Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty

Nobody spoke for what felt like a century. We didn’t even look at each other, just sat there with the presence of Doctor Stewart’s body hanging heavy in the room. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him yet, I could only stare at the floor trying to make sense of everything. I heard hellish screams all around, echoing through the building, but they were distant to me now.

‘He was right,’ Lisa said, ‘we need to get people out of here.’ She got to her feet steadily, but I could tell she was avoiding looking at the body too. I didn’t make an attempt to follow her, my legs had turned to cement.

‘Please,’ Lisa’s eyes were wet and she was biting her lip, she looked terrified just for a moment. ‘We can deal with this mess later.’

‘Do you think he was lying, or mistaken,’ my heavy tongue found the words.’

‘No,’ Lisa said firmly, ‘thirty years is a long time. You have to forget that now, people are counting on us.’

‘Teresa,’ I whispered.

It came out of nowhere, Lisa grabbed the collar of my t-shirt with one hand, stretching the material, and with the other hand she slapped me hard across the face.

‘I’m not carrying you through this,’ she snapped at me, ‘I can’t protect you and everyone else by myself.’

It did work to some extent, I felt ashamed that people were dying all around me and I was lacking so much courage. I buried my face in my hands, she was right of course, the only way out was to fight, but I just couldn’t bring myself to even stand up.

‘It’s just,’ I tried to find the right words, ‘I still love her.’

‘I understand,’ she said, ‘and if I find that bitch now I’ll rip her in half.’ She gave me the shadow of a dangerous smile. ‘But you have to help me, or we’ll die in here.’ She took my hand and helped me up, her palm was slick with sweat and I lost her a few times, but eventually I was on my trembling feet again.

I spared the Doctor a glance as we left the relatively peaceful corridor to face whatever lay beyond. I wasn’t scared or disgusted by the sight of him, I just felt saddened. When this facility opened thirty years ago, Doctor Stewart met Jarl and Elizabeth, and believed vampires could be trained. Now the belief he had clung to was drowning in blood. We walked back into the world, closing the door on the doctor and his foolish dreams.

Everything was soaked in blood, the corridors seemed flooded with blood. The building was so sodden in blood that the messes of human organs and bodies on the floor were unrecognisable as anything except mounds of red. I tried hard to keep my vomit in, flies had begun to descend on the dead and the smell had begun to gain the sweet edge of decay. Lisa’s skin looked green as she surveyed the death.

We rarely found a live human, we found a few that were close to death, but beyond help. This was hard, Lisa took their bloodied hands in hers and promised them it would be okay. If they could speak it was mindless babble, I couldn’t watch much of it, turning away from the desperation and pain. Surprisingly, it was the intact bodies that were harder to look at than the pieces torn apart, many bodies still had faces fixed in pain and hands curled into claws.

One horrible moment we came across a woman moaning softly, she indicated downwards, cautiously Lisa lifted up her dress and whatever she saw made her skin turn the colour of those dead vampire ash piles. The woman had a small silver knife, and despite my sudden shocked cry, Lisa slid the knife silently into the woman’s heart.

‘Kill me,’ Lisa whispered, ‘that’s what she was saying.’

‘How bad was her injury?’ I asked, my hands shaking and my throat drying.

Lisa simply shook her head, clearly she didn’t want to discuss it any further. We passed the woman without a backwards glance, but Lisa was shaking a lot more than me. I placed a hand on hers and she turned to face me, her face still ash grey.

‘We could run away,’ I said, ‘leave all this.’

‘No,’ she said, we have to help.

Many corridors were silent and only filled with the dead or dying. On several occasions we encountered a live vampire, feeding so greedily on a corpse that they were easy to kill. A young porter ran straight into Lisa clutching a stake, luckily they buried it in the air just above her shoulder and not through her flesh.

The young man stared wearily at Lisa for a few moments and she did the same thing, not lowering her weapon. The boy was probably about twenty, and he was mostly covered in blood, a wild reckless look in his eyes. When he had realised that Lisa and I were human, he did this mostly from looking at my broken arm; he called out in French. There were about seven of them, it was hard to tell because they too were all covered in blood, but they were all workers and all carrying weapons.

Lisa began to talk rapidly in relief to them, and they shared her enthusiasm. For one woman the presence of another capable human had driven her to silent bloody tears. A vampire approached the group, teeth barred ready to strike, I cried out, but they were ahead of me, working as a team they had reduced the creature to dust in a hazy blur of movement.

