Midnight Outbreak (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It had been several weeks since Mari had killed the army soldiers, and things took a turn for the worse. The next day, the captain had set some ground rules for them. A curfew was in place, and lights were installed all around the perimeter of the house. Big, industrial-sized lights that lit up the house as if it were daylight. It made sleeping hard; the curtains were so threadbare and worn, they let the light right in.

He had tried to take their weapons, but the house drew the line at that. Nobody would be leaving them unarmed, no matter what. Joan reminded the captain that their living situation was supposed to be temporary. This was still their home, not the army’s headquarters for their area. 

The vampires were on lookout. Every night, they stayed in the basement or rushed to the upstairs bedroom. None of them wanted to be caught because their future was uncertain if they were. Mari had sacrificed her innocence for them and they were not about to screw anything up.

Lexi was more overprotected than usual with Mari. Making sure she was okay, sitting with her for hours, reading classics to her. Mari was acting about as normal as possible, the fact that she had taken two lives slowly sinking in. She cried to her family about what a horrible person she was, how her daddy would be so disappointed in her now.

Van cut that talk short. “You listen, baby girl. Your daddy, when he gets back, is going to be so damn proud of you. So proud. You put your family first. You did what you thought was right, and for that he is going to know how grown-up you’ve become.” Van’s voice was wobbly as tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. She had come to love Mari as her own, and she couldn’t handle seeing the little girl deal with so much inner turmoil.

Sienna agreed. “Mari, you did something that no other human has ever done for me. It means the world to me. And to Lukas. We are so grateful to you and your bravery. That’s what it was—bravery, sweet Mari. You are the bravest young lady I have ever known.”

After those talks, Mari seemed to cheer up a little.

Lexi, on the other hand kept imagining the showdown. It played nonstop in her head. Her heart ached for Mari, who was too young to have to go through something like that.

At the same time, her heart rejoiced that Mari was so protective of her vampire friends. It made her feel a tiny bit of hope that maybe one day vampires and humans could get along and coexist in peace. Even Will and Josh didn’t hate them as much as they did in the beginning. They didn’t treat them differently anymore. There wasn’t as much tension in the air between them. To coexist after this plague would be the best thing that had ever happened.

Lexi knew the vampires had died out considerably since the plague happened. Miguel and Lukas figured out numbers of previous councils and the results broke her heart. The numbers were almost nonexistent. The number of vampires in North America had dwindled down to barely a hundred. Now those numbers across seas were different, and Miguel had thrown the idea around about moving over there once their commitment was fulfilled.

Lexi didn’t know, though. She didn’t want to leave. Mainly because of Mari, even though she would grow up and no longer need her around. Lexi knew that no matter how long she lived after this, her life would never be the same without her Mari.

The captain continued to be stiff and authoritative. Mari prayed for winter to come to an end. She longed to play out in the sunlight, to start her gardening again. She had dreams of when the season changed, imagining that her daddy and uncles would be back. In one dream, the sun was shining, and the crisp Texas spring air was cool on her skin. She was outside on the porch and her daddy appeared out of thin air. Other dreams were slightly different, but the outcome was always the same. The men would come back and deep down, she knew everything would finally be okay once they did.

***

Van was taking a nap in the hammock she and Makayla had rigged up in the back of the house. It was Makayla’s idea when they had found an old cloth sail in the shed one day.

Rigging it up had proven difficult. Often one of them would wind up on their ass on the ground, laughing hard. Once it was up, they were proud. It was used. A lot. It became Van’s favorite place. Since they didn’t pull guards anymore, she spent her hours out there, staring up into the gray sky.

What woke Van was the hard swinging of the hammock. It rocked from side to side violently. Her eyes snapped open and she noticed the branches moving with a high wind.

“What in the world…” she muttered aloud.

Mari ran out the back door. “Van! Van! There’s a chopper in the air. It’s landing!”

Van hopped out of the hammock and followed the girl around the house. The rest of their family was out on the porch, shielding their eyes from the wind as a helicopter came closer and closer to the ground. It was unusual. The army relied on their trucks, hardly using the helicopters.

They huddled together, holding onto one another as they witnessed something that they never thought was going to happen.

Josh was out first. He was dressed in cargo camouflage pants and a thin shirt with a camo jacket on. He looked the same, except more muscular. Makayla gasped. She reached for her sister’s hand and squeezed. Will was next, his body even more transformed than Josh’s. He had on the same type of clothes and a baseball bat, his katana sheathed at his side. He scanned the small group, locked eyes with Van, and smiled. Van instantly felt dizzy.

