by Alan Ryker
"I sold him morphine."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. About a day before his wife died of a morphine overdose. Equipment malfunction."
And he had her attention. "That's a lie."
"You ever wonder why he didn't go after the hospital or the IV manufacturer? Why he signed all their papers so quickly? Because then they would have had their own investigators look into it."
Then the disbelief was back in her face. "He didn't sue them because he didn't want anything from them. I don't believe for a second that he bought anything from you. He never would have killed Irene. He might as well kill himself. She was everything to him."
"You can't get into his head and understand him. Nothing's beyond a psycho like that." Dennis smiled. "Well, nothing except me. I'm well beyond him now." He snarled and let all his fangs show. She cringed, but not enough. He punched the wall, putting a deep dent in the steel. She wasn't sneering anymore.
"What are you?" she asked. "A vampire?"
"I think so. That's the only thing that makes sense. Soon, you'll be one too, and this whole county will be ours. You can't imagine what it's like. The power. Imagine being able to do anything you want. Imagine being so strong that you can take anything you want. You had a taste for meth." He smiled, and she looked down. "Imagine tweaking all the time, the world moving in slow motion around you. I'm going to give that to you."
"Why me?" she asked.
Dennis let his fangs retract some and knelt beside her. "I've liked you for a long time, but you were Brandon's girl."
"We fooled around a couple of times when I was high. I was not his girl."
"Well, he wanted you to be, and you could've done worse. Anyway, you're not like the rest of these country bumpkins. You're tough and smart and pretty, and soon you'll be more powerful than you can imagine." He ran a claw along her strong jaw line.
She jerked her head away and glared at him. "And I'm Keith's."
"See, I said you were smart. And you're Keith's. And once I take you away from him, he'll have nothing."
Jessica's tough expression held for a moment, then melted. "What you said about my parents… What do you mean 'he'll have nothing?'"
The discussion was over anyway. He picked up a short length of thick rope and wrapped it around her head. She clamped her mouth shut, but he worked the coarse fibers across her lips until she had to relent to the gag.
"I need to go take care of a few things. I know you're upset right now, but I promise you, once I turn you, you'll get perspective. None of these heifers matter a bit."
Dennis turned and stepped over the edge of the loft.
Chapter 18
As Keith jogged behind his dogs through the pastures, he thought about how he'd gotten into this mess. He'd never thought much of it before, when Dennis was a worthless crippled junky. But Keith had drawn the anger of this monster on himself.
He'd been leaning on his truck outside Dennis's trailer when Dennis pulled up in his old beater car. Keith remembered Dennis hesitating for a moment, but then stepping out with a case of beer.
"Hey, Keith. What's going on?"
Hidden beneath Keith's crossed arms was his .45, and he pistol-whipped Dennis in the face with it.
Dennis dropped to the dirt, holding his face and screaming. He had one hand on his shattered cheekbone and one hand on the ground. Keith put his boot heel on that hand, and his gun to Dennis's head.
"My niece was found with drugs. If you ever sell her drugs again, you'll die."
"I never sold Jessica drugs. Jessica is Brandon's girl."
"Brandon's girl?"
"I mean, they don't do anything, just hang out—"
"Shut up. I know you're the leader. If anyone sells Jessica drugs again, I'll kill you."
Brandon opened the door, rubbing his eyes as if he'd just woken up. Keith pointed the gun in his direction. Brandon slammed the door.
"I never done shit to you," Dennis said. "I didn't sell to Jessica. I kept quiet about you buying morphine off me, even after your wife ODed."
"What?"
"I… I did you a favor, man. Your wife… I did you a favor!"
His old tunnel vision came back. He couldn't even say why exactly because Dennis was right. But things closed in on him, went dark on him, like they had back before Irene. He had Dennis's hand pinned with one boot heel. He stomped Dennis with the other. He stomped his shoulder again and again. He could feel things snapping. Distantly, he could hear Dennis screaming.
Then the trailer door opened again, and Brandon stood there with a shotgun.
Keith stared down his .45 at Brandon, but he stepped off of Dennis. Dennis curled up into a ball. Keith left him there crying in the dirt.
