Less Than Human

by Raisor, Gary

  "Be with you in a second," the voice said. The hat began beating against the bigger glob of flies, causing them to lift, revealing a man beneath. Bobby Roberts.

  "Hey, Elliot, Timmy, how you boys doing?"

  Elliot redoubled his efforts to start his bike, but in his haste, he flooded it. The sharp tang of gasoline overrode the riper odor of Bobby as he walked closer.

  "You ever have one of those nights where everything goes wrong?" Bobby asked with a laugh. He kept beating off the flies with his hat. "So much to do, so little time. There just aren't enough hours in the night." The flies wouldn't seem to leave Bobby alone. Sometimes, parts of him would completely disappear beneath their squirming bodies. "I guess you're wondering what I'm doing out here."

  Elliot tried to nod. Timmy whimpered.

  "Carelessness, pure and simple," Bobby said, as if he were talking about the price of beef. "Got caught by the rising sun and I had to burrow in under those rocks back there. It's cool under the trees." His smile was a trifle embarrassed. "But I damn sure didn't count on all these flies. It must have been the dead dogs that brought them."

  Elliot was unable to look away. Timmy had his face buried in his brother's back again. Elliot had to admit it was a little disconcerting talking to someone whose head kept disappearing beneath a mass of blowflies. "Bobby, don't get mad, but could I ask you something?"

  "Sure, little buddy, ask away."

  "How come you're all covered with flies?"

  "I expect it's because my clothes are all soaked with blood." Bobby walked toward his Caddy, opened up the trunk and pulled out some clean jeans and a shirt.

  "Bobby?"

  "What, little buddy?"

  "Did you kill somebody?"

  "I killed a lot of people."

  "Are you going to kill us?"

  "I expect so." Bobby began changing into his clean clothes.

  He wadded up his old ones and tossed them over the fence.

  Timmy whispered in his brother's ear, "See, I told you he'd cut your balls off."

  The flies swarmed over Bobby's blood-crusted shirt and jeans. "I guess you'll want to know why."

  Elliot nodded.

  "Well, I've got a little surprise for Crowder Flats, and I can't have you two spoiling it."

  "You mean like a surprise birthday party?" Timmy asked.

  "Yeah, something like that."

  "Are you a monster?"

  "Fraid so." Bobby was completely changed now. "I guess I'm what you'd call a vampire. It's the only term you'd understand."

  "No shit?"

  ''No shit."

  Elliot couldn't decide if he was excited or scared. This was definitely the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. "You like it okay, I mean, being a vampire and everything?"

  "No, not really. The thing inside me makes me do things I don't really want to do."

  "Like killing us."

  "That's right." Bobby closed the trunk. The sound had a note of finality in it.

  "Vampires get all the babes," Timmy said. "Could you make us vampires?"

  Bobby laughed, sailed his bloodstained hat over the fence, where it landed next to his old clothes. The flies descended. "You've been watching way too many bad movies, boys." Bobby's face turned serious in the bike's light, his good humor falling away. All that was left was pain and it twisted his mouth into a crooked line. "You don't want to be a vampire, Timmy. It ain't nothing like what you think. You're better off being dead, believe me."

  "We can work a deal," Elliot said. "How about we promise not to say anything about what we saw here, and you don't kill us?"

  The smile was back, only now it looked painted on. "You always were a funny kid, Elliot. All that crazy shit you do, spearing jackrabbits, lighting the barbecue grill with a flamethrower. I'm going to miss you." Bobby moved around the car, started toward him.

  Cocking his head, Elliot sniffed the air. There was no gasoline smell now. He stepped down, kicked the bike to life, revved the engine.

  Bobby stopped. He looked pissed. "You were just stalling me, weren't you?"

  "Yeah, my bike was flooded."

  "All right, maybe I was a little hasty." Bobby backed up a step. "Maybe we can work out a deal on this vampire thing."

