Chapter Twelve
No matter how much I hinted then outright begged, Dad wouldn’t hear of us staying any longer. The thought of leaving made me feel empty inside. Part of me thought of Samuel’s cottage as home.
“If you like him, you’ll give him a better chance of survival,” he told me harshly. “He’s going to be fine out here. But only if we leave.”
Samuel seemed deflated by our preparations. He tried to send some food with us, but Dad secretly replaced most of it. We couldn’t take too much, not when Samuel was going to be alone for who knew how long. He was so old. Who knew how long he had left? But at least he would die in the place he loved, surrounded by good memories and his witch’s luck.
“Are you sure we can’t stay?” I whispered.
“One foot in front of the other,” Dad said, and he gave me an unexpected hug. Purpose was the only thing that gave him hope, and I didn’t have the heart to try to take that away. Besides, our chances of escaping seemed good, maybe even great, and if help was coming, or if help had already arrived, then everything would change.
Before we left, Samuel pressed the book into my hands.
“It’s yours,” I said.
“You need to finish the story,” he said firmly. “Never leave anything unfinished, young lady. That’s my lesson to you.”
Smiling, I took the book and promised to return it when everything went back to normal.
He waved a hand. “Keep it. My gift to send you on your way. You never return a gift. It’s bad manners. Lesson number two.”
Laughing, I hugged him. Dad wasn’t watching, so he couldn’t give me a warning look. “Be careful,” I said. “If anything comes here—”
“I’ll beat them with my walking stick,” he finished with a grin. “Don’t go worrying about me. I’m not the one daft enough to run straight into the face of danger.”
“We’ll survive,” I said. “No giving up, right?”
“That’s the spirit.”
He reminded Dad about the landmarks we would pass, and then we were on our way.
With a clearer route and a dirt road to follow, keeping to the right path was easier. The dirt road eventually became a paved one, and finally we came to the bridge. We crossed it and found our way out of the moors and back onto dangerous ground that would lead us to the places we needed to go.
“Do you think help is coming?” I asked.
“If it does, it’ll go south first,” Dad said. “Might be too late for here if it ever comes this way. We could have to fight our way out. You understand that, right, Jess?”
“We should have stayed with him. We could have kept him safe.”
“You know why we didn’t.”
And there it was, that dismissive tone, the one that made Dad my boss rather than my father.
“You’re impossible sometimes,” I snapped.
“This is why we can’t stay in the one place. You’re ridiculous. You can’t just impose yourself on people and expect them to open their doors for you. He’s an old man. He doesn’t deserve the intrusion.”
“He was lonely!”
“He was fine.”
I fell silent. Dad and I needed a buffer between us, or else we butted heads constantly. I was so tired of it.
After that, we saw bodies irregularly. Not all of them human.
“People are fighting back,” I said.
“Oh, so you’re speaking to me again?”
I shut my mouth. But it was evident some small battles had been fought. I wondered if Bruce and Tia and Ruby were still alive. I wondered what Sonia had told them all. Had we died in their imaginations? Or was I a worse monster than those they hid from? Staying with Samuel had helped me forget about them, but wandering the cold empty streets in perfect silence with Dad, they were all I could think about.
We stayed in an empty house that night. We even found some blankets to huddle under. The route we took must have sent us farther south, into places that had already been hit. We saw nobody at all.
“Think they’re all dead?” I whispered in the dark.
“Maybe they found some place safe. Maybe that bit in the radio transmission about evacuations was right.”
I hoped that were true, but I didn’t believe it.
The next day, we found a shop that had been looted, but that still had a few things lying around, as if they had been dropped by someone in a hurry.
“Why isn’t the government helping?” I asked as we sat on a freezer, sharing a bar of chocolate. “There’s nothing out there, no helicopters, nothing.”
“Perhaps they are. Or they evacuated here already. Maybe what we think is going on is not really going on. What if it’s not as bad as it looks?”
“It looks like people are being wiped out.”
“There would be more bodies.”
There were some bodies, but not enough for a massacre in such a large town. The people were somewhere else. They had to be.
“Before… Bruce said we weren’t finding enough remains. The night Sonia and Bruce came after us, we found an old man being attacked. Before he died, he told us the vampires had killed most people but had taken some of them with them. What if that’s what happened here?”
“Try not to think about it,” he said, but he looked worried. “The vampires feed on humans. They can’t kill all of them.”
“What if the whole world is overrun?” I asked. “What then?”
“Couldn’t be. Somebody would have nuked this place by now.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“It’s true. If it were an outbreak, then some human would panic and persuade the others to destroy everything. There’s nothing we can do except move on and stay alive.”
