Reign of Blood

  ***

  My eyes fluttered as I woke with a start. Sitting up, I saw that I had been lying in what looked like a hospital bed. The smell of alcohol wipes and bleach assaulted my nostrils as I turned my head, immediately and instinctually scanning the room. I even checked underneath the bed I was lying in, hoping to not find a feral creature lurking there.

  Where the hell am I? The lights were on and blared down on me like God’s flashlight, examining me and making my eyelids flutter at the glare. How could there be electricity in this hospital? How the heck did I get here?

  I swung my legs over the side, noticing I had hospital socks on and a flimsy white and blue gown that patients usually wore. I pulled at it, feeling quite naked underneath it. I shivered, looking around the room for my stuff but none of my clothes were there. My confusion made me curious as I stood up and shuffled to the door, listening with almost disbelief as I reached for the door handle. Voices. The murmur of them slipped through the door like a hum. My eyes widened as my heart seemed to jump with excitement. Could it be? Did someone find me? Other humans?

  Overwhelmed with happiness, I swung the door open and stared at the nurse’s station before me. I studied the nurses in their scrubs with their stethoscopes draped around their necks, busy at the desks. My mouth gaped open as the phones rang while they busied themselves, shuffling around papers and drawing up medications. They hadn’t even noticed me yet but I wanted to run to them and squeeze them tight. I stopped before leaving my room, feeling like something was not quite right. I glanced down the halls on both sides of my door. They seemed to go on forever with so many doors, all closed and quiet. I wondered if there were many patients here.

  I breathed in deeply, deciding to head toward the nurses and see why I was there and how I had gotten there. I padded softly on the cold tile floor, feeling the cool breeze of air conditioning swirling about me. The place was clean, as a hospital should be. The floor gleamed as the fluorescent light bounced off the freshly-polished and cleaned surface. It was almost too clean. I reached the desk and was about to speak to one of the nurses, whose back was toward me, when I let out a yelp as someone grasped my shoulder.

  “Do you need something, miss?” A calm voice sounded off behind me. I swiftly turned, restraining myself from smacking her. The nurse eyed me suspiciously, her blue eyes gleaming as she studied me. Her dark brown hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail that sat softly on the neck of her purple flowered scrub top. Her pants were a solid purple and her lilac-colored stethoscope hung from her neck. My eyes drifted to her name tag and read the name “Grace.” She wore light makeup and smelled like a combination of medicated soap and scented lotion.

  “I–I don’t know. Where am I? What am I doing here?” I asked softly. Grace gave me a concerned smile and waved me to a chair at the station as she grabbed a chart from a wall rack and flipped through it, reading the contents.

  “Ah, Miss April Tate, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it seems you are here for treatment of a viral infection.” She smiled and looked up from the chart as I stared back confused. My fingers subconsciously reached over to touch the bite on my left arm. Feeling nothing but smooth skin I glanced down, sensing a shift in my surroundings.

  “But how did I get infected?” I looked back up at Grace but found her gone. Looking around me, the same nurse’s station remained but looked ravaged. The fluorescent lights were dangling from their cords and flickering in and out. Papers and charts littered the now-dirty and streaked floors. I shot up from my chair and gasped. Along the hall were the same nurses I had just seen working but now they were lying face down on the floor, lifeless, with the color drained from their skin. Their eyes stared out into nothingness, blank and dead. I shivered, stepping over them, and noticing I was no longer wearing the hospital gown I had awoken in, but jeans and a white shirt. I paused, catching sight of Grace standing in the hallway, facing away from me.

  “Grace? What’s going on?” I felt the hair on my neck stand on end as Grace turned around–she now owned the grey skin of a feral vampire and bared her fangs, flashing them at me as they dripped with fresh, red blood. A snarl crawled across her face as her red-black eyes gleamed in the nearly darkened hallway.

  Oh shit!

  I backed into the nurse’s station, searching for a weapon in the trashed mess of the desks and chairs. Finally spotting a scalpel lying across what looked like a prepped table for a chest tube, I grabbed it and a cart of charts, swinging the cart behind me, just in time to hit Grace as she scrambled toward me. She was fast but not fast enough as I spun around a pillar. I hopped onto the desk, swiftly bending as I pirouetted back, bringing my arm with the scalpel in hand around in an arcing motion to slash her throat. The thick, syrupy blood poured out of the neat cut like a bucket being poured down her scrub top. I had not cut far enough through to decapitate her but it was near enough for sure.

  I landed on the floor inside the quad of desks and scrambled back onto my feet as she reached toward me, gurgling as blood continued to spout out of her neck. Her eyes were angry but sallow as she began to turn paler, her life blood draining away. Grabbing a thick bedside chart, I swung it as hard as I could into her face, sending her head reeling across the tile. Her grey-skinned body convulsed as it dropped to the floor without its brain to command it.

  I sighed, dropping the chart and looking around, hoping she was the only vampire around. When I didn’t see any more I relaxed just a bit and started down the hallway. I avoided the ripped wires from the lights above that swung into my path. I still couldn’t figure out why I was even here. This was not right somehow; I was at home sleeping, wasn’t I? I felt naked without a weapon and searched among the rubble for anything I could use to kill a vampire. Finding a broken bar off a transport cart, I gripped it in my hand. I was ready to pummel anything that came at me.

  I made it around to the back employee hallway when I stopped, realizing the elevators might not be working. I pushed the button but the console was dead. I sighed, hoping I wasn’t on the top floor; going down the stairwell was not going to be fun if it was infested with ferals. As I exited the employee hallway and made my way through the floor’s main passageway, where I finally found the stairwell. I dodged a few gurneys on my way and stupidly swung the stairwell door open without scoping it out first. So why was I surprised when three feral vampires lunged at me immediately, taking me down and biting into my upper arms and my thigh?

  I screamed as I kicked and hit as much as I could, hoping to get away from them, but they latched on and sucked my life’s elixir away. The light faded in and out above me as I saw a shadow of a woman standing over me. Her eyes were not red but a desert sandy brown rimmed in a circle of gold. She snickered at me and bent down next to my ear. “You are one of us,” she faintly whispered just before the darkness overcame me.

  Chapter Nine