House Of Dragons Page 17

  The scholarship program was simple. If they demonstrated economic need, which most people did in Detroit, then kids, or their parents for very young kids, were simply asked to write a note or letter stating why they wanted skating lessons. There were no wrong answers. They also had to state that they would abide by the rules of the rink.

  Very young kids were off the hook as far as scholarship eligibility via school performance, but all kids in first grade through high school had to sign a contract stating that they would keep their grades at Cs or above and would provide rink staff with copies of all report cards.

  If their grades fell below Cs, there would be many chances to get grades up to par. Free tutoring and educational counseling would also be offered. Only in the case of clear-cut willful refusal to raise grades would a skating lesson scholarship be terminated.

  In exchange for compliance with these things, each child was given a lifetime scholarship that would cover everything from skates to skating clothes to lessons by highly experienced instructors, all the way to costumes and travel fees once a child reached competitive level.

  Several dozen kids did reach that level after the rink had been in operation for a few years. One of these kids was Michelle, the little girl who'd set the whole academy in motion with what she'd said to me after the post-Olympic show. On the academy's opening day, she and her mom had been the very first ones in a line of kids and parents that snaked down blocks. They'd been waiting since five in the morning, fearing a first-come, first-serve basis for a limited number of scholarships.

  In addition to having two rinks, the skating academy also boasted a cafeteria where any kids from the city could come for a free daily dinner, as well as free breakfast, lunch, and dinner on weekends. The food definitely wasn't gourmet, but it was nutritious, and on days when school wasn't in session, a meal at the rink might be the only meal a child would get all day. The cafeteria staff also handed out take-home "go-packs" filled with fruit cups and packets of trail mix to kids who were insecure about their food situation at home.

  The facility also had an after-school tutoring center, a part-time mental health counselor that any child or parent could make an appointment to talk to, and a large karate studio for community kids who weren't into figure skating.

  Drug and alcohol-free teen parties and dances were held twice a month in a three-thousand-square-foot "rec room," which was always supervised by the academy's own security team, who were also in charge of walking kids from and to various city bus stops before and after lessons.

  Building all this had cost millions, and the remainder of my money, which I'd invested, would keep the rink and its various programs up and running indefinitely. Which was a very good thing, since the number of kids enrolled in the scholarship program only grew and grew with each passing year, eventually swelling to six hundred, keeping my four full-time skating instructors insanely busy.

  All that was what had been going on in my life when the world had gone to hell. I'd been twenty-three years old, in my fifth year of running a large, non-profit enterprise, the only one of its kind in the nation, and two years away from likely competing in my third Olympics.

  With many in the figure skating world saying I was in the best shape of my life, I was training up to thirty hours a week while spending almost as many hours a week running the academy with Sandor and Marta, even teaching several weekly skating classes myself. Also, for the fifth time in my life, I was the reigning senior national champion, which required occasional travel for appearances.

  After I'd repeatedly told Jess to stay put with Ebony in Nashville, the phone line went dead, and that was the last of the phone service. It would never be restored.

  After waiting a week for the animal shifters to return, I began running low on food and knew I couldn't wait for rescue any longer. I packed a suitcase with clothes, the remainder of my food, and other supplies, and left my apartment, bound for Nashville, where I intended to drive in my large SUV. The fact that I hadn't seen many vehicles on the street below my apartment since the undead had risen had almost encouraged me, because I figured that I'd have a quick, clear drive down south. How wrong I was.

  But even before getting on the road and figuring out exactly how wrong I was, I did something else first. After leaving my apartment building and making my way to the parking garage with my suitcase, mercifully not encountering any of the undead, I got in my shiny white SUV and started driving to the rink, immediately encountering two Husk People that I swerved to avoid, shuddering.

  I encountered many more of them in the incredibly eerie, nearly-empty, sunlit streets on the way to the rink, but I didn't see any shifters. Whatever had become of them, I could only imagine, and what I imagined wasn't good.

  When I got to the rink around four in the afternoon, I parked right up by the main entrance, just praying that I'd find some of my skaters and staff members inside. Being that business break-ins were all too frequent in Detroit, the rink was never without one of my security team members on patrol, twenty-four hours a day; and I hoped that when the virus had hit, one of them had been there to lead survivors inside, to safety.

  I'd always told all my skaters that the rink was a "designated safe space," where they could come no matter what time of day or night it was, and they would be protected. Over the years, many kids had sought refuge at the rink after being threatened with violence in their neighborhoods or after experiencing violence at home; so I was confident that even in the midst of all the absolute chaos of the previous couple weeks, some of them had remembered my promise of safety at the rink.

  However, when I unlocked the double doors of the main entrance and stepped inside the vast foyer, the only thing that greeted me was perfect silence. The lights were on in the building, though, probably running on the generator, which I took as a positive sign, so I began making my way to the cafeteria, hearing distant noise that encouraged me further.

