Read The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood Online

Authors: Richard Finney,Franklin Guerrero

Tags: #zombies

The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood (16 page)

He stared at the photograph.

“Find that stapler?” shouted Juarez from across the barn.

Matt walked over and tossed the stapler to Juarez. He then turned to Tyra and tossed her something as well, which landed at her feet.

A pack of cigarettes.

She looked at the cigarettes and smiled.

“Now we’re square,” said Matt.

There was a cold, distant tone to his voice that got Tyra to look up. She saw that he was holding a shotgun. And the expression on his face didn’t look right.

Tyra stood up. “Matt…”

“Stop right there,” he said to her.

Before anyone could say another word, there was the noise of a loud thud on the roof.

Chapter Twenty Seven

During the initial days of the takeover, Matt and Jay had received some intelligence from the people back in Virginia. It was what they had been able to put together regarding their own employees’ experience against the vampires, and what they were able to gather from other sources.

There were five combat capabilities the “FSF” Intel reports rated as 90 percent or higher that “the adversary” possessed. One of the five was that a vampire was capable of convincing an enemy target that a noise was coming from a different source or direction.

Somehow Matt completely forgot about the intel report as he waited breathlessly for the vampire to make his entrance from his parents’ barn roof.

With his shotgun pointing up, Matt was taken completely by surprise when the side of the barn exploded like a bomb had gone off. A shard of the barn siding caught Matt in the head, sending him to the ground, dazed.

From her belt, Tyra snatched an Al Mar knife she had planned to take back to the concentration camp, and raced toward Matt. When she saw a shadow moving toward her, she slashed at it, sending her off balance and stumbling forward.

After regaining her footing, Tyra saw blood dripping from the blade of her knife.

The creature was no longer a shadow, but now was standing about a dozen feet away, bleeding from the chest. The blood from the wound was soaking up the black T-shirt the vampire was wearing.

This was not anything like Tyra’s previous experience in fighting a vampire, which occurred on the night she had been captured. The wound she inflicted on a vampire from one of the blood patrols healed so quickly there was almost no blood loss.

A shotgun blast sent the wounded vampire into the air. It landed on the ground near the opening of the barn.

“Are you all right?” asked Matt.

Tyra nodded, keeping her eyes focused on the still body of the creature that now lay two dozen feet away.

“How about you, Juarez?”

“I’ll feel better when we stake him.”

“The both of you stay right where you are...”

Matt started to confidently walk toward the creature. Blood was pooling up all around what looked like a heap of human body parts that had been stacked on top of each other.

But as Matt drew in closer, he saw bubbles in the pool of blood… and that convinced him that this encounter was far from over.

Suddenly, the pile of body parts all seemed to reorganize in a flash, and there was a vampire leaping toward him.

Matt reacted by calmly pulling the trigger.

The shotgun blast propelled the creature backwards with enough force that the impact threw open the barn doors.

He stepped out of the barn, reloading his shotgun as he kept one eye on the vampire lying in the ground just a short distance ahead. After he fed the last bullet into the chamber, the vampire rose slowly in front of him.

Matt took aim, but rather than shooting at something he expected would be moving toward him, the vampire was fleeing across the farm compound.

He narrowed his eyes to re-aim, but then a twenty-foot stream of fire streaked across his eye line. It looked like an orange lightning strike coming from out of the woods, which immediately set ablaze the vampire that had been trying to escape.

The creature stumbled for a few feet, then fell into the dirt. It rolled around, emitting a squeal of pain before falling silent and still.

Two figures, standing at the edge of the woods surrounding the farm compound, began advancing toward the fallen creature. Both were cradling flamethrowers.

Matt made his move toward the vampire as well. As he drew in closer, he held the shotgun over the creature, but after seeing its condition, he realized there was not going to be another resurrection. He stepped away and lowered his gun.

“Good choice. Dead is dead this time.”

He was fairly sure that he recognized the voice, and turned.

One of the figures behind the flamethrower removed the headgear and goggles, and then pulled off a cap that had been keeping her hair in a bun.

It was a woman dressed in camouflage clothes, with smeared, black shoe polish all over her face.

“Beth. I thought that was you…”

He was referring to the voice, not anything else. His ex-wife had changed quite a bit since he last saw her. Her eyes were so intense; the pupils looked capable of becoming bowling balls and rolling him over like he was the last pin standing.

She also had long, taut arms, with bulging veins; both limbs seemed as if they weren’t just holding the flamethrower, but that they were appendages originally built into the weapon.

“Yeah, I recognized you too the minute I saw the shotgun,” said Beth. “Your father’s old rifle, right?”