He supposed that if he looked back over his life, he could find a hundred such times where he'd damned himself. But that one seemed to have stuck.
Keith followed his dogs right up to the big dairy barn. Standing against the fence on either side of the barn, dairy cattle with swollen udders lowed piteously. Keith wondered that the neighbors hadn't heard it, then understood that Dennis had probably already gotten the neighbors. Keith walked up to the big metal door. The dogs were ready to lead Keith inside, but he unleashed them.
"Home," he said. They whimpered and spun in circles.
"Home." They turned and ran. Keith readied his shotgun and slid the big door open just enough to slip inside.
Pointing the flashlight into the darkness, he saw nothing. He searched the wall for the light switch and flipped it on. The fluorescents popped to buzzing life.
At the other end of the barn, Dennis held Jessica against himself. He gripped the back of her head and pressed her face into his chest, and he smiled.
"Let her go, Dennis."
"No."
"She's got nothing to do with this. I'm the one you want. Let her go and take me." Keith heard a shuffling sound above him but couldn't look away from Dennis and Jessica.
"No, no, no. I've heard this before!" Dennis took on a John Wayne drawl and said, "Let that pretty little thing go and take me instead." Then in his normal voice, "You're not a goddamn hero!"
"So what do you want me to say?"
"I want you to beg."
"I'm begging you—"
"On your knees."
Keith dropped to his knees. They were weak anyway. He was weak. There was nothing he could do with her in Dennis's grasp. "I'm begging you."
The shuffling above got louder and bits of straw fell around him, but he couldn't take his eyes off of Dennis, even when Dennis looked up with a strange expression on his face.
"Come here," Dennis said. "Now."
But before Keith could get to his feet a rattlesnake rattle hit the concrete in front of him. He looked up and saw Jessica looking down at him from the loft above. She was gagged and had shaken the necklace over her dangling head.
Keith brought his shotgun to bear on Dennis but Dennis roared and threw Patty Seller aside while he dove in the opposite direction. Patty hit a metal post with a sickening thud and crumpled to the ground. Keith fired, but too late.
From one of the stalls, Dennis said, "I'm gonna start calling you Molasses Keith with a draw like that."
Dennis had jumped to the right. Keeping his shotgun to his shoulder, Keith edged slowly down the left side of the aisle.
"Hey, Keith, you know what makes even better eating than humans?"
With a shriek, a shriveled old vampire came careening out of a milking stall near the end of the aisle. Looking back over its shoulder, it moved like it was trying to put as much distance between itself and Dennis as it could. When it finally looked forward, Keith saw that it was old Logan. Logan slid to a stop, then shrieked again and launched himself through the air at Keith. Keith shot him like he was a clay and stepped aside. Logan's body slapped the concrete right beside him, white and thin limbed with a soft, loosely-fleshed torso. Before it could rise, Keith put the shotgun against the old man's head and blew it apart.
"Keith,"
someone said from his left. He recognized the voice and hurried forward, shotgun still at his shoulder.
"Bill, is that you?"
Sheriff Wheeler lay on his side on the concrete floor with his wrists and ankles hogtied behind him. He was battered and bloody, but still had a bit of the spark in his eye that annoyed Keith so much.
"You've gotta stop him," Wheeler said.
Keith glanced around. No Dennis. He knew that dropping his guard was dangerous, but between the two of them they could pin Dennis down. Keith sat his shotgun aside, pulled his pocketknife out and sawed at the rope binding Wheeler's limbs together.
"Keith!" Wheeler shouted.
Keith glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a clawed hand grab the back of his shirt. It wrenched him from the stall and threw him across the aisle, where he slammed into a metal gate before sliding to the concrete.
Dennis smiled as he walked towards Keith. Keith hurled his pocketknife at Dennis's face.
"Oh God!" Dennis screamed, gripping the knife in both hands, but he started laughing and held the knife out. He took his other hand away from his unmarked face. He'd caught the knife. "Fool me once—"
Keith whipped the hunting knife from his belt into Dennis's eye.
