I run.
A man to my right is jerked away, taken straight up into the sky by one of the huge bats I saw earlier. But they aren’t bats at all. They’re people. People with wings and fangs.
“Stop!” A bloodied woman limps toward me. “The vampires are waiting. They’re waiting for us.”
My steps slow. My side hurts, and I still can’t catch my breath. The cold air burns my throat. “What?”
Someone runs past me. Then another person.
“I said the vampires are waiting!” The woman yells. “We’re hemmed in.” She sits heavily on the curb. “There’s no way out.”
“We have to run,” I say between heaving breaths.Vampires. Did she sayvampires?
She stares up at me, blood darkening one side of her face. “There’s nowhere to go.” She’s wearing military garb, her eyes stern. “We’re trapped.”
Screams sound ahead of us and then are quickly silenced.
“Are you injured?” I make my choice and hurry over to her. “Show me.”
“One of them swiped me.” She pulls her hair back and shows me a long gouge along her shoulder. “Bastard couldn’t finish me off, not when I emptied my entire magazine into him. But he’s not dead. They don’t die.”
“The vampires?” I ask as I inspect the wound more closely.
More screams, closer now. No one’s running past anymore.
“Yeah, the vampires. Who else?” She peers down the road. “They’re coming. They were always going to come. We should’ve seen that from the start.”
The scratch is angry but not deep enough to hit bone. My brain goes through the steps I need to complete to help her. It’s like a little refuge, somewhere I can still function as the world falls apart around me. “It’s not too deep. If we can get you somewhere?—”
“We aren’t going anywhere.” She grabs my forearm and pulls me in front of her, glaring at me with hard eyes. “Don’t bother. They’ve done what they set out to do.”
“I don’t?—”
“We’re meat.” She lets me go. “That’s all we ever were to them. President Clark sold us out. Fucking killed us all.”
“Clark?” That’s my name. “Wait.”
She gets to her feet and squares her shoulders. “So this is how this country ends. The Great Experiment. I’ve served her all my life. I won’t go down without a fucking fight.”
My brain is still trying to parse through her words. Clark. There’s a President Clark. Juno? I try to remember. A stabbing pain shoots through my temple, but I remember.Yes! Juno is the president. She won the election.
“I came here to cure the plague,” I say slowly.
The woman scoffs. “The plague isn’t our biggest worry. Not anymore. Here they come.”
I look down the street. Shadows emerge. Dozens of them. Vampires. Eyes glowing in the dark.
“Looks like we’ve got some top brass,” one of them calls, his tone dripping with derision.
The woman next to me raises her chin. “You are enemies of the United States. I will give you no quarter, no mercy, and nothing but the grace of God will ever be able to save you from the hell you’ve brought down on yourselves by attacking us.”
Some of them chuckle. One darts out and grabs her. I scream as another yanks me backwards by my hair and throws me to the ground, then plants his boot on my throat, pinning me. I grab his foot, but he just glares down at me, unmoving.
“Take these for interrogation.” A woman with long white hair says, disdain coating her words like acid. “If anyone else looks like a higher up, take them too. Gifts for the high lord. The rest, they’re all fair game.”
She continues back the way I came as more explosions rock the night. The monster pinning me swipes his thumb across his teeth, then leans down and shoves it into my mouth. I taste blood.
“Stay,” he says, then does the same to the woman with me. To my horror, I can’t move. I can’t do anything.
