Desolation: Chapters 19 & 20
Dominion of the Damned: Book One
In a world where zombies roam and vampires rule, how far will Hannah Jordan go to survive?
Desolation is the first book in my post-apocalyptic horror trilogy, Dominion of the Damned.
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Chapter Nineteen
It turned out that Zach didn’t particularly care what she wore as long as she showed up. Nevertheless, she changed into her scrubs once she got there. They made her feel more like a real nurse, even though so far the work Zach had given her was more suitable for a filing clerk. She spent the first few hours sorting research notes and organizing files.
“That’s the stuff I never have time to do,” he’d explained, and that much was obvious. The place was a mess.
“It’s time to feed the rats,” he told her after she finished filing a stack of data. “Their food’s up in that cabinet.”
Hannah found the food, and then she found the rats. She hadn’t even noticed them tucked away in the corner. Four of them slept in a pile in one corner of a large, glass tank. A fifth had a cage of its own off to the side. “Be careful with number five,” Zach called. “Be sure you wear the gloves on top of the cage, and don’t get your hands too close to her. She’s infected.”
Hannah looked from Zach to the caged rat and back again. “She’s a zombie rat?”
“Not yet. But she’s a carrier.”
“Why infect rats?”
To his credit, Zach didn’t look at her like it should have been obvious, even though she realized after asking that it was. “To test the efficacy of the vaccine, we have to introduce the virus.” He pointed to Number Five. “That was the latest formula, and it didn’t work. The virus still took hold. Poor thing’ll probably be dead by the end of your shift.”
Hannah frowned at the doomed creature. The rat looked healthy enough at first glance, but her moves were sluggish, and she didn’t seem interested in the food Hannah poured in her dish. “Shouldn’t we put her out of her misery?”
Zach sighed. “I wish we could, but we need to see how long it takes her to die. We’ve made some progress in slowing down how long it takes for the virus to kill. Or transform, as the case may be. It’s not exactly the desired outcome, but it is progress.”
He pushed back from his work station and stood up. “Speaking of which, I need to collect a new sample.” He smiled at Hannah. “It’s time to introduce you to Bob.”
“Bob? You mean that shambler you keep in the old jail?”
Zach looked disappointed. “You already know about that?”
“Chris told me,” she said, and left it at that. She took off the gloves and put away the rat food. Then she found her tote bag where she’d stashed it and took out the Sig.
If Zach was surprised that she carried a gun, he didn’t show it. “You won’t need that. Bob’s strapped down.” Hannah tucked it in the back of her waistband anyway. Zach shrugged. “All right, if it makes you feel better. Let’s go.”
She was a little surprised to see that it was still light outside, even though it was only seven o’clock and still summer. It felt like she’d been stuck in that windowless cave of a lab for more than just a few hours. Zach led her to the old fort. In the late afternoon light she could see why Chris had thought it was worth showing it to her. Every building there was at least a hundred years old, full of history and ghosts of the past.
The old jail was a squat white stucco building with a wide wooden front porch. She could hear Bob’s muffled groans as she followed Zach up the steps and through the front door. Inside, Hannah found herself surrounded by wood. The flooring and paneling looked like it was probably original to the building, and the room held a couple of antique-looking desks. Historical plaques stood next to each. More plaques hung on the wall, along with portraits of men in uniform and paintings of scenes right out of the Old West.
“This place was a museum before,” said Zach. Before what went without saying. Iron cages lined the back of the room, and next to them stood a doorway that opened onto a set of descending stairs. A mindless moan floated up those stairs, and Hannah shuddered.
“This way,” Zach said as he started down the stairs. Hannah followed reluctantly, pulling the gun from her waistband as she went. The grip felt reassuring in her hand.
“Down here is where they kept the most dangerous prisoners,” Zach said. “The walls of each cell are three feet thick, with heavy doors made of oak and iron.” He paused in front of one such door and pulled a key out of his pocket. He fit it into a modern-day padlock and unlocked it. “They kept Geronimo in this one.” He opened the door.
The smell of rotting meat assaulted them, making Hannah’s stomach churn. She had to swallow against her gag reflex as she followed Zach into the tiny cell. Inside, strapped to a gurney, lay Bob. Except he didn’t lie there so much as writhe and squirm. The sight of him made her want to gag some more. His skin showed visible signs of decay, and it had mostly sloughed off where the restraints came in contact with it. His lips were missing, and as he strained toward them and gnashed his teeth, she saw that his tongue was gone, too. The flesh on the bottom half of his face had mostly rotted away.
