Shallow Veins

by Brian Martinez

  What he's just seen hasn't just shocked him, it's changed him. The sight of April being taken apart and put back together again has awoken something in him, an ancient fear, perhaps, a biological knowledge of the unknown that has been systematically removed by the joint efforts of science and adulthood, two pillars which, in all their well-meaning, act as mortar and pestle to the crystals of childhood fear. Yet in the backs of minds, in the lizard parts we haven't outgrown yet, there are those lingering doubts. Those voices that say yes, there are monsters in the world. And yes, they do want to hurt us.

  As Butcher becomes aware of himself again, he begins to feel guilty for not trying to save that poor girl, let alone the others he saw. The mangle of people around and behind and above her, a web of meat and pain and horror. It's a heaviness in his soul, located specifically in that place where his badge sits on his chest. He took an oath some years ago, and tonight his fear beat down that oath.

  Yet he still doesn't move. He sits against the house and he waits to wake up, waits for his alarm to go off and push him out of bed so he can get ready for work in a world where a roomful of arms and eyes don't do the things he saw, the things he imagined, didn't see, couldn't have seen.

  "C'mon," he whispers booze into the sky. "Wake me up." He sits for a minute this way but nothing happens, no irritating sound blares down on him from the heavens to pull him from the nightmare, because there is no alarm.

  Life has become the nightmare.

  Butcher shakes it off and gets to his feet when he hears the front door open. He leans through the bushes to get a look at the people coming out, single-file, shoulders straight and eyes dead.

  There's something wrong with the way they move. It’s not outwardly alien but just slightly off, and when seen all together there's a synchronicity to their gait. It's not that they move simultaneous, like an army march, but it has a pattern to it, as if each person is one leg of a centipede.

  The night is dark. Butcher strains to make out their faces. He knows he'll need names when he gets back to the station-house, he just has no idea how he's going to tell the others about this. He'll have to worry about that later, though. For now it's faces. Identities. Take down the information, that's his job. Reconnaissance. Focus on the job.

  He leans further to see their faces, careful not to disturb a single leaf. His hand finds something solid tucked against the house, a few of them, cold, waist-high metal, and he puts his weight on them to lean just a few inches further.

  He sees their faces. He knows these people. They're the same who walked in this door not long ago, the co-workers of Mary Robins who showed up in costume. Now they're leaving in masks of a different kind.

  The metal shifts under too much of his weight and collapses in a loud, tinny series of bangs.

  Butcher's heart stops. He looks up to find a dozen pairs of eyes looking his way. After a moment of silence, they begin to walk toward him.

  "Stay where you are," he warns them. They continue their creeping advance and he raises his weapon, repeats himself, this time identifying himself as an officer. "Stop moving and put your hands on your heads."

  But they don't stop. Their eyes are so cold it shoots a shiver up his spine, and he backs up to match their gait. He steps out far enough from the house that a security light mounted to the house clicks on and floods the night with blinding white. His eyes adjust and he glances down at the pile of metal to see what it was that betrayed him.

  Signs, not one but three. He makes out the words “For Sale” and “Maycomb.”

  The shades on the window he'd been looking through are drawn up, revealing a black silhouette against the inner lights of the house. Whoever it is stares down at Butcher with such hostility that he can feel it in the back of his skull.

  The silhouette raises its hand to the crowd. It gives the signal.

  The crowd reacts all at once. They run at him, and he fires off a round, the explosion magnified by the quiet night. It catches April in the shoulder, knocking her back a moment, but to Butcher's horror it barely slows her down.

  The insides of her shoulder aren't what they should be at all. Instead of blood and broken tissue there’s blackness like tar and burnt wings. Her face doesn't show pain at all, only hate and cold determination, and as she bears down on him he can see her wound is already closing up, stitching itself, swirling in and healing like water down some vast well.

  He runs.

