anightwithoutstarsfinal Read online

  Phones with touch screens.

  Renting movies out of a box.

  Dead people covered in blood.

  The lobby, with its plain brown carpeting and matching walls, was dark. I tried hitting the row of light switches hidden behind a plastic fern, but nothing came on.

  I took the stairs two at a time, making an effort to keep my footsteps as quiet as possible. I waited for a creature – I couldn’t wrap my mind around the word ‘vampire’, at least not yet – to jump out of the shadows and attack, but the only thing that greeted me when I reached the third floor was an eerie silence.

  The air stank of sweat and cigarettes. Mrs. Dobbs in 4C must have been smoking again. I wondered if she was still alive. If any of them were. The fat cat lady whose name I didn’t remember. Old Mr. Graham two units down who pulled a lawn chair into the middle of the hall every Sunday to read his newspaper. Sue and Olivia, married last spring, who always waved when they saw me.

  I thought of them, all of them, as I passed by their doors to get to my own, using memory and my hand against the wall to guide me through the dark. Some of the units were open, but I didn’t look inside. I didn’t need to. The blood stained carpet told me everything I needed to know.

  Mimicking every bad cop movie I’d ever seen, I tugged Maximus’ gun free from the canvas holster on my hip and held it out in front of me, elbows locked. It really was heavy, and by the time I reached our apartment at the end of the hall my arms were trembling.

  The door was ajar. I nudged it open with the toe of my sneaker and, with my heart somewhere in the vicinity of my throat, stepped slowly inside.

  Air came out of my mouth in a whoosh of pain when my shins collided with something hard. I stumbled, arms wind milling for balance. The gun slipped out of my hand and went skidding across the floor. Unable to save myself I hit the ground with a hard thud, taking a lamp and stack of magazines down with me. The lamp shattered on impact. My feet crunched on broken glass and bits of cheap porcelain as I used the edge of the sofa to pull myself up.

  So much for being quiet.

  The apartment complex lost power so often I kept a spare flashlight next to the TV. It wasn’t there now, but a quick search of the carpet revealed it had rolled against the wall. Holding it away from my face I clicked it on and saw right away why I had taken a header when I came through the door.

  Nothing was where it should have been. Furniture was overturned. Windows were broken. Desk drawers were cracked in half on the floor, their contents scattered. The trash bin in the kitchen was knocked over, the linoleum covered in empty frozen dinner boxes. The apartment had been torn apart, in every sense of the word.

  I shone the murky beam of the flashlight into the corner and spied the gun. Picking it up by the grip, I held it in my right hand, the flashlight in my left. I probably should have crossed them – wasn’t that what they did in the movies? – but proper gun etiquette was the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

  “Dad?” I whispered. “Daddy?”

  Nothing.

  My lower lip jutted out. My throat burned. And suddenly I wasn’t Lola, the reckless pain in the ass teenager. I was Lola, the scared little girl who used to hide under her blankets after a nightmare.

  In the silence it sounded like an explosion.

  It wasn’t.

  I recognized the sound at once. A sharp familiar pop. A little hiss of air. A long, noisy slurp.

  I charged through the living room, kicking things out of my way as I went. I found him in his bedroom closet. He was sitting in the corner, using a case of beer to hold himself up. When I shined the light at his face he lowered the can he had just opened and squinted up at me, his watery eyes bloodshot and unfocused.

  “Sophia? Honey, is that you?”

  If you want your daughter to go from concerned to pissed off, call her by the name of the woman who abandoned you both. It will work like a charm every time.

  “No,” I gritted between my teeth. “It’s Lola.” Leaning forward, I ripped the beer can out of his hand threw it as hard as I could against the wall. It bounced back, striking my dad on the shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Sophia?”

  I tucked the gun back in its holster before I did something I truly regretted. The entire town was going to shit and my dad was in his closet getting drunk.

  No surprise there.