Brendan was last, and they couldn’t hold Mari back once she saw him. At the top of her lungs she screamed, “Daddy!” She then ran as hard as she could, her ponytail bouncing up and down. Tears came to Van’s eyes at the reunion. Brendan dropped the bag he was carrying and bent down on one knee with arms wide open. She ran straight into them, knocking Brendan slightly off balance. It was a beautiful sight. Van couldn’t help herself; she broke away from the group’s grasp and ran toward Will, who picked her up with one arm, immediately kissing her. Makayla shyly walked toward Josh and gave him a hug. He surprised her with a kiss.

After more reuniting, more hugging and tears, everyone settled in the kitchen. Mari wouldn’t let her daddy go, and Brendan didn’t seem to mind the least bit.

The captain left them alone during their reunion. The helicopter flew off, but nobody paid attention as they got reacquainted with the guys. They told them about losing Nathan, Brendan’s voice wobbling as he shared the news. They told them about Peter, and the men’s faces fell. There was so much to catch up on, they didn’t know where else to start. They took the rest of the day talking, laughing, and listening intently to the stories that the war would soon be over.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Change didn’t happen overnight. It felt like it wouldn’t happen at all at some points. Brendan, Josh, and Will adjusted to life back at the compound and the presence of their fellow soldiers. They took up command posts, working with the captain on certain aspects. They found him to be an arrogant and harsh man. He regarded Brendan, as Mari’s father, with resentment about his men being killed. He was standoffish, afraid that he was going to lose their camp now that they were back.

Will and Josh sat around after dinner on the porch a couple weeks after they had returned. Each held a beer as they sat in the old rocking chairs overlooking the yard.

“War changes people; we’ve always heard that phrase. I just didn’t know how true it was until now,” Will said one evening as they were sitting on the porch drinking a beer. Somehow, the army was in constant supply of the beverage.

“When I served, I didn’t have to serve in any war. Some of my buddies did, and they were never the same. That’s how it is now. We will never be the same. You know how Mark, Paul, and Elijah all kind of went a little insane? I think that’s normal. We travelled down that rabbit hole and we came back up completely different men. And I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t. We’ve seen too much shit. Shit we would have never seen if we had stayed here. Even killing vampires in the past never amounted to the kind of stuff I did while we were gone, man. It’s just… I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Van never asks me what happened. But sometimes JJ, sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat with tears running down my damn face because of stupid ass nightmares that won’t leave me alone.” Will exhaled loudly and slumped over, like the admission had taken a physical toll on his body.

Josh cleared his throat, took a long pull of his beer, and said, “I know, Will. All those dead heads we killed were people once. Like me and you. I just don’t understand why this happened. Why it only took one damn vampire to turn one dead human into a zombie and all hell broke loose? I have nightmares too, man, where Mark and Elijah would hack away at those dead heads until they were nothing but a pile of blood and skin and bones. It was disgusting how animalistic they became, how funny they thought it was. Sure, my rage and aggression got the best of me sometimes, but if I ever resort to that, shoot me. Straight up just put a bullet in my head, ‘cause once I cross that line, I don’t need to be around anymore.”

“Brendan kind of scared me that time with the whole Valentine’s thing. Pulling the heart out and squishing it. I think he had a really hard time wherever he was,” Will said.

“Yeah, I think so too. He doesn’t say much. But I think he went through some dark shit.”

The two friends were silent for a while after that. They watched the darkening sky, the trees blowing in the wind. The seasons were changing, and the captain had said that at the end of springtime they would go back to Washington to help with the rebuild. Will, Josh, and Brendan all declined to come. They were under no obligation to, and their place was in Texas. They weren’t going to leave for a long time.

“I wonder how they plan to rebuild. I mean, how do you rebuild a country?” Will wondered out loud. 

“I don’t know. Bring in help from across seas, maybe?” Josh offered.

“Fuck them overseas. They never helped us during all this bullshit. Why should we rely on them now?”

“It’s all politics. They helped house the President.”

“Is he even alive? Is he going to take over now that all the hard shit’s been taken care of? What a pansy ass.”

“Well, we need a leader, I guess.”

“Fuck that. I’ll be king.”

“Dude, you are so random.”

“Well, I don’t want a pansy-ass president who ran away at the first sign of trouble. Who’s probably been sitting on his ass, eating filet minion and having running water, while every else is fighting for their life.”

Josh chuckled. “Yeah…”

“This is giving me a headache. I say we go to an island and make it ours. We can sip margaritas for the rest of our lives. Just move the whole compound out there and stake claim to it.”

“That would be nice.”

“We take the vampires with us?” Will asked, an eyebrow raised. Josh could tell he was drunk.

“Yeah, sure; why the hell not?” 

“Wonder if they like to swim?” The men laughed.

