First Light (The Daylight Cycle, #1) Read online

  “You’re kiddin’,” Rose said. “You have to be.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You honestly expect to set one of those things on fire?”

  “Why not? They’ll burn just like anything else does.”

  “Yeah, as they’re running right for us.”

  “Whatever then. Doesn’t mean we won’t run into anyone else out there.”

  Rose dreaded to think her friend might be right.

  This’ll bring out the worst in everyone, she thought, thinking of Lyra’s brutal assault against Spencer, then of how she’d desperately ended Mary’s reanimation.

  Just a few days ago, her friend would’ve paled at the idea of hurting someone without need, let alone killing them. But now… after this…

  Shaking her head, Rose stooped to help Lyra arrange the personal belongings within the sack and glanced about the flat, scouring the corners and high storage for anything that might be useful as a weapon. Her eyes eventually fell to a prized baseball bat that lay behind glass—framed, immortally, for the famous high school games that’d granted her a scholarship to Liverpool University while she was still living in America.

  “Rose,” Lyra said.

  “Yeah?” she asked, blinking, the image of her hitting a home run fading from her mind just as soon as it’d come.

  “We probably shouldn’t wait. It’s starting to get cloudy.”

  Nodding, she lifted the sack onto her arm, allowing Lyra to take it as she made her way to the door. “Hold on a second,” she said as her friend reached out to take the bolt in hand. “There’s something I have to get.”

  Stepping forward, she pressed her hands against the glass case and stared in at the one part of home she had brought with her.

  Well, she thought. This is it.

  She undid the clasps holding the display in place and readied herself for what was to come.

  Now wasn’t the time to be afraid.

  Now was the time to survive.

  Chapter 2

  The cold aluminum was uncomfortably familiar in her hand.

  She hated knowing that such fond memories would be wasted on the cruelest of acts.

  In the streets of the small portside town she had come to know and love, where she and Lyra stood looking upon the world that had changed tremendously in less than twenty-four hours, Rose listened to the silence placating their surroundings and waited for the inevitable hell to break loose.

  Sweat beading her brow, shivers running down her neck—it seemed too convenient for them to step into the midst of crisis only to be met with destitution. Lyra’s breathing was the only noise she could hear, which was a pale contrast to the usual hustle and bustle surrounding the district.

  “So,” Rose said, idly glancing over at her friend, whose eyes had strayed toward the distant side of the road, where in the distance, the docks could be seen, vessels idling or some adrift in the harbor. “Where are we going?”

  “Umm,” Lyra replied, a frown crossing her face. “I… I thought we could go down to the docks and see if we could find a key, but seeing all those boats out there, I’m not so sure that’s a good i—”

  The sharp clang of something crashing in the distance overwhelmed her friend’s voice.

  The bat was over Rose’s shoulder in an instant.

  “What was that?” Lyra asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rose replied, instinctively stepping in front of her friend as Lyra reached for the pepper spray. “Stay back.”

  “I—”

  The crash came again, followed by a sharp yelp.

  Rose’s hands tightened around the bat.

  Concentrate, the voice of her old baseball coach said. Listen. Wait.

  The instinctual slip of her tongue over her lips gave birth to phantoms of the past.

  Her knuckles popped.

  Moments later, a man—bedraggled and with his business suit in tatters—came stumbling from the back alley, bits of trash adorning his body. “They’re coming!” he cried, limping forward on a bad leg. “We’ve gotta run! THEY’RE COMING!”

  “He fell from our building,” Lyra said, her voice clouded as another crash came from the alley. “If he hit the trash and it didn’t kill him, that means—”

  A screech ripped the air.

  Not one second after Rose’s bat fell into position, a frenzied, blood-soaked woman launched into view, instantly homing in on the injured man.

  “Wait!” the man said as Rose grabbed Lyra’s arm and began to tug her down the street. “Don’t leave me! PLEASE!”

  “We can’t just leave him!” Lyra cried.

  “More will come!” Rose cried back. “More will—”

  The man screamed as he was dragged down.

  Howls rose in the streets.

  Lyra’s eyes, centered directly on the man being eaten in front of them, widened.

  The prey was there.

  Doe.

  Beast.

  The pitted struggle for survival.

  The approaching figures barreling down the streets were drawn only to one thing—the screams.

  Taking hold of her friend’s face, Rose turned Lyra’s head toward her and looked directly into her eyes.

  She said only one thing.

  “Run.”

  Their frantic footfalls along the sidewalk did little to drown out the dying man’s screams or the pitched cries the undead made because of it. Breaths ragged, chests heaving, they tore down the road parallel to the chain-link fence that separated High Street from the dock, in a desperate attempt to free themselves from the madness.

  The mass of bodies swarming from the opposite direction gave them little choice as to where they could go. Forced by proxy into the rat run that sloped down not once, but twice, they threw themselves onto the path just in time for the first of the corpses to slam into the fence above them.

  “Lyra!” Rose screamed. “Look out!”

  Having stumbled into the fence, her friend had little time to react before a shredded hand lashed through the links and took hold of her hair.

