by Jack Dann
‘How so?’
‘Every Hunter I know insists on cremation. Just in case.’
‘Catholic,’ the barman said.
‘They burn as good as anyone else.’ George tucked the snapshot away. ‘Shame I missed the funeral.’
‘It was only small. You didn’t miss much.’ He took George’s empty glass. ‘What brings you out now?’
‘Work.’
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘You here about that lad out at Black Creek Station? The one that got tore up? That was just dogs, wasn’t it? Poor little bugger.’
‘I can’t say. Wouldn’t want to start a rumour.’
The barman looked around the empty room. ‘Yeah, wouldn’t want folks to talk. Anyway, headstone’s up at Charleville. Danny Smith’s the name. Another?’
George put down another bill from his wallet. ‘So how was he, towards the end?’
‘Same as always.’ The barman topped off the glass with a practised smack on the tap. ‘Come in from his shift at the meatworks, get pissed, stagger home.’
‘He was working at the meat works? Up at Charleville?’
‘Cunnamulla. Bit of a drive, but a man’s gotta earn a crust, eh?’
‘Where was he living?’
‘Little cottage up the street, there. It’s on the market. Was thinking of buying it myself, but not much point, really. The town’s gone belly-up: just a handful of locals here now, and the guys out on the stations. Between them and the occasional tourist and truckie, there’s just enough trade to keep this place open.’
‘I reckon I know the one. I might go take a look at it, for old time’s sake.’
‘Nothing much to see. Every cent he made, he put across this bar.’
George glanced out the window. Noon had passed but sunset was a long way off. ‘No rush. I reckon I’ll have another one: for Tommy.’
George parked around the corner from Tommy’s house after a slow drive-by. The timber building looked much as he remembered: the porch a little more sagged, the stairs a little more rotted, the paint more peeling. The iron eaves drooped over the windows, the rusted tin roof all but curling under the sun. George reckoned he knew how the house felt. He could’ve used some structural work himself.
With a heavy sigh, he went around the back of the van, opened the rear doors and retrieved his case. Back in the merciful shade of the cab, he popped the lid and took stock of the tools of his trade. Once he had his vest on and had adjusted his shoulder holster, he assembled the shotgun quickly, an action he could do with his eyes closed, and then went through the similarly automatic steps of preparing the hypo of PP-D. He rolled up his sleeve and tapped the hungry vein underneath a clean patch of skin. One of the idiosyncrasies of the serum was that, for all the vampire-like physiological effects it could mimic, healing the damage caused by its own delivery wasn’t one of them. Thirty years of working for the Commission was mapped out on his arms in needle sticks. It was something the boffins were working on for the next version, but it had never been a high priority: there was only one Hunter who had reached thirty years of service, and he wasn’t likely to make another ten. So the doctors told him.
George shot the contents into his vein. The familiar rush swirled through him, pushing him back in his seat. The world grew very bright, very hot, as his senses peaked. His heart raced.
He pushed his sleeve down and went through the ritual of rolling a cigarette as he waited for the spasms to subside, his breathing to ease. Roll the tobacco, lick and seal the paper, tamp the ends, light her up, breathe her in: so pungent to his nose, so acidic on his lungs, but soothing, in its own way. He was ready to go.
Dry, brown grass and crumbly sand crunched like glass under his boots as he walked towards the house. With every step, he felt the buzz of PP-D burning through his system: muscles quivering with the need for release, reflexes as taut as fencing wire, the world bright and loud and moving just a little too slow for his hyped body.
For a long moment, he stood, finishing off the cigarette as he surveyed Tommy’s old home.
The last time he’d seen Tommy Daniels, they’d been pulled over by the side of the highway a good few miles from here, the stench of burnt timber and flesh still clinging in their hair, the back of the wagon filled with recaptured Toowoomba renegades.
