Pitch (10 page)

Why fight the inevitable? “My dad and my best friend.” Something in the assuming nature of his tone caught my attention and I quickly added, “Wait. Are there other survivors that you know about? Anyw—in the town?” I was about to say ‘anywhere’ but I changed my mind at the last second. If the entire world had been destroyed, I didn’t want to know about it. At least not yet. As my Mom used to say, you have to focus on the little things to see the big picture.

His shoulders lifted and fell beneath his leather jacket. “There are always survivors. You know what they say about cockroaches, don’t you?”

I shook my head. I was not, by any means, a cockroach expert.

“If the world was destroyed by a nuclear blast, cockroaches would survive.”

“Are you comparing me to a cockroach?” I asked skeptically.

His teeth glittered white in the darkness. “What if I am?”

“Then I would say you’re crazy. This isn’t some kind of nuclear blast or a war or something.” 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Lola.” Maximus stepped closer, pushing into my personal space. I let him push. I liked to see his face up close. To see the color of his eyes. The curve of his lips. The unruliness of his hair. “This is a war,” he said softly, so softly I had no choice but to lean towards him to. He angled his body to mine. We were as close as two people could physically be without touching. My breath caught in my throat, refusing to go up or down.

“What kind of war?” I managed to croak.

“A war to end all wars.” His eyes burned into mine. “A war to end the human race.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The War to End all Wars

A war to end the human race.

The words rang in my head. Our eyes held until I looked away, over his shoulder. I saw the case of beer that had gone flying out of my hand when the Drinker grabbed me and brushed past Maximus to pick it up. He followed me, silent as a shadow.

“Beer?” he said as his gaze dropped to the case I had balanced against my hip. “You risked your life for beer?”

I could tell by the disgust in his voice that any special moment that may or may not have sprung up between us was gone. Hitching the beer up a little higher, I tightened my arm around it protectively. “It’s not for me. It’s for my dad. He needs it. To… to fall asleep,” I finished lamely. I had never told anyone about Dad’s drinking problem before. Not even Travis. He probably should have caught on when I stopped inviting him to my house, but Travis was oblivious about stuff like that. Real problems were beyond his scope of understanding.

“To fall asleep,” Maximus repeated.

“Hey, if it’s really the end of the world a guy is entitled to a few beers, right? I might even have one or two myself.” Two complete lies in one sentence. Dad would have the case finished by morning and I would never drink beer again after I had stolen a sip from a lukewarm can he had left lying around one afternoon. My gag reflex kicked in just thinking about it.

Maximus cupped the back of his neck and looked heavenward to where the last traces of daylight were fading away. “We should go. Give me the beer. I’ll carry it.” He held out his hands and I passed the case over, grateful that I wouldn’t have to lug it all the way back to the hotel.

“So I guess this means you’re coming with me?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question as we had already started walking. Maximus ignored it.

As with most things, the way back seemed faster. We reached the cornfield without coming across any more of the Drinkers, although I could hear them, slithering in the shadows like snakes. Every so often a shrill scream tore through the air, sending a shiver down my spine. I glanced sideways at Maximus when I heard the screams, searching for some sort of reaction, but his grim, tight lipped expression never faltered. Only when the high pitched squeal of a child reached us did he curse under his breath and falter.

“Are you okay?” I said hesitantly when he stopped and looked back towards the town. His chest rose and fell with every sharp intake of breath. Without thinking about what I was doing I wrapped my fingers around his arm. It was like holding granite.

Maximus jolted at my touch and looked down to where my fingers were splayed across the sleeve of his leather jacket. Neither of us moved. The cornstalks rustled quietly as they closed in around us, cutting away the outside world. Our eyes met, dark gray against deep, stormy blue. For one crazy, mind numbing moment I thought he was going to lean forward and kiss me and I imagined the way my eyes would close and how my arms would curl around his shoulders as if they had always belonged there and my fingers would bury themselves in his hair.

He licked his lips.

My eyes began to drift closed…

“Stop lagging behind,” he growled. “We don’t want to be caught out in the open.”

My eyes popped open. It felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of freezing water over my head. Maximus ripped his arm free and stalked off into the corn, leaving me standing by myself like an idiot. Muttering my own curse under my breath, I hurried after him. Maximus might have been an asshole, but he was an asshole with a gun.

He didn’t look at me when I pulled up alongside him and we continued on towards the hotel in stony silence, neither one of us willing to give an inch. The sun was dipping below the mountain range to the west when we reached the parking lot. Or at least, what remained of the parking lot. Time had not treated the Renner Hotel and her grounds very kindly.

The hotel sat before us, an old, neglected building that sagged slightly to the right. Four large columns, the marble chipped and cracked, guarded the entrance. The front door was one of those old fashioned spinning doors where only one person could go in at a time. I was surprised – and relieved – to see all of the glass was still intact. I gave the door an experimental push. Without electricity to help swing it around, the door didn’t so much as slide an inch.

“Get out of the way,” Maximus said.

Tight lipped and glaring, I stepped to the side.

Leading with his shoulder, he threw his weight into the door and moved it easily. I darted in behind him and narrowly avoided tripping over my own feet as the door spun around with a high pitched whine.

The inside of the hotel was no better than the outside, with the exception of it being darker, so the neglect and decay weren’t as visible. The scent of mold and dust hung heavy in the air, although I would take grandma’s closet over blood and burnt flesh any day of the week.

