The New Night Novels (Book 1): Rippers: A New Night Novel (5 page)

     Leland checked through the aisles and in the back storage areas. The cooler and the spacious area where freeze drinks and soda supplies, extra bags, cleaning supplies, and overstock were stored were empty of human life, as well. The convenience store was completely empty.

     He returned to the door, moved the brick, and twisted the lock. He felt the most secure he had since he saw the two crazies on his aunt’s front lawn.

     Sitting behind the register with a bottle of cola and a bag of barbeque chips, Leland wished for his phone. He wanted to check online for news or call someone for help. There wasn’t a phone in the store that he could see. The owner probably had a cell and didn’t care to pay for a landline.

     Even without a way to reach the outside, Leland thought of the little store as the perfect place to lie low for a while. He needed to gather his thoughts and plan what he would do from that point on. What he didn’t want to was think about what had happened at his aunt’s house. What he had permitted to happen to his nephew when he ran away.

     The less he wanted to think about those things, the harder they pressed on him until he could think of nothing other than Drayton’s tiny cries. Even when he tried to tell himself he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby, his guilty conscience insisted his excuses were all made to disguise his cowardice.

     Rubbing his hands briskly over his face, Leland considered the shelves of alcohol behind the register.

     His dad had let him try his beer a few times and his Uncle Tony had given him a shot of vodka and made him chase it with Sprite once. Leland stood and took down a small bottle of rum from the shelf. He’d heard his Uncle Tony say once or twice that he enjoyed rum and cola together. Because he already had the cola, he figured he might as well try to add the liquid that went well with it.

     Leland sat and twisted open the cap on the bottle of rum. He sniffed the amber liquid and found it wasn’t too abrasive in his nose. He tipped the bottle back against his lips and let the warm alcohol slide over his tongue. The trail of heat hit him like a shot of fire in the chest and he coughed in surprise. He chased the mouthful of rum with three drinks of the cola and let it sit.

     He didn’t become violently ill or suffer any other negative effects, so he took another drink. Chips forgotten, he alternately nursed the bottle of warm rum and his cool cola. The warmth migrated from his throat to his head and he found it easier to avoid thoughts of his nephew and the other family members he’d left behind in his fear.

     When Leland heard a noise near the door, he took the screwdriver in hand and held it up close to his head. His hand shook and his vision wavered. He’d been at the rum and cola for over thirty minutes. It hadn’t hit him in one solid rush but had rather crept up on him until he was drunk without knowing how he’d gotten there.

     If someone was trying to get in and wanted to hurt him, being drunk wasn’t how he wanted to be. Leland wrinkled his nose and his lips twisted into a frown. He shoved the small, half-empty bottle of rum away from him and stood.

     He couldn’t see anyone on the other side of the door. If there’d been a person trying to get inside, they’d already moved away. It was someone like him then, wasn’t it? Leland was almost certain; it had be.

     One of the crazy ones like the two who’d killed or hurt his family members would have just flung themselves through the door with no thoughts for injuries or broken glass. But whoever it was had tried the door, found it didn’t open, and moved away. That indicated a level of higher thinking Leland thought the potential pursuers he’d outrun didn’t have.

     He stood frozen with indecision for only a moment. The first few steps made his head swim and he braced himself against the counter. He’d heard his father say it several times and after just the first experience with drunkenness made Leland agree with the old man: he was never drinking again.

     The door lock seemed too large and unwieldy for his fingertips. He fumbled with it once, then twice before he was able to get it open. By that time, Leland assumed the other person had already gone from the area.

     He swung the door wide anyway and called out to the empty parking lot, “Hey!”

     No one answered him at first. Leland was sure the person had gone and he could return to the store to do anything else except drink more alcohol. Then, he saw a man round the left side of the building.

     He was tall, white, and looked like the body-builder type. He carried a suitcase and a briefcase as though they weighed nothing and didn’t bother his bulging muscles. His sharp brown eyes took in Leland, found him non-threatening, and warmed when his disarming smile reached them.

     “Nice to meet you,” the man said as he stepped forward. When he was within distance for it, he put down his briefcase to free his right hand for a shake. “My name is Jameson.”

Chapter Seven – What’s Wrong With the World – Leland and Jameson

     Jameson noticed how quickly Leland reengaged the lock once they got back inside the convenience store. His suspicions about the state of things kept receiving more confirmation. He’d left the apartment complex less than ten minutes before but had crossed considerable distance. He couldn’t see even the outline of the fire which consumed the home he’d left behind against the dark horizon. The young man was the first person he’d encountered since leaving the burning apartment building.

     “I’m Leland,” the young man said after some delay. He looked outside through the locked door once more before he turned back to Jameson. “Did something happen to you?”

     The question was open-ended enough Leland didn’t have to go into his own experiences or reason why he’d ask such a question. Jameson respected the kid and his inquiry.

     “My wife,” Jameson said with a nod. “Someone killed her.” He didn’t specify how, but he could see his admission didn’t startle the kid in the slightest. He’d definitely experienced something, as well. Jameson wanted to know what had happened.

     “Two crazy people killed my family,” Leland said. His voice could barely make it out of his mouth through the pain he felt. “They broke through the front window and just…” He trailed off with a shrug and moved toward Jameson, who leaned against the counter.

     “I’m sorry about that. It seems like there’s a lot of crazy shit going on right now.”

     Leland took a fold-out chair from the back and then returned to grab another for Jameson. He gestured to the free one as he sat and asked, “Have you heard anything else?”

     Jameson took the offered seat and looked around for somewhere he could set up his laptop. He turned his chair so he faced the counter and started unpacking his briefcase.