Dennis shrieked and grabbed the hunting knife in both hands, perfectly mimicking the movements he'd made a moment before in jest. With shaking hands he slowly pulled the hunting knife from his eye and dropped it aside.
Keith had made it to one knee and fumbled for the revolver in his boot before Dennis roared and leapt at him. Keith saw he didn't have the time and instead stood to meet him, quickly pulling the hatchet from his belt and slamming it into his gut. Dennis didn't pause, but backhanded Keith against the cage door.
Knocked on his ass, Keith had no choice but to fish the damned revolver from his boot. Just as Dennis closed in for the kill, Keith yanked the gun free and fired all five rounds into Dennis's chest, point blank.
Dennis fell face-first before Keith, clawing at the concrete, but Keith knew now that that wasn't the end of it. He tossed the revolver aside and scrambled to his knees, hatchet-in-hand.
But Dennis scurried away even faster. He made it to his feet, and after a few staggering steps, gained speed and leapt up into the loft.
Battered, bloody and already aching, Keith ran for the ladder to the loft. Slipping the hatchet into its belt-clip, he grabbed the rungs and began to climb. Jessica shouted, "Keith!" and he climbed faster.
He'd barely made it off the ground before Dennis flew over him, carrying Jessica. He landed with a crunch as the concrete beneath his shoes cracked. He set Jessica on her feet. He'd untied her mouth and feet up in the loft, but held a rope that bound her wrists behind her back.
"Keith, do you know what I want?"
Keith nodded. "Revenge."
"Can you blame me?"
"I can't."
"You're no hero, Keith."
"I never claimed to be."
"No, I suppose you didn't. But you strode in here jingle-jangling like you were going to settle some foolishness."
Keith noticed Sheriff Wheeler slowly creeping out of a stall behind Dennis with Keith's shotgun in his hands. He was shoeless and moved with cartoonish care. Keith's eyes snapped back to Dennis. "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to tell Jessica how you killed her aunt."
Keith hesitated. Dennis reeled Jessica in on her rope and tilted her head to the side.
"Okay," he said to Dennis, then to Jessica, "You know Irene was very sick. She was suffering a lot. She asked me to help her—"
"Tell her that you murdered her," Dennis said.
"I murdered Irene."
Tears streamed down Jessica's cheeks.
"I'm sorry, Jessica. I didn't want to."
"It's not your fault," she said.
"Then whose fault is it?" Keith asked.
"No one's. Sometimes things happen and it's no one's fault."
Keith risked a glance at Sheriff Wheeler. He was trying to get to a position where he could take a shot without hitting Jessica. Keith knew that the closer he got, the more likely Dennis was to hear him. All he could think to do was keep talking.
"I don't know. I was supposed to protect her. Our whole marriage, I tried to shield her from the bad. But in the end, I killed her. In the end, I couldn't protect anybody. I destroy. Seems like that's all I can manage."
"You're here to protect me," Jessica said. "You're still a good man, even if you've made mistakes. We all make mistakes. I sure as Hell have. All we can do is try."
"How sweet," Dennis said. "It just—" And then Dennis's mouth filled with fangs and all his muscles went tense as he spun around. Keith didn't hear whatever alerted Dennis, but something had.
"Move, Jessica!" Keith said.
Jessica jumped to the end of the rope and Sheriff Wheeler blasted Dennis in the chest with the shotgun, sending him toppling over backwards. But Dennis immediately began to struggle for his feet. Sheriff Wheeler put the barrel of the gun to Dennis's head and pulled the trigger. It clicked on an empty chamber. Wheeler flipped the gun, holding it by the barrel, and smashed the stock down on Dennis's head as he rose. He swung again, but Dennis caught it.
"Get clear," Keith yelled to Wheeler. He'd pulled his .45 but couldn't get a clean shot. Wheeler yanked at the shotgun, trying to tear it from Dennis's grip. Dennis used the gun to pull Sheriff Wheeler in. He knocked the Sheriff out with one punch.
"Get out of here," Keith said to Jessica.
"What about you?"
"I have to kill him."