  "Fuck you, Bobby; you must think I'm a retard. Get out of the way." Elliot revved the engine again, dropped the pole he still held in his hand to jousting position. "I mean it, get out of the way." The sharp end was pointed at Bobby's chest.

  "Vampires get all the babes." Bobby raised his head to the night air, sniffed, and Elliot had the feeling Bobby was sniffing him. "You'd like to get Louise Warrick, wouldn't you, especially after what she did to you today?"

  The pole in Elliot's hand wavered. "How did you know that?"

  "Vampires know lots of things." Bobby leaned against the Caddy, seemingly at ease. "You want her; I can smell it on you."

  The bike idled while Elliot digested that. "You're full of shit."

  "Am I?"

  "Okay, so maybe I like her a little."

  "If you were a vampire, you could have her."

  The possibilities played across Elliot's face. "I could really have her?"

  "Absolutely. You'd be able to get any woman you want."

  "Even Amy?"

  The skin at the corner of Bobby's eyes tightened. "Even Amy."

  "I don't know, Bobby. I think I gotta go home and sleep on it."

  Bobby shrugged, raised his hands. "All right. See you boys around."

  While they were talking, smoke from the idling bike had drifted toward the graveyard, sending the flies into a hovering cloud.

  What they had covered was becoming visible, and Timmy was quietly tugging on Elliot's shirt.

  Elliot risked a quick look, turned back to Bobby. He was still holding up the Caddy.

  What Elliot had seen began to register.

  Five dead bodies lying in various positions of repose.

  Four of them were people Elliot had known all his life. They were pale, waxy mannequins. For the first time in his life Elliot had an inkling of what death really looked like. He tried not to look again, but he couldn't stop himself.

  Elliot looked back at Bobby.

  Bobby wasn't by the car anymore. He had moved.

  He was much closer.

  And he had both hands on the pole.

  The suddenness of the move startled the teenager and his hand twitched on the accelerator. The bike lurched forward.

  Not much, maybe a foot.

  Like magic, the pole was sticking out of Bobby's back. He looked at it with faint surprise and the embarrassed smile suddenly appeared. "That's what I get… letting my lips flap… guess becoming a vampire hasn't changed that none."

  Elliot tried to turn the bike, but the cars and the fence had him hemmed in.

  Blood, or whatever passed for blood, leaked from Bobby's stomach and ran down the pole. It was dark red, almost black in the light and slightly luminous, filled with specks of light that glittered like broken glass.

  It stunk, too, worse than Bobby.

  Timmy wrinkled his nose at the awful smell.

  The black substance was a trickle at first, though as it got nearer Elliot's hand; it sped up, moving with startling speed. The teenager turned loose of the pole as though he had been burned, and scrambled back on his bike.

  The blood came to the end of the pole, paused, rose up, and split into dozens of tendrils. They wriggled with agitation, as though trying to decide whether or not to go any farther. They made up their mind, shooting toward Elliot like a nest of striking rattlesnakes.

  But their strike fell short.

  All except for one tendril.

  It brushed Elliot's hand, leaving behind a welt. And a trace of itself. Inside his mind, the fifteen-year-old had a flash of something too alien to comprehend, something that was incredibly old.

  There were images, murky at first, then clearer, like one of those photographs that developed in your hand.

&
nbsp; Elliot sucked in his breath when the images crystallized.

  He saw a moon, bright as silver, clear as pain, riding over a stretch of desert that seemed to reach the ends of the world.

  Mountains sprawled at the desert's edge, the skeletal backbone of a giant snake pushing its way up from the earth. He took a breath and looked around. The night was humid, filled with the siren call of flutes, the slow thunder of drums, the hot copper smell of blood, the screams of people crying out in pain and ecstasy. All somehow joined together.

  Elliot was standing on the summit of some vast triangular stone monument, a pyramid was the word that came to him, and he was looking out over a clearing, while hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned people dressed in bright-hued clothing and exotic feathers bowed down to him. They were chanting his name and