     “I haven’t, but I saw the men who were after my wife. There was something wrong with them. It feels like the whole world is wrong right now, doesn’t it?”

     Leland nodded his agreement with the assessment as Jameson booted up his computer. He decided not to bother with the cord as the machine was fully charged. If it took too long to read what was on Joselyn’s flash drive, he could always plug into the outlet behind the counter.

     Leland put his head in his hands. The ache behind his eyes had gotten worse. He didn’t know what else to talk to the stranger about. Maybe his job? His family? What kind of mundane conversation was appropriate when two men were hiding out against a threat they couldn’t even put a name or face to?

     “So what do you plan to do after this?” Jameson asked as he logged on and slipped the flash drive into its place on the side of his laptop. The machine recognized the device without a problem and gave Jameson access to its contents. No folders existed in the display. Only one document was available for selection. It was titled, ‘Project Codename: Rippers.’ Jameson clicked on it and looked at Leland, awaiting his answer.

     “I don’t really know,” Leland admitted. “My dad passed a couple years back and the rest of my family… they were all at the party. I don’t really know what to do.”

     Jameson smelled the kid’s depression even through the haze of alcohol he’d noticed as soon as he’d seen him.
     “Well,” the vampire began, “I hope you can find a friend or something.” The scent of blood was even heavier than the smell of rum. Jameson didn’t think he could trust himself around Leland. He didn’t want to risk the kid’s life any more than it was already being risked just by existing in what Jameson assumed was a dangerously changing world.

     Leland’s eyes widened a bit at Jameson’s words. He’d hoped the older man might have had some sage advice to offer. Instead, it seemed like he planned to part ways with Leland as soon as he could and didn’t care to offer him any words of wisdom at all.

     What Jameson read, he didn’t understand. He frowned at the screen as his brain tried to make sense of what he saw. Words like, ‘Grissom virus,’ ‘virus/antibody observations by electron microscope,’ ‘virus infectivity titer,’ and ‘morphological change,’ confused him as he scanned just the first few pages.

     He understood what Joselyn had in her possession when she died contained notes about a virus of some kind. That much, he could grasp. But there were charts detailing numbers he couldn’t comprehend, a map of the United States with proposed spread (which Jameson only knew because it was labelled), and other informational graphs. It was all entirely over his head. The document was over six hundred pages long. Not only did he have no time to go through it all, he had no way to use the information he possessed. Joselyn had with her dying breaths given what appeared to be vital data to someone who had no way to use or even understand it.  

     “Son of a bitch,” Jameson whispered to himself. “Son of a bitch…”

     “Something wrong?” Leland asked. He hoped to draw Jameson into conversation. Anything to distract himself from his aching head.

     “Just a bunch of stuff I don’t understand,” Jameson answered. He cleared the document from his screen, logged out of his computer, shut it down, and repacked it before he spoke again. “Do you happen to know anything about viruses?”

     Leland furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Is that what this is? Is that what happened to those people who killed my family? They’re sick?”

     Jameson bounced the flash drive in the palm of his hand before sliding it back into his pocket. He turned and leaned against the counter as he responded. “The information on this disc seems to indicate the possibility. I can’t imagine Joselyn was killed for something other than this data. It seemed important to her that I take it.”

     “So what are you going to do with it?”

     Jameson looked outside, into the deepening shadows of night. He pondered the kid’s question, trying to be honest with himself about his options.

     He could move quickly and try to make his way to the CDC or some other facility capable of utilizing the information in a positive way. But he’d seen evidence even in his quick perusal of research into vampire DNA. He couldn’t risk that falling into the hands of the humans. It was the first rule he’d been told: avoid giving humans information about their kind. Do not kill them, turn those who would jeopardize the exposure of the vampire population, or speak with them about vampirism. Jameson assumed, ‘don’t hand over a document containing information about the genetic makeup of vampires,’ fell in the category of giving humans information.

     So he couldn’t hand it over to the humans at the CDC. He had to find another vampire to give the flash drive to. The necessity to find another of his kind when the only one he’d even met was Joselyn would be frustrating to no end.

     “I really don’t know,” Jameson finally answered. “I think I need to find someone who knows more about viruses than I do and hand it over. If this is a virus, maybe it can be cured.”

     Leland wanted to be excited about that possibility, but what good would a cure do him now? He’d already lost anyone he could have cared about to the potential virus.

     “Well, good luck with that,” Leland said. The heaviness in his voice made Jameson look at the kid with a bit more compassion than he had been. He was sixteen-maybe seventeen. He’d decided to try drinking away his recent experiences but had had no luck, even though it smelled as though the effort he’d made should have about covered horrific family murder memories. He was alone; truly alone from what little he’d said about himself.

     Though the kid was too proud (and possibly too scared) to ask, Jameson was currently the best option for an adult who wasn’t slaughter mad who could lead him to some kind of safety. The kid had done well enough on his own so far, but what if this thing had spread farther than their little town? Leland seemed competent enough, but he was a kid on his own with no place to go. The more Jameson thought it through, the more he felt like an utter asshole for being so obsessed with the flash drive. He may not have been human anymore, but the human contact he’d given a kid who’d obviously experienced major trauma had been shit.

     Joselyn had told him he was the strongest-willed person she’d ever met. Jameson told himself he could keep from munching on Leland at least until he found some humans he could send the kid along with.

     “Hey, it’s no solid plan, but it’s better than hanging out in a corner store until someone drops a bomb on this place or more sick people overrun us, right? You want to try to find someone to give this to with me?” Jameson said. He attempted to bring some brightness to his voice. If he focused on raising the kid’s spirit, maybe he would stop getting so distracted by the alluring aroma of blood beneath his healthy, dark skin.