by Alan Ryker
"And why are you putting it way out here?"
Roy said, "We've got some—"
"I'd like to hear from Keith now, Roy. Keith?"
Keith's eyes never left Wheeler's. "What the fuck are you doing on my property?"
Roy took a step forward. "Now Keith—"
Keith held a hand up to silence him. "I'll rephrase. What's your business, Wheeler?"
Wheeler grimaced in a look of exaggerated worry. "Still looking for those missing boys. You hear Dennis is missing, too?"
"I'd hardly call him a boy," Keith said. "And yeah, I heard."
"Know anything about that?"
"No."
The two men stared at each other in silence. Roy fidgeted in the background. He reminded Keith of a dog whose owners were arguing.
"Why are you here?" Keith said.
"I've just noticed that when left to your own devices, you tend to get into trouble. I figure it'd be good for you and the whole county if I came out and checked up on you every once in awhile. Especially with everything that's been going on."
"You checked. Now leave."
Wheeler slowly nodded. "Roy, you keep an eye on your brother here. He's got a hot head. And I've got this weird feeling I can't explain that says he's somehow involved in the bad things that have been going on recently."
"Now Bill—"
"Don't argue with me, Roy," Wheeler said. "Just keep a leash on him."
Wheeler turned and walked through the tall pasture grasses. Without turning back, he said, "I'll be around to check up on you again soon. Keep an eye out for Brandon and Dennis."
They watched him climb through the fence, get in his cruiser and drive away.
"Shit," Roy said. "What do we do now?"
Keith walked over to the coffin and knelt down. He ran his hand down the side. "Now we patch this here hole. Tonight I lock Brandon—I mean the vampire—in this shed. Tomorrow we go hunting for another vampire."
"Goddamn it Keith, you know what I mean! What about Bill?"
Keith looked over at him. Bill had certainly gotten Roy worked up. He looked about ready to pop.
"Roy, he's been nipping at my heels my whole life. He'll keep on nipping."
Roy took off his hat and wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. "I don't know Keith. Maybe we should talk to him."
Without answering, Keith hauled his toolbox up onto the lid of the shed and started lining up the tools he needed to patch the gap in the wall.
Chapter 8
Dennis leaned against a small scrubby tree and watched Keith lead his best friend through the pasture. He could see Keith and Brandon as clearly as if it were daylight. More clearly even, at that distance. Keith gripped a chain attached to Brandon's collar tightly, but didn't pull it. Brandon scurried along behind him, docile as a house pet. As Keith led him along, Brandon looked all around and sniffed the air. He appeared to be starving for sensation. Dennis's anger rose and he pulled the branch he held off the tree.
Brandon heard this and looked straight at him. Keith didn't hear and couldn't see him in the dark, but Brandon could. Brandon shrieked and ran, hitting the end of the chain. Keith braced himself before he hit and held fast. He turned, slung the chain over his shoulder and plodded on, dragging Brandon behind him casual as could be. Eventually Brandon stopped fighting and let himself be guided into the strange wooden box. Keith shut the lid and locked it with two padlocks before returning to his house. He didn't look back over his shoulder even once.
What an over-confident idiot. He knew that monsters lurked in the darkness, and he still strutted around like a puffed-up rooster. Dennis wanted to kill him right then, but he didn't. He dropped the branch from his left hand. His bad hand. He hadn't gotten used to that yet. He held it in front of his face and flexed it, and dried blood fell away in flakes. He smiled, but the smile faded as he picked up his gas can and started toward Brandon's strange little prison.
He patted the wood. The thing was heavy-duty. He tugged lightly at the padlock's that secured two thick latches. Then he slid his clawed fingers under the edge of the lid and ripped it up, letting it clatter to the other side and hang from its hinges.
Brandon jumped to his feet. He stared at Dennis for a moment with huge black eyes, then leapt from the box and ran.
"Wait, Brandon," Dennis said as Brandon hit the end of his chain. His feet shot out from under him and he landed flat on his back, but he flipped into a crouch. He scrambled back and forth at the limit of the chain. Then he started batting at the chain with stumps that should have ended in hands, and Dennis felt sick to his stomach.