This was definitely the team we wanted to be with, as we stuck with them, I began to see a way out of this. They were capable and smart, we moved in a circle, so that everyone was protected. Every time we met a vampire, it was dead within minutes. The group had a steely determination, they had seen so much death tonight and they were now ready to kill every vampire they saw until there were none left. To my joy, there were also still people left to save, and we worked on clearing the passages that led to the main door.

Several people in the group had injuries themselves, one woman had a broken arm which hadn’t been fixed by a professional doctor like mine, just strung up with some found bandages, when she collapsed through, warm caring hands pulled her back onto her feet. Very few words were spoken in the group, we were just focused on getting everyone out safely, or maybe, like me, they felt the screams of death had said it all.    

The doors opened wide and we spilled out onto a field of burning cars, hot and stifling. Surviving nurses and doctors were walking through the injured, handing out saved medicines and bottles of water. It felt for a moment like we were recovering, like everything was over and I could breathe again. I felt sighs all all around me, and I imagined for a moment that they were all dead.

That’s when I saw Elizabeth. She was smiling, no, grinning, widely. I had never seen her face stretched like that, like a Cheshire cat. For a moment it made her ugly, wild and crazy. She was still wearing that thin dress, crouched beneath the ivy which decorated the outside walls of the building, her hands grasped around fragile vines. In that moment I hated her so much, I wanted to kill her myself. I didn’t want her to be just another victory for the humans.

I broke away from the group, and I hear Lisa shouting at me before, my arm had begun to itch with pain as I hadn’t taken my prescribed painkillers, I was reminded that she gave me this wound and my hatred increased. Before I could reach her she disappeared behind the wall, I cried out in frustration but as I ran to follow her strong arms pulled me back. I heard screams echo through the survivor’s camp.

Fingers closed around the cast on my arm, I could hear the plaster crack and tear before my whole body went rigid with searing pain. I heard myself screaming, as if it were someone else, the felt the bone crack all over again, in a hundred different places.

Laughter echoed in my ears, cruel hard mocking laughter. ‘What did she do to you?’ Alex’s voice was cracked with holding back the laughter, my vision went blurry from the pain and I retched, my throat on fire. I begged for an end, if it meant death, I would’ve welcomed it in that moment.

An inhuman howl made my head spin, so close it was to my ear that it repeated itself over and over. He had let go of me, but the pain remained, it hadn’t even dulled, I felt the heat of the fire and smoke deep in my shattered arm. I crawled over onto my side, spitting and retching and biting my tongue so hard blood spilled over my lips.

It was bright as daylight, everything around me a high wall of fire, the flames cut into the night, turning the world into a vision of hell, impossible to tell where the black smoke ended and the black sky began. Nothing else was visible beyond the fire. Tears streamed down my face and ash seemed to crush my throat.

Standing in front of me was Lisa, hatred etched into every line of her troubled face, the fame reflecting on her skin made her look like a demon, her eyes grotesque and pulsing at the creature before her. Behind Lisa stood her comrades, burnt and bloodied, and each brandishing a wooden stake.

Alex pulled the steak out of his chest with barely a whimper. It had been really close, but not close enough. He saw that he was trapped, trapped by the fire of his own making and trapped by angry faces armed with weapons. He started laughing again, wildly giggling like a naughty child. I could barely make out shapes now, my vision failing with the smoke and pain. Everyone was a gargoyle to me, features twisted.

‘He warned you,’ Alex continued to laugh, ‘Jarl, warned you. We can’t be controlled, or tamed, and now you see what you’ve done.’ He laughed again, ‘look at how many people you’ve killed.’ He clutched his chest. ‘I’ll be skipping to hell with a song in my heart.’

Lisa didn’t say anything, she just stared, that pain and sorrow and hatred changing her face forever. The laughter went on, and on, until it lost all meaning, until it was animal gibberish. It was devoid of everything which makes laughter what it is, no understanding of humanity remained.

They carried him, high on their shoulders. He hadn’t even attacked them, he had just laughed. As they threw him into the fire his laughed died with him, fading into the smoke.

I remember nothing of the next few hours, I gave in to the pain and for a moment I was resigned to die, when my eyes closed I thought they would never open again.

But they did.

I opened my eyes to another white hospital ceiling, morphine making my head heavy and my thoughts laborious. Lisa was there, her fingers were intertwined with mine and a hollow smile stretched across her face. I understood then, there was no winning or losing, nothing had changed.