The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (16 page)

Right, he'd skipped work and gone shopping, driving from one grocery store to another to buy any canned or preserved food he could find. The fruit and vegetable bins sat empty except for a few stacks of apples. Oddly, there were no line-ups to buy the remaining food. Why were people not out grocery shopping? Surely people during their regular shopping must've noticed the depleting supplies, which would usually provoke panic buying, like stocking up on water and batteries in advance of a hurricane.

Bertrand had also emptied his bank account and called about his mutual funds, ordering his adviser to sell them and convert them to cash. The adviser had begged him not to, pointing out that even though the stock market had recently plunged, it was still fractionally up from last year. If Bertrand would just wait, his advisor was sure the market would rush back up to those stratospheric highs from which it had fallen. Bertrand didn't care. He wanted the money now. He also considered putting his house up for sale, but so many houses were for sale in Chicago—indeed across the country—that there were simply no buyers. Housing prices had plummeted to levels that made stories of the 2008 crash sound like a minor blip in the market.

The doorbell chimed. That was what had woken him. Jeff would be pissed that he had ignored the warning and returned home, but after the conversation with Detective Costa, Bertrand wasn't as worried about the police for today—until now. He threw off his bedclothes and rushed to the window. There was no hope in seeing the front door, but maybe he could see if a police cruiser was parked in front.

"Bert! Are you there?" It was Destiny's voice.

What the hell was she doing here? She should be in the office, answering phones.

"Please, Bert. I'm really scared! If you're there can you let me in?"

Bertrand reached up and slid back the little window. "I'll be right there."

He scrambled through the basement, finding his jeans and yanking them on in haste. He snatched up a dress shirt from the back of a chair and hurried up the stairs, buttoning it on the way.

"Hey," he said upon opening the door, but before he could say more, Destiny threw herself at him, hugging him and weeping as if she'd just found a long-lost lover.

"Oh, thank God you're here. I'm so scared."

Bertrand awkwardly patted her back and tried not to feel her breasts pressing against his torso, fought to not to be aroused by the scent of her, the curves of her body. But his protective instincts went full throttle as she buried her face in his chest and wept. He looked past her into the street, but there was no one else around so he pulled her into the house and slammed the door.

"We've got to be careful," he said when she had calmed down enough that he could push her away without being rude. "Come into the kitchen and I'll make you some tea."

"You got anything stronger?"

"Beer?"

"That'll be good."

He took her hand and led her down the narrow hall, feeling like a boyfriend rather than a coworker. What would Joyce say? It wasn't like they were dating or anything, yet he felt a special connection to Joyce that he didn't share with Destiny. But Destiny was attractive, and she had come to mind more than a few times when he was involved with himself late at night. She slipped her jacket off, revealing a blouse unbuttoned deep into her cleavage, a gossamer covering more suited to summer than Chicago's fall.

"Take a seat." Bertrand averted his eyes as he spoke, but didn't fail to note that she didn't appear to be wearing a bra.

Bertrand had renovated the kitchen a year after his parents had died, a desperate attempt to make the house his own and to bury the past. He had donated the nineties countertop and cupboards to Habitat for Humanity and replaced them with a granite countertop and expensive white cupboards. The floor was now stone tile, which he had discovered was very cold in the winter. The table of the breakfast nook was the same granite as the counter, and the bench seats with it were red leather and overstuffed, making that corner look closer to a fifties diner. Destiny slipped onto one bench while Bertrand opened the stainless steel fridge door and pulled out a couple of Buds.

"What happened?" He twisted each open, tossing the caps into the garbage can under the sink and handing one to Destiny.

"It was Malcolm. He's totally a freak." She took a gulp of the beer to calm her breathing and her tears. "He invited me back to his place this morning. I worked a double yesterday, stayed till midnight and Malcolm went home early cause the call volume dropped off. That's when he asked me over."

"So ... like ... he assaulted you?" Bertrand knew he wasn't the right person for this conversation. He didn't know anything about sexual assault counseling. It wasn't her fault. She at least needed to be told that, but what else?

"No. I mean it was weirder than that." Her eyes stayed with the beer bottle, and she began to peel the label from the brown glass. Her embarrassment made Bertrand's ears burn in sympathy.

