by Alex Bledsoe
“Sweetie pie, you’re raising my crankshaft,” he said, his voice husky. Toddy was a baby even by vampire standards, with only ten years since his death at age seventeen; a white country boy who came looking for sex with sophisticated city girls and instead met doom in Fauvette’s embrace down the alleys behind Beale Street. He had a crew cut, soulful eyes, and full lips that covered his fangs unless he laughed.
“I know, Toddy,” Fauvette said wearily. She had not created him on purpose that night; she’d simply forgotten to take her usual precautions. And she felt nothing much about him one way or the other now, but she knew he’d keep pestering her, so at least this way he’d shut up. “Come on.”
He took her on the floor in front of the corpse, his trench coat forming a dark tent over them. She spread her thighs and he plunged into her without preliminaries, ignoring her initial cry of pain. His weight drove shards of glass and nails into her soft buttocks, and when she arched her back to get off a particularly annoying piece of rusted metal, he moaned as if he’d drawn the motion as a response. She almost laughed.
After the first few moments, once the sharp jolt of agony faded into the standard vampire numbness, she felt nothing. When he finally climaxed, ejaculating the cold jellied substance that passed for vampire semen into her, she shoved him off contemptuously and rolled onto her side, thighs clamped against the loss of blood.
“Wow,” she heard him gasp, “that was intense. It’s always great with you, hon, you know that?”
She gritted her teeth against the pain, and her eyes against the tears. As he had every time before, as every man would until the end of time, he’d taken her virginity. Since she’d died a virgin, been raped in death and reborn as a vampire, her maidenhead (her mother’s quaint, blush-inducing term for it) reappeared intact the next night after it was taken. Most vampires who were virgins at the time of their creation were immune to any sexual arousal, and thus never felt it; but she was denied that. She felt lust as much as any of them, only in her case, giving into it was agony.
She wondered why only that wound hurt, only that wound bled; once, out of boredom, she’d sliced open her own stomach and studied her entrails without either pain or bleeding.
“Wow,” Toddy repeated. Then he noticed her whimpering in pain. “Hey, Fauvette, y’all all right?”
“Go away,” Fauvette said.
“No, wait, I wanna ask you something.” He knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. “You planning to go out and hunt tonight?”
Dark, sticky liquid oozed out as she shifted her legs. “Reckon I have to now.” Which, she realized, was why she’d turned him on, because without this immediate need she might not have hunted, and wasted away even more. Apparently even the sub-dead had a subconscious.
“Well, wait, before you go, I, uh . . . got something for you.”
“No, Toddy, not again. Not right now.”
“No, no, not that. Something that’ll make you feel good.”
She looked up in surprise, for a moment astounded that he’d gained some genuine insight into what she felt. But instead he held up a small plastic bag filled with gray powder.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Takes away the hunger,” he said with a slight smile.
She sat up straighter. “What hunger?’
“The hunger.”
She got to her knees and studied the bag in his hands. “What is it?” she repeated.
He opened the bag, licked his finger, stuck it into the powder, then extended it toward her. “Here, baby doll, take a lick for yourself. See if ol’ Toddy ain’t telling you true.”
Her lips closed around his fingertip. Somewhere in the building a telephone rang.
CHAPTER 3
RUDOLFO ZGINSKI, CLAD in the loose-fitting green garments and white coat he assumed delineated a physician, peered from the morgue doorway into the empty hall. He had been animate for less than twenty minutes, but he had already killed once and knew he had to get far away as quickly as possible.
Since the moment Francis Colby drove the crucifix into his heart, he’d been trapped in a timeless, blank limbo. When the woman removed it, physical agony greater than anything he’d ever known consumed him. He felt his dry, brittle flesh crack and split, his muscles snap free from their tendons and great chunks fall away as he tried to move. Each sensation roared through his newly roused consciousness with the ferocity of a dull saw scraping living bone. If his lungs had worked he would’ve screamed.