They’d tracked the escapees to a shearing shed. He and Tommy had gone in under cover of daylight, juiced out of their brains on serum — what had it been back then, PP-A? B? The Greek had come out of nowhere, a shadow amongst shadows. She’d got the drop on Tommy and it had been luck, just luck, that George had got the shot off and put her down, long enough for Tommy to ram a stake home — no spiffy HeartStoppers back then, but the old-fashioned stab-and-thrust, squelching up under the ribs while the reverb of the gunshot still shook the white ants in the posts. The situation had got out of hand, the other Undead charging in, and him and Tommy running white-hot. There’d been gunfire, blades, incendiaries. Some of the Undead were kids. It wasn’t pretty, seeing them burn, those they couldn’t drag out in time. Tommy had cried, openly, and reckoned he was done with the Commission. George hadn’t believed him.
That night, when the shed was a pile of ashes miles behind them, they agreed the Greek was the most beautiful woman either had seen, living or Undead. In the wagon, with the stake withdrawn in a moment of mutual weakness under the excuse of interrogation, they’d asked her where she was from and she’d said Greece, a long time ago. George had asked the questions but she’d answered them to Tommy, and after a couple of hours of that, George had told Tommy to ‘stake the bitch, she’s not gonna tell us anything useful about the others’, and stomped off to have a cigarette. When he’d come back, the woman and Tommy had gone. He’d tracked them for a day, but realised pretty quick that Tommy was no hostage. George returned to Brisbane with the remainder of their capture, and never reported the run-in with the Greek; just said Tommy was MIA, lost in the fire.
Had he made the right call? If he could go back, would he do it differently? George stomped out his cigarette and took a long, hard look at the house. Nothing moved behind the boarded windows.
He checked his pistols one more time — 9mm automatics in the shoulder and hip holster, and a snub-nosed .38 on the ankle — and felt the reassuring weight of the shotgun, its mag filled with heavies. He’d been putting this off for twenty years. It was time.
A crow cawed, lethargic in the heat, the cry rasping across George’s enhanced hearing as he approached the house.
The iron gate hung open in a fence long absent of wire, but habit made him walk through and up the cracked, uneven concrete of the path.
George wrinkled his nose as he paused at the bottom of the steps. Whiffs of vampire reek carried on the air. The smell of a nest was distinctive, a bit like the roost of a city derelict: that pungent, throat-burning aroma of an unwashed body in near permanent habitation. Not that vampires were dirty; it was more subtle, the scent of exhaled blood and meat, of decay on hold.
George cranked a round into the breach and picked his way up the dodgy stairs. They creaked, but held. He tested the door. It swung open with a rusty squeak that sounded like a hacksaw through metal to George’s sensitive ears, making him grit his teeth. Shotgun cradled against his waist, he let the door tap against the wall. Sunlight scorched a path across the room. Motes of dust twinkled in the beam. The rest of the room was cloaked in shadow, the furniture merely enigmatic dark shapes, a television screen gleaming in the light.
The threadbare carpet cushioned his footfalls as he stepped in, his senses scanning for the tell-tale signs. He was halfway across the room before he felt the movement behind him: the softest, most delicate footfall, the sudden change of light as the door swung almost shut.
That delay, the merest breath-long delay it took for her to reflexively close out the sunlight, was what saved him. He was used to it, surviving by a breath. It was part of the rush. The PP-D could only do so much in levelling the playing field; to win against the real th
ing, you needed cunning and a bit of luck. He took two paces back, giving himself extra time to bring the gun to bear as she approached. Slow, the Greek, not like twenty years ago, back in the shearing shed.
‘He’s —’ she said, before her voice drowned in the blam-blam-blam of the shotgun. The burst shook dust from the ceiling, echoed in his ears long after the afterimage of the muzzle flashes had faded from his vision. She sprawled, spreadeagled and bloody, looking as if she’d been dropped from a great height. Her chest was a gruel of flesh, bone and blouse, her jeans saturated and pale face splattered with dark blood.
George knelt beside her, held the HeartStopper over her breast and fired a bolt into her before she had time to recover. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and brown. He reflexively fitted another bolt into the tube and reloaded a charge before holstering it. God, she was beautiful. Even like this. He traced her chin, rubbed her cheek, flicked a hair from her forehead where it lay stuck in a blood splash. His hand shook as memories of the shearing shed pulsated through his racing mind. As beautiful now as she was then, even being dragged, bloodied shirt hanging open, as limp as a corpse with a stake through her heart, her life on hold until that vital muscle could beat again.