  “No, Dad, it’s Lola. L-O-L-A. Lola. Your daughter?”

  His eyes zeroed in on my face and flickered with recognition. “Lola,” he breathed.

  “Yep. You got it. Remind me to give you a medal later. Now you have to get up.” I grabbed his arm and tugged. He collapsed forward and rose unsteadily to his feet, swaying back and forth. Setting the flashlight on the nightstand I wrapped my hands around his shoulders and guided him over to the bed that still had the same pink rose comforter on it from when my mother slept beside him. He sat down and rolled over onto his side. I guided his feet up and pulled his shoes off. It was a dance we’d done a hundred times before and, as wrong as it was, it actually helped to do something so familiar.

  For a few minutes I wasn’t running from bloodthirsty monsters, I was just putting my drunken father to bed. No big deal.

  “Dad.” I crouched beside him and he turned his head to look at me. His face was pale. There was a cut above his left eyebrow that had dried blood crusted on it. He blinked once, twice, and when he winced, the corners of his eyes pulling tight and his mouth pinching, I knew he was fighting off a massive hangover.

  It almost made me feel bad for him.

  Almost.

  “Lola.” His voice was raspy and his breath reeked of beer. I sat back on my heels, nose wrinkling.

  “How much did you drink?”

  “I thought… I thought they got you too.”

  The hug was as unexpected as it was awkward. He tried to wrap his arm around my neck and nearly fell out of bed in the process. I eased him back onto the mattress, my annoyance turning rapidly to pity. He’d been a good dad once, just like I’d been a good daughter. The past year had changed both of us, neither one for the better.

  We were getting by the best way we knew how. Dad with his drinking, me with my reckless behavior. Coping mechanisms. At least that’s what the shrink would have said. I glanced down at my hand, saw the moon shaped scars reflected in the muted glow of the flashlight, and wondered what she would have to say about Angelique.

  Superiority complex? Check.

  Narcissistic behavior? Double check.

  Daddy issues? Definitely.

  At least I wasn’t the only hot mess in town anymore.

  “I’m fine, Dad. I’m right here. Have you… Have you heard from Mom?” I didn’t know if it was the right thing to ask, but I had to know. “Do you have your cell phone? I can call her.”

  Dad’s head jerked to the side. He stared up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly, and I was stunned to see tears glinting in the corners of his eyes. A tightness welled inside my chest, pressing against my lungs and making it difficult to breathe. I started to reach for his hand but I hesitated, my fingers curling and drawing back.

  Twelve months ago I would have squeezed our palms together without thinking. It was a normal, healthy, human reaction to give comfort when someone was in distress. To hug them when they reached for you. To hold their hand while they cried. But to give comfort you also had to receive it, and I couldn’t remember the last time my dad had offered me a kind word or a steadying hand on my shoulder.

  He wasn’t a bad man. I knew that. But he wasn’t the father I needed, and I couldn’t be the daughter he wanted.

  I folded my arms in front of my chest, tucking my hands up and out of the way. There would be time to muddle through our screwed up relationship when there weren’t maniacs running through the streets butchering everyone in sight.

  “No I don’t have my phone,” Dad whispered, still staring at the plain white ceiling with its ugly watermark in the left hand corner. “I forgot to charg
e it and the… the power is out. The radio. The television. The computer. Nothing is working and I can’t… I can’t reach them.” He closed his eyes and drew in a deep, trembling breath. “All I heard was screaming. It was loud. It was so loud. Doors were slamming. People were… people were begging for help. Pleading for it. They came in here. Knocked everything over. I hid in the closet. I don’t know… I don’t know what’s happening.” He turned his head to look at me. His eyes were huge and dark and filled with fear. “Lola, what’s happening?”

  Useless.

  He was going to be useless until I got him to sleep off the beer. “Just stay here, okay? Everything’s fine now. I’m going to get you some water and some aspirin.” I stood up and turned to go. Dad grabbed my wrist. “What?” I said, more sharply than I had intended.

