, perhaps something a cop might carry.

Sarah realized in an instant that the couple wasn’t so trusting after all, just confident.

Even if she were some sort of bad guy, Sarah was so banged up that she would be useless in a struggle. Adam too, she noticed he was limping his way to the White House.

Sarah was suddenly struck with an epiphany. What if it wasn’t Bruce and Ann who were too trusting, but her and Adam.

If this was some kind of trap, they had wandered straight into it.

She fidgeted in her seat and tried her best not to show it.

“Is Daddy going to kill the monster?” asked the little boy sitting next to his mother.

“Yes,” said Ann. “Daddy’s going to kill the monster so we won’t have to run anymore.”

“But will he get hurt?” asked the girl.

“Not at all, your Daddy is stronger than any monster.”

“I like when Daddy saves us.”

“Me too Dear, me too.”

Adam and Bruce were just passing the helicopter. Adam pointed to it and Sarah could only guess that he was explaining how it had gotten there.

She remembered flying in on that helicopter. All of their companions had been with them. Now they were in that dark building surrounded by ash, the whereabouts of her friends unknown.

Somewhere deep down in her gut, she already knew they wouldn’t be coming back out. That didn’t stop her from hoping however. The sky was blue and the sun was shining after all, it was the perfect day for a miracle.

When Adam and Bruce reached the White House, Adam stopped and after a short pause Bruce went in without him.

“What are they doing?” asked Ann.

“He’s not going in because he already knows they’re dead and he doesn’t want to find the bodies.”

If the statement had confused Ann, she didn’t press the matter. She just stayed quiet.

Sarah waited for tears that would never come. The hole in her heart had already been carved out and scabbed over. More death meant more nothingness and her life was already full of that. If Joe, Keith, and Matt were dead, then she would shrug it off with numb indifference. That was the only mourning her body had left to give.

A pair of robins landed on the mangled fence, not far from the Jeep. Sarah watched them and wondered what they thought of all this mess.
Could they comprehend the magnitude of what was going on around them?

She doubted it. They were chirping and hopping from fence post to fence post. They looked happy.

Sarah envied them. She would give anything to be so blissfully unaware of how fucked things were.

Bruce emerged from the White House a half hour later. He must have found what he was looking for because he and Adam were soon making their way back to the Jeep.

“What’d I miss?” Bruce called as he was slipping through the fence.

For the second time since the night before Adam’s pant leg got caught on a broken piece of fence. He put too much weight on his bad leg and fell through to the other side. They could hear the calf of his pants tear as he went.

He recovered quickly and was soon walking towards the Jeep. He tried to hide it, but Sarah could tell he was in pain. He was gritting his teeth and his limp was more pronounced.

“So?” asked Ann.

“They got him,” said Bruce.

Sarah allowed herself to fall back and feel relieved. It was as though someone had lifted a large weight off of her chest, one that she hadn’t even realized was there.

“I think we’re safe now,” Adam said as he sat down next to her on the seat.

Sarah attempted to force a smile, but it wouldn’t come. “I hope so.”

Neither of them mentioned their companions. They didn’t have to say it.

Bruce started the Jeep then put the CB microphone close to his mouth.

“This is Bruce, you guys still out there?”

-Took you long enough. The whole camp is waiting.-

“Well then I won’t delay,” said Bruce. “We killed him, I repeat, we killed him.”

-You’re sure?-

“I saw it with my own eyes.”

-That’s good news. That’s really good news.-

“I couldn’t agree more.”

-We’ve got something else for you too, a report fresh out of China. They’re saying they haven’t seen one attack since the sun went down a few hours ago.-

“Are you sure?”

-It just came in, straight from the boys in California. It looks like killing that vampire was a global solution.-

Adam grabbed Sarah’s hand and gave it a squeeze. This time her smile came naturally.

Bruce let out a short laugh and hopped in his seat.

Sarah felt like she could do the same. After all that had happened, hearing this good news was almost too good to be true.

Those two words, let her know that her life was once again heading in the right direction. They blossomed in her mind and grew nourished her damaged soul. She knew that those two words would repeat in her head for days, if not weeks. She would look back on her life one day and remember the words as a defining moment.

Global Solution.

Epilogue

              Adam took a sip from his water bottle and kicked his feet up. He ate from a piece of beef jerky and watched Sarah fishing at the end of the dock. It was early dusk and the morning sun lit the mansion behind him in an orange glow.

The first day of September had arrived and it wouldn’t be long before they needed to begin preparing for the winter. It was probably going to be a hard struggle, but he wasn’t going to worry about that just yet. For now he was going to relax, fish, and continue working on his makeshift chicken coop in the back yard.