Zach pulled a pair of gloves out of one pocket and put them on. From the other pocket he drew a scalpel and forceps, along with an empty vial that he handed to Hannah. “This’ll just take a sec.”
He leaned over Bob and carved out a small chunk of his thigh. If the grotesque creature on the gurney felt the scalpel cutting into him, it was impossible to tell. Zach grasped the sample with the forceps and turned back to Hannah. She tucked the gun in her waistband and opened the vial so he could drop it in. She secured the lid and handed it back to Zach, who put everything back in his pockets and stripped off his gloves. “That’s it.”
A hand grabbed Zach’s sleeve. He let out a high pitched scream as it yanked him back. As Bob pulled him down his other hand, or what was left of it, slipped free of its restraint. It grabbed Zach around the back of the neck and pulled him toward those gnashing teeth. Hannah grabbed the gun, took aim, and fired. Bob’s head exploded like a melon. His hands went limp.
Zach fell backward on his rear and scrambled back against the wall, breathing hard. “Shit!”
Hannah brandished the gun. “Thought you said I wouldn’t need this.” Even as she shouted the words they sounded muffled to her ringing ears. She made a mental note to wear ear protection the next time she thought she might have to fire her weapon in an enclosed space.
Zach pointed accusingly at Bob. “That’s never happened before!”
“That’s no reason not to expect it.” She reached down to help him up. After a few deep, calming breaths, he examined the corpse. Raw flesh and gray skin coated the wrist restraints and lay globbed up on the gurney. Hannah had to suppress the urge to vomit.
Zach’s face had gone pale. “He slipped his hands off, like they were gloves.”
“That is so nasty. Can we get out of here now?”
“We have to clean this up. We’ll need to burn the body and disinfect the cell. And I’ll need to ask Carl to get me another sample.”
“Another sample?”
He looked at her. “Another shambler,” he clarified. “And we’ll have to figure out how to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” He sighed and dug the vial back out of his pocket. “Here. I’ll take care of clean-up. You get this back to the lab, and get it into refrigeration. Oh, and it’s about time for the doc’s wakeup call. He stays on the top floor. Get a couple bags of plasma from the tissue bank and take them up to him. You might have to buzz him a few times before he wakes up and answers the door.”
A feeling spread through Hannah’s chest. She couldn’t tell whether it was anticipation or dread. “You want me to come back here and help when I’m done?”
“No thanks, I’ve got it. He’ll probably have some work for you once he gets downstairs.” She nodded, and turned to go. “Hey,” said Zach, and she paused outside of the cell. “Thanks. You saved my life.”
Hannah smiled, and nodded. Then she went to wake the doctor.
She found the elevator to the top floor. It let out into a short hallway with a set of wooden double doors at the opposite end. On the wall next to the door was an electronic key sensor. Above that, a doorbell. She pushed it and a buzzer sounded.
Hannah waited, fidgeting with the plasma bags in her hands. She wondered who it had come from. Who would he be having for breakfast?
After a moment passed she buzzed again, remembering what Zach had said about it sometimes taking a few tries. Another long moment passed. She was about to try knocking when the door opened.
Alek stood there, looking rumpled and groggy, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue boxer briefs. His eyes widened as he looked at her. “Hannah.” He looked down at what he was wearing—or not wearing—and stepped back. “Sorry. I was expecting Zachary. Come in.”
“He sent me to wake you,” she said as she stepped inside. Her gaze swept his apartment, taking it all in, looking everywhere except at him. She held out the plasma bags. “And bring you breakfast.”
He sighed, and she glanced at him as he took the bags from her. “Thanks,” he said, sounding irritated. Or was it embarrassed? “Make yourself at home. I’ll go put something on.”
She started to make an excuse to leave, but it died on her lips as her mind went blank. Instead she nodded, and caught herself stealing a glimpse as he left.
She blew out a breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding and tried to fill her head with visions of Chris. But as she tried to remember their kiss from the night before, Chris’s face morphed into Alek’s, and the way he kissed her was anything but sweet and gentlemanly.
“Stop it,” she muttered. She made herself remember the bags of blood she’d just brought for him to feed on. For all she knew, that was Chris’s blood. The thought made her slightly queasy. She tried to distract herself by looking around the room.