He looked at the gun, and almost couldn’t believe that he was now holding it with Beth just a few feet away.

“How about that?” said Matt. “The same gun I had when I tried to kill myself.”

Beth froze when she heard the words.

“Come on, that’s what you were thinking, right?”

A long time ago, Beth figured out that Matt had a way of framing his questions so that any of her answers would be channeled in just one direction: the quickest way to triggering his temper.

“That’s him…”

The other person holding the flamethrower approached. He took off his goggles and the rest of his headgear.

“… Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the guy I saw that night at your house.”

Matt looked the guy over and said, “If you’re still not sure, why don’t you get out your flashlight and fucking shine it in my eyes.”

His tone and the words were like a magnet, pulling Ryan to take up the space right next to Matt.

“Tell you what. Forget the flashlight; why don’t you just raise your voice loud enough to attract a vampire patrol.”

Beth stepped between them.

“Matt Haynes this is Ryan Sellers. Yes, Ryan, this is my ex. Matt, what are you doing here?”

“I saw the restraining order against me had lapsed. I figured getting it extended was not an option under present conditions. So I decided to make my way out here. How are you doing?”

“Well, she just got done saving your life,” answered Ryan, moving past Beth to get closer to Matt.

He kept his eyes focused on his ex-wife. “I’m sorry, I might have missed something. Is Ryan your lawyer?”

“I’m not her lawyer, but I’m also not fucking with you.”

He then nudged Matt with the nozzle of his flamethrower, which was still fired up and ready to go. “You need to dial back the attitude, Haynes. As I said, she fucking saved your life. Maybe you crawled back under the rock you originally came from during the takeover and missed the information about how vampires absorb bullets like a sponge. There’s only a few ways to kill them, and shooting them with a shotgun is not one of them…”

Matt listened to every word Ryan had to say before breaking out in a grin.

“Sorry. My mistake. Beth has saved my life so many times, I guess I’m guilty of taking it for granted,” said Matt.

He then stepped around Ryan’s flamethrower, and began walking toward the barn. Matt was relieved when he saw Tyra and Juarez moving toward him.

“You didn't answer my question,” said Beth. “What are you doing here?”

After he got over the shock that Beth was pursuing him, he got angry.

“This is my parents’ farm; why do I need to explain anything to you?”

“That’s bullshit, Matt, and we both know it. You were at my house,” said Beth. “I’m asking for you to explain why you were there!”

He stopped walking and turned to face her.

“I was looking for you. I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“Safe? Don’t make me laugh. I can take care of myself. And second of all, taking care of myself got way easier the day I stopped taking care of you.”

“Are you all right?”

Beth turned to look over at Tyra.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Matt.

All the tattoos on Tyra’s body immediately grabbed Beth’s attention. She then noticed that Tyra’s skin was also lined with vampire bite marks.

Tyra grabbed his arm and this time Matt looked over at her.

“We need to get going.”

Matt stared at Tyra.

“Matt, we need to get going.”

He nodded, and without another look at his ex-wife, Matt turned and started walking toward the barn.

Beth tried to follow, but Tyra stepped in front of her.

“I don’t know who you people are, but we don’t have time for this.”

“Nice,” said Ryan, walking up behind Beth. “We just saved your life, and that’s all you have to say?”

“No, I’d like to add three words of gratitude,” said Juarez. “Flame on, Dude!”

Beth moved closer to Tyra, and lowered her voice. “I know that guy, and I’m warning you, he’s someone you all need to stay clear of…”

Tyra pulled a cigarette from the pack Matt had tossed to her in the barn. She used the flame on Beth’s weapon to light it up.

“Matt and I go way back. We worked together in the Green Zone.” She took a long drag on the cigarette. “Right now we’re right in the middle of trying to set free about two hundred people from a vampire concentration camp.”

Tyra took another puff and then blew some smoke into Beth’s face,

“So, thanks for saving our lives. But if you don’t mind, you need to get out of the way because you’re fucking up our plan to sneak back into the camp…”

She then threw down the cigarette, stamped it out in the dirt, then hit Juarez in the back and they both left to join Matt.

He walked slowly into his parents’ barn and embraced the darkness that was beginning to descend on the hilltop where he grew up.

Matt had traveled across the world to see if the love of his life was alive. On many nights during the trip, he actually spoke aloud the words he would say to Beth if she was somehow still living. And every night during his trip back to Morristown, New Jersey, he would rehearse those words while staring at her picture.

“The world’s come to an end and I came back to see if you were still here, hoping if I found you… that somehow you and I… we could start all over again…”

TO BE CONTINUED…