Authors: Emily McKay
Tags: #Dallas, #dark powers, #government conspiracy, #mutants, #drama, #Romance, #vampires, #horror, #dystopia, #teenage, #autism
The Before
The Before
Before vampires began devouring humans; before the surviving teenagers were rounded up and harvested for their blood; before all of that there was a time simply called The Before . . .
What looks at first like nothing more than a bad science fiction movie soon becomes a terrifying reality for Lily Price: swarms of vampires devouring humans across America. Now, locked in her house while the world falls apart around her, Lily must find the strength to support her collapsing mother and protect her autistic twin sister, Mel—and somehow find a way to flee the advancing horde of undead before it’s too late.
But with martial law declared and a rogue cop watching every move Lily makes, escape seems hopeless. And then comes a phone call that threatens to change Lily’s life forever, a call that’s certain to break up her family and send Lily and Mel to a place they may never return from.
From the author of the award-winning
The Farm
and
The Lair
comes
The Before
, a terrifying look at what life was like when the vampiric undead first took over our lives.
The Before
Emily McKay
Copyright © 2013 by Emily McKay
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-937349-82-0
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Contents
Chapter One
Lily
“Lily, darling,” my uncle said as soon as I answered the phone. “I think it’s about time you girls came up to see me.”
“Hey, Uncle Rodney. What’s up?” I asked, cheerfully ignoring the concern in his voice as I wedged the phone handset between my shoulder and my ear. I yanked open the fridge and gazed at the contents, hoping a chocolate cake would miraculously appear.
“Your mom around?” he asked, ignoring my greeting, which was unusual. Even when he called to talk to Mom, Uncle Rodney wanted to know all the details of our lives. We were the only family he had now that Nanna was gone.
“It’s not even five yet,” I pointed out. Mom wouldn’t be home until after six, at the earliest. She worked as a lawyer for a local nonprofit. You’d think that one of the benefits of working for very little would have been shorter hours. But not for Mom. She was a sixty-hour-workweek kind of gal. Since that chocolate cake hadn’t miraculously appeared, I shut the fridge door. “You want to call back later or do you want me to take a message?”
“What the hell is she doing working at a time like this?” His voice rose sharply with concern, surprising me again. He never—never!—spoke ill of Mom. He disliked his neighbors, distrusted organized religion and reviled the government, but he adored Mom. And Mel and me along with her.
I glanced out the window expecting to see—I don’t know—the dark green clouds of an approaching tornado. Or maybe fighter jets descending on suburban Dallas.
Uncle Rodney was what Mom liked to call “eccentric.” He lived up in the Ozark Mountains in a three-room shack with a bomb shelter in the backyard. Three or four times a year he’d call and tell us he thought we should come stay with him a while. He’d been gleefully predicting the end of American civilization for most of his life and all of mine. He was one gas mask away from having his own reality TV show, but family was family and we all loved him.
“What’s up this time?” I asked, teasing him. “Alien invasion? Tropical storm forming off the coast of Africa? Teacher protests in Austin getting out of hand again?”
Normally, Uncle Rodney took teasing pretty well. Yes, he was hard-core about the whole prepping thing, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know when to take a joke.
This time, however, his voice got low and serious. “Lily, I want you to go turn on the TV.”
It was summer and Mel and I spent our mornings at the local rec center, where I worked part-time as a lifeguard and where Mel hung out and taught informal chess classes. I’d spent the hours since we’d come home streaming a movie off Netflix.
I didn’t even wait for him to finish the sentence and went straight for the living room. Mel was curled up on the sofa with her portable keyboard out on her lap, her fingers flying over the keys. It wasn’t actually on. She was just playing along to the music in her head.
My twin, Mel, was on the autism spectrum and she was kind of a musical savant. Thanks to years of occupational therapy, she functioned highly, but sometimes I still felt like she wasn’t really of this world. She did her real living in the world of music and sound.
She didn’t look up when I entered the room, but frowned when I turned on the TV. An image of some cheesy sci-fi monster flickered across the screen. The movie was filmed in that fake documentary style, all grainy footage and jerky camera angles. The monster lumbered down the street of some dusty small town. Its features and body were human but not quite in proportion. Classic low-budget horror. Like they’d just shoved a mask onto the face of some stunt man.
I rolled my eyes as I fumbled the remote. “Hang on, Uncle Rodney. The TV’s on the Syfy Channel. Let me turn over to CNN.”
“Lily—”
But the next channel was showing the same movie. I flicked again. And again. And again.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered. Every channel was airing the same crap monster movie.
“Lily, honey, why don’t you sit down?”
I looked back at Mel, who was staring at the TV, her head cocked to the side, her expression puzzled. She stood and came over to me, taking the remote from my hand. I let her. Maybe she would have more luck.
Uncle Rodney was still talking, his voice pitched low, like he was trying to talk someone off a ledge. “You girls there alone?”
“Yeah,” I said. Hadn’t I already told him that Mom wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours? His attempt to soothe me had me more freaked out. Rodney was the reactionary one in the family. Yeah, he was twenty-plus years older than my seventeen years, but I was the one who usually did the calming, not him.
“Did you lock the doors when you got home?”
“Yes. Always.” Mom worked late, but she’d drilled basic safety measures into our heads since we were toddlers.
“You’d best stay in that den where no one can see you from the street. Better yet, your momma still have that TV in her dressing room?”
“Yes.”
“You girls gather up some bottled water, some snacks, and some pillows. You go sit in there and watch the TV in there. Lock the doors on your way in.”
Panic was eating away at my reserve now. I snatched the remote back from Mel. She hadn’t had any more luck than I had had. I flipped through the channels quickly. They were all showing that same footage.
She looked up at me, confusion written in her expression. “The British are coming. The British are coming.”
My breath caught in my throat as I turned to stare at her.
When Mel was young, she didn’t hit all her milestones when I did. That’s how Mom and Dad knew there was something up with her. When she hit three and still hadn’t uttered a peep, that’s when they knew it was serious. A year of occupational therapy later and she was finally talking, but she’d only repeat things other people said to her. Then she finally started talking on her own, but only in nursery rhymes. I put up with years of “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” and “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick” before I ever had a real conversation with my sister. Her mutterings always meant something, but figuring out what was a pain. And, yeah, “The British are coming” wasn’t a nursery rhyme, but it was enough to make my pulse race. The last time Mel did this nursery rhyme thing was when our dad left.
I wasn’t ready for another five months of nursery rhymes. In those few seconds I’d been focused on Mel I’d let my hand drop to my side; now I raised the phone back to my ear.
“What’s going on?” I asked Uncle Rodney.
“There’s been some kind of outbreak,” Uncle Rodney answered. “Some virus or something. It’s bad.”
I chuckled and the sound was nervous and edgy. I fooled no one. “This can’t be real. Those special effects don’t even look good. This has to be some sort of prank.”
Uncle Rodney was silent for a minute. When he talked, there was regret in his voice. “If it was a prank, it wouldn’t be on all the stations. It’s real.”