The Harvest (Book 1) (12 page)

The kitchen was dominated by a large granite island. Five stools sat empty on one side. A sixth stool had been knocked over. Without conscious thought as to why he bothered, Edward righted the sixth stool. At least there were no dead bodies in here. Relief settled in, even if only reserved for this one detail. He shed his gloves and scarf.

A full pot of coffee was too tempting to pass up. He poured a cup and warmed it in the microwave. He rummaged through the refrigerator, found the bagels and cream cheese. While he waited on the bagel to toast, he turned on the TV, flipped past programmed shows to the news channels. Static and white noise was all he got. He clicked the off button.

Silence closed in, heavy and deafening.

He clicked the TV back on, and flipped to a rerun of ‘Two and Half Men’. He stared at the screen, but didn’t see the actors. The bagel popped up, startling him. He grabbed the two halves, quickly dropped them on a paper towel. He spread a generous portion of cream cheese on each half, picked one up, and took a bite. His actions were mechanical and precise in nature.

Each chew, each bite, each swallow was given his undivided attention. The simple everyday tasks had become his protector.  They kept the more complicated issues at bay. Issues like why no one answered when he called the police or nine-one-one. Or where everyone had disappeared to. And the more obvious and pressing matter of who was ripping people apart and stealing their organs.

Of course all of these issues didn’t amount to squat in light of his most important question that he didn’t have an answer for and he refused his mind to give one. So the crucial aspect of his focus on the mundane prevented hysteria from making an appearance. An unwelcomed guest for certain, one that took over the party and stayed long after everyone else went home.

With a refill of hot coffee in hand, Edward returned to the living room. Along the way he bumped up the thermostat to eighty degrees. He surveyed the furniture until his eyes came to rest on an oversized leather recliner. He set his coffee down. With some pushing and shoving the chair was maneuvered into a corner, out of sight from anyone that might peek through the cracks of the shutters.

Edward settled into the chair, coffee in one hand, cell phone in the other. He took a few sips of the coffee. Soon his eyelids began to droop. He set the cup on the floor, leaned back and closed his eyes. His chest moved up and down in a rhythmic pattern. 

An hour later Jenni and Ryan paid a visit to Edward. Jenni gave Ryan a piggy back ride. They ran into a mountain of leaves and disappear from his sight. Edward’s chest tightened. He ran into the pile after them, but the leaves had the consistency of mud after a rain shower and clung to his hands and face. The harder he tried to swim through the pile the thicker the leaves became. He fell to his knees and clawed his way through, stopping when his hand landed on a foot.

The leaves disappeared leaving two small piles. Edward didn’t want to look at those piles. He already knew who was lying underneath and he didn’t need confirmation of sight, but his subconscious was controlling this show, commanding him to look. He reached out. His fingers seemed a far distance from his face. He touched the leaves and they fell away. Ryan stared up at him.

Edward did the same to the second pile, and found Jenni. At first he felt elated. He tossed handful of leaves from Jenni and Ryan, but stopped when a single drop of blood fell onto his bare foot. The leaves fell from his hand, his eyes moved in slow motion over the naked body of his wife. He stopped where the blood began.

In his chair Edward gripped the arms, his nails digging into the leather. He yelled out. The sound of his voice woke him and he bolted from the chair, hands up in a defensive position. There was no one in the room. He listened to the house. All was quiet. He lowered his hands, the dream faded and awareness returned.

Dusk was upon him. In a few minutes it would be completely dark outside. Panic ensued as he realized he couldn’t walk home, not in this weather, not in the dark with a maniac on the loose, but what if Jenni and Ryan came back? What if Ryan came home alone and Edward wasn’t there? Did he lock the door before he left? Will his son be able to get in the house? Panic seized his chest, began to squeeze reason out.  

“Pull it together Edward.” He demanded out loud. “What are you a man or a cupcake?” He repeated the infamous words of his father, the late Joseph Edward McGrath. 

“I’m a man dad.” He answered his dad.