"Damn it, Brandon. Look what he's done to you." Dennis held his hands out, palms-forward. "Shhh… Shhh… It's alright. I know. I feel the same way. It's taking all my willpower to not either run away or kill you."
Dennis tried to get closer to Brandon, but Brandon scrambled in a circle, still attempting to remove his collar with hands that weren't there. Dennis shook his head as he stared into Brandon's eyes and saw no hint of recognition. He saw more than a lack of memory, but also a lack of human intelligence. It really was taking everything inside Dennis to be near Brandon. It must be even harder for Brandon than it was for him, because Brandon was just an animal now. He'd hoped that somehow Brandon would have ended up like him. But that was just him grasping at anything from his old life. He'd lost his right-hand man. He was alone.
Dennis gave up walking after Brandon and sat on the edge of the box. "You were a loyal friend, and a good soldier. Yeah, I kind of blamed you for what happened to my arm, seeing as how you got Keith involved by sniffing around Jessica. But check this out." He worked his arm through an elaborate series of motions, showing Brandon how it was good as new. Then he chuckled and said, "So I guess no harm, no foul, huh?
"I'm sorry for locking you out of the van. I keep telling myself that I was already starting to lose it, but I don't know. I'm sorry. You saved me from that thing, and I don't know if I could have saved you. I could have tried. But I didn't know what the Hell was happening, you know? I didn't realize that I could save you.
"Whatever that bite put into my blood almost shut me down. It tried to do to my brain what it did to yours. I could barely think. So I just did what came natural, and it's sad to say, but what came natural was to put as much speed up my nose as I could. I just kept doing rail after rail, and eventually I felt myself die. The weird part is, I didn't mind."
He scraped his claws under his nose and down his mouth, pulling away flakes of blood.
"I came out of that van, and I knew that I had to eat. But I had to get away from Keith and the Sheriff. I smelled that fucking freak that attacked us and went after it. It was kind of like I was on auto-pilot. I just ran, mile after mile, going faster and faster, following that vampire. It knew I was coming, but so was the morning and it was weak, so it went to ground. Went back to its lair. I found it in this old abandoned barn, cowering under a sheet of old plywood in this shallow pit it'd dug out of the dirt floor."
Dennis smiled and shook his head. "You'd really put the hurt on it, man. It was beat all to Hell, just shaking there. I jumped on it, yanked its hair back and ripped its fucking throat out with my damn teeth. I didn't even know why. I know why now, but then, I was just doing what came natural. I drained it until it was nothing but a sack of bones and then I slept right there in its stinking pit."
Brandon had finally sat down at the end of his chain. When Dennis smiled, he cowered, and Dennis remembered his fangs. He supposed that vampires probably didn't really smile. "Anyway, the next day I felt so much stronger, so I've been hunting down more of the bloodsuckers. Draining them. Leaving them in the sun to burn up. When I feel another vampire out there, it takes all of my will to use that ability to hunt it instead of avoid it. But the blood leaves me so much stronger, not like the stuff you've been getting from cows. It's no wonder we're so territorial. Our blood is like crack and steroids rolled up in one delicious drink."
Dennis looked towards Keith's house an
d shook his head. "I'm gonna wipe the slate clean. This is my town now. Hell, my county. But there's one thing I have to do before that. I have to punish Keith Harris. I'm gonna take every good thing in his life and make it bad. By the time I get around to killing him, he'll beg me to do it."
He looked back to Brandon. "But I can't take you with me, man. Damn it, this really sucks."
Dennis hopped down, grabbed Brandon's chain and started reeling him in.
Brandon struggled wildly, hurling himself against the end of the chain. He'd lost some weight, but compared to Dennis, he was still huge. Brandon's muscles rolled under his chalk-white skin as he flailed. But Dennis pulled him in like a leashed puppy. He marveled at how strong the vampire blood had made him.
"I didn't have any reason to hope, but I hoped you'd be like me. I can't take this alone. I'm going to have to make another vampire like myself."