  One foot after the other his boots pound the wet ground. He puts everything he's got into his legs, running faster than he has in years. Behind him all the way the partygoers from Hell pursue him, each of their dead eyes trained on his sweating back. His heart is in his throat, lungs in his ears, and he fires back at them once, twice, hitting two of them, one in the leg and the other the cheek.

  Their flesh erupts in greasy clouds. The man hit in the cheek slows another one down, and the others run around him, leaving him behind, and the woman hit in the leg stumbles and falls to the ground, rolls in the grass, takes down another before the rest jump over her and continue on.

  Butcher runs harder, pushing whiskey out of his pores, and he starts to gain a lead on his pursuers. Their odd way of moving- he doesn't want to compare them to his son, but they have that same, unsure quality to their limbs as when Jake learned to walk- is just enough to give him an advantage, one he bets won't last long. He makes a wide circle across the field and toward the street.

  A hundred yards from his car, he engages the safety on his gun and stuffs it into his waistband. He crams his hand into his pocket, all the more difficult at full-speed, fishes out his keys and bears down on his car, remembering, double-checking, reassuring himself that he left the doors unlocked.

  He allows himself a single glance over his shoulder, then wishes he hadn't.

  With too much speed he slams into the passenger side of his car. It knocks the wind out of him but he doesn't have enough time to care, just enough to fumble the handle, open the door, throw himself inside, lock the door and scramble over to the driver's seat before the partygoers catch up to him.

  They crash into the car, one, two, three, rocking it on its wheels, and he locks the driver's-side door and ignores their screams and grunts and wet growls and concentrates on getting the key into the ignition.

  "Start, start, start," he shouts. The engine turns over with one flick of the wrist. He slams the car into drive and stomps the gas pedal down as far as it goes. The car fishtails in zig-zag patterns and burns rubber but he's able to keep it on the road.

  He reaches for the radio to call for back-up but finds a tangle of wires and broken plastic in its place. It's been ripped out with such force the dashboard is cracked. Pieces of metal frame bent in half. His phone is gone also, missing from where he'd tossed it. Considering the guests were all inside the entire time, he appears to have been sabotaged by someone else.

  This town, he thinks. Worse and worse.

  He makes the mistake of checking the rear-view, giving himself a look at the angry, malformed faces he'll attempt to stop thinking about as he drifts off to sleep for as long as he lives.

  **

  In the pitch black of the musty closet, Mary's face is buried in clothes. Her eyes squeezed shut, her teeth clenched, she has the palms of her hands crushed into her ears. She wants to keep from hearing even one sound through the door and walls of a house she once wanted to spend the rest of her life in.

  After a time, when the rate of her breathing approaches normal, she takes her hands from her ears. The house is quiet, and not just quiet but silent in a way she didn't expect it to be. She leans forward to hear.

  A sudden banging on the door. Mary jumps, and a small cry comes from her throat. She grabs the closest thing she can find to use as a weapon, sifts through the pile of coats until her fingers hit something solid. It's a coat hanger. She bends the hook up into a point like she saw in a movie once, grips the handle in one, trembling hand.

  The door opens. A dark, intimidating face app
ears in the opening. She jabs with her make-shift weapon, aiming for its black eyes, but a hand shoots out and catches it before it finds its mark. She kicks out at the attacker and falls to the back of the closet.

  After a moment, her eyes adjust to the light. They find her husband looking back.

  “Kevin?”

  “It's over,” he says, looking down on her in the pile of clothes.

  "Is everyone..." She can't bring herself to finish the thought. He simply nods, and holds out his hand to help her up.

  She comes out slowly, scared of Kevin, scared of what she'll find, but finds a house spotless and silent. Not a single body, not a disembodied foot, not even a drop of blood to give away the scene which happened so recently.

  She moves into the kitchen, peeks down into the basement, then comes back to the living room where Kevin stands at the middle, arms at his sides.

  “Where did they all go,” she asks.

  “Out.”