“If this place has been hit already, then maybe it’s a good place to stay.”
“None of the radios are picking up signals.”
I felt deflated all over again. Dad had been obsessive about checking things: cars, houses, everything. There was no electricity, no signals, no way of contacting anyone. Who would we call anyway?
Dad found a car with a small amount of gas. He managed to start it, and we drove for an hour before the car couldn’t run anymore.
“At least we didn’t have to walk for a bit,” Dad said. “We should sleep in it. I doubt we’ll make it to another town before nightfall. Think you can rest in the back?”
I climbed into the backseat and stretched out, while Dad reclined the driver’s seat as far as it would go. We slept during the day when we could because it was impossible to sleep during the cold nights. We were too jumpy and fearful, and even if one of us kept watch, the other would usually stay awake, too. It was safer that way. The monsters only came out at night—unless I could be considered one, too.
“It’s not like I drink blood,” I blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“You made me out to be a monster, you and Sonia. It’s not like I can’t think or see right from wrong. It’s not like I have fangs and—”
“You mean like that woman you’re obsessed with?”
“I’m not obsessed. And she wasn’t like that. Yeah, she had fangs, but she wasn’t using them. She was helping people.”
“For all you know, she drained a few children for breakfast that day. She was trying to survive, but all she did was make our world unsafe. Look at us now. People like her did this. If she had kept her mouth shut—”
“If she had kept her mouth shut, then maybe boats wouldn’t be heading to Ireland.”
“I’m not listening to you when you use that tone, Jessica.”
“Forget it,” I mumbled, rolling over and trying to get comfortable. I dozed off, but my dreams terrified me, leaving me shaken. I desperately wanted to leave the empty town behind.
“Can we walk?” I asked after a while. “I can’t stay here. I don’t like sitting here, and—”
“Fine,” Dad said. “It’s getting late. We can walk away from the road. Keep listening for—”
“I know the drill, Dad. Let’s just get to the next town and hope people aren’t dead.”
We set off again, weighed down by backpacks we had filled with essentials. Our idea of essentials had probably always been different to most people, and I supposed the fact we were used to running gave us an advantage when the world seemed to end.
Snow drifted prettily as we trudged through fields to avoid any main roads. Dead cows were scattered across the grass, the carcasses half frozen.
I glanced at Dad. “Monsters?”
“Possibly. They’re so feral.” He shuddered. “They must be desperate to feed all of the time. Impossible to fight against.”
“I haven’t even seen a mouse or a bird in a long time.”
“A new predator is around. Perhaps they’re as much in fear as the rest of us.”
We came to a village and entered carefully. Something hung in the air, a dark sensation that made my skin crawl. I had my own built-in warning signal. The vampirish monsters were definitely near.
“Maybe we should turn back,” I said, looking around nervously at the bloodied walls of small stone cottages. It looked relatively fresh. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“Yes,” Dad said. “I think you’re right.”
We headed back toward the fields. Not far out of the village, we heard grunting. I turned around to see a monster just standing there, looking at us, blood dripping from its chin. For some reason, the monsters always seemed to stare at me for a couple of seconds before they attacked. Perhaps they were trying to figure out what I might be, and my presence was as confusing to them as theirs were to me.
“Just the one,” I said. “We can take it.”
“Are you sure?” Dad whispered, gripping a knife tightly.
“I need the practice, right?”
We separated. The monster looked from one of us to the other as we circled it, but then it made a decision and ran straight for me. I ducked and rolled out of the way. The creature was slow to recover. It skidded and collided with the corner of a building, making a strangely human sound upon impact. I swung a stick at its head, but the monster lashed out with both hands. It caught me with one fist, but it didn’t follow through enough to make me pause. I knew Dad would flank the thing, so I kept its attention, slashing out and avoiding its attacks.
It leapt into the air and slammed into my chest. We both crumpled to the ground. I wheezed, struggling to catch my breath while holding the monster away from my arteries. It snapped and almost bit my finger right off. I gripped its neck and pinched, holding the creature in place long enough for Dad to put a blade through the back of its skull.
I pushed the thing off me in disgust, and Dad helped me to my feet. Then the hair on the back of my neck stood to attention, and I whirled around in horror. Three, four… five beasts surrounded us, sniffing the air, all of their eyes on me.
“Run!” Dad yelled. “Get out of here, Jess.”
“I can’t leave you!”
He grabbed my hand and ran, pulling me along with him. A strange sound filled the air, like the creatures’ growling mixed with something else. Then a heavy army tank appeared, rolling down the main street. We had almost reached it, but the monsters were catching up.
A man wearing a ski mask popped up on top of the tank. “Get down!”