  “I thought they got you too,” he said again. “Lola, I thought—”

  “I know. I know, Dad.” The tightness in my chest returned with a vengeance. I pried his fingers off my wrist one by one and stepped out of reach. “Like I said, everything is fine.”

  By the time I came back he was passed out and snoring. I set the water and aspirin on the nightstand, picked up the gun, and settled myself in the corner of the room closest to the door. My head fell against the wall with a dull thud. “Everything is fine,” I repeated softly.

  I almost believed it.

  In the morning everything would be fine. In the light of day everything would somehow make sense. I was positive help would arrive. I was certain this couldn’t be happening across the entire town.

  I was so wrong.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Silver Linings

  Bodies. Blood. Burning cars. It had been a massacre.

  With a sick, twisted mixture of horror and morbid fascination I stared out the living room window to the street below. The sun was just rising, bathing the bloody carnage in a soft, pleasant glow.

  Bodies littered the sidewalk. From this high up they looked like broken dolls, except I’d never seen a doll with its throat ripped open or its leg twisted all the way around. There was a police car sticking out of the drug store across the street. A blue Ford truck was wrapped around a telephone pole. The driver had been slingshot through the windshield and was sprawled on the hood. Shards of glass stuck out of his face and arms. All the blood made him unrecognizable, but at least he’d died of natural causes.

  Sort of.

  A fire burned in a trash bin, sending bright orange flames licking up and over the metal rim. Yesterday morning it would have been a significant event. Today it paled in comparison to the death and destruction of an entire town.

  It seemed no one had been exempt. Men, women, children… Even the stray black and white cat that lived in the alley next to the apartment complex had not survived the night.

  I knew that cat. I knew these people. I had passed them on the street. I had smiled at them. Held doors for them. Sometimes even exchanged a few words with them. They weren’t friends or family, but they were someone’s friend. Someone’s family. And now they were all dead.

  I lurched away from the window and slapped both hands over my mouth to contain the scream that threatened to burst free. Keeping my hands firmly in place I sprinted for the bathroom and collapsed on my knees in front of the toilet, flipping up the seat just in time.

  When I was done I collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap, pressing my face flat against the bath mat. I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. My injuries still didn’t hurt – in fact, many of them had disappeared entirely which was something I really didn’t have the mental capacity to think about right now – but I had only slept in fits and starts, waking at the tiniest noise, the gun clutched to my chest and my heart beating so loudly I was terrified the sound of it would give me away.

  Dad was still sleeping off the effects of his hangover. I’d already packed two bags for us so we would be ready to go whenever he woke up. The bags were sitting by the front door. A green duffel for myself filled with anything and everything I thought would be useful. Clothes, an extra pair of sneakers, a toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, batteries, and all the flashlights I could find, which only ended up being three. In Dad’s I stuffed as many bottles of water as I could fit and any food that wasn’t perishable. Why die of dehydration and hunger when there was a vampire just waiting to rip your throat out?

  Vampire. Drinker. Whatever they were called, I believed in them now. How could I not when I’d looked out the window and seen what they had done with my own eyes? And even worse than the broken bodies outside – even worse than the senseless murder of innocent people – was the fact that no one had come.

  Not the police. Not the army. Not the secret service government people in their black SUVs. Which had to mean this was happening the world over, because how could anyone sit back and let an entire town get destroyed? The answer was they couldn’t. The answer was the only ones who could help us were either fighting somewhere else or they were already dead. No one was coming to our rescue. We were on our own.

  I picked myself up off the mat and stumbled into the shower. The water was freezing, but at least it woke me up. Silver linings, right? Weren’t those the things you were supposed to look for when your entire life was going to shit?

  I scrubbed my skin until it was bright pink and washed my hair twice, working conditioner through the heavy tangles until they dissolved. Usually I would dry my hair – it was too heavy and thick to leave wet – but without power I didn’t have much of a choice. I toweled it dry the best I could, yanked a brush through, and plaited it into a braid.