Then he sensed blood.
With no idea where he was or whose blood called to him, he lunged toward it with every bit of pitiful energy his corpse form possessed. He felt soft skin and tight, curly hair, and buried his fangs deep in the heated jugular. The victim’s choked scream rattled in what was left of his ears. The human struggled, but even in this skeletal body he possessed vampiric strength. Blood gushed forth into him with each heartbeat, reconstituting him like water poured on powdered milk. The victim’s struggles gradually faded as his body absorbed her life.
As his other senses returned and the pain subsided, he realized he held a Negro woman in his arms. Already her body was almost thoroughly drained, and by the time he gained the strength to stand upright she was dead. He let her drop, and fell awkwardly from his coffin. He dislodged a tray of surgical instruments, and the horrible clanging sound terrified him.
Naked, he twitched and convulsed on the cold tile floor while his body soaked up the woman’s entire blood supply. After what felt like an eternity (and he was qualified to make that analogy), he was able to control his limbs enough to move around, although at first all he did was hug his knees and weep. But like his physical self, his emotions gradually fell under his control. He had no idea where he was, or how long he’d been “dead,” but he would learn nothing crying like a huntsman’s lost child. And waiting here beside the dead woman was a very stupid thing to do.
He stood, luxuriating in the movement of his limbs. He ran his hands over his body and found everything where it needed to be; he even had an erection. He started for the door, then stopped and smiled at his own obliviousness; however long it had been, he doubted that people paraded around the streets naked.
Zginski’s original clothing had long since crumbled to dust and rags. He sized up his victim, who appeared to be of African descent, about thirty-five, heavyset, and tall. Her name tag identified her as “Dr. Patricia Johnson.” He scowled at this; a woman, let along a Negro woman, should never be allowed to practice something as complex as medicine. Catch one in the wrong mood, and she’d be as deadly as any nosferatu. As always, things had changed for the worse.
Her clothing appeared androgynous. At the very least, the trousers would suit a man as well as a woman. He stripped her down to her shamelessly scanty undergarments and placed her body in his own coffin. He took a knife from the fallen instrument tray and sliced into her breast over her heart; naturally no blood came forth. He proceeded to efficiently remove her heart and place it beside her in the coffin. He’d never created another vampire, and didn’t intend to start by conferring immortality on this total stranger. Following Serbian custom, he then cut off her toes and looked around for a nail to drive through her neck. Among the surgical tools he found something long and thin, like an ice pick, and pushed it crossways from jugular to jugular. Since he did this before her resurrection, she would never return as a vampire, even if someone removed the pick and restored all the missing parts. Wherever her soul had gone at death, it would be grateful.
The woman outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. Her clothes were baggy on his slender form, but the drawstring cinched tightly at his waist and held them in place. He put on the white coat, astounded that, in his desperation, he hadn’t marred it with a single drop of the woman’s blood. The shoes were more difficult, until he figured out the elaborate strings that held the canvas tops closed. He wondered what the word “Converse” stitched on the side signified; were there shoes that were “inverse”?
As he dressed, he examined his surroundings in more detail. The tables and general cleanliness spoke of a medical atmosphere consistent with the dead woman’s title. On the ceiling, long metal tubes glowed with an uncomfortable intensity and scalded his weakened eyes. The room had no windows, and evidently only a single metal door with a large handle. He opened some of the square hatches in the wall, and behind each found a dead body on a sliding metal tray. All appeared to have been cut open again and sewn shut as if by a vivisectionist. He examined the cabinets, with their drawers of carefully arranged surgical instruments.
Then he opened the refrigerator. A dozen bottles of distinctive reddish liquid rested there, behind a small box marked “pizza.” He took one out, fiddled with the lid until it opened, then inhaled the aroma of something he’d never experienced before—chilled blood.