Dennis tossed the Sheriff aside with disturbing ease.
"Or at least slow him down. Go!"
The slap of Jessica's bare feet on concrete got Dennis's attention. Fully enraged, Dennis ran after her. Keith began shooting him center-mass. Black blood and gore exploded out of Dennis's back. Dennis didn't slow, but he did change directions.
Running through the bullets Dennis tackled Keith to his back, sending the gun spinning out of his hand. Dennis crawled up Keith's chest and pinned his arms with his hands.
"You thought this was a fight?" Dennis snarled. "This was me toying with you. How does it feel to be the one squirming in the dirt, your life in the hands of a merciless bastard?"
Dennis calmed himself. His face became more human. "Damn it, Keith. I've got a feeling this is going to be a boring existence. You're the toughest hombre out there, and look at what I've done to you. Say I'm really immortal. How am I going to entertain myself for the rest of eternity if you're the best the world has to offer?" Dennis smiled. "Well, Jessica and I will probably manage to distract each other."
"We both know why you need to talk so big, little man. Just shut up and do what you're gonna do."
Dennis laughed. "Goddamn, the Devil made you mean. I hope some of that evil's in your blood."
Dennis pinned Keith's left arm with his knee, then slammed a palm into that shoulder. It snapped as easily as if Dennis had hit it with a sledge hammer. Keith gritted his teeth as Dennis ground the broken shoulder into the concrete.
"Now we're even," Dennis said. "Now you're just a meal." He pressed Keith's head back with both hands and bit into his neck.
The draining of his blood was one of the strangest sensations he'd ever felt, and Keith wrapped the fingers of his right hand in Dennis's hair and pulled. Dennis was far too strong for this to have any effect. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.
With his head pressed back, Keith watched Jessica sneak back into the barn, her arms still tied behind her back. He said, "No," but Jessica kept coming. Dennis seemed to think Keith was begging, and began to feed even more greedily.
Jessica kicked the .45 Ruger. Keith reached out and snatched it up with his good hand.
"Dennis!" Jessica yelled.
"Wha—?" Dennis looked up, dazed and blood drunk, and Keith smashed the .45 through his fangs and pulled the trigger three times. Dennis fell over backwards, bent at the knees. His jaws snapped reflexively
at the air.
As Keith awkwardly tipped Dennis off of him with his good arm, Jessica knelt beside him. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"No."
Keith rose to his knees, took the hatchet from his belt and hacked Dennis's head off. He tossed the head across the barn, as far from the body as he could get it, just to be sure.
Sweat ran down Keith's face and blood ran from his neck. The exertion made his head swoon even worse and the world began to pulse black around the edges and then blur. His blood roared in his ears as he sat back onto the concrete and reached for the .45. He put it against his temple.
"Keith!" Jessica shouted.
He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Forcing his eyes to focus, he looked at the gun. The slide was still kicked back. He'd used the last bullet on Dennis.
"Damn it!" he shouted as he threw the gun across the barn.
Jessica knelt and examined his neck. "You can make it, Keith. Just put some pressure on it. They can fix this."
"He bit me. I'm becoming one of them."
Sheriff Wheeler staggered over to them and untied Jessica's hands.
"You did it, Keith. That was amazing."
Keith could tell that he was trying to put the past behind them, but it didn't matter. Keith thrust his hatchet at the Sheriff. "I'm turning. I need you to finish me off."
"What? No. I can't. I'm a man of the law."
"You can't let me become one of them. It ain't right."
"I've never killed anyone. I'm a man of the—"
"Goddamn it, Bill! You can't do this to me."
"I'm sorry."
The hatchet disappeared from Keith's outstretched hand. It took a moment for him to understand that Jessica had taken it, not Wheeler. The Sheriff reached for the hatchet, but she raised it menacingly.
"Back off," she said. "Way back."
Wheeler turned around and walked away. He was a coward, but Keith could at least thank him for that. He could in good conscience say he didn't know how Keith had died.
When Wheeler was gone, Keith said, "I can't ask you to do this."
"You don't have to. You came here prepared to do the same for me."