“Not at first,” her uncle said, “but eventually, yeah. Some of them never even came back at all, but when the others started to turn and attack people…”
“You had to kill them,” Natalie said gently.
“Yeah,” James sighed. “Yeah, we did.”
“Weren’t they, like, super strong and shit?” Lily asked. “And like super hard to kill?”
“We shot them before they could really drink too much of anybody’s blood,” James said, “and then once the news started to report that this shit was happening everywhere, we just stayed alert.”
“So wait,” I said. “Other than what sounds like just a couple of people, are you saying that your whole town is human? And still alive?”
“Yep,” James said as he scratched at his salt-and-pepper beard again. “But there’s only about 100 of us, so it’s not like we’ve got the population of Charleston or anything.”
“That’s incredible,” I said.
“We’ve been pretty lucky so far,” James said, “but I have a feeling that’s gonna change soon.”
“What do you mean?” Catherine asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, that kinda brings me back to why I was so suspicious when I saw your armored truck pull up,” her uncle said. “Sorry about the gunshots, by the way.”
“I would have done the same,” I said with a shrug, even though I would have come up with a slightly different strategy in his position.
“Anyway, we’re not the only ones who are still alive around here,” James said. “The whole town downriver is still alive, too, fucking bastards, and I thought you were one of them.”
“And you hate that town because…” Catherine trailed off.
“Oh, shit, I forgot that you wouldn’t know,” James said. “The whole town upriver are fucking vamps.”
Chapter 9
The girls and I all just stared at him for a minute, while I let that information sink in. Of all the fucking places that there could be a town full of vamps, of course it had to be just downriver from where Catherine’s uncle lived.
I had thought that we made it past the worst of what West Virginia had to offer when we got around Morgantown and the frat bro fiefdom that had been set up there, but apparently, we had just gone from bad to worse. Still, even though it might not be the literal end of the world, that all very much depended on what exactly James knew about the bloodsuckers in the town downriver.
“Say what now?” Catherine spoke up before I did.
“Yeah, I think we might need a few more details from you, if you don’t mind,” Natalie said.
“How many are there?” I asked. “And how far away is this town?”
“Um, and like how did they manage to all get the vaccine when Red House didn’t?” Lily added.
“Well, I’m not sure about how exactly they got the vaccine,” James said, “because up until just a couple seconds ago, I didn’t know that’s what caused all this shit. I’d bet you anything that Big Pharma did this on purpose, probably so they can ultimately come out with some kind of life-saving drug for everybody, or--”
“Yes!” Catherine clapped her hands together. “See, that’s what I’m talking about! Uncle James gets it. It all goes back to Big Pharma, and--”
“If they were gonna come out with a miracle cure, I think they might be a little late,” I said with a smirk. “Unless their miracle cure can bring the dead back to life, I don’t know if there are enough humans for them to actually make a profit off of.”
“Eh, that’s just details,” Catherine said. “I’m sure they’ve got it all planned out.”
“We were talking about the vaccine,” Neko said. “If we could come back to the point.”
“Right, sorry,” James said. “Anyway, I’m not exactly sure how they got the vaccine, but Black Betsy sometimes has--”
“Excuse me, what now?” Catherine interrupted.
“Black Betsy,” her uncle repeated. “It’s the name of the town.”
“Oh, my god, of course, it is,” the auburn-haired girl snickered. “Red House? Black Betsy? What’s next, Blue Barn?”
“Hey, I didn’t name this shit myself,” James groaned. “These names have been around for fucking ages.”
“So Black Betsy sometimes has what?” Neko glanced at me and then back at James. “You’re not sure how they got the vaccine, but…”
I appreciated that the petite Japanese girl wanted to keep us on track as much as I did, and that she wasn’t afraid to speak up and say so. Neko could be really blunt about things, but that was one of the things that I liked most about her.
“Right, but there’s some wealthier people who live down there,” James said, “and they give some big-ass donations for this mobile vaccination charity to roll through and hand out doses of whatever people need.”
“So it’s possible that they had the AIDS vaccine,” Catherine said, “and that’s how everybody there got the vaccine, but no one here did.”
“That’s my best bet,” the gray-bearded man said. “And as far as how many of them are down there, I really couldn’t say. Black Betsy is about the same size as Red House, but I don’t know how many people got turned versus how many people down there they ate and shit.”
“But if you had to guess?” I asked. “Just roughly.”
“Uh… a couple dozen, maybe?” James sighed. “But honestly, it could be closer to a hundred, I don’t really know. I’ve never seen the same vamp twice, I don’t think.”
“So you’ve seen them?” Natalie asked.
“Yeah, it’s only about five miles upriver,” James replied. “On these roads, that can be fifteen or twenty minutes, but if you’re a good driver, you can make it a little faster.”
“Do you know any of the people in Black Betsy?” I asked. “Have you recognized any of the vamps as people that you used to know?”
“I’ve recognized a couple,” Catherine’s uncle replied, “and I did know a lot of the folks down there, but there’s been plenty of vamps that I haven’t ever seen before. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, of course. I might just never have met them or something.”