If he had converted his living quarters from office space, it was hard to tell. The room was painted a cheerful, buttery yellow color, definitely not something you’d expect to see in a vampire’s lair. There were no windows. In the lamp light, it looked cozy and inviting. Furniture was sparse, only a dark green sofa and a glass coffee table, with a floor lamp next to the sofa. A bookcase lined one wall, filled with paperback Westerns of all things. Something about the idea of Alek reading obsessively about cowboys and gunfights made her smile. There were also medical books and books on science. And there were pictures. Most of them looked very old.
She picked one up. A wedding portrait, black and white, taken sometime in the 1930s, judging from the style of the bride’s dress. It was all satin, simply cut. A lace veil covered her dark hair and trailed over her shoulders, and a smile lit up her face, radiating happiness across the ages.
The groom looked just as happy. Hannah recognized the grin as it tugged at something in her that she didn’t want to identify. His eyes lacked the sad, haunted quality she was so used to seeing there. Instead they looked happy, and full of adoration.
A door opened behind her. Hannah turned to see Alek coming out of his kitchen, fully dressed in dark jeans and a blue button down, untucked with the sleeves rolled up. He carried two mugs.
Hannah set the picture down as he came over to her. “She was pretty.”
He looked at the picture, and the more familiar look of pain filled those inhumanly blue eyes. “Yes. She was.” He held out a mug to her. When she hesitated, he said, “It’s coffee. If I recall, you like it with milk and one sugar.”
She took the mug. “You noticed.”
He smiled, and some of the pain seemed to leave him. He sipped the contents of his own mug—Hannah didn’t want to think too much about what was in there—before asking, “Do you have a question for me today?”
At first she didn’t know what he meant; but then she remembered their bargain. She glanced back at the picture and briefly considered asking about his wife, but that was obviously a painful subject. She nodded toward his mug instead. “Does it have to be human?”
A crease formed between his eyebrows as he frowned, but then comprehension seemed to dawn. He held up his mug, as if in a toast. “This is French roast. But if you mean the blood, yes. I’m not sure why, but drinking animal blood is about as effective as not feeding at all. I know because I’ve tried living off of it.”
“What happens if you don’t feed?”
“We can go days without feeding, actually. I’ve gone as long as a week before. But the hunger gets worse with each passing day, and if we go too long, it becomes the only thing that drives us. We become feral, mindless, driven only to feed. When that happens we’re hardly any different from those poor bastards outside the gate.”
Hannah stared into her own coffee and contemplated his answer. “So I guess it’s kind of important that you guys stay fed.”
“You could say that. But there has to be a better way then enslaving humanity and forcing them to feed us.”
She took a slow, thoughtful sip. That’s what all of this was about, she realized. This camp, his research. It was all about finding a better way.
She looked back at Alek’s picture on the bookshelf and wondered what he must have been through to make him so different from all the others, so driven to help humanity when all Esme and her ilk wanted was to control them. She thought about asking, but it seemed too personal. Instead, she handed him back her mug. “I should get back downstairs. Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome. But there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
A nervous feeling flooded her chest. “What is it?”
“It’s Noah,” he said, setting the mugs down on the bookcase. “Now that we’ve got our samples, he needs to get started on his vaccinations. He should have gotten started months ago.”
“Oh. Right.” Hannah rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head. “He’s been so healthy, I haven’t even thought about that.”
“Well, we want to keep him that way. If you bring him in tomorrow, Zach can give him his shots. Or if you’d like to get it over with I can come over tonight…”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thanks. We can get it done tomorrow. I doubt twelve more hours or so will make that much difference.”
Was that disappointment she saw in his face? Don’t be stupid. He’s just being a good doctor.
Alek smiled, and nodded. “You’re right. I need to finish waking up. I’ll be down in a bit.” He walked her to the door and opened it for her.
She felt his gaze on her back as she crossed to the elevator and waited for it to arrive. When the doors slid open, she stepped in and turned around. She saw him standing in the doorway, watching her with a look that paralyzed her with . . . with what?
Six months ago, she would have called it fear, but now she knew what real fear tasted like. There was a hunger in his gaze that had nothing to do with food, and warmth spread through her stomach as her body responded to it.
Inexplicably, she pictured herself going back to him and pushing him inside and… and what? Part of her was afraid to look beyond the and. But part of her wanted everything that came after it. She met his gaze and felt herself take a step forward.
Then the doors closed, cutting her off. She leaned against the back of the elevator and closed her eyes. Where on earth had that come from? And what was that look he’d given her?