They made sure to visit the gas station once a day and were developing a pretty good collection of full gas cans in the neighbor’s kitchen.

Sarah had dubbed that mansion “Their Barn House.
”
So far it made for a perfect place to store anything that smelled bad. At this point that was mainly the gas.

Out on the dock, Sarah was reeling in hard. The pole bent at an odd angle and fought against her. Sarah pulled against the strain, arching her back as she did.

Adam thought about the White House a month earlier. He remembered the ash-laden front yard and the flickering flames that danced across it. It looked more like blacktop from a distance.

He remembered them walking through it, avoiding the flames as best they could. It was hot, he was sweating and the ash stuck to his skin. It was deep too, up to his shins in spots. Walking through it was like walking through freshly powdered snow.

He couldn’t bring himself to go inside when they reached the front steps. He didn’t really want to see. The army guy, Bruce, went in without them. He reported back that there were vampires sleeping on every inch of the floor, and no survivors.

Adam hung his head as they waded their way back to the Jeep. He felt pretty horrible about his friends.

It wasn’t long after that Bruce informed them his family didn’t keep companions around. They had discovered early on that the vampires were keeping spies. That meant it wasn’t safe to stay with people they didn’t know, after dark at least.

In his defense, he still kept them around long enough to find a working vehicle. Sometime early that afternoon they found a blue minivan. After it started, Bruce and his family went one way, while Sarah and Adam went another.

Adam hoped they were still out there somewhere. They were good people and deserved to live.

Sarah pulled up her fish, from where Adam was sitting it looked like a largemouth bass. She held it up for him to see and he began to clap. She was becoming a regular pro. He found comfort in knowing they wouldn’t starve as long as they stayed close to the lake.

Adam leaned back in his chair, hoisting his bare feet onto the patio table.

The night they found the minivan they slept on the road, in the back seat.

It was the first test, to see if the vampires were really finished. When the morning came they were still there. The miracle of life was granted to them for one more day.

They spent the next two days traversing to Marietta Middle School, hoping they wouldn’t find what they did. The school was an empty shell of what it had been when last they left it.

The windows were all broken, their dark sockets staring out at the world. The doors swayed open on bent hinges.

Adam hollered inside for people, but only his own voice came echoing back. They found no incentive to investigate further.

That was when they decided to head back for the mansion.

They passed their fair share of ash piles along the way, most twisting away with the wind and weather. It was a lonely ride. Their missing companions felt like a giant hole that they couldn’t quite seem to fill. Even if they found a reason to laugh, a dark shadow hung over them.

It had been a month and they had yet to see another living vampire.

They didn’t let their guard down, however. Adam knew there were probably still vampires out there. They’d been dealt a heavy blow, but that didn’t mean some wouldn’t recover. At least he would have to assume so. It would be foolish to let their guard down for no reason.

If any did survive, they would be ready.

“What do you think?
”
Sarah asked, walking up with her catch.

“That looks delicious.”

“I caught it so you have to prepare it.”

“Deal.”

When the fish stopped flopping Adam pulled out his pocket knife and set to work. He did as Joe had taught them a month earlier.

As he did this Sarah poured charcoal into a grill and lit a fire with matches. It was slow to start without lighter fluid, but she got it.

When Adam was done cutting he tossed on the fish and they had themselves a nice little breakfast.

Adam savored the taste. They didn’t have any toppings, but his taste buds were changing. Things he used to consider tasteless now seemed flavorful. It was an odd sensation that he didn’t mind in the least.

When they were done eating Adam found himself wondering about the other people in the world. He had no idea how many survivors there were, but if Bruce’s family was any indication, he had high hopes.

There could be thousands still out there,
he thought.

He wished them well. One day they might cross paths, but for now he was okay with it just being him and Sarah. They would survive and that was more than he could hope for.

Sarah scooted her chair closer, when she was close enough, she leaned in and gave Adam a kiss on the cheek. The kiss gave Adam the chills. It was a feeling he never wanted to lose.

“That was good,
”
said Sarah. “You want to take out the yacht next?”

Adam nodded, “Hell yea.”

He leaned back and examined the American flag that flew in the back yard. It was weathered, torn, and the ends were fraying, but it was still there. The flag waved in the wind, defiant of all that had happened. Adam admired it. He knew that out of everything, the flag was what gave him the most hope for the future.

It was a sign of resilience, that no matter what threat arose, mankind would fight and mankind would live on.