He dipped his finger into it and touched it to his tongue. He scowled; the liquid tasted odd, wrong at this temperature. He could wait for the real thing. But it gave him an idea. He took the bottle and poured its contents into the coffin, around the woman’s body. A bloodless victim would arouse suspicion, and perhaps this way whoever found the body would believe she had been attacked and subsequently bled to death.
He regarded the empty bottle in his hand. If the authorities found it, his ruse would be immediately discovered. He looked around for a place to discard it, and noticed a garbage can with a newspaper crumpled in it. He picked up the paper and sought the date on the masthead.
Zginski stared. 1975. Sixty years had passed.
He vividly remembered the fearful look on Sir Francis Colby’s face as if he’d seen it no more than a few minutes ago. In the space of a blink, he’d missed half a century. What would the world be like?
He flipped past the news to the advertisements; what people bought would tell him more than any political information. He recognized clothes and food, and vehicles that clearly descended from the horseless carriages he’d known. But what were these other strange devices? 8-track, hi-fi, C.B. . . . what was a “mo-ped” and why was the family in the ad so happy to have one?
Finally he turned back to the front page. He was in America, in Memphis, a Southern city he’d read of in the works of Mark Twain. How had that happened? And why had his sixty-year-old supposed corpse been in a hospital? Conventional medicine certainly could not help someone dead as long as he’d been. Had resurrection become commonplace in the last half century?
He skimmed stories that mentioned public cruelty that both excited and repulsed him, then stopped. At the bottom of the front page ran a story about a “teen racial slaying.” A bloody body lay on a stretcher similar to the ones stacked against the wall beside him now. Men in uniforms held back the crowd, mostly young Negroes. But there, at the front of the crowd, behind the barricade, was a vampire.
The girl, also a Negro, dressed no differently than the others, but Zginski could instantly tell. There was an indefinable weariness, a way of standing that conveyed maturity that far outreached the physical appearance of youth. The eyes, cold and lifeless, reflected light like polished tin. And if this colored child was a vampire, here in the American South, then there had to be others. He’d need shelter until he acclimated to this new world, and they would know where to find it, even given their inferior race.
He tossed the paper aside. He’d committed a murder, so the first thing was to distance himself from the scene of the crime, along with any evidence that might implicate him. He put the empty bottle into one of the jacket’s voluminous pockets and started for the door. Light glinted off the crucifix dagger that had held him in demonic limbo for sixty years, where it rested on the main examining table. He pocketed it as well.
He was about to turn away when he noticed the faded manuscript pages. He skimmed through them, and when he realized what they were he smiled for the first time. This would make interesting leisure reading; how much credit had the old man given himself for his cleverness? Did he acknowledge that it was Zginski’s own overconfidence that ultimately did him in, or had he shaded events to make himself out to be the hero? He added the sheets to the bulging pocket.
And then Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski stepped out of the morgue and into the polyester era.
CHAPTER 4
THE BELL OVER the door jingled and Mark Luminesca looked up from the small black-and-white TV behind the counter. Mr. Wiggly’s, the only all-night bait and tackle store in Memphis, seldom got customers in the dead time between 1:00 and 3:00 A.M., and those that did wander in usually wanted alchohol or cigarettes, which the store didn’t sell.
The man who entered was black, with an enormous Afro and a large black pick comb stuck in the back of it. He wore burgundy pants flared at the bottom, a wide white belt, and a yellow shirt with the collar unbuttoned halfway down. His eyes were red from drinking or smoking dope, and he weaved a little when he tried to stand still. He looked around the small store with the kind of dangerous, intimidating swagger Mark had seen on punks of all races. “Y’all need some help?” Mark called.
“Naw, man,” he said, conveying both superior cool and insecurity. He strolled slowly down the short aisles, examining the fishing lures and rolls of line with exaggerated care. His dance-club getup didn’t automatically mean foul play; perhaps he intended to greet the sunrise by reeling in a channel cat from the river.