  "In the yard?" She runs to the front window and draws the blinds to nothing.

  "They're halfway to town by now," he tells her. "They'll go back to their families and sleep the night."

  "And then what?"

  He says nothing.

  Mary breaks down, making sounds halfway between laughter and sobbing. She hadn't realized The Self would be putting people back together, going out into town, starting the process over. If she had known, she might not have agreed to all this. If she had known, she might have tried to kill it, burn the house down, do something other than feed the monster and set it free. "Nothing was keeping it here," she says through tired tears, "why didn't it just leave in the first place?"

  "It needed to be strong enough to replicate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Give birth."

  “Give...how do you know all this?”

  “It told me days ago,” he says. Her face goes white.

  “Why did you still go through with it?”

  “Why wouldn't I?”

  "So many people in town, all those people, the kids. When does this stop?" She shakes her head and wipes her eyes. “It doesn't matter now, it's too late for that. This is our chance to get out. We have to leave. We can forget everything that happened here. Forget everything.” She glances at the kitchen. “We can change our names, we can cut our hair, I don't care what we do, but we have to leave now, before it comes back.”

  Kevin nods. "Of course," he says. “We will. There's just one more thing that has to be done.”

  **

  Back at the station-house, the four officers on night duty are settling into a new pot of coffee. Tonight's debate is who would win in a fight- a vampire or a horde of zombies.

  "It's a matter of power," Officer Agani states. "There's no question a vampire is stronger than a bunch of dead people. They're just humans who started to rot."

  Monton sips from his mug. "You ever worked crowd control? Sheer numbers can be scary as all get-out. I'll take the zombies myself."

  "Numbers don't mean anything when a vampire can fly over their heads."

  "Now hold on, this is the flying kind," the much younger Smith asks.

  Agani shrugs. "Of course. That's pretty standard vampire stuff."

  Monton shakes his head. "Common, maybe, but I wouldn't call it standard. I think before we go any further we have to agree on what version of vampire we're working with. Zombies, too."

  "There's only one version of zombies."

  Smith says, "Not true, there's fast zombies and there's slow zombies."

  "I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that."

  "Well there is! Go watch a movie before you think you're an expert."

  Agani takes his feet off his desk and leans in. "There's no fast zombies, idiot, there's infected. That's a completely different thing."

  "Infected?"

  "You know, like rabies. Crazed, violent, spread the virus through their bite."

  Smith says, "I don't see the difference."

  "Then we're not having this discussion."

  "Now hold on," Monton walks over from his desk, "I still want to know what vampire we're dealing with."

  "Nothing fancy, nothing glittery. We're talking the classic Bram Stoker."

  “In that case he can turn into a bat or mist or whatever he wants and slip away from the crowd,” Smith says.

  “That's true,” Monton points.

  “Okay, never mind escape, this is a fight to the death.” He pauses. “Undeath.”

  “Why would a vampire bother fighting a bunch of zombies,” Smith asks. “It's not like he can feed on them, they have no blood. While we're at it the zombies wouldn't want any of his tainted meat, either.”

  “I don't know, maybe it's personal. Maybe the zombies ate his one true love. You know they always have one of those.”

  At this everyone nods.

  Monton says, “In that case I'm going with the vampire. He'll just start ripping off zombie heads like he's picking blueberries and he won't stop 'til no one's left.”

  “Unless halfway through he breaks down and cries. You know how emotional vampires can get.”

  “Yeah, they are pretty dramatic.”

  “He starts sobbing tears of blood, the zombies close in and finish him off.”

  “With what,” Smith asks.

  “Pardon?”

  “Finish him off with what? To kill a vampire you need a wooden stake or holy water. Last I checked zombies don't use tools or weapons, and if they did they certainly wouldn't know enough to use the right one.”

  Everyone's quiet. Then: “Sunlight.” They all turn to Officer Stroud, silent until now. “Their weight could hold him down long enough for the sun to rise.”