Dennis grabbed Brandon's collar. He felt like he had to explain himself. "But even if you weren't just a dumb animal, look at what he's done to you. Look at your hands. I know how that feels. I don't think the real you would want to go on like this."
Brandon hissed in Dennis's face, and Dennis grimaced. "Your teeth… What kind of monster…?"
Dennis unlatched Brandon's collar.
Brandon felt at his neck with his stumps, and Dennis saw hope enter his eyes, and he felt horrible. Brandon turned and ran, but only got a few steps before Dennis jumped on his back, knocking him to his stomach. Dennis had undone the collar only because he needed access to Brandon's neck.
"I'm so sorry, Brandon," Dennis said. He crunched into Brandon's neck. The hunger took him then, and he didn't feel remorse again until he'd completely drained Brandon's filthy body.
When he finished, he stood. Blood that had already been clotting and rotting in Brandon's veins covered Dennis's face and chest and hands. He grabbed Brandon by an ankle and an arm, and hoisted him up into the box. Then he took his gas can and sloshed the fuel all over the box and Brandon.
"God, I hope you're not in there to feel this," Dennis said as he tossed in a match.
The box was transformed immediately from a prison to an enormous funeral pyre. Dennis roared along with the flames, and soon heard Keith's dogs barking from inside his house. He watched Keith emerge in boots and boxer shorts, holding a shotgun. Keith squinted toward the raging fire. Dennis doubted that Keith could see him at all.
"You're dead, old man," Dennis said. "But first, you've got some suffering to do."
Chapter 9
Keith watched Roy poke at the smoldering ruins of the box. Like Keith, he had a shotgun slung over his shoulder. Keith's dogs strained at their leashes, sniffing at the smell of vampires all around them.
The sun was only just rising, and the air was still cool.
"I can't find the bones. Are there bones after a vampire burns?" Roy asked.
"I don't know."
Roy tossed the stick aside and wiped the sweat from his face. He'd stirred up some red embers from beneath the gray ash. "I thought you said they were territorial. I thought you said our vampire would keep the others away."
"What the Hell do I know?"
Roy thought about it for a second, then said, "I always assume you know."
"I don't have anything to do with your assumptions," Keith said. He handed Roy a leash.
"What makes you say it was a vampire anyway?" Roy asked. "These things are dumb animals. How would it set a fire?"
"I heard it. It was a vampire."
"Then how did it do this?"
"Goddamn it Roy, I don't know!" Keith took a deep breath, then let it out. "I can't explain it. It screamed like a vampire, but it stood tall and watched me like a man."
Roy whistled, then looked confused. "You saw it all the way from your house?"
"It stood right in front of the fire. I could see its silhouette. It's like it wanted me to see it."
"We still going hunting?" Roy asked.
Keith nodded.
"We gonna try to find the one that did this?"
Keith nodded.
"We're gonna have to dig out the bones and bury them somewhere, if there are bones in there," Roy said.
"Should be cool enough by this afternoon. Let's go."
They started off in the direction the dogs were pulling. Roy broke off a stalk of straw and showed it to Keith. Dried blood. He walked another few steps and broke off another.
They followed the dogs through the pastures of tall, brittle grass. Every so often they came to a fence, lifted it for the dogs, then climbed through themselves. Every mile or so, depending on if they were headed straight in a cardinal direction, they crossed a dirt road. A few times they had to work their way through hedges of Osage orange trees, spiny with huge, slick thorns that tore at them. Keith found a shredded bit of cloth hanging from one as he attempted to work his own shirt loose. Finally, they entered denser trees on a downhill slope as they approached a creek.
The men walked carefully, their cowboy boots slipping down the bank of moist earth. The dogs tugged at their leashes until they made it into the creek where they splashed back and forth sniffing. Roy hesitated, but Keith carefully picked his way across the shallow creek and Roy followed.
The dogs tried to pick up the trail again on the other side but couldn't. They stalked back and forth with their noses snuffling the ground; first one sat down and began to whine, then the other. They looked at Keith for guidance.