"You don't have to tell me what happened." Did he sound panicked?

"I want to. I want you to understand what a sick bastard he is. To think I liked him." She finished peeling the label and proceeded to fold it in half and half again as if involved in origami. "You see, I went there because I wanted to get with him. Everybody thinks I'm some delicate little virgin, you know."

"I don't." What did he just say? Jesus Christ! "I mean, the way you talk and all it's obvious that you're not frigid or anything like that. I mean, oh forget it. I can't dig my way out of this one."

Destiny laughed and met his eyes for the first time since she had sat down.

"It's okay. I have been around the block once or twice, but I admit I talk sluttier than I act. Everybody thinks that 'cause I'm a tiny Asian I should giggle behind my hand and wear school-girl uniform kilts and be all modest. That's why I talk dirty, 'cause it shocks mundanes like you. But Malcolm's so cute and funky, and I really did want to bone him—that's why I went back to his place."

Bertrand was surprised she was alive, given his suspicions about Malcolm.

"He was interested in something else," Bertrand said.

Destiny nodded and took a big gulp of her beer, summoning up her courage to retell the story. "He's kinky, and I kinda thought that was attractive. I was looking for adventure, so when he wanted me to tie him up I thought it was all cool. I'd be in complete control and nothing could go wrong."

Bertrand's ears flamed and pressure in his jeans filled him with dread. What if she asked for another beer? She would see his erection and think he, too, was a sick pervert. He wasn't into bondage, but Destiny talking frankly about sex while sitting there looking so pretty and vulnerable in her low-buttoned blouse. Bertrand fought to restrain his lust.

"But something did go wrong." Bertrand hid his interest with another sip of beer.

"He couldn't get it up. He's just lying there, spread eagle on the bed." Destiny studied her beer again, not quite as embarrassed as Bertrand. "I was doing everything, you know, to get him excited, and I know some good tricks, but he was just totally Mr. Flaccid."

Bertrand was relieved and the pressure in his jeans thankfully subsided. He had feared a pornographic story with Destiny in a prominent position. "Okay, I don't think Malcolm's well. In fact I think he's even sicker than you know."

"I'm not finished." She gave him a quick glare and looked back down to her beer. "I'm naked and doing everything and I'm getting pretty pissed with him. So he asks—like—begs me to cut my finger and drip some blood into his mouth. I really wanted some action by this time so I decide to one up him. I'm not afraid of a little blood or a little pain, so I cut my wrist."

"Crap! Destiny!"

"Just a bit." She held up her right arm and pulled down her sleeve to show off a Band-Aid. "See, not like a suicide cut to my wrists, but just a little nick on the vein. I put it to his mouth and he went crazy, I mean sucking like crazy. And then he is going, I mean totally up in the air and I'm thinking it's sick but at least I'll get some action and then before I can do anything, boom! He blows—"

"Stop! Yes, I get it." Bertrand hands were up, palms out in surrender in his futile panic to prevent the graphic image from generating.

"All over the place."

"Yes, like, spare me. Please. I get the idea. He's a really lousy lay and he's twisted."

Now she met Bertrand's eyes. "Sorry. I just wanted you to understand how sick he is. Anyway, he wanted more and said the action would last longer, but I got my clothes on and got the heck out of there. But just before I left I untied one of his hands, and he shouts after me while he's still untying the other that he's not done with me. The perv wants to do it again! I'm afraid to go back to work 'cause I don't want to see him tonight. I should never have tried to sleep with someone from work."

Bertrand finished his beer, appalled at how quickly he had consumed it, his head buzzing from the quick blast of alcohol on an empty stomach. Even so, he stood and grabbed two more from the fridge. "You can go back to work easily enough." He reclaimed the seat opposite her, sliding a beer across the table. "Just do like I do and tell Whitlock that you won't work late. Malcolm never comes in before sunset."

"Yeah, but don't you think it's totally weird. I mean, he likes to suck blood—really likes it, and he never comes into work during the day. I mean—" She looked up from her beer, her expression far more embarrassed than when graphically describing her attempt at sex with Malcolm. "I know this sounds totally freaky, but do you think he's a vampire?"

