Zeke didn’t answer. He appeared to be deep in thought, so I left the room without another word, heading outside to dispose of the bloody wrappings.
In the yard, I buried the rags quickly, then stood to gaze down the road. Old Chicago waited at the end of the highway, along with a whole raider army and a mysterious vampire king. Who ruled a vampire city. I found it ironic; the very thing I’d been running from all this time was the place I’d return to in the end.
The sky in the east was lightening. I returned inside to find Zeke still at the table, the open backpack beside him, munching from a bag of pretzels I’d scavenged in town. He glanced up as I came in but didn’t stop eating, an instinct I recognized from my Fringer days. No matter what the situation, no matter how awful you felt or how inappropriate it was, you still ate when you could. You never knew when your next meal would be, or if your current meal would be your last.
I also noted he had his gun out, lying on the table within easy reach, and decided to ignore it.
“Dawn is almost here,” I told him, and he nodded. “There’s painkillers in there if you need them, and some water. The bandages and peroxide are in the front pocket.”
“What about ammo?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t find any back in town, and I didn’t have much time to look around.” I deliberately did not look at the pistol close to his hand. “How many bullets do you have left?”
“Two.”
“Then we’ll have to make them count.” Glancing through the window, I winced. “I have to go. Take it easy on that leg, okay? If something happens, I can’t help you until the sun goes down. I’ll see you this evening.”
He nodded without looking up. I wandered down the hall, weaving through cobwebs and scattered rubble, until I reached the bedroom at the end. The door was still on its hinges, and I pushed it open with a squeak.
A large bed sat against the wall beneath a broken window, curtains waving gently in the breeze. On the worm-eaten mattress, two adult skeletons lay side by side, the remains of their clothes rotted away. Between them was a much smaller skeleton, being held in the arms of one of the adults, cradling it to its chest.
I gazed at the skeletons, feeling an odd sense of surrealism. I’d heard stories of the plague, of course, when my mother had told me tales of life before. Sometimes it struck so fast, so suddenly, that entire families would get sick and die within a couple days. These bones, this family, were of another age, another era, before our time. What had it been like, to live here before the plague, when there were no rabids and vampires and silent, empty cities?
I shook those thoughts away. No use in wondering about the past, it wasn’t going to do me any good. I backed out of the room and crossed the hall, pushing open the door opposite the bedroom. The space here was smaller, with a single twin bed against the wall, but it was dark, the windows were shuttered closed against the sun, and it didn’t have any skeletons.
I lay down on my back, keeping my sword within easy reach on the mattress. Of course, if anyone wanted to sneak up on me during the day, I’d be easy pickings, lying here like the dead, unable to wake up.
I glanced at the closed door, and a thought came to me that turned my insides to ice. Zeke was still out there, awake, mobile and armed. While I slept, would he come creeping into my room to cut off my head? Would he kill me as I lay here, helpless, following the principles that Jeb had instilled in him? Did he hate vampires that much?
Or would he simply take the bike and drive off to confront the raiders alone?
I suddenly wished I’d chosen to sleep outside, buried in the deep earth, away from vengeful demon slayers. But gray bars of light were slanting in beneath the shutters, and I could feel my limbs getting heavy and sluggish. I would have to trust that Zeke was smart enough to know he couldn’t rescue the others alone, that his principles weren’t nearly as strict as his mentor’s, and that even though I was a vampire, he would realize that I was still the person he had known before.
My eyes closed, and just before I lost consciousness, I was almost certain I heard the door creak open.
*
THE WORLD WAS UPSIDE DOWN.
I couldn’t move my arms from behind my back, couldn’t move anything. A soft breeze slithered across my naked shoulders. My arms felt broken. Or bound. Or both. Strange that I felt no pain.
The floor, a few feet from my head, was concrete. The walls around me were concrete. It had the feeling of being deep underground, though I remembered nothing of how I came to be here. I turned my head and saw, upside down, a table a few feet away, covered in instruments that glinted at me from the shadows.