  I gave a little more thought to my clothing. What did one wear when they were on the run from bloodthirsty vampires? It beat me. My regular attire (ripped jeans and a tight tank top) didn’t seem appropriate, so I settled on a pair of comfortable navy blue shorts I managed to dig out from the back of my closet and a loose fitting green t-shirt with a grinning turtle on the front. My sister had given me the shirt last summer for my birthday in an attempt to be funny, knowing I would never wear it in a million years.

  Guess the joke was on her now.

  I glanced in the mirror one last time before I stepped out of the bathroom. My reflection stared back at me, a solemn faced girl with faint purplish bruises under her eyes. The cut on my cheek was gone, as was the one on my knee. Last night might never have happened if not for the tiny scars on my hand… and all the bodies outside.

  “You got this,” I told myself. “You’re totally going to rock this vampire apocalypse shit. Right? Right.”

  Dad was still sleeping when I crept into his room. I studied him for a moment, noting there was more gray in his hair than brown now and the lines running along the side of his mouth had deepened into grooves. He’d aged more than he should have in the past twelve months. I guess a broken heart will do that to you, not to mention a steady diet of alcohol and microwavable food.

  “Dad.” I thumped the end of the mattress with my fist. “Dad, you have to get up now. We have to get out of here.”

  He groaned and rolled away from the light streaming in from the window, burrowing his head in the covers. If this was a regular day I would have closed the blinds and let him go back to sleep. But this wasn’t a regular day. For all I knew there would never be a regular day again.

  “Dad get up.” I yanked away the top comforter. Still dressed in the same jeans and brown Villanova sweatshirt he’d passed out in, Dad sat up on his elbows and blinked drowsily at me.

  “Whaffisit?” he mumbled.

  “Oh, nothing much. Vampires invaded the town and everyone is dead. If we want to stay alive, we have to find a safe place to hide before dark. I met a guy last night. He suggested the mountains.”

  Maximus. Had he survived the night? Would I ever see him again? Did it matter?

  Dad swung his legs over the side of the bed. His face was red and blotchy and there were dark shadows under his eyes. The hood of his sweatshirt was twisted around and hung off one shoulder. He on
ly had one sock on. I would have thought he looked like a wreck, but his disheveled appearance had become the new normal and I didn’t even bat an eyelash. “You went out with a boy last night?” He squinted blearily up at me. “Who was he? What did you do?”

  “I just told you vampires murdered everyone and you’re worried about the guy I met?” I said incredulously. “Seriously?”

  “I… I know someone broke in.” His eyes cut away to the door. From this angle the wrecked living room was clearly visible. I hadn’t bothered trying to pick anything up. What was the point?

  Remembering the glass of water and aspirin I’d set on the nightstand table, I held them both out. I needed my dad to be lucid. Or at the very least capable of walking down three flights of stairs without falling over. “Yeah, someone broke in,” I said as he cocked his head back and swallowed two tiny blue pills. “But they didn’t steal anything. Like I said, the vampires—”

  “Lola, please stop.” He grimaced at me, as though I was the one causing him pain instead of the dozen or so beers he’d sucked down last night. “We’ve talked about this. I know things haven’t been easy lately—”

  “Lately?” I scoffed.

  “—but that does not excuse your poor behavior. Now I need you to tell me the truth.” He took a deep breath. “Are you pregnant?”

  I couldn’t blame him for not believing me. After all, I’d been the Queen of Denial less than six hours ago. But I didn’t have Maximus’ patience, or his time. If we were going to get out of here we needed to move now. Which meant I didn’t have a whole lot of options.

  “Look out the window.”

  “Lola, you need to tell me—”

  “Look out the damn window.”

  That got his attention. I may have done a lot of things (break curfew, talk back, attempt to steal cars) but I never cursed in front of him, mostly because it was such a typically teenage thing to do.