Our footsteps echoed over the hardwood floor as we walked across the lobby. It was empty; the various tables and chairs that had once filled the space stripped away long ago. Narrow slivers of moonlight passed through the windows and illuminated everything in a soft, silvery glow. It didn’t escape my notice that Maximus stayed mostly in the shadows.

“Where are your father and friend?” he asked.

I bit down on my lip as I struggled to recall what room Dad had said he would be in. “Umm… Two fifteen or sixteen, I think.”

“We’ll have to go higher than that.”

“Higher?”

The whites of Maximus’s eyes flashed as he rolled them. “Drinkers are leery of heights. They’ll go up if they have to, but they prefer to stay close to the ground.”

So much for believing everything I saw in the movies. “How do you know so much about them?” I asked as we headed for the stairs. Maximus held the door open behind him – barely – and he answered when it clicked shut behind me, plunging the stairwell into darkness.

“Learn to know your enemy, Lola. You’ll live a lot longer if you do.”

Clinging to the smooth metal railing, I made a face at his back. Or at least where I thought his back was. It was too dark to tell for sure. “What does that even mean? It’s a simple question. How do you know so much about them? Have you seen them before?
Are
you part of some secret government – AHH!” My shriek of alarm echoed as my right foot slipped out from under me and I went flying forwards. I threw my arms out, bracing for the fall, but it never came. Instead two strong, capable hands caught my shoulders and pushed me upright. Gasping, I collapsed against the wall. It felt cool beneath my back and I pressed the side of my face against the painted brick while I waited for my heart rate to return to normal.

“Are you always this clumsy, or is it just in life or death situations?” Maximus asked dryly. 

“Shut. Up.”

From somewhere above us came the sound of a door slamming and the clatter of footsteps. I drew in a sharp breath and instinctively moved towards Maximus, who wrapped one arm around my waist and jerked me hard against him.

“Go back down and wait by the door,” he hissed in my ear.

“What about you?” I heard a quiet
click
and then felt a cool brush of metal against my arm. “Oh yeah,” I said, feeling foolish. “You have a gun.”

“Go down and wait by the door,” he repeated. “Now, Lola.”

“But –”

The arm around my waist gave a threatening squeeze.

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “Just don’t… die or anything, k?”

“Are you worried about me?” Maximus sounded amused.

I could feel my cheeks turning bright red and was suddenly thankful it was so dark in the stairwell. “No. I’m worried about what would happen to
me
if something happened to
you
.”

His low chuckle sent my heart pounding again, this time in a not so entirely unpleasant way. “Don’t trip on your way down.”

I made another face.

“I saw that.”

My eyes widened. “But it’s so dark. How can you –”

“I have excellent night vision.”

I raised my hand with one finger in particular pointing high above the others. “Can you see
that
?”

“Lola…”

“I’m going, I’m going,” I grumbled. Carefully turning around I made my way back down the stairs and waited next to the door as Maximus had instructed. He went the opposite way, sprinting silently up the steps and out of sight. I waited anxiously in the dark, twisting a lock of hair around and around my finger as I strained to hear even the smallest noise.

I did not have to wait long. There was a muffled bang, like a door slamming, followed by a high pitched yelp that sounded suspiciously like…

“TRAVIS?” I shouted up the stairs. “TRAVIS, IS THAT YOU?”

“Lola,” came the answering wail. “Lola, get him off me!”

 Grasping the railing I took the stairs two at a time and was well out of breath by the time I reached the second level. A flashlight knocked into one corner of the landing supplied enough light to see Travis’s terrified face as he laid on his stomach with Maximus crouched on top of him, pulling his head back with one hand and using the other to hold his arms pinned behind his back in a position that looked downright uncomfortable.  

“Let him go,” I wheezed out. I seriously needed to get in better shape. “Maximus, that’s my friend Travis. Let him go, you’re hurting him.”

Reluctantly Maximus released his death grip on Travis and stood up. “Your
friend
blinded me with the flashlight and tried to hit me with a baseball bat.”

I gazed at Travis with new appreciation. “Really?”

Looking embarrassed, he hunched his shoulders and said, “Yeah. I heard you scream so I came out and when I saw him coming up the stairs I thought he was, you know, one of them. Who is he, anyway?”

“He’s the guy I told you about before. The one who knows about the Drinkers.”

Maximus scowled. “You told him about me?”

I nodded.

“Don’t tell people about me,” he said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Is he always like this?” Travis whispered.

“Pretty much.”

“I can
hear
you,” Maximus said.

“Where’s my dad?” I asked.

Travis shifted from foot to foot and scratched the side of his head. “In the room we picked out. Sleeping. He, uh, found an old bottle of wine downstairs in the restaurant.”

Travis didn’t have to say anymore. Leaning down, I picked up the flashlight and pointed it directly into Maximus’s eyes. He cursed and backed away, but I tracked him relentlessly until I had him pinned in the corner. That was it. No more nice girl. No more vague answers. I was ready for some facts, and I knew just the guy to give them to me. “We’re going into one of those rooms and we’re not leaving until you tell me every single thing you know about what is going on. You got that?”

“All right,” he said quietly.

“And if you don’t Travis is going to take that baseball bat and –”

“Uh, Lola?” Travis interrupted.

“What?” I snapped.

“Maximus said okay. Plus he kind of, uh, broke the bat.”

I swung the flashlight towards Travis who squinted and threw both hands up in front of his face. “Hey, watch it,” he complained.

“Sorry.” I pointed the flashlight at the ground. “Travis, you can come too if you want.”

“Gee, thanks,” he muttered.

“Well?” I said when he just stood there.