Everyone Dies in the End #5

Cindy

Cindy lay on the cold floor, trying to breathe, trying to stay conscious.  She could pull air through her nose, and that had been enough for the trip to the farmhouse, but the vampires had done the work. She had been nothing but an unwilling captive on the older one’s shoulders. There had been no exertion. That was not the case with her teleportation, if that was what it could be called. Her gift was unable to move her a centimeter; at least never before, but now she stared at the damp imprint of her body on the concrete floor twelve inches distant and realized this time had been different. This time she had moved. Not far, but distinctly. Why? Maybe the passion of her will, the desperation. She didn't know what had enhanced her ability, and right now, she didn't care.

But that movement, her disappearance, the exertion of transporting, had exhausted her. Again she sucked the damp air through her nose, struggling for the oxygen her body needed. She couldn’t pass out. What if the vampire returned? She willed her heart to slow, concentrated on pushing the air to her body, and slowly her breathing slowed, her focus returned.

With her focus came the question. Why? Why didn't the vampires kill her? She knew their ways, knew them better than most, knew them before their revelation. Her mother had made sure she had the knowledge. Yes, vampires were intelligent, ruthless, cunning, even protective of their own, but they weren't kidnappers. They had no use for the lesser species, as they referred to humans. Humans were one thing, and one thing only--food. Why? It was a question she knew she must answer if she hoped to stay alive.

Questions were well and good, but she wasn’t finding any answers till the ropes were off her. Fortunately, her former captors weren’t lacking in confidence. Her bounds were lose. Obviously, they felt they had little to fear from a human. She had been tied tighter when she played games with Eddie. He liked to play rough, and truth be known, she did too. The trick to slipping bounds was to go counter strain. Don’t pull against the ropes, give them their respect, go with them.

Cindy let the air out of her lungs and relaxed her body, stretching her bound hands toward her ankles as curled her feet toward the small of her back. There, there. She could feel the slack. She visualized her hands smaller. She wasn’t sure if it made them so, but she thought she could feel even more slack. She rubbed the wrists against the rope, rubbed them raw, rubbed them bloody, using the blood to lubricate the ropes, make them slippery, slimy, slick, and… there! One hand was out, then the other. Ten seconds later she had untied her feet, pulled the gag from her mouth and stood.

Up the stairs, quickly, yet quietly, hoping to find something useful in the room above. She knew there wasn’t anyone alive, if there had been, the vampire would never have returned for her. She was right, no one lived, but wished she hadn’t been. The stench of blood was overpowering, the bodies, at least what she could make out in the dim darkness, weren’t bodies anymore, but rather shredded lumps of flesh, and her vomit was as hot as it was instantaneous.

For a moment she stood in the doorway, the soup of bloody goo seeping through the side holes in her converse high tops, tears streaming down her cheeks. She wiped the vomit from her lips with the back of her hand, smearing the tears, fighting another wave of nausea. Fighting the urge to quit, to sink down, to lie in the blood, fecal matter, and flesh till something—a soldier, a ganger, something—added her blood to the primordial stew covering the tile, but she knew she couldn’t. Her life wasn’t about her. She touched the locket safely ensconced in her Levi’s watch pocket and smiled. It was about Eddie. It was about finding him. She set her mouth in a grim line and set about the business at hand.

She stepped to the kitchen’s door, careful not to put a foot on the unidentified lumps of flesh or clothing. At the door, her toe stubbed something hard, and she barely stifled a yelp. Something about the hardness was different, not like bone, and certainly not flesh. She remembered the booms, the gunshots, and slowly she crouched, running her hand down her leg, to her toe, to the object. Gritting her teeth, she closed her hand on the sticky, hard shotgun.

         Five minutes later she stood at the farmhouse door. Finding shells for the gun hadn’t been hard. Not after she steeled herself to the task. It only took five minutes, one retching, and two bodies. She used the weak light at the door and the tail of her shirt to clean the weapon. It wasn’t much different from the 12-gage Eddie used on Quail. A breeze had kicked up, and the air smelled like dawn, surprisingly fresh. A direct contrast from her vomit and blood encrusted shirt. Its reek filled her nose and she fought another wave of nausea. Without hesitation, she tore it off. It was no longer a world where shirts mattered.  No shirt would protect her—she jacked a round into the shotgun’s chamber—but the shotgun just might.