The first whiff of burning flesh hit his nostrils like a smelling salt and he looked around, blinking away his reverie, and found her arm lying in that narrow beam of sunlight shining through the slightly open door. The skin, scarlet and blistered, was starting to crack and smoke. His hand left the guillotine, denying the call of the primed, diamond-edged blade, and moved her limb into the shade.
A footstep.
Behind him.
Still on his knees, he straightened slowly and grasped the shotgun in both hands, aware now of the glint of eyes surrounding him as the vampires emerged from behind furniture, materialised from the shadows. He could see three, sensed more.
Timber creaked.
He turned, heart leaping, barrel swivelling, trigger finger tightening — he jerked the barrel up. ‘Fuck, Tommy, I almost drilled you.’
Tommy leaned against the doorway into the hall, arms crossed across his blue singlet. ‘I heard you were back in town, Georgie. I was hoping you’d drop in.’
Sweat ran cold down George’s back, his finger still jittery on the trigger. The others hadn’t moved, content to hover in a loose circle around him, phantoms at the edge of his vision. ‘I’m surprised you’re still here, Tommy.’
‘Where else would I go?’ He moved to peer around George at the woman’s body. ‘Lys only wanted to talk, you know.’
‘Old habits,’ George said, getting to his feet, careful to keep the gun pointed at the floor, his finger on the trigger guard. ‘I’m juiced, Tommy. You know what it’s like. But she’s still kicking.’ Thank God he hadn’t finished her. At least this way, he had some kind of bargaining chip — hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be undone. ‘You took a risk, didn’t you? Letting her do that?’
‘I didn’t reckon you’d do her in. Wouldn’t have let you, anyway. She wanted to talk to you first, see how you’d react. I told her it would be okay. That I knew you.’
‘It’s been a while, Tommy.’
‘Not that long. Let her up, George. I want to talk to you.’ He pointed over his shoulder, down the hall. ‘Tea?’
‘Is that what you’re drinking these days?’
Tommy smiled, teeth bright. ‘Still enjoy a good cuppa.’
George stooped and yanked the bolt out of the woman’s chest. It withdrew reluctantly, dragging a wet, sucking sound. She moaned, blinked, her wide, dark eyes registering her delayed shock. The wound began closing over immediately. The lurking vampires shifted nervously. ‘Sorry about that,’ George said, surprised to realise he meant it, and retreated after Tommy.
He found his old mate filling a battered kettle at the kitchen sink when he entered. Cracks of light shone through the boards over the kitchen window, casting the room in a twilight murk. Soft footsteps on the worn hallway runner urged him to put his back to the wall by the door. By the time Tommy had ignited the gas stove and put the kettle on the burner, four children were gathered around him, their eyes fixed on George.
Tommy sat at the Formica table, its red and white check pattern faded with age. The kids gathered around him, vaguely reminiscent of that painting of the last dinner of Christ, but a few bodies short. Tommy Daniels and the four apostles. Plus however many were left in the front room with the Greek.
‘So what brings you out here after all this time?’ Tommy asked.
‘Work, just work.’
‘Nice of you to visit, then. I’m amazed you’re still Hunting after all this time. I though you would’ve retired by now, one way or the other.’ His eyes roved over George’s long sleeves. ‘It’s hard to give up, isn’t it?’
‘Not for some, apparently.’ The PP-D screamed at him for release, the flood of synthetic, vamp-based drugs trying to convince him he could make it. He only had to get into the sun. They couldn’t touch him out there. The incendiary grenade on his belt could take care of the rest.
‘You remember the shearing shed, Georgie?’ Tommy’s voice was low and level but carried the cold menace of a knife blade on a steel.
George gripped his shotgun tightly, squeezing his reply through a clenched jaw: ‘I remember.’
‘And you’re still Hunting.’
The two men locked stares; both blinked when the kettle shrieked. The kids all seemed to vibrate on the spot, like guard dogs on the leash, begging for release.
George used every ounce of will to overcome the urge to spray them all with a long burst and run for the kitchen door and hope to God the PP would give him enough strength to burst through before the vampires tore him apart.
