Free The Vault (A Farm Novel) by Emily McKay Page B

from the blood, but it’s everywhere. All over him. On his clothes. On his useless bandage. On the ground. Even when I look away, all I see is the blood.
    And then I really do see more blood. A smear of dark brown in the red-brown dirt. A drop here. A streak farther away. More drops.
    I follow the trail, stupidly at first, my gut guiding me more than my brain. Slowly I figure it out. This isn’t a trail to food. This is a trail away from something. Away from the site of the helicopter crash. Away from the Ticks. This is the blood my father lost when he dragged me here.
    At the site of the crash I might find something. A gun. A weapon. A . . . something.
    I pull myself step-by-step over toward the rise, following my nose and my instinct. I’m not as cold anymore. I’ve stopped shaking, but I don’t know if this is a good thing.
    Beyond the hill, I can see a plume of inky smoke. I follow that when the drops of blood become more sparsely spaced. I hadn’t noticed it before, so dark against a line of trees. When I crest the hill, it’s there before me. A field of some kind of grain, and in the center of it, the smoking metal heap that was once a helicopter.
    It seems huge. Much bigger than the Life Flight helicopters we would sometimes see overhead in Dallas. It must be a military helicopter if it was big enough to bring . . . how many of us had he said there were? Four patients?
    Three predators that could awaken at any moment. Starving and mindless. I may want to die, but I don’t want to be eaten by a Tick. And I’m not sure that would kill me anyway.
    Am I different already? My body feels heavier somehow. And there’s a deep gnawing hunger in my belly.
    As I stumble toward the wreckage, my head spins. The air reeks of smoke and hot metal and something else I can’t pin down. Something in the twisted pile of metal is smoking, but the helicopter is too intact for there to have been an explosion. There are bodies littering the ground near the helicopter. I can’t tell if they were thrown clear or if someone dragged them out. My father dragged me, but would he have bothered with anyone else?
    Two weeks ago, I would have said he wouldn’t have even bothered with me. Two weeks ago, I hadn’t seen him in nearly a decade.
    I am drawn to the other bodies with a kind of twisted fascination. There are two men, both wearing singed and torn hospital gowns. Both large hulking types, with bulky arms and pronounced brows and heavy jaws. Their bare arms and legs are covered with thick, coarse hair. They look like a cross between professional football players and the wax Neanderthals from the natural history museum. Like mercenary soldiers who have almost turned into Ticks but aren’t there just yet.
    They should be less terrifying unconscious, but they aren’t. They are too close to what I will become. Another day? Maybe two? No more than that, now that I’m awake.
    I stumble around to the other side of the wreckage; the air is heavy with the stench of fire and blood and singed hair and roasted flesh. I see another body, this one impaled on a hunk of helicopter metal. The pilot. He didn’t even survive the crash. I trip backward, desperate to get away. I move up the hill but stop at the sight of another body. A woman, dressed in a white doctor’s coat. Facedown in dirt, like she stumbled away from the site and collapsed. Instinctively, I drop to my knees and roll her over. I place my hand on her chest and feel her take a shuddering breath. One of her arms flops oddly, like her shoulder has been dislocated. Her belly is strangely distended. A nasty gash oozes blood on her temple.
    She won’t make it. Somehow, I know this instinctively. I tell myself this, gazing at the lovely smear of blood on her forehead. It’s bright red and fresh. Before I can stop myself, I lean down and lick the blood from her skin.
    It’s sharp and tangy on my tongue. My eyes roll back in pleasure. I’m so hungry. And she’s dead anyway. I