“Or it means that a group of vamps moved into the town, joined forces with the local bloodsuckers, and then took over everything,” I muttered.
“Either way, that doesn’t sound great,” Brianna whispered.
“But how have you seen these vampires?” Neko demanded. “Did you go down there to Black Betsy, or did they come here, or what?”
“I’m curious about that myself,” I said with a nod at the pink-haired girl. “I know you’ve got a nice secure little spot for yourself up here, but it still wouldn’t be a match for a couple dozen vamps, especially if they were even halfway organized.”
“That takes me back to my original point,” James said. “When I saw you pull up in the armored truck--”
“And shot at us,” Catherine interrupted, “but go ahead.”
“I only shot at you because I thought you were from Black Betsy,” James said. “They’ve come up here a couple times to try to kidnap some of our people, and they’re usually in some kind of big windowless van or something. I thought your truck was just their latest vehicle.”
“Damn, so you have vamps and kidnappers to deal with?” Lily asked. “That’s a fuckin’ lot.”
“Yeah, vamps who kidnap people weren’t exactly on the list of things I wanted to deal with in a midlife crisis,” James said with a shrug, “but here we are.”
“But they don’t just come and kill your people?” I asked. “They definitely kidnap them?”
“Yeah, but they’ve only gotten a couple,” James replied. “We’re usually able to chase them off with guns, but they’ve still managed to snatch a few.”
“Do you think they’re using them to feed off of?” Natalie bit her lip as she looked at me.
“I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet,” I said with a nod. “The vamps down there probably either ate their way through the whole town and n
eed more people to feed from, or they just want more people to add into their blood pool.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” the gray-bearded man said. “Did you run into something like this in New York?”
“I’m afraid so,” I sighed. “They call them human cattle, and it’s probably how the vamps down there are keeping themselves so strong.”
“And why they keep sending vamps up here to try to get more prisoners,” Natalie added.
“Shit,” James said and then let his head fall into his hands for a second. “Fucking shit, I just…”
“Why don’t I get us something to drink?” Catherine asked. “Do you want some water, Uncle James?”
“Nah, just give me a shot of moonshine,” her uncle said. “It’s in the cabinet by the fridge.”
“You know it’s not noon yet, right?” the auburn-haired girl asked.
“One little shot won’t kill me,” James chuckled. “I’ve got a stronger stomach than that. Anybody else?”
“I’ve always wanted to try moonshine,” Neko said, “so I’ll take a little.”
The rest of the girls just asked for water or Gatorade, so Catherine hurried into the kitchen to get everybody’s orders. Brianna followed to help her, while I leaned back into the couch cushions to let James take a break before I pressed him for more information.
We had clearly stumbled onto an accidental hotbed of vamp activity, but that didn’t necessarily mean we were fucked. We could be out of here as soon as we wanted, and we could just make sure that we avoided Black Betsy on our way out of West Virginia.
Sure, I had hoped that we could rest here for a couple of days, but we had enough fuel and supplies to get us a decent distance, and then we would just improvise whenever both of those ran out. It wasn’t ideal, but nothing about this was what I would call ideal. We had gotten pretty good at making the best out of bad situations, so we would just do the same thing here.
But at the same time, I hated to just leave Catherine’s uncle in the lurch here. He wasn’t my priority like the girls were, but he was Catherine’s family, and from the sound of it, he was just about the only family that she could actually stand to be around. Still, he was obviously attached to his town and the people here, so I didn’t know if we would be able to persuade him to leave and head out to Colorado with us.
Of course, there was also the little problem of the fact that James didn’t know that I was a vamp, and I sure as hell didn’t want to come right out and tell him. He might be Catherine’s uncle, but there was no reason for him to actually trust me at this point, so if we tried to explain it to him now, he’d probably try to put a bullet in between my eyes, and then I’d have to break his arm, or worse, to stop him, and the whole thing would just turn into one big fucking mess.
So basically, we could wish James good luck, get right back on the road, and then head out before the Black Betsy vamps decided to come to town again. Our only other option was to take the risk and stay here at the cabin for a few days, but that would mean we might have to fight some bloodsuckers from the next town over, and it definitely meant that we would eventually have to explain my need for blood to James.
When Catherine and Brianna came back from the kitchen, they handed out drinks to everybody, and that included a small shot of moonshine for Neko and James, as well as a glass of water for me.
“Uh… thanks?” I raised an eyebrow as I looked up at Catherine.
“Thought you might be thirsty?” Catherine bit her lip and then shrugged.
I took the glass of water but just held it in my hands. I knew it might look strange to James if I was the only one without a drink in my hands, but it wasn’t like I needed or wanted it. All I wanted was blood, and right now, the scent of Neko right beside me was enough to drive me crazy, so I just tightened my grip on the glass in my hands and then forced my fingers to relax before I accidentally broke it.
James knocked back the shot of moonshine like it was water, and after Neko watched him take it, she sniffed the clear liquid in her hands, dipped the tip of her tongue into the shot glass, and then tossed back the whole shot in one swallow.