  “He could push them off,” Agani says.

  “If we're going by Bram Stoker's Dracula, he was said to be as strong as twenty men, and hordes of zombies can easily number more than twenty.”

  “So he'd burst into flames.”

  “Taking the zombies with him. It's a draw.”

  “It would burn some of them, not all. Fire doesn't kill zombies.”

  “Not unless it destroys the brain,” Stroud says.

  “Could it?”

  They shrug at each other, no one answering.

  “Maybe we should call the fire department.”

  The front door bursts open. Franklin Butcher comes through the door in clothes heavy with sweat, his eyes wide and crazed. He barely takes the time to shut the door behind him before he says, "Four of you? Is this all there is?"

  "It's the night crew, what do you expect," Officer Monton answers.

  "Gear up, I need you all to follow me.

  “Where?”

  “Back to the Robins house. Right now."

  "Aren't you under orders not to go there," Stroud asks as she walks over.

  "I'll deal with Sheriff Green later. There's been a homicide. Multiple, actually. Or it could be a kidnapping."

  "What are you mumbling about," Officer Agani asks, not getting up from his chair.

  “You're not making any sense,” Stroud agrees.

  Butcher exhales, trying to catch his breath. "I staked out the Robins place. They were having a party with about a dozen people. I approached the house and heard signs of struggle, so I looked through the window and saw...well I saw all of them..." He tries to find the words for what he witnessed through the glass.

  "Are you saying the Robins couple murdered them," Stroud asks.

  "No, not them. It was something else."

  "Something?"

  "A creature. A monster. I don't know what the fuck it was but it was killing them, taking their places like some goddamn copycat. All the workers at that dentist's office are replacements now. They chased me across a field and tried to kill me. Look, we're wasting time here, we have to get over there before they leave!"

  A few of the officers exchange glances. Smith says, "Replacements?"

  "Don't give me that look, I know how it sounds. I saw it with my own eyes and
I barely believe it."

  Officer Agani walks up next to Stroud and leans past her shoulder. "Who else's eyes would you see it with," he asks, "your replacement's?"

  Butcher lunges at him, tries to grab him by the collar, but Stroud gets between them and holds them apart. The room erupts into shouts as the officers converge on Butcher to hold him back from attacking Agani, and vice versa.

  “Knock it off,” Monton yells at Agani.

  “He started it!”

  “Yeah, and I'm ending it.”

  “What, we have to listen to that crazy bull he's spewing about monsters photocopying dentists or whatever?”

  “I'm not crazy,” Butcher says.

  “Ever hear the expression 'if it quacks like a duck'? Well you're doing a lot of quacking, my friend.”

  “I'm not your friend.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “I thought we were cops, we're supposed to trust each other.”

  Agani leans in. “Quack. Quack. Quack.”

  Butcher lunges again, as does Agani, but they're held back by the others. In the middle of the commotion, Smith says, “Jesus, he reeks of booze,” and they all fall quiet.

  Monton says, “Did you drive here?”

  Butcher looks between their faces. “I had no choice.”

  “Christ, Butcher.”

  "You can book me later if it makes you feel better, but right now we have to get out there and stop those things before they get too far and do God knows what!"

  There's a cold, metallic pressure against his wrist followed by a loud click. "I'm sorry," Stroud says, "you're not going anywhere."

  Around his wrist is a locked pair of handcuffs. They're the same he carries on him every day, but suddenly they look very different.

  Stroud solemnly leads him down across the station, around the corner and down the hall to the holding cell at the end. It's the most private of the four, unable to be seen from any of the other cells due to a brick wall and a support column.

  Butcher doesn't fight her. The others hang back and watch her walk him into the cell, sit him on the bed and remove the cuffs.

  "I'm not crazy," he repeats.

  "I know," she says, "you're just a drunk."

  The words cut him like a shiv to the belly. She shuts the cell door, leaving him to feel the sway of the room as the footsteps drift away.