“Good, because this world’s already full of cupcakes. It don’t need no more.” Edward nodded in agreement.

“I don’t know what to do.” He hung his head, feeling utterly alone.

‘Don’t know what to do? Hogwash. Use that mush between your ears to come up with a solution to this deeply pickled situation. Ain’t never been in a pickle I couldn’t reason my way out of. You just need to man up son and get to thinkin’.

“Right.”  And his father was always right. A little reason added to the recipe was a sure way to guarantee perfect results every time. Edward knew it was the one ingredient he needed for his survival.

With the house covered in darkness, Edward moved through the rooms at a slow pace. He debated over using lights for several minutes. He didn’t want to attract the wrong attention, but worried someone alive might seek refuge. In the end he decided lights were too risky. Using a flashlight he found in the kitchen, he navigated to a bathroom. After washing his face, he rubbed toothpaste across his teeth and rinsed with mouthwash.

Edward returned to the leather chair, stretched out under a blanket and watched the shadows. He closed his eyes. After what seemed like mere seconds of time gone by, Edward’s eyes snapped open. His watch indicated he’d been asleep for three hours. He lay there listening to the silence. Outside the window he thought he heard something heavy fall or drop on the snow near the window. Not daring to move, Edward lay still and waited. Farther away from the house he heard a crash and then another. At each explosion of noise he flinched. He couldn’t know then the cause, but when he investigated the next morning, he would discover the awful truth.

9 SECTION SEVEN

The lights in the concrete room went out, leaving it near dark with only a few small emergency lights glowing high above. Eve didn’t care about the lights. Her vision was exceptional day or night.

Outside her prison the girls moved about. Soon a flashlight came on and then another. Whispers about vampires and shape changers were exchanged. Someone flashed a beam of light in her direction, making sure she was still behind the glass. She’d been called a vampire many times, as far back as 70 B.C., but did not know if she was one or a descendent of one.

The stories she heard about vampires changed over the centuries and many of the details didn’t ring true. She’d been inside various sacred places and even touched holy water without peril. Although she preferred the night, she could walk in the sunlight the same as a human. The one detail remaining constant over time was the vampire’s need for blood. This one commonality, passed down from generation to generation, gave her pause to consider the possibility that her kind may have flourished on Earth once upon a time.

Eve walked up to the glass wall facing the girls. For selfish reasons she liked having them near, being able to smell their blood and knowing, if the need arose, her life source was in close range. She amused herself by watching and listening to them. Although she herself never did anything note worthy, she found them staring in her direction quite often.

One of the younger girls had attempted to engage in a conversation by asking Eve her name and where she was from. The girl was quickly admonished by an older girl and dragged back to her cot. Eve would have enjoyed listening to the girl, whose name was Charlie. A human with an intelligent mind was always worth her time.

At first she was curious as to why the general decided this room a safe place to keep the girls, but not long after their arrival the evening visits began and it became apparent the girls weren’t being kept there for safety. Each evening one of the general’s men would come and take a girl from the room. At first the girls cried and fought from going, but then the sniveler would pop up out of nowhere wielding his belt like a whip. The girls learned quick to be submissive.

The sniveler, she noticed, took a girl almost nightly and Charlie seemed to be his favorite. He never looked in Eve’s direction, which made no difference to her. She could feel his thoughts and they left a rancid taste in her mouth, worse than stale blood. He was a walking contradiction with his sweet smell, and rotten to the core soul. It must be nature’s way of eradicating the world of his kind. If his blood was rotten, she would never have desired to kill him.

She heard the girls whispering about the creatures that had landed on Earth and killed all living things. Which, thinking her food supply might have been wiped out, deeply concerned her, but she couldn’t ascertain fact from fiction when listening to the girl’s chatter. Aside from the name Sundogs, it seemed the humans knew very little about the predators and were ill equipped to fight against them. When she considered leaving the mountain, the voice had shown her what took place and assured her she need not worry.