We obeyed, throwing ourselves on the ground as he aimed a large rifle. The tank kept rolling, running right over the first monster, and the man shot the rest in the head, one by one, quickly and efficiently.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the stars and the falling snow, trying to savour the feeling. We were saved. We weren’t alone, and we hadn’t just been torn apart by a gang of monsters.
The man approached us and pointed the gun at my head. “On your feet,” he demanded gruffly. He was dressed in army gear, and he had saved us, so what the hell was he doing?
Dad held out his hands. “We’re just—”
“On your feet!” the soldier shouted.
We slowly got to our feet.
“Turn around,” he added.
I turned my back on him with my heart in my throat. It went against everything inside me to turn my back on a potential enemy. I felt hands skate up and down my body. I glanced over and saw hands patting down Dad, too.
“All good,” a woman said. “No guns. Well prepared to face a monster or two, though.”
“Just not five,” a second man said with a laugh.
“Face me,” the first man said.
I turned, and he yanked off his ski mask. My breath caught in my throat. He looked young, maybe early twenties, and he was gorgeous. He had short brown hair and deep blue eyes, and I could feel my cheeks going up in flames as he looked at us with interest.
“Where you heading to?” he asked. A dimple in his cheek danced as he spoke.
“Anywhere those things aren’t,” Dad said. “We heard a radio broadcast went out about a boat leaving the country. Thought we’d take a chance.”
“You know what’s going on?”
Dad hesitated. “We’ve heard rumours. We saw a video of a woman in Ireland telling the world that things exist. That’s about it.”
The guy nodded. “More than rumours. The army was alerted, but it was too late. The big cities were already lost. Everyone from the surrounding villages is holed up in a nearby town. There’s room for two more. We have food, blankets, and a doctor. We’re set up in a detention centre until we can make contact with someone who matters. You’ll be sleeping in a cell, but you get used to it.”
Dad’s face reddened. “We’re not sleeping in a cell.”
The man shrugged. “We’ll sort something out.”
“We’re looking for a boat,” Dad said.
“Not our problem,” the woman said. “There’s not just these monsters running around. There are all kinds of things. Things you wouldn’t believe in. Gotta protect ourselves from them, too.”
“But aren’t they being attacked, too?” I blurted. “That woman in Ireland. She had… fangs, and she said—”
“Listen, honey. Right now, we’re on lockdown. Anything that isn’t human dies. Anything. And we can’t let anyone wander around here and get in the way of what we have to do. We’re taking you back, exchanging information, and when it’s daylight, we’ll talk about helping you to this boat. If it even exists. Deal?”
Dad agreed before I could say anything else. We trudged after two of the group, leaving the others with the tank.
“We keep cars around, just in case.” The woman yanked off her ski mask, revealing strawberry-blond hair in a pixie cut. “There’s one around the corner.”
“It’s not far,” the young man said when I yawned. “You look like you could use a decent night’s sleep.”
I nodded. “Hard to relax when… you know.”
“It’ll be easy when you have so many people keeping watch.”
“Have you heard from anyone in London?” Dad asked. “Or anywhere really?”
“Brief contact only. Not enough. From what we hear, it sounds like they just want to cut us down to size. If we do what they say, they’ll probably go easy on us.”
“Enough, Dace,” the woman snapped. “We’re not getting on our knees for anyone.”
Our rescuer, Dace, held up a hand. “I’m just saying. They’re not trying to wipe us out.”
“Naw, just keep us breeding so they can feed on our children,” she said smartly. “Get a grip.”
We made it to the car, and Dad and I got into the backseat. Dace drove, while the woman sat in the passenger seat.
“Is it far?” Dad asked. “This detention centre.”
“Not too far.”
“And what happened to the prisoners?”
“War has a way of changing circumstances,” Dace replied.
The woman sent a sharp look his way, but I couldn’t read what was behind her eyes.
Dad nodded, but his heartbeat raced. We might have gone straight from the frying pan and into the fire, but we also may have found our best chance at survival. They had a tank. They were soldiers. If anyone could change the tide, it had to be them.
“Is it going to be safe for my daughter?” Dad asked, his voice surprisingly wobbly. “We’ve had… trouble along the way.”
“I get it,” the woman said. “Shit happens, but we do our best to keep people happy. You’ll be with the other families, so you should be fine.”
“We’ll keep an eye on her if that makes you feel better,” Dace said, turning in his seat to flash me a brief, dazzling smile.
Dad’s face clouded over. I could tell that what Dace had said didn’t make him feel better at all.
I didn’t care. We weren’t alone anymore, and we had a chance to learn more. The price to pay was keeping silent about how different we were, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’d already had a lifetime of training in secrecy.