Keith unhooked the leash from his hound's collar. "Let her loose," he said to Roy.
The dogs loped away, sniffing at the ground. They crossed and re-crossed the creek.
"This one is different," Roy said. "It meant to lose us."
Keith nodded. He watched the dogs run around for a bit, then began to walk along the bank towards an interesting looking tree. The creek had eroded the earth beneath it, exposing half its roots and creating a shallow cave. Keith crouched down and peered under the tree. It was dark and dank under there, even in the middle of the day. He grabbed a handful of soft, black soil and crumbled it between his fingers. It was extremely easy to dig into.
"Let's walk this creek. I've got a thought." Keith rinsed his hand in the shallow water, then whistled for the dogs. They came bounding up and he leashed them again.
The day had grown hot and Keith was grateful for the shade of the trees and the cool air that had settled down in the creek bed over the water. The dogs pulled ahead as he and Roy stumbled along over roots and slick rocks. After some time the dogs stopped and began baying at a particularly large, gnarled tree. Its roots nearly spanned the creek and were clogged with debris that had drifted downstream. The space beneath the tree where it overhung the bank was almost cavernous. The dogs continued to bay.
"Hush!" Keith said.
He dropped the leash and unslung his shotgun. He removed a small flashlight from his belt and aimed both beneath the tree, creeping slowly forward. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw that in the furthest recesses fresh earth was scattered and piled.
"It stinks," Roy said. "You see it?"
"It's dug in."
"We going in after it?"
Keith wondered about his brother's trust in him. It seemed infinite. Roy would follow Keith through the gates of Hell and feel perfectly safe as long as Keith said he was. That often felt like more responsibility than Keith wished to have.
Keith knew where that trust came from. Keith had always protected Roy, from bullies, from tough decisions. And when they were young, getting into boyish mischief, Keith always caught it double from their father, first for doing wrong himself, second for dragging Roy into it. All while Roy hid safe in their mother's apron.
"I'm not getting that close. We'll come back this evening. Get it as it comes out."
"You think this is the one that started the fire?"
"Guess so."
Roy nodded, then looked around. "Where are we, anyway?"
Keith grabbed his dog's leash and motioned for Roy to follow him up
the bank. Once they emerged from the trees, Keith pointed across the pasture to a big, shiny red barn.
"This is the Irving's property," Roy said. "Let's cut across to the road."
Keith nodded, and they began walking through the tall grass.
Back in Keith's pasture, the brothers sifted through ashes with heavy rakes. Four concrete plugs with the scorched ends of four-by-fours projecting out of them marked the corners of the consumed shed. They were both covered in soot from head to boots, and each wore goggles over his eyes and a bandana over his mouth.
It turned out that there were bones left in the pile, but that they burned up in a flash when they were exposed to sunlight. So they raked through the ashes again and again, spreading the pile further out, occasionally getting a pop like a flashbulb when they uncovered a new bone. But that happened less and less.
"You finding anymore bones?" Roy asked.
"Nope."
"Guess we must have got them all."
"Saw the smoke this morning."
Keith spun around. Sheriff Wheeler was approaching from the direction of the gravel road.
"Oh shit," Roy whispered from behind his bandana.
"Keep your mouth shut," Keith hissed.
Wheeler didn't seem to have heard them. "With all the weird shit going on, you two barely make the cut." He smiled. "So what happened here?"
"Don't know."
"Someone committed arson on your property and you didn't contact us?"
Keith didn't say anything. He just took off his goggles and pulled down his bandana.
"You two look like a couple of bandits with those things on. Almost makes me suspicious."
"Maybe he did it himself, accidentally," Roy said. "So why are you here?"
Wheeler frowned, and not sarcastically. "I expect that attitude from your brother, but not you, Roy. You know the saying 'where there's smoke, there's fire?' Well right now, those ashes aren't so interesting. But you're certainly smoking, Roy."
Keith had had enough of Wheeler to last him the rest of his life. Wheeler seemed to think he had something on Keith, something that would keep Keith careful. He was wrong.