  I found one of my security team members lurching around between the numerous long tables, still in uniform, gray-faced and groaning, clearly undead. If his appearance hadn't convinced me, the stench of his rotting flesh would have. When he saw me, he began stumbling over to me, groaning even louder, and I clutched the screwdriver I'd brought in with me to use as a weapon in case of the worst.

  With my heartbeat accelerating and my heart breaking at once, I lunged and stabbed Mr. Marcus, as all the kids called him, right in his left eye the moment he got close enough for me to do so. A muscular, tall older gentleman with a deep, resonating laugh, he'd been working security at the rink since the day we'd opened. Before that, he'd served as a Detroit police officer for thirty-one years.

  In Rink A, I found two of my skaters, ten-year-old twin sisters, undead, and I killed them both, weeping. Nearby, I found their fifteen-year old brother, who'd recently earned his black belt at the academy's karate studio and planned to become a karate teacher himself someday. Hissing, fangs bared, he lunged to bite me at the same time I was lunging at him, but he wasn't fast enough.

  I buried the silver of my screwdriver in the left side of his chest, stabbing him through the heart, before he could bite me, drink my blood, and transmit the virus that would turn me into one of the undead as well.

  In Rink B, lurching around near the bleacher area, I found one of my instructors, a young woman my age who'd been a junior national pairs skating champion before a back injury had ended her career at age eighteen. Beneath the bleachers, a twelve-year-old girl who was a new student at the karate studio greeted me with a hiss. I did what I needed to do to both of them, still weeping.

  A further search of the vast building soon yielded three more members of the undead, two of them snarling toddlers with ashen faces and tiny glinting fangs. Not far away was their mother, a petite young woman who'd recently signed herself and the two kids up for parent-tot skating classes.

  She was only nineteen, and had told me she was making a fresh start after a lifetime of "getting knocked around," as she'd put it. I'd
told her that if she felt threatened ever again, to come to the rink for safety, day or night, if she couldn't or didn't want to go to the police.

  In the "rec room," I found and dispatched a thirteen-year-old boy who was the best male skater at the academy. Further into the building, I found and dispatched a slender young man I didn't recognize and two children, a boy and a girl, I didn't know either.

  My tears began falling anew when I noticed an index card inside a plastic bag hanging from a slender chain around the little boy's neck. The card read: My name is Davion, and I'm four years old. My grandma has the fever and can't take care of me anymore. Please help me and take me someplace safe.

  In a staff bathroom, I found another of my skating instructors, this one hanging from a rope attached to a stall, though she was clearly undead, kicking and hissing with fangs bared. On the mirror, with a bar of soap, she'd written I know it's all just a bad dream, but I can't wake up.

  After stabbing her through the eye, I undid the knot securing her noose to the stall and lowered her corpse to the tile floor. In the karate studio, I found Michelle's mom and dispatched her with a screwdriver stab to the heart as she tried in vain to grab my throat, groaning and gurgling.

  Being that my office was the only place I hadn't looked by this point, I knew this was where I'd find Michelle, and I did. Moaning, she was staggering around, gray-faced, flesh showing clear signs of rot. She hissed when she saw me, revealing razor-sharp fangs.

  Sobbing the hardest I had yet, I held her back from me with a hand on her chest while I drove my screwdriver deep into one of her eyes. As the others had, she collapsed instantly and fell to the floor in a heap. Dead at fifteen, and by the looks of things, she'd been dead for days.

  After covering all the corpses with towels and blankets, exhausted, heartbroken, and sickened by everything I'd just had to do, I spent the night in the foyer with the double doors locked, hoping against hope that more non-infected survivors like me would show up, and I could help them.

  With literally tons of canned food in the cafeteria kitchen, I figured a group of survivors could hole up in the rink for a year if need be. Until the government, or the military, or whoever, got things under control and made everything safe again, if they were ever going to, which I was beginning to doubt more and more.

  When not a single fellow survivor had knocked on the double doors by noon the following day, I'd left the rink, posting a large poster-board sign on one of the doors. All survivors welcome. Key beneath white stone planter nearby. Food in kitchen. Showers. Laundry facilities. Industrial generator and back-up generator. Clothing for kids and adults. Help self to all.

  Good luck.

  E. Blake, owner.

  PS- Corpses of undead that I killed inside. I apologize, but you will have to remove them yourself if you want to shelter here permanently.

  I can't spare the time, because my sisters are alive in Nashville, and I need to get to them quickly. Please be as respectful as possible when moving/burying the bodies. Many of these people were my friends, and the rest deserve respect, too. Thank you.