He was probably just hungry for his breakfast. That’s all it was. And she was hungry, too, she realized. Low blood-sugar must be making her crazy with poor judgment.
She would go back to the lab and eat the leftover quiche and cobbler that Chris’s mother had packed for her, and then get back to work, and when Alek came down, everything would be strictly professional, and Zach would be there, and it would be safe, and there would be no and.
She took a deep breath and blew it out, then went over the day’s events in an attempt to get Alek out of her head. A new job helping to discover the cure to the apocalypse, zombie rats, Bob… which brought her back to Alek, the humanitarian vampire.
All of her days were full of strangeness here at the end of the world, but this day was standing out as one of the stranger ones.
Chapter Twenty
Hannah woke up the next morning with a powerful urge to shoot something. Her night had been filled with fitful sleep and vivid dreams barely remembered.
Bits and pieces came to her in flashes as she sat on the edge of her bed. She saw Bob rising from his gurney, skin sloughing off and landing in puddles on the floor. Except it wasn’t Bob. It was her mom. She saw herself running down a long hallway lined with bars, chased by her parents and the prison guard. She saw Esme behind them, holding Noah and smiling her cold smile. And she saw Alek ahead of her, leaning out of a helicopter and holding out his hand. He called to her but she couldn’t reach him.
She’d had other dreams about Alek, too, but she didn’t want to think about those. They made her feel like she should apologize to Chris.
While on her morning run, she decided she wanted to see him. He had a way of making her feel like everything was normal.
She stopped by the store, panting and sweaty and not caring. Leaving the stroller at the bottom of the front steps, she carried Noah inside.
“Hey,” Chris greeted her, coming around from behind the counter. He smiled. “What’s up?”
“Do you want to have lunch with us?”
His smile widened into a grin. “Yeah.”
“Good. Do you have ear plugs?”
His grin held, but his brow creased with uncertainty. “I’m pretty sure we do somewhere.”
“Bring them.” She kissed him, a quick peck on the cheek, and headed out to finish her run.
She was showered and dressed by the time he knocked on her door. When she answered it, he held up a little plastic box filled with orange earplugs and shook it. “Good. Here.” She handed him the mini cooler that held the sandwiches she’d packed for them, along with her father’s duffel bag.
“This is heavy,” he said as he shouldered the bag. “What’s in here?”
“You’ll see. Now, where’s a good place to shoot some shamblers?”
He took them to a section of the base that had been set aside for tourists, where they kept decommissioned and antique tanks and large-scale weapons. They could hear the wordless droning of the infected as they approached. A twelve-foot chain-link fence stretched along the boundary of the base, with razor wire lining the last two feet. At least a hundred of them lurched and stumbled into each other on the other side of the fence. Hannah, Chris and Noah drew closer, and the shamblers seemed to sense them, moving as one toward the fence to press against it and each other.
Hannah shuddered. “Talk about shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Okay.” Chris set the bag and the cooler on the ground. “Now will you tell me why we’re here?”
Hannah crouched and unzipped the bag. She pulled out the rifle and handed it to him. “Target practice.”
Chris’s eyebrows shot up, but he took the rifle and nodded appreciatively. “Cool.” He grinned down at her. “Want to tell me again how you’re not really a tough girl?”
She slapped a magazine into the Sig, stood up and held out her hand. “Ear plugs?”
He handed her the box. She took out three of the plugs before handing the box back to Chris. She tore one of the plugs in two and tucked each half into Noah’s ears, then dug out a pair of earmuffs that she’d packed in the stroller and put those on his head. He immediately tried to tear them off, but she dug out a baby book and gave him that to keep his hands occupied.
Once Noah was settled, she plugged her own ears and turned back to Chris. “How well do you know guns?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard through the ear plugs.
“Pretty well. I spent a year in ROTC before I got up the nerve to tell my dad I didn’t want to join the Army.” He chambered a round and sighted the rifle. “How do you know guns so well?”
“My dad was all into prepping and survival. He started teaching me how to hunt and shoot as soon as I was big enough to hold a rifle.” She looked around and pointed at a Sherman tank. “Let’s get up there.” She wheeled Noah over and parked him behind the tank where he’d be shielded from possible ricochets before climbing onto the tank. Chris handed her the guns and ammo and then climbed up behind her.