Mark settled back behind the counter. If the guy became trouble, he’d worry about it then. Another car pulled up outside and parked beside the black guy’s Cadillac.
At last the man approached the counter with a pack of hooks. “Gimme a box of crickets, too,” he mumbled. To fetch the bait Mark would have to leave the cash register, and suspected the other man knew it, too. He stepped around the counter to the big wooden box. Through the screen-covered hole in the top, he heard the soft chirping of the crickets. He scooped up a handful into one of the cardboard containers. It was more than he was supposed to give, but he had no desire to spend time winnowing it down. He closed the box and went back behind the counter.
The man had his right hand in his pocket. The pants were far too tight to hide a gun, but he might be going for a knife. Mark waited patiently.
Instead, he brought out a wad of bills and peeled a couple off. “How much?”
Mark told him. If he was a robber, maybe he wanted to see the cash register open, to gauge if it was worth the effort. He took the man’s money, punched the heavy keys, and pulled the handle to open the drawer.
As he reached for the change, the door burst open and a tall white teenager with torn jeans, shaggy hair, and a sad beard burst in, handgun already pointed. “Gimme all your money, motherfucker!” he shouted, his voice high.
The black man casually raised his hands. “Whoa, just be cool, dude,” he said. His red-rimmed eyes tried to open in astonishment, but lacked the juice.
“Yeah, y’all be cool,” Mark said. “Here, check this out.”
When he knew he had the robber’s full attention, he picked up a stray cricket and, slowly and deliberately, stuck it in his mouth.
The gunman stared. Mark grinned, which ordinarily gave an unobstructed view of his fangs. But in this case, all the gunman saw was the live cricket squirming between his teeth. When he was certain the man was riveted, Mark bit down, squirting the insect’s juice out of his mouth. “Yowsah, yowsah, yowsah,” he said and swallowed it.
The gunman turned even paler, muttered, “Oh, fuck this!” and ran out of the store. In a moment tires squealed out of the parking lot. With his vampire vision Mark had no trouble seeing the license plate through the front glass, but of course he would never call the police.
He heard a thump. The big black man had passed out cold. Mark wondered if it was from fear of the gun or the sight of him eating a live cricket. He wiped his chin and lips with a Kleenex. Either way, the unconscious man had just won the lottery, in the Shirley Jackson sense.
Mark locked the door and flipped the CLOSED sign over. Chances were slim anyone would come by, see
the sign, and complain to his boss. Then he effortlessly tossed the unconscious man over his shoulder and carried him out back into the alley. The bait store was next to an auto repair shop, and Mark had no trouble jumping the security fence and forcing open the door of one of the broken-down cars. He placed the man in the backseat, then searched his pockets. Sure enough, there was a butterfly knife tucked in beside his wallet.
Mark twirled the knife open and efficiently made three slashes down the length of the man’s nearest wrist. Blood flowed at once, and Mark forced himself to let the first few pulses splatter on the car seat. Then, when he was sure there was enough to convince people the man had bled to death, he pulled the sliced arm to his mouth and began to feed.
It did not take long to drain the body, and he spit the last mouthful on the ground outside the car door for good luck. Since he had not actually bitten the man, there was no danger he would come back as a vampire. He dropped the knife beneath the other limp hand, easily jumped the fence, and returned to the bait store. The whole procedure had taken only ten minutes. He flipped the sign to OPEN, unlocked the door, and settled back behind the counter. On TV, the Channel 3 late movie was over, and the late-late one was beginning.
He picked up the phone and dialed the warehouse number. On his own, he’d installed a phone in the boiler room where everyone rested during the day, tapping into the wires that ran along the seldom-used nearby road. He’d worked for the phone company for three years and knew how to set it up so no one would ever know. He wanted to alert the rest to the fact that he’d already fed in this area, and they should choose another part of town for their own excursions. Too many bloodless bodies in the same part of town, even minority thugs disguised as suicides, would draw unwanted attention.