Much else she overheard from the girls was useless drivel. The only thoughts to peak her interest were those coming from Charlie, who had scoffed at the idea Eve might be a vampire. Charlie believed Eve was an alien from a far away planet who had been separated from her people. Eve liked that idea and more so the part about her having people. She liked to think the possibility existed.

Her eyes sought out Charlie. This girl was a fighter. She heard Charlie’s blood coursing through her veins each evening when the men came to choose a girl. She saw the venom in her eyes, sensed the anger inside her mind. She liked Charlie and the thing she liked most about Charlie was her hatred for the sniveler. Eve believed Charlie might kill him before she herself had the opportunity, which didn’t bother her, as long as she could have his blood.

On the long days between feedings, she thought about making Charlie like her. She knew this could be done, but had only succumbed to the temptation once in her life. That was all part of the voice’s plan for her and had been more of a high jacking than a transformation.

Her reasoning for not creating others of her kind was primal. Having competition for food was something in every aspect that made sense to avoid. She’d witnessed up close how humans behaved when resources were scarce and firmly believed her kind would behave much worse.

Another fact she’d discovered through eavesdropping was hundreds of feet a mountain sat on top of them. She knew they were underground, but hadn’t known how deep. However this was of little importance to her other than knowing which direction to go when she left. The timing of her impending departure was soon, maybe sooner than she had anticipated.

She sat on her bed and closed her eyes. Reaching out with her mind, she searched for him, for Captain Reynolds. He wasn’t far now, maybe five or six more days before he arrived. Although she could have left at any time, she didn’t question his role in the timing of her departure from the glass cube. The main reason being there was no one to ask, since the voice never answered questions, but only gave direction.

***

Charlie watched the girl inside the glass cube. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be sleeping. Charlie didn’t think she actually slept, but had nothing to base this assumption on other than her own reasoning. The other girls thought the prisoner was a vampire, which Charlie thought stupid. Although, when they challenged her on it she couldn’t explain why she was fed blood every few days.

Charlie sighed and looked away from the girl. The clock on the wall read seven twenty five. Five more minutes before a pig showed up. She hadn’t been picked in several days, which was a blessing, but only prolonged the inevitable. Captain Chase, or Disciple Morgan as he called himself these days, was sure to come around soon. He never went more than a few days without exercising privileges granted to him by the general. She hoped it wasn’t him.

Five minutes later, on the dot, the door opened and Disciple Morgan walked in. Charlie grimaced, knowing she would be leaving that night. He walked over to her and held out his hand. She smacked it away and he slapped her in the face. She cowered beneath him, promising to behave when he took out his belt. She stood up and followed him from the room. At the door she turned to look back at the girl.

***

Eve watched Charlie being led from the room by the sniveler and was surprised when she turned back to look in her direction. She wanted to raise her hand to Charlie, but stood statuesque. The door closed behind them with a solid thud. She wanted to reach out, to touch the girl’s mind, to provide her strength, but her energy was spent, having used up her reserves on finding Captain Reynolds. If she didn’t get blood soon, measures would have to be taken.

Irritated that she had not been fed in four days, Eve wondered why the general waited so long and concern over her food supply grew more insistent. Sundogs, she repeated to herself the name of the human’s enemy. In her mind she viewed them as predators, and in doing so classified them in the same group that she herself belonged to. This also made them her competition, which was not something she’d ever dealt with, but thoughts of battle made her skin tingle in an unexpected and pleasant manner.

10 DODGE CITY DINER

Inside the Dodge City Diner storage room, Edward slept for the third straight day since being rescued. Austin had found an air mattress and a few more sleeping bags. With Luke’s help, they had transported Edward from the floor to the mattress without waking him. From a pharmacy around the corner, Austin brought back prescription pain killers and salve. After redressing the wounds, Madison draped a light weight cotton cloth over him to keep the dirt away, but allowing his wounds to breathe. She sat by his side wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. “At least he’s stopped talking in his sleep.”