“That you?” Matt, alarmed, shouted from behind him.
“Yeah,” Josh shouted back. “I’m making sure there’s nothing in here. Maybe I can lure them out.”
“Good luck with that. They’re not that stupid.”
“Yeah, well, you never know.”
Matt was right. The bloodsuckers weren’t stupid. Josh had seen them up close, seen the way they pounced and attacked, always relying on their numbers. Then again, stupid creatures wouldn’t have been able to take over the world in one night. At first, Josh had thought it was just their little corner of the universe — Ridley, Texas, population 4,100 in a good year — but he had learned the truth quickly enough.
No, the bloodsuckers weren’t stupid at all.
Josh took a breath and stepped into the back room, gripping the cold steel rod tightly in his right hand, ready to swing. He swept the room again with the flashlight. The backpack felt light and empty behind him, and his sneakers did what sneakers do — they squeaked ridiculously loud against the cheap, tiled floor.
He made a beeline for the shelves in the back, careful not to move too fast, running the flashlight along every inch of the room for signs of occupancy. Corner to corner, around the empty and opened boxes on the floor, the piles of clothes nearby, an old raggedy couch, a bucket, and a mop. Nothing. Just the sound of his movements, the sound of Matt tossing things around in the store beyond the opened door.
Jesus, Matt, you’re louder than my grandma without her meds, man.
Then he was suddenly at the shelves. Josh grinned at the first box he saw, labeled “Canned Fruits.”
Jackpot, mofos!
Josh leaned the prying bar against the shelf and stuck the flashlight between his teeth. He reached for the nearest box, but before he even touched it, the shelf wobbled and Josh froze.
And he heard it (and smelled it) and alarms began ringing inside his head. In the second or two it took Josh to pull back his hands and reach for the bar, the shelf wobbled again as the bloodsucker leaped down from the top of the shelf — where it had been hiding all this time — and crashed right into Josh.
The force of the impact threw Josh back to the floor. The flashlight flew from Josh’s mouth, the lens shattering against the concrete floor, even before Josh crumpled nearby in a heap of blinding pain. The creature was on top of him, gripping him with long, slender fingers, and Josh’s nostrils flared at the pungent smell of the thing’s breath, the unmistakable odor of death that seethed from the gnarled flesh and the rotting muscles underneath.
He let out a scream before he could stop himself (Oh, man, Matt’s going to have fun over that one), and the adrenaline rushed through him, pumping him full of urgency and somehow, somehow, Josh was able to throw his right elbow into the bloodsucker’s cheek. He felt the bone underneath what was left of the creature’s flesh breaking, and the thing flopped off him. Josh scrambled to his hands and knees, saw the bright blue prying bar nearby, the color giving it away in the blackness.
He leaped for it and got the bar by the middle section just as he landed, feeling another massive stinging sensation ripple through his body as he crashed back against the floor. Josh could feel it coming—smell it getting closer — and he spun around and saw the creature flying through the air. He swung on instinct and caught it in the head. It jerked off course and landed on the floor three feet away from him, bony arms and legs making a hell of a racket against the hard concrete.
Josh fought for his footing, managing to get up on his knees before the bloodsucker beat him to it. There was a big gash in its left cheek, thick clumps of coagulated black blood dripping free. There wasn’t a lot of it because the bloodsucker was small and frail, and it looked miserably weak, almost malnourished, though it was hard to tell with them. This one looked especially pathetic, as if it hadn’t eaten in a while, and Josh wondered pointlessly how long it had been in here, just waiting for some idiot to stumble cluelessly inside. Some idiot like him.
The creature opened its mouth and bared its teeth, revealing filthy, dirty, brown- and yellow-stained teeth, chipped and crooked and twisted. “Meth teeth,” he remembered thinking the first time he saw a bloodsucker, on the night everything changed forever.
They were hairless creatures, more animal than man, with pruned flesh and skin that hung loosely over bones underneath, like ill-fitting clothes. Their dark black eyes, lifeless and pale, gave away that they were no longer human. There was a thick, overwhelming smell about them that reminded Josh of his dog Sally, especially after she had gotten into the trash cans.
The bloodsucker leaped into the air again. It was fast — so much faster than Josh had expected — and Josh was staggering backward even before he had completely risen to his feet. He felt the edge of the metal shelf dig into his back as he bumped into it, and boxes tumbled down around him. One box hit him on the head and Josh thought, Oh, great, now I have a concussion, too. Can this day get any worse?
But it did, because soon Josh was on the floor again, and the bloodsucker was on top of him. It glared down at him, emotionless eyes like the pits of some hell Josh used to read about on the Internet while everyone else was out having fun. He felt skeletal fingers digging into the flesh of his shoulders through his T-shirt as it pinned him down and opened its mouth. Josh stared into the cavern of ugly, twisted, disgusting teeth, like something out of a nightmare. His stomach twisted into knots, the disgust of being this close to the creature overcoming even the fear of the moment.
The bloodsucker grabbed his head and turned it, lowering itself toward his exposed neck. Josh felt weak and stupid and useless under its grip.
Thick, sticky black blood dripped down from the gash in the creature’s cheek. The blood caressed Josh’s temple and he winced. It didn’t hurt or sting, but the reality of coming in contact with their blood was enough to make him want to retch.
He closed his eyes and stopped fighting the bloodsucker and thought about other things, of Gaby. Lovely, lovely Gaby. He hadn’t been sure she could possibly get any lovelier than when he had seen her that first time in sixth grade. She got prettier as she grew up, and now that she was eighteen, he was certain she was the most beautiful girl in the world. It was too bad he never had the courage to tell her, even before all of this. And now he never would.
Regrets. He had so many regrets.
Oh fuck it, just get it over with, you smelly piece of shit.
Sticky saliva dripped down on him as the bloodsucker put its mouth over his neck, and it was about to take a bite when Josh heard a loud, bloodcurdling scream that sounded very familiar coming from behind the creature. Josh’s eyes snapped open at the same time the bloodsucker lifted its head away from his neck and turned just as ping! — and the bloodsucker looked like it was levitated up into the air by some unseen force, off of Josh, and flung sideways. Josh swore he could hear the creature’s bones clattering as it landed roughly in a pile across the room.
He saw Matt — big, muscular, handsome Matt — standing over him, the bright, open doorway perfectly framing him in some kind of heroic pose.
Oh, come on, he saves my life and gets the heroic profile, too? This is too much.
Matt stood with the aluminum baseball bat in his hands, and he was changing up his grip on the shiny weapon when the bloodsucker sprang back to its feet like nothing had happened. Of course the creature hadn’t felt anything. What was Josh thinking? He had caught the thing twice in the face and it kept coming. And he had a steel bar. All Matt had was an aluminum baseball bat.