  “Fuck!” Lyra cried. “Fuck!”

  Rose reared the bat back and slammed it against the links. Bone crunched beneath the weight of her thrust, but did nothing to deter the mad creature from releasing its hold on her friend.

  She thrust again.

  More bone exploded.

  She knew the howl that followed came from rage, not pain.

  The creatures who’d previously been concentrated on the businessman were making their way toward them.

  Shit.

  Sweat broke out along her palms and threatened to send the bat from her grasp.

  Lyra tore the pepper spray from the pack and managed to thrust it behind her before releasing a spray into the throng of bodies.

  The concoction did nothing.

  Their minds were gone.

  Abandon reigned supreme.

  Flinging the bat behind her shoulder, Rose braced herself to throw the most powerful swing at the creature that she could manage.

  A gunshot went off.

  Already mangled from a day of violence, the creature’s head exploded as the bullet entered its skull.

  “RUN!” someone screamed.

  Rose didn’t bother to question as she grabbed Lyra and flung her friend down the incline.

  The first creature that came forward, she struck directly in the head with an over-the-shoulder swing, denting its head in to the point where any normal person would’ve surely been dead.

  “ROSE!” Lyra called.

  The second she bashed in the face; the third, she clobbered over the head.

  “COME ON!”

  A second, then third gunshot sounded, and Rose took off after her friend.

  Her hands were flecked with blood and her shirt soggy from the resulting spray as she chased Lyra down the last ramp. At the bottom, Lyra braced herself alongside the gate and began to slam it into place before Rose had even cleared the threshold.

  She jum
ped.

  Her frail frame whipped through the space.

  No sooner had her feet landed on solid ground than the gate slammed into the weight of three creatures.

  “Get the chain!” Lyra cried. “Get the fuckin’ chain!”

  Rose lashed out and grabbed the massive link before swinging it through the loop normally reserved for the padlock.

  Lyra held steady despite the rampant assault.

  Slick with blood and sweat, Rose’s fingers struggled to form some semblance of a knot.

  “Come on!” the same voice from before cried. “Hurry!”

  The moment Rose managed something resembling a knot, Lyra broke free and tore toward the docks.

  The monsters screamed.

  The fence trembled under the weight of not one, not two, but three dozen creatures.

  The sight was almost too much to believe.

  All those bodies, all those people—bloodied, injured, dead.

  Rose took off after her friend.

  It was then she saw the source of their salvation.

  Poised atop an impressive yacht, upon which stood what had to be at least a dozen people, was a lone rifleman, whose only focus was on the carnage threatening to break free behind them.

  Waiting in the harbor was a dingy little lifeboat, manned by an older blonde woman and a teenage boy with a gun.

  “You’re gonna have to jump!” the woman cried.

  “Are you crazy?” Lyra screamed. “What do you think I am? A squirrel?”

  The gate groaned, then snapped off its hinges.

  The chorus of cries that followed stopped Rose’s heart.

  At the end of the pier, Lyra made no hesitation. With as much effort as she could offer, she broke into the fastest run she could manage, then vaulted from the planks.

  Her body soared through the air.

  A scream tore from Lyra’s throat.

  Rose thought for one horrible moment that her friend wouldn’t make it. Then, just as she neared the halfway point of the dock, her friend crashed into the boat, nearly capsizing the vessel with the uneven distribution of weight.

  “Come on!” the teenage boy cried.

  A wicked screech lit the hairs on Rose’s neck.

  The vibrating planks at her feet felt like they would snap at any moment.

  The end of the dock was just a few feet away. If she could only make it before the creature reached her—

  Rose barely registered the bullet as it whizzed past her head, or the creature as it stumbled and fell into the harbor.

  Ahead, the boy’s smoking gun centered on her.

  She jumped.

  A gun fired.

  She landed in the boat directly beside Lyra, and would’ve slipped over, had the woman not grabbed her shirt.

  “We gotta go,” the boy said. “They’re not stopping.”

  Their distance would be fruitless if they were to idle much longer. Now free of their earthly confines, the creatures made no effort to halt their advance as they approached the end of the dock.

  Into the water they fell, bodies flailing and water spraying the air, and when their sights were set on the humans, they instantly struggled forward. With the weight of the water anchoring their clothes, their movements were far too sluggish to offer any true advantage, but enough would surely overwhelm them if they waited too long.

  Behind her, the blonde woman struggled with the engine, her arm whipping the starter cord repeatedly.

  “Uh… Jewel,” the boy said. “Hurry.”

  “I’m trying!” the blonde woman cried. “It won’t go!”

  “They’re coming,” Rose said.

  Now visibly trembling, the boy lifted his gun and drew a bead on the closest creature.

  Raising her hand, Rose signaled for him to stop, then reached for her bat.

  A gargled scream exploded from a torn windpipe drowning in water.

  Rose slammed the aluminum weapon into the creature with enough force to knock it into the water.

  A second creature neared.

  She clonked it over the head.

  The third closest was met with its companion and the boy fired two consecutive shots into their heads.

  The boat revved to life.

  The resulting tremor nearly sent the boy over the edge.

