Fall of Dawn (Fall of Dawn #3)

Chapter 1

Stumbling along an empty street, eyes filled with tears, the ground beneath my feet rumbling, and nothing but destruction behind me, I keep going. I can’t turn around.

Why? Why can’t I go back? Where did I come from?

My mind is foggy, and I can’t remember how I got here.

Even so, I can’t fight the feeling in my gut that I need to run.

There’s something terrible at my back, like a rabid hound with sharp teeth.

Snapping. Ready to claw through me until it reaches my marrow.

I gasp as something explodes, heat rushing along my spine and blowing me hard forward, but I don’t turn around. I can’t. Forward. Only forward. Away from … From what?

Boots. Pounding boots on pavement. Ahead, a contingent of soldiers emerge from the dark, their guns at the ready as they run toward me with steely intent.

With a strangled cry, I veer off the street and onto the sidewalk, flattening myself to a brick wall as they surge by. One of them screams, but I can’t see why. Then the shooting starts.

Acrid smoke wafts past and sparks a coughing fit in me, my throat burning. I can’t stay here. Can’t stop. My feet seem to have a mind of their own. The soldiers ignore me, more of them pouring onto Pennsylvania Avenue and heading toward the White House.

DC. That’s right. I’m in DC.

More screams and gunfire. I should go back and help. That’s my job. Even as I think it, I break into a jog despite my cough. More soldiers run past. More screams. They need me. I’m supposed to save people, to help them.

I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes.

I don’t stop. I can’t. The jog turns into a sprint, hurrying along the road as more explosions sound behind me and I struggle with the desire to aid the people I’m running away from.

Fire lights the moonless night, sending shadows stretching along the broken pavement, and I don’t know why I flee, but I can’t stop.

What is happening? I can’t process it. Something’s wrong.

It’s like I’m trapped in a dream state, part of my mind in deep sleep while the rest of it functions at a basic level.

It says run, I run. The part that should tell me why I’m running isn’t there.

It’s slumbering somewhere dark and warm, and no matter how many gunshots and explosions I hear, it doesn’t wake.

A helicopter passes overhead right as all the lights go out, all of DC falling into darkness.

The helicopter makes an odd noise, then its hum turns into the screeching of metal pushed too far.

The sound stops abruptly, followed by another violent burst of noise.

A plume of fire rises off to my left, and when I peer at the impossible mushroom of flames, I could swear I see enormous bats overhead, their wings spread wide in the cold night.

But I don’t pause to look at the impossible sight. I don’t stop for anything.

Forward. Away. I have to get away. That thought is on a loop in my mind. It’s the only truly clear thought I have.

Shouting erupts to my left as more troops emerge from a side street. They don’t give me so much as a glance.

Now running, I cross the street to avoid the soldiers and pass along a narrower lane until I reach an open area.

The bleached skeleton of the Capitol building rises in the dark, and I finally see more people.

Not soldiers. They’re all running away, just like me.

I follow them, finally forced to slow some as a stitch aches in my side.

“The White House.” A woman dressed in scrubs stares at what’s behind me. “It’s gone.”

I want to see what she sees, but I can’t turn around. Turning around would mean stopping.

People are scrambling up the Capitol steps, and more are beating on the doors far above us. “Let us in!”

“There’s no one there!” a man to my left yells. “We have to keep going!”

They ignore him and keep trying to get in. Is it safe inside? My gut is full of misgivings, and I don’t go that way. I don’t take the stairs. Instead, I veer around and climb a barricade at the side of the building.

Still moving, I keep sweeping the area around me for … for what? I’m not sure. But nothing here is safe. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

Finally, my steps slow somewhat as the ache in my side makes it hard for me to breathe. The urgency is still there, but I can slow my pace a bit more. Maybe I’m in shock? Is that it? On autopilot from shock, that could be it.

“It’s blocked!” Someone runs past me, her voice shrill. “Go back!”

I turn and follow her, climbing back over the barricade and then heading toward the street that runs beside the building. Maybe it’s clear there. Maybe I can keep going. Escape—that’s the word. That’s what I’m trying to do.

What am I escaping? I still can’t answer that question. Something is horribly wrong. We’re under attack. By whom? The next question that surfaces stops me. My feet finally going still. Where’s Juno? My sister. Where’s my sister? Did I leave her behind?

Though my skin crawls, I force myself to look, to stop and just look. The White House is at the other end of the mall. It’s engulfed in flames, some of the licks of orange and red reaching high into the night. The gunfire is nonstop, and a jet screams overhead, flying low.

“Let’s go!” A man grabs my arm. “We have to run!”

I let him pull me. When he releases my arm, I follow him into the street. There are more people here, all of them fleeing.

“Keep going! They’ve taken the city!” someone yells.

They? They who?

A squad of soldiers emerges here and there, all of them headed back the way I came. “—many bogies. Air support can’t tell friend from foe. We have—” A snippet from a soldier’s radio offers no comfort.

“Help!” A woman cradles her arm and kneels on the sidewalk. “Please!”

People run past.

I slow.

I stop.

“Help me!” she screams.

Though it sets my teeth on edge, an ache growing in my chest, I turn and walk to her.

“Someone cut me.” She looks up at me, her eyes watery in the faint light. “I don’t know how. I-I was running and—”

“Let me see.” I have no light, no supplies, nothing except my instinct to save her.

I swipe up her tattered sleeve and find gashes down the length of her forearm. Blood and some sort of pale crusting ooze along the edges.

“It burns. It burns so bad,” she sobs.

“We need to wash it. We have to clean the wound. I don’t know what—”

Someone yells behind me, the sound guttural and turning watery.

The woman I’m helping screams.

I whirl.

The man who yelled is dangling in the air, impaled on the clawed hand of …

of a monster. It looks like a woman. But it also doesn’t.

It’s wrong, wrong on a level that I can’t put into words but that I can feel in my bones.

It leers at us as the man twitches. Bile rises in my throat.

Disbelief tries to destroy my thoughts, to turn me numb. I can’t let it.

“Up!” I drag the woman to her feet and pull her along with me.

The creature just watches, its eyes silvery and semi-reflective like a nocturnal predator.

It drops the dead man and follows us.

“Faster!” I yank on the woman’s good arm. “Come on!”

More people run past us, but the monster ignores them. It’s focused on us.

“I can’t!” the woman wails.

I’m still pulling her when the monster swipes its claws across her throat, warm blood spurting onto my cheek. I scream as she reaches for her neck.

The creature wrenches her away and sinks its fangs into her bloody jugular, then scurries backwards with her, dragging her away from me.

“Run!” Another woman rushes past me.

I do. I turn and run, my body in agreement, as if sighing in relief as my feet take me in the ‘right’ direction once again. Screams rise all around me.

The gunfire has stopped.

I run.

The earth rocks beneath my feet as a deafening explosion hits the Capitol building. The round roof falls in as flames leap up.

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 say vampires?

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.

“Now, poppets.” He grins down at us, his fangs glinting. “This is where the real fun begins.”