“What are you two giggling about?” Lexi asked as she appeared on the porch. She smiled shyly at the men.

“Actually, we were talking about if vampires swim or not.”

She sat down and stared at them dubiously. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

There was a pause as she stared at them, mouth drawn down into a frown, and mumbled, “Yes we do.”

The men looked at her, then at each other, and all three exploded with laughter.

“What a silly thing to wonder,” Lexi finally said, catching her breath. The vampires were a lot more carefree now that the army was leaving. The rules and regulations had also gone relaxed, and the soldiers kept to themselves around the base, giving the vampires more freedom to wander outside the house.

“It is. It’s even sillier to imagine that we’ve been partners for almost seven years now and we know hardly anything about you guys,” Josh remarked.

Lexi nodded thoughtfully. “The vampire world can be complicated. Our histories are long, since we live forever.”

“Mari knows more than anyone, though. She gets the stories out of you, huh?”

Lexi beamed. “Yes, that little girl has quite the effect. She loves my stories; Sienna’s too, but especially Miguel’s since he’s from Brazil.”

“So what do you think you guys are going to do once things get back to normal? The new America and whatnot?”

She took her time answering. “I don’t know. It’s so different than it used to be. We’re used to change. We adapt easily. This time though, it was such a difficult situation. We have heard of other groups of vampires, not that many, though. Miguel wants to visit his homeland. See how they fared over there. We’ve heard that things are the same, everyone continued on while we were stuck. Most the vampires living in the United States moved away. To other countries.”

“Why didn’t y’all?” Will asked.

Lexi met his stare. “Because we had an obligation to you. To this family. You helped us when we were in dire straits. We couldn’t forget that. Couldn’t leave you to fend for yourself. Other vampires do not regard humans like we do. But I couldn’t just throw my responsibilities away. After a while, this group wasn’t a responsibility. It was a family. To us. And we don’t leave family. No matter what.” She gave a small smile and then cast her gaze down.

Josh didn’t know how to respond. It was a sincere statement and he was grateful the vampires never left them. He didn’t know if they would have survived without them.

“I do know that I would like to keep in contact with the group. Wherever y’all may go. Or if y’all stay. I would like that very much. I don’t think I could let Mari grow up without being in her life. She means the world to me.” She paused before continuing. “Before, when I was a human, it was every girl’s dream to grow up and have a family of her own. That’s what we were taught to strive for. To accomplish that was to accomplish everything. I was turned too soon, though. Too early. I hadn’t even had a suitor when my father turned me. That’s the part that hurt the most. Not to ever have a family of my own. With you guys—and with Mari especially—it’s helped me. Helped me get over my resentment towards my father, my anger, my fear.

“Will, I knew your father. He and my father knew each other. Had come in contact, actually, in a fight before. My father wasn’t a fighter. He was a powerful leader, but he knew there were some vampires that were nothing but bloodthirsty. So he and your father, Jacob, had a deal. Samuel let your father know where the bad vampires were, and there were a lot, in order for our population to be kept at an ideal number. Samuel wanted us to live in peace and, actually, that was Jacob’s plan as well.”

Will looked stunned. “I never knew that.”

Lexi shook her head. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I think when your father formed the group he did, his dreams were squashed. Nobody likes anything that they don’t understand. And his friends didn’t understand the respect he and Samuel had for each other. Instead they turned to hate and the fear they had kept the embers of the hate burning. When he mentioned them living in harmony, they called him a fool. Told him he was weak. So he kept those opinions to himself.”

Will nodded. “Yeah, those people were a bunch of crazy hunters, that’s for sure.”

“I often wonder if it was by coincidence that we ran into you guys that night. But I’ve come to the conclusion that we have a destiny. Each of us. Even us vampires. Our paths were meant to cross at that time because needed each other in order to live.” Lexi sighed and stood up. “I’ll leave you two, but please think about what I said. I would like to remain in contact with the family. You are both near and dear to my heart.” She brought her hands up to her chest and smiled.

When she left the men were silent. Finally, Will spoke. “Who would’ve thought that we would end up friends with them, connected like we are.”

“Not me.”

“It makes me regret killing Claire and Myra. I don’t think I should have done it and, for that I’m sorry, JJ. I really am.”

Josh swallowed the lump that appeared in his throat at the mention of Myra’s name. It had been a while since he’d thought of her, and that made him feel guilty. He wondered how she would have made it during this zombie plague. How she would have survived. She was a giver, always. She would have made her place helping those in need.

“I forgave you a long time ago, man. It’s okay. I promise I hold no animosity toward you. We’ve been through too much. You were just trying to save my life. That’s okay in my book.”

The men shook hands and continued to drink, waiting until it was too cold to stay outside.