The petite Japanese girl licked her lips, cleared her throat, and set the glass down on the coffee table in front of her.
“What’d you think?” James smiled.
“Not bad,” Neko said, “but I prefer sake. You know, Japanese liquor.”
“I can’t say that I’ve ever had it,” James said, “but maybe one day.”
“I imagine that this is hard for you, James,” I said as I set down my untouched glass of water on the coffee table, “but I need you to finish what you were telling us.”
“I know I got upset,’ the gray-bearded man sighed. “I really hate to think about the fact that the vamps have any humans as prisoners, much less some of our own people, but the thing is… I think the vamps from Black Betsy are getting bolder.”
“How so?” Natalie asked.
“I think they’re planning to do more than just send little raiding parties up here,” James said. “I think their goal is to just take over Red House, so then I guess they’d have two whole towns under their control.”
“And all the people in both,” I said. “What makes you say that?”
“About two days ago, a vamp showed up at the edge of town,” Catherine’s uncle replied, “but it was just one of them, and he didn’t even try to attack anybody until we asked him who he was and what he wanted. Then he tried to attack us, but me and a couple other men from town were able to chase him off.”
“So like, what was he doing here alone?” Lily asked.
“I think he was a scout,” James replied. “I think he was probably sent here to look at our defenses and everything, and the bad thing is that I’m pretty sure we didn’t chase him away in time, before he saw… well, before he saw that Red House ain’t got much in the way of defenses.”
“Do you have any kind of defenses?” Catherine asked. “Other than one hell of a winding road to get into town, anyway.”
“Yeah, the road definitely works in our favor,” her uncle said. “Thanks to this mountain, there’s really only one way in and out of the town, and that’s the road that you all would have come in on.”
“So technically, there’s two ways in and out, right?” I asked. “At the northbound and the southbound ends of town?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” James replied. “And we’ve obviously got the river on one side, so that helps, but other than that, Red House is mostly just a collection of houses all kinda spread out from each other, so it’s not exactly the easiest place to defend.”
“What about weapons?” Natalie asked.
“This is West Virginia,” James laughed, “so we’re not short on self-defense weapons. We’ve got plenty of guns and ammo, but it’s been hard to get everybody organized, especially since I don’t have any idea what the vamps have planned.”
“Lucky for you, Sam here is awfully good at guessing what vamps might do,” Lily said with a wink at me.
“Really?” James raised his eyebrows.
“I’m not bad,” I said with a shrug. “So how many people would you say that the vamps have taken from Red House so far?”
“Just five,” James said. “Well, they tried to take six, but…”
The gray-bearded man suddenly trailed off and pressed his lips together, and I realized that tears had welled up in his eyes.
“Uncle James?” Catherine whispered. “You okay?”
“They tried to take one of my best friends about a week ago,” James murmured, “but he fought so hard that they ended up just slashing him open and leaving him, so then… there was just nothing that we could do at that point, you know? So I just held him until he… sorry, you gotta excuse me for a minute.”
James jumped up from his chair so fast that the chair legs scraped backward across the wooden floor, and then he promptly disappeared down the back hallway. He obviously didn’t want us to see how emotional he’d gotten, but
I wished that I could explain how much we understood what he felt.
After all, we had all lost people over the last few weeks. Hell, Natalie had lost her fucking brother, but not before he had voluntarily turned himself into a bloodsucking psychopath, so now she had to live with the fact that he was dead and that he had turned out to be a real son-of-a-bitch before he died.
Well, technically, before I killed him.
I had hoped that some of the more rural parts of the country, like Red House, would be less affected by the vampocalypse, but so far, it seemed like the vaccine had spread just about everywhere, and that meant vamps were in just about every corner of the country.
It might take a little longer to get out to Colorado than we originally planned, so I just hoped that our trip out west would be fucking worth it.
“What are we gonna do?” Catherine whispered.
“What do you mean?” Neko asked. “We’ll rest here and then go on to Colorado, right?”
“I don’t know if I can just leave him,” the auburn-haired girl said. “Don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t want to just set up shop here, and I’m sure as hell not going to leave Sam, but… fuck, are we really just gonna leave him?”
“I know what you mean,” I sighed.
“We could really help this place out, you know,” Catherine said. “I know Uncle James won’t ever leave this place because he just loves it too much, but what if… well, what if we try to help him protect this place?”
“So you want to help him get set up to defend Red House against the vamps downriver?” Natalie asked. “And then once he’s all set up, we’d go on to Colorado like we planned?”
“Well, maybe,” Catherine said. “It’s not the worst idea, is it?”
“It would be nice to be in one spot for more than a couple hours,” Erika said from her spot on the couch beside Natalie. “I know there’s vamps downriver, but there will also be vamps on the road, so I don’t know if the difference really matters.”
“But we could really make a difference here,” Catherine said. “There’s like a hundred people in this town, and if we leave them, we know they’ll eventually get eaten or taken prisoner by the bloodsuckers, and we have a chance to actually help them!”
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 13