Dominion of the Damned Read online

  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 said as he leaned over Bob and began carving 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 under her arm 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, and 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 tried to pull him down toward those gnashing teeth. Hannah pointed the gun and fired. Bob’s head exploded like a melon, and 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.”

  He 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 just slipped his hands off, like they were gloves.”

  “That is so nasty,” said Hannah. “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,” he said. “You saved my life.”

  Hannah smiled, and nodded. Then she went to wake the doctor.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  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, and above that, a doorbell. She pushed it, and inside 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, 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, as the case may be—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,” he said. “I’ll go put something on.”

  She opened her mouth 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 then she 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, and 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, just 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 that 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, and 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,” he said. “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 fr
om 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,” she said, “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, she told herself. 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, and 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 the hell had that come from? And what the hell was that look he’d given her?

  He was probably just hungry for his breakfast, she told herself. 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, and 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.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  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, his skin sloughing off and landing in puddles on the floor, except it wasn’t Bob anymore. It was her Mom. She saw herself running down a long hall, 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, calling 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.

  She wanted to see Chris, she decided during her morning run. He had a way of steadying her, making her feel like everything was normal. She stopped by the store, panting and sweaty from her run. 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.”

  Hannah nodded. “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 set aside for tourists, where they kept decommissioned and antique tanks and large-scale weapons. They were still at least a quarter of a mile away from it when they could hear the wordless droning of the infected. A twelve-foot tall chain-link fence stretched along the boundary of the base, with barbed 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. As Hannah, Chris and Noah drew closer, the shamblers seemed to sense them, and moved as one toward the fence, pressing against it and each other, clawing at the chain link as they tried to reach through.

  Hannah shuddered. “Talk about shooting fish in a barrel,” she muttered.

  “Okay,” said Chris, setting 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 up to him. “Target practice.”

  Chris’s eyebrows shot up, but he took the rifle and nodded appreciatively as he cracked it open to check the chamber. “Cool.” He grinned down at her. “Want to tell me again how you’re not really a tough girl?”

  She slapped a cartridge into the Sig, stood up and held out her hand. “Ear plugs?” He handed her the box, and 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 military school 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 a survivalist. 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, then climbed onto the tank. Chris handed up the guns and ammo before climbing 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 trucker 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,” said Hannah, and shot a woman whose wiry red hair only covered half of her head. They took turns in that fashion until they ran through most of their ammo. It felt good, shooting at things w
hen their lives weren’t at stake. With every squeeze of the trigger, the impact 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 next to Noah. She had packed him a bottle, but he had actually managed to fall asleep despite all the gunfire so she decided not to disturb him. She and Chris leaned against the tank and ate their sandwiches. “How’d your first day at work go?” Chris asked her.

  Hannah chewed the bite of food in her mouth and swallowed. “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 ass’ll 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.