For most of his life all Matt Haynes thought about was himself.
After the takeover, he took some time to think about the fate of the rest of the world. But those thoughts didn’t last very long.
He did think about his ex-wife, Beth. And those thoughts lasted long enough for him to work through a plan to make it back to the states.
They were now in New Jersey, on one of the back roads leading to Morristown. For more than four states they had steered clear of any of the main highways.
Jay Granville let go of his right handle grip, then balled that hand into a fist and extended it high in the air.
Matt squeezed his hand, triggering the brakes on his motorcycle. He rolled to a stop next to Jay’s bike.
“What do you think?” asked Jay. “Ride on… or check and see if there’s anything we could use?”
Ahead were at least half a dozen cars, left abandoned in the middle of the road. And there was another car, off the main road, stuck in a ditch, with its rear tires hanging a foot off the ground.
“I’m open. But we’re not very far away from Beth’s house,” Matt said. “I’d hate for something to happen after coming halfway across the world.”
“I’m low on munchies,” said Jay. “How much you want to bet that with the end of the world on top of these people, no one wanted to starve to death. There’s got to be something to eat. And we know the blood suckers wouldn’t have a reason to take it. ”
Matt took off his shades and put them into his pocket. The sun was setting and there really was no reason to continue wearing them.
“Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Let’s go take a look.”
The last thing Matt wanted to do was argue with Jay. His buddy had been with him since Madrid. For some reason Jay had agreed to accompany him all the way to another continent to check out if his ex-wife was still alive. And the only thing Matt had to put up with was a relentless stream of jokes about wanting to see if his ex-wife was still alive.
Jay’s best joke -- “If you had told me that we were going, not to see if she was still alive, but to make sure your ex-wife was really dead, I would have understood from the get go.”
They switched off their engines and walked their two bikes over to the side of the road.
From his leather bag Jay grabbed a sawed off shot gun, the one he had pulled off the dead guy who was working with the gang who had tried stopping them near Raleigh. This time Matt noticed Jay didn’t even bother taking the rifle out of the blanket he normally kept wrapped around the weapon. Between his finger and the trigger was a baby blue dyed cotton quilt that a woman in the Sudan had given Jay for saving her husband from a government death squad.
Matt’s gun, a 9mm Beretta PX4, was still holstered. He had picked up the pistol in Libya, during the overthrow of Gaddafi. Ten days ago he paid off the customs guy in Atlanta to let him leave the airport with it. The crocodile leather shoulder holster (with Cognac Ostrich trim) housing the weapon was something Matt had snatched two days ago while they were squatting in a condo in Norfolk, Virginia. The holster was hanging on a wall hook, only a few feet from a dead body. It looked like the owner of the holster died crawling across his beautifully carpeted floor in a futile attempt to reach his weapon.
Only after taking off his glasses did Matt realize how late it was in the day. If Jay noticed the sun setting over the mountain, he didn’t let on as he marched along the road toting his shot gun with the confidence one usually reserves only at sunrise.
One by one, Matt checked the cars left abandoned in the middle of the road. Each one had the trunk stuffed with luggage and boxes of clothes and personal mementoes. The owners of the car were clearly trying to escape before being attacked.
Escape to where? The whole world had come under siege. Matt tried to fathom what any of the occupants in the cars must have been thinking on the day they loaded up all their belongings and headed from their home.
He was going through the trunk of the sixth vehicle when Jay whispered to him from a dozen feet away, “Anything?”
“No bodies in any of the cars. And no food. We’re too late. Someone’s already been here…”
Rather than depressing Jay, Matt’s words brought a smile to his friend’s face. The discovery had confirmed, at least to Jay, what he had been hoping for ever since they landed in the states as stowaways in the cargo hold of a military plane.
“The states are the only place where I can imagine anyone will put up a fight.”
Matt disagreed with Jay’s narrow assessment of who would and would not put up a resistance to the vampire takeover. But he wasn’t about to argue with the only man willing to watch his back as he made his way to New Jersey to check on Beth.
“Must be the resistance, “ said Jay, walking parallel with Matt as they headed toward the last car, the one abandoned on the side of the road. “They’re the only ones who would give a shit about real food.”
It was impossible to ignore the sight of Jay suddenly walking with an extra bounce in his step. He was clearly excited to pin some hope on the idea that there was a group of resistance fighters giving it back to the vampires.
Matt approached the last car, a Volvo station wagon, the one stuck in the ditch. The hatchback trunk was raised and Matt could see that the belongings in the back had already been rifled through. He gave it a cursory search, then stepped toward the front of the car.
Jay suddenly raised his fist… and Matt stopped in his tracks.
The two of them stood still… staring at each other… listening to their surroundings… waiting for an attack…
But when nothing happened, they both exchanged nods, and Matt continued toward the front of the car.
Unlike the other vehicles, the occupants, a driver and a passenger, both adults, were still in the car. The large amount of brain matter splattered on the window behind the passenger made it easy to deduce that she had died from a head shot fired at close range.
The gun that had done the damage to the passenger was in the lap of the driver, inches away from the hand that had pulled the trigger a second time. His brains were on the interior ceiling of the car.
Matt stepped away from the Volvo, waving his hand in the air. It was definitely time to go.
“What did you see?” asked Jay. They were headed toward their bikes and Jay had to move double time to keep up with Matt.
“A .38 Special. Two gunshots. Two victims. Both dead… DEAD… that’s why they were left behind.”
Jay nodded without emotion. He was hearing facts similar to facts he had been hearing for years, even before the takeover.
“No blood,” Matt whispered. “Not a single drop…”
When he heard those words, the optimistic bounce that had been in Jay’s step, vanished.