Hannah braced herself and pointed the gun into the crowd. The shamblers were so thick that she could just start firing at random, but where was the challenge in that? She noticed one of them pressed up against the fence wearing the faded remains of a yellow golf shirt, and aimed at his head. “Yellow shirt,” she announced, and fired. The shambler’s head snapped back, and he slid down against the fence and was trampled as those behind him filled in the gap.
“Green hat.” Chris aimed the rifle and fired, and a gray-haired zombie with a decayed nose and a John Deere hat dropped from the crowd.
“Redhead at two o’clock.” Hannah took out a female whose wiry red hair only covered half of her exposed skull.
They took turns in that fashion until they ran through most of their ammo. It felt good, shooting at things when their lives weren’t at stake. With every squeeze of the trigger, the recoil shook Hannah’s body and eased just a bit more of her pent-up tension. By the time they finished, there were about thirty fewer monsters left in the world, and Hannah was the most relaxed she’d felt in ages.
They slid off the tank and settled on the ground beside Noah. She had packed him a bottle, but he had fallen asleep despite all the gunfire, so she decided not to disturb him. She and Chris leaned against the tank to eat their sandwiches.
“How’d your first day at work go?” Chris asked.
Hannah chewed the bite she’d just taken before answering. “It was okay.” She didn’t want to think about the awkwardness and tension she’d felt working with Alek. “I killed Bob.”
Chris snorted. “On purpose?”
“He got loose and attacked Zach. It’s not like I had a choice.”
“Well, I guess saving his butt will keep you from getting in trouble for destroying their prized sample.”
He seemed more amused than horrified. That annoyed Hannah at first, but now that the incident was behind her, she could see the twisted humor in it. “It’s not like they don’t have plenty more where he came from.”
“True.” He finished his sandwich and looked at her, as if contemplating something. “This was fun,” he said after a while. He reached over and brushed a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “We should make this a regular thing.”
Hannah smiled. “I’d be up for that.”
He leaned in to kiss her, and she let him. This time his kiss was more heated. Hannah tried to push all other thoughts out of her mind and give herself over to it, but just as she was starting to succeed he pulled away. “I should get back to work,” he said, standing up.
Hannah hid her disappointment and nodded. She let him help her to her feet. “I need to take Noah by the lab before my shift there starts. He’s way overdue for his shots.”
Chris winced and looked down at the baby with sympathy. “I sure don’t envy you right now, little guy.”
“Not a fan of needles?”
He shook his head. “When I was little it took my mom and three nurses to hold me down to give me a shot. I think that probably traumatized me more than the actual needle.”
Hannah couldn’t help but laugh at the image, but he seemed to take her laughter in stride.
They walked back to town together and then stopped in front of her house. “So, what do you say? Want to make a date for lunch tomorrow?”
Hannah smiled. “Sure.”
He grinned and kissed her, a quick peck on the lips. “See you then.”
She watched him go, and then took the guns inside. She came back outside to find Noah awake and sleepily rubbing his eyes, so she gave him his bottle on the front porch. Once he finished she should have enough time to take him for his shots and then come back and clean up before Paula arrived.
The thought of going to work filled her with a feeling somewhere between anticipation and dread. Her dreams of Alek tried to invade her thoughts, but she fought them, forcing herself to think about Chris instead.
Chris, with his cute, floppy hair and his easy smile and casual kisses. Chris, who should be everything she wanted at this stage of her life.
She liked him. There was no doubt about that. He made her feel comfortable, and he made her laugh, something she didn’t get to do much of these days. His kisses probably weren’t going to set the house on fire, but they were pleasant, and he was still young and lacking experience. They both were. At least he was her own damn age.
So then why did she have to work so hard to think about him when he wasn’t around, always having to push past thoughts of Alek? He was always right there at the front of her memory, his face appearing effortlessly every time she closed her eyes. She had to try hard to not think about him, and it made her angry. It felt like a violation, like he was somehow forcing himself on her mind.
Ordinarily, she’d dismiss such a notion and wonder about her own sanity for even thinking of it. But Alek wasn’t ordinary, and she had no way of knowing the true extent of his powers. Did they extend to mind control?
She remembered the previous evening in the elevator. The way he’d looked at her as she left, and the inexplicable urge she’d felt to return to him. She had wanted him in that moment, more than she’d ever wanted anything, or anyone.
It scared her.
Tonight she would make sure she was never alone with him. She would have to make it clear to Zach that she wasn’t comfortable delivering Alek’s breakfast and wakeup call.
But that was later. For now, Noah had finished his bottle and it was time to go get his shots.
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