Tommy breathed out, a long, sad sigh. ‘You just should’ve come for me, Georgie, way back when, instead of taking it out on those poor sods over the years.’ He motioned to one of the kids, who turned off the stove. The kettle’s scream died away. ‘You still take it black?’
‘Yeah.’
Tommy got another kid, the tallest, to fetch two cups and saucers from a cupboard.
Shaking, George propped the shotgun against the wall and rolled a cigarette. Had to work hard to get enough spit to seal the paper. He could feel the stares of the kids: vacant, hungry, inhuman. One twitch from Tommy and they’d be on him. ‘I never figured you for a family kind of guy. Not all yours, I take it.’
‘Strays. Surprised me, too.’
‘Must be the woman’s touch,’ George said, lighting up. He coughed, blew smoke. The stench offended his artificially keen sense of smell, but he didn’t care. For some reason, he wasn’t dead yet, but if he was the condemned man, he’d bloody well enjoy his last cigarette. ‘I heard they buried you.’
‘I heard that, too.’ Tommy gave his trademark guffaw. ‘C’mon, sit down. Like I told you, I want to talk.’
George sat. The kids bristled as the chair scraped on the lino floor. George felt their hostility fill the room like a looming storm. At eye level, their teeth seemed much brighter, much sharper. His hand found the butt of the pistol at his hip: for him, if not for them. His fingers clenched on the cool metal as the only girl, dark-skinned and flat-chested, plonked the tea pot on the table, then stepped back beside Tommy’s shoulder. Her gaze settled on George, steady and alien, and he became aware of new trickles of sweat running down his back.
‘So what’s on your mind, Tommy?’
Tommy poured two cups, the scent of tea wafting over the stale layer of old blood and dust, the bite of nicotine and freshly struck match.
‘You’re here about that young fellah out at Black Creek, aren’t you.’
‘Like I said, just business.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘He’s still dead, Tommy.’
‘We trained the kids to live off the land, but they’re just kids, Georgie. They make mistakes, just like the rest of us. But they don’t always understand what they do, you know?’
�
��That kid out at Black Creek’s still torn up when he didn’t need to be.’
‘And you got to take someone back to show for it, haven’t you?’
George nodded and sipped his tea. ‘The Commission knows, Tommy. They recovered enough of the corpse to work it out: not dogs, not weres — vamps.’
‘I figured as much. Where do you reckon we could run to?’
George put his cup down and resettled his hand on his pistol. ‘Nowhere’s safe. Not without friendly bartenders to cover for you.’
‘What about the enclaves?’
‘They’d never shelter a renegade, not one with a blood warrant on its head.’
‘I’m out of touch, been out of the game too long, not like you. Tell me this, though, Georgie: after thirty years, what’ve you got to show for it? Scars inside and out, and blood under your nails. How long do you think you can keep going? How long till the juice wears out, or you do? And then what have you got?’
George tapped ash from his cigarette onto the saucer, then rubbed his eyes, his chin. He felt tired, so very tired: the PP-D wearing off, no doubt, and perhaps the thirty years of hard, dangerous road catching up with him. Living on the edge, and about to fall off. Sitting here with the last man he’d trusted, but not the last one who’d betrayed him. ‘I dunno, Tommy, I dunno.’
‘So why did you wait so long to come looking for me? For us? Why didn’t you lop Lysandra just now when you had the chance?’
‘I dunno that either, Tommy.’ He focused on the glow of his cigarette: so bright, burning down, almost out.
‘I think you do.’
George ground out the butt on his saucer, making the china rattle. ‘Fuck it, Tommy, you were my mate. I couldn’t hunt you, not even after you jumped ship and left me holding the can.’
‘You ever ask yourself what you would have done if she’d made you the same offer she made me?’
‘What offer was that? Eternal life?’
‘I only got her to bring me across a week ago, once I realised Black Creek was going to be a problem. Up till then, it was too important to have someone who could operate in the daytime. The job at the abattoir provided all the nourishment this lot needed, and kept me in beer money.’ Tommy ruffled the hair of the nearest kid, an Aboriginal boy with white teeth and curly, black hair, rendered sexless by youth and a voluminous football jersey.