"Did he have fangs or anything like that?" Bertrand leaned forward, hungry for information that would confirm or deny the growing dread.

"No." Destiny also looked disappointed. "No fangs. No weirdness other than just Malcolm weirdness.

"What the heck is going on?"

Destiny started to peel the label of the second bottle. "Did you find anything when you hacked?"

Should he admit to the hacking? Bertrand caught himself looking at the bare skin between her breasts—definitely no bra. His cheeks flamed and he fought his eyes up to her face, thankfully getting there before she looked up from the beer label.

"Yeah. Crime stats—totally crap, crime stats. Want to see?"

"Absolutely."

"They're in the basement. It's safer down there anyway."

He grabbed his beer and led her down the stairs where his computer waited on his old desk from high school, some of the mementos of those years still push-pinned to the cork board above it: ribbons from the debating team and the computer club. A photo of Bertrand graduating taken by his dad.

"You sleep down here?"

Bertrand's bed was shoved up against the old couch so that there would still be a maneuvering area in the cramped little room.

"It's safer down here at night. They can't get in when I've got that door at the top of the stairs locked, and I keep the blinds drawn and the lights really low if the power's up."

"Weird." Destiny plunked down in the chair in front of Bertrand's desk, moving the wireless mouse to wake the laptop.

"Let me show you weird."

He put his beer down far from the computer and stood beside her, leaning over to take control of the mouse and see the screen. Her scent—a subtle perfume—filled his nostrils and forced him to acknowledge his proximity. Don't look down now! He would be looking right down her cleavage. He carefully kept his eyes on the computer screen, finding the icon for the DVD and opening up the Chicago P.D.'s crime stats. The pie charts and bar graphs all splashed across the window, and Destiny sat forward to study them.

Bertrand turned away and went to the window, stretching up on his toes to look through the bars to the sun, which was just above the peak of Needleman's house, closer to the horizon than Bertrand had thought. Destiny would have to spend the night with him. His breath shortened at the thought of lending her a T-shirt for pajamas, of sleeping on the couch so close to her. But what about his appointment with the detective? If he didn't show, would the police come here—or worse, the rippers? They'd better get to Thomas's bunker and they could sleep on the couches. They'd still be very close together.

"Are these graphs right?" Destiny studied the computer with hungry intensity.

"Who knows? But if they were crap, why did they pull them off the public site and hide them?"

He turned from the sun and again looked over her at the screen. Eleven murders in May, twenty-six in June, over two hundred in July, over a thousand in August and then nothing. Either there were zero murders or the stats had never been loaded and just defaulted to zero.

"Check out the missing persons though. That's the really scary part." Bertrand took control of the mouse and clicked over to another set of graphs. These bars also rose exponentially: over one thousand reported missing in May, and by August, over fifty thousand reported missing. Again, September showed zero.

"What the—"

"That's what I said." Bertrand picked up his beer and fought not to gulp the whole thing down. Was Needleman included in those numbers?

"What is going on?" Destiny sat back and stared at the computer, and Bertrand took a seat on the edge of the bed.

"There's a cult, I think—a blood cult. What's really weird is that so many people in the government, even the cops, are in on it."

"No." Destiny shook her head but kept staring at the crime stats. "If Malcolm was just in some kind of cult, then why won't he come into work during the day? Why have so many people switched to night shift? And I don't mean just from our office."

Bertrand let the silence hang as he faced the impossible that Father Alvarez and those teenagers had forced him to face. There were murderers out there who wanted to drink blood, and there were more of them every day, and like vampires, they couldn't go out at night. What had that detective said?
Get your dinner somewhere else
. And something about the Daylight Brigade.

"What's weird is there are people who can come out in the daylight who help them—like cops and stuff," he finally said. "I just can't figure out—I mean, vampires? But they use knives, they're not afraid of crosses or stuff like that. I doubt garlic helps. This is all something else. Something real." He thought of those teenagers last night, about their limp bodies sliding down into the sandpit at the beach. These kids didn't need a stake through the heart—bullets had worked just fine. Bertrand still feared that Father Alvarez was crazy and that they were just violent teenagers. But those kids had talked about being "brids."