  I'd decided to leave the key under the planter instead of just leaving the doors unlocked so that random Husk People couldn't shamble on in to the rink, possibly attacking any survivors who later entered.

  Driving out of Detroit in my SUV had been fairly easy and uneventful. I'd picked up a desperately-waving family of five along the way, a middle-aged mom and dad and three teenaged sons, and then had taken them to the mom's parents' house on Nine Mile Road in Warren.

  Almost immediately after, a grandfather and grandson pair flagged me down and begged for a ride to West Bloomfield, and I took them. After that, I didn't give anyone else any more rides. Leaning on his cane in my passenger seat, the grandfather had told me I shouldn't.

  "These are dark, dark days, Miss," he'd said. "You women are now a small, small minority of folks left in the world, and there are already groups of men roaming around, up to no good, if you understand me. Best to head to where you're headed without stopping."

  I did, driving at least a hundred miles south before nearly running out of gas. An elderly man running a tiny gas station pretty much in the middle of nowhere filled my tank and gave me a gallon container filled with gas as well, very kindly refusing any form of payment, saying that survivors had to stick together. I'd stopped only because he was so elderly and wizened that I was fairly confident he wouldn't try to pull anything on me.

  I was in the uninhabited boonies of northern Ohio when I ran out of gas again, having used the spare gallon a ways back. Not knowing what else to do, I transferred the contents of my suitcase to a duffel bag in the back of my SUV and continued on foot, terrified but determined.

  For the next nearly two years, I killed hundreds of Huskers while continuing to head south in fits and starts, having to shelter in abandoned houses and factories during the winter months, when it was just too cold and snowy to keep going. I foraged for wild berries, helped myself to fruit from orchards, and took lots of canned food from empty houses. Farmhouses tended to have particularly good supplies, though some had already been scavenged by the time I arrived.

  I met good survivors, like four brothers who escorted me through a ten-mile stretch of Ohio, with the oldest saying that there were far too many male predators in the area for them to have a clean conscience doing otherwise.

  I met far less moral survivors and had a few narrow escapes. I sometimes stayed with various groups of wandering elderly and mixed-gender survivors for a week or two at a time, once for three weeks when I'd been sick with a deep, rattling chest cough that had weakened me.

  But mostly, I just traveled by myself and hid from other survivors, not wanting to find out if they were the good or bad kind of people. And always, inevitably, I continued heading south, to Nashville.

  * * *

  Presently, in a vast grassland in southern Kentucky, I was oh-so-close. I wasn't positive, but I was pretty sure the Tennessee border was only about twenty or thirty miles away. But also presently, I was boxed in by sixteen or seventeen men. Men who I was certain were going to rape me, possibly killing me in the process, whether intentionally or not. And even if I could take out one of them with the screwdriver I'd come to call Phillip, I knew that wouldn't do much. There would still be fifteen or sixteen men left to contend with.

  Brandishing Phillip, I shouted at the advancing men again, trying my best to be threatening and tough while mentally being in absolute anguish. "I'm going to kill one of you; I swear it!"

  My sisters were waiting for me. I'd come so close. All for nothing. Just for horrendous violation and possible death. But I felt like I owed it to myself, my parents, Jess and Eb, Sandor and Marta, and everyone else who'd ever loved me to not just lie down and volunteer for the inevitable. I had to kill as many men as I could first. I had to try. Especially if there was a chance that me killing even one of the men might spare another woman from being raped.

  When the fastest man, who'd come from the west, reached me, I thrust Phillip's point in his direction with a grunt, and I did connect with my target, stabbing him. For just a split-second, I felt the familiar jolt that came along with stabbing, followed by the immediate feel of flesh giving way.

  However, nearly at the same time time that I'd been stabbing him, the man had been attacking me, clothes-lining me with one meaty arm. I went down backward, and I went down hard, hitting my head on something that felt like a brick. Before losing consciousness, which I did within a fraction of a second, I heard a curious sound. It was a loud, clear roar.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When I came to, however long later, my head was throbbing, and I was sitting in a moving truck. A quick glance to my left and right told me that I was sitting between two men. My head had been resting on the muscular shoulder of the man on my right, who was shaggy-haired and kind of grimy-looking, which was how my very brief first initial impression had struck me. The man to my left was generally a little cleaner-looking, my very
brief first initial impression of him. I'd also gotten the impression that he was handsome, maybe even incredibly so. One second was all my brain had needed to take in and process a quick flash of strong jaw, golden brown stubble, and deep-set green eyes fringed with thick dark lashes.

  I honestly didn't know what to do. Didn't have a clue. My knee-jerk reaction was to thrash and fight, demanding that the driver stop the truck immediately and let me out. However, as much as a rising sense of panic was making me want to shove and claw my possible captors, I didn't want the one driving to plow the truck into a tree as a result, possibly accidentally killing me in the process.