LIFERS Chapter Twenty Eight

‘Hey, take it easy. It’s me. Nick.’

Jill stepped out to see him on his ass, half in and half out the door, the rain bouncing off his already drenched shirt. ‘That was a stupid thing to do. Don’t you realise I could have killed you just now?’

He hoisted himself up, pointed at the bullet holes in the cupboards. ‘And if I’d been stood on the table you might have even hit me,’ he said, then snapped another pic of Jill.

‘Will you stop doing that? And I thought we said not to go back to your van?’

‘I had to go back, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Well certainly for me anyway, so there’s no way I’m not going to get some kind of record of it.’

She topped-up the gun, tucked it away. ‘I understand your enthusiasm, Nick, but wondering off like that without saying something was … well, you had me worried, okay?’

Nick smiled. ‘You were worried about me?’ he said, and put the two Polaroids into a polythene bag and the bag into his jacket pocket. ‘Actually worried?’

‘Get over it, Nick. And no more disappearing tricks.’

Nick allowed the camera to dangle around his neck. ‘Okay,’ he said, hands up. ‘I’m sorry, but this is really something special, and I gotta get photographs of it. So,’ he said, looking the room over, ‘did you find anything?’

Jill pointed. ‘I found that.’

Nick looked, frowned. ‘An empty bag?’

‘Take a closer look.’

So he did. ‘Hey, are those…?’ he trailed off.

Jill nodded. ‘Teeth marks, sucked it right from the bag. Now take a look in the dog’s feeding bowl on the table. I’m only guessing here, but I think that’s how they may have disposed of their human empties.’

Nick lifted the bitten bloodbag from the floor and placed it next to the bowl. ‘Oh boy, this is really gonna get me noticed by the guys at the convention,’ he said, and took another snapshot.

‘Yeah,’ Jill said. ‘And if you keep flashing away with that thing they won’t be the only ones who notice you. Know what I mean?’

Nick looked at Jill then his camera. ‘Gotcha.’

‘Come on, we’ve got another one of these to search,’ she said. ‘This one’s empty.’

When they reached the last of the stores, Jill was taken aback by the size of the padlock before her, and if she hit it with the butt of the gun, it would do as much damage as hitting it with a stick of cotton-candy. The padlock was new and as big as her hand, and obviously put there to protect whatever lay within. She held the gun an inch from the lock and turned away before she fired two shots. The padlock thudded to the ground and the door swung open.

‘Jesus, what the hell is that, a hand-held cannon?’

‘Well it sure kicks back like one,’ she said, and pushed the door the whole way open.

The room was similar in size to the last; only it felt colder, and the door across the way wasn’t wooden, it was brushed aluminium, and had a small glass viewing panel near the top. A thermal gauge attached to the wall beside the door said the space beyond was at two degrees Celsius.

Jill peered through the panel. ‘It’s as black as night inside, I can’t see if anything’s in there.’

Nick turned to look at the busted padlock lying on the ground outside. ‘Well that thing had to have been chosen to either secure something very precious, or something very dangerous.’

‘As long as there are no dead bodies or vampires or snakes in there, I’ll be happy.’

Nick sounded surprised. ‘You don’t like snakes?’

‘Yeah, sure I do,’ she said. ‘I like them just as much as I like dead bodies and vampires.’

‘Well I can’t speak for the latter two,’ Nick said. ‘But snakes wouldn’t last very long at just two degrees. Hey, what if it’s that virus thing you mentioned, the one that turned them all into vampires?’

Jill didn’t reply as she tugged on a steel handle positioned half way up the door.

Nick touched her shoulder. ‘I beg you, stop,’ he said, slight panic in his voice. ‘I’m serious, Jill. What if the virus really is in there and we contaminate ourselves by opening it?’

‘I don’t think that’ll happen, Nick. They told us it had to be injected into them. And Gregg and I have been surrounded by this lot for the last seven or eight hours, so if it was that contagious we’d both been infected by now.’ She leaned back and pulled the door wide open. ‘Pass me your camera.’

‘What?’

‘Your camera, pass it to me.’

Nick handed his camera over and Jill held it at arm’s length above the threshold of the door and took one photograph. The flash provided a nano-second of vision into the room but all she saw were a number of brown, cardboard boxes. She pulled the film from the front and gave the camera back to Nick then tore away the chemical strip and began to waft the film to and fro. She also blew over it in an attempt to make it self-develop that little bit quicker.

‘That’s a common mistake,’ Nick said.

‘What?’

‘Wafting it like that. It’s a common mistake, well not a mistake as such, you see─’

‘Boxes,’ she said, cutting him off, ‘about a dozen of them.’

Nick looked at the still-developing film. ‘What does “BPL” mean? And who are “PuriCell?”’

‘No idea, just be thankful there’s nothing swinging from the ceiling, I certainly am.’ Jill walked into the refrigerated room and tried to drag out one of the washing-machine-sized boxes. ‘Come on, Nick, help me with this.’

Nick put the new photo with the others and the camera back around his neck and helped Jill pull the box from the room. Once they had it in the light coming from the rear door, Jill tore open the lid and they both looked inside.

Nick took another snapshot before he retrieved part of its contents. ‘Well, waddayaknow,’ he said. ‘It looks like they have their own personal supply here.’

‘If that’s the case why take the girls? It doesn’t make sense.’

Nick shrugged. ‘Perhaps some of them prefer warm food,’ he said, and snapped another shot. ‘Or it could be some sort of back-up supply, you know, emergency rations.’

Nick’s comment half made sense; these could be emergency provisions if their usual methods of feeding ran dry.
‘Come on, let’s get back,’ Jill said. ‘I think we can take it there’s no more of them out here.’

When Nick started out the door, Jill picked up one of the bloodbags and slipped it under her poncho and down the neck of her T-shirt.
‘Ooh, that’s cold.’

‘What?’

‘I said I’m cold. Come on; let’s get back to that heater.’

Jill wasn’t surprised to see Nick lead the way to the garage, and at a faster pace than he used leaving it. They both ducked under the shutter and Gregg stood to greet them.
‘I heard shots,’ he said, then hit the down button.

From those three words, Jill sensed a change in his behaviour, an agitated change.
‘I had to shoot some locks off, that’s all,’ she told him, not mentioning she also killed some cupboards. ‘One of the stores was empty and another we had no chance of gaining access to. But in the third we found something.’ She looked closer at him; he seemed distracted, edgy. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘Fine, why?’

‘Nothing, it’s just─’

‘Here, look at these,’ Nick said. ‘See those boxes, they’re full of blood.’

Gregg gave Jill a look, and knowing it would answer his question, she touched the poncho and lifted an eyebrow.

He turned to Nick. ‘I thought we agreed you wouldn’t try to go back to your van?’

‘I had to get my camera. I couldn’t leave this place without some proof of what’s going on here. Surely you of all people can understand that?’

‘That’s if we ever leave this place at all, Nick?’

He didn’t reply.

Gregg gave him back the photographs. ‘And you found nothing else?’

‘Nothing,’ Jill said. ‘What about the cinema?’

‘Empty, which probably means the rest of them are up at the town hall like the old guy told us. All we need now is a workable plan to get those girls out. Any suggestions?’