  Rose snagged her fingers through the back of his belt just moments before one of the creatures could snap their teeth at his face.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” someone on the ship cried. “There’s more of them!”

  And there were, Rose noted. The commotion from the screams, the gunshots, and the screech of the manual engine had drawn what appeared to be the entire town. The swarm.

  The chain-link fence warped with the effort of maintaining so many bodies. Sections of it had already begun to bow and threatened to snap free, were the pressure to mount any further. The nightmarish sight was only intensified by the howls as the woman named Jewel navigated the manual about the shallow parts of the harbor and then toward the yacht.

  The monster under the bed, the thing in the closet, the red-eyed dogs that stalked the streets, Jack the motherfucking Ripper—these were things that did not exist, whose legends were prevalent in the stories woven from yesteryear. But these—these were something else. These were—

  Zombies.

  She swallowed.

  There.

  After all this time denying it, she’d called them what they really were.

  Their wounds, their abandon, their cold, lifeless eyes—these things had crawled through hell and back again.

  Now free of the imminent danger, she struggled to maintain focus on the situation at hand. The adrenaline dissipated the further they got from the dock and the creatures meandering at them.

  She lowered the bloodied bat into the water and allowed the ocean to cleanse it free of the blood and filth that adorned its surface. Her hands came next, vigorously scrubbed in the current. The whole time, her friend’s eyes were on her—scared, surely, but quickly spiraling down from the chaos they had just endured.

  “You ok?” Rose asked as she pulled her hands from the water, rubbing her thumb along the face of her dirtied class ring.

  “I’m fine,” Lyra replied. “What about you?”

  Rose nodded. She turned her head to regard the boy at her side and forced a smile, regardless of the faint palpitations in her heart. “Thank you,” she said, nodding as his eyes met hers. “You saved my life.”

  “I thought I was going to hit you,” the boy confessed.

  “Better than getting eaten by those things,” Rose replied. “What’s your name?”

  “Tommy.”

  “Thank you, Tommy. My name’s Rose, and that’s my friend Lyra.”

  “You from here?” the woman named Jewel asked.

  Lyra nodded. “Right on High Street,” she said. “In the big row of flats right near the end.”

  “It’s amazing you got out alive.”

  “We watched ‘em swarm the town,” Tommy said. “Like a big wave. All of ‘em. Just… running. And then we heard someone screaming bloody murder and they all just—” The boy shook his head and lowered his gun. “You’re lucky we found you.”

  “Damn lucky,” Jewel agreed. “We were just getting ready to pull out when we saw the two of you running toward the docks.”

  “We’d be dead without you lot,” Lyra said. “Thank you.”

  Jewel nodded and directed the manual toward the yacht.

  She arranged the four of them alongside the ship and took careful consideration in securing a series of ropes through the hooks angled on either side of the vessel.

  Now aware of its use as a lifeboat, Rose settled into her seat opposite Lyra and allowed their saviors to do their work, her gaze never faltering, not once leaving her friend. Lyra’s brown eyes met hers in a resolute nod as she extended an arm to take her hand, which Rose met in a hardy grip the moment their palms touched.

  “You all ready down there?” a man holding the rifle
asked.

  “Ready to rip!” Jewel cried.

  The attaching pulleys pulled them from the depths of the harbor and into the air, their mechanisms groaning with the effort of four bodies balanced within one small vessel. They were directed to remain still and keep a steady posture, forcing Rose and Lyra to break free from one another. Within moments they were alongside the boat.

  Lyra was assisted first—both hands held steadily by two men as she was directed to place one foot on the ship’s surface, then as she was instructed to loop her body over the railing. Rose came next—likely as a result of their recent predicament—followed by Jewel, and then the squirrely boy named Tommy.

  By the time the process was over, the cloudy sky had darkened, its mass bloated with the telltale signs of rain.

  “Pretty close call there,” the man who had saved Lyra’s life said, his voice flecked with a faded but still distinctly-noticeable Middle Eastern accent. “You two all right?”

  “We’re ok,” Rose said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand as he offered it. “Thank you.”

  “No need to thank me. Thank my military for teaching me how to be such a crack shot.” He adjusted his rifle against his shoulder and surveyed Jewel and Tommy. “How about you two?”

  “We’re fine,” Jewel said, running a hand across her glossy brow. “Lucky, but fine.”

  “Good shootin’, Tommy.”

  “Thanks, Yayir,” the boy replied.

  The man nodded and cast a glance back at the dock fading into the distance. His uniform spoke of an Israeli background, but so far as Rose knew, there had been no Middle Eastern military presence in the area—unless he was visiting, or part of some embassy. At that moment, she didn’t particularly care. He was the reason they were alive. That was all that mattered to her.

  “How many of you are here?” Rose asked, taking note of the mass of people—some of whom had wandered off, while others watched them curiously.

  “There’s about fifteen of us here,” Yayir said. “Most civilian. A few with armed forces backgrounds.”

  “Where’d you get your guns?” Lyra asked, speaking up for the first time since their arrival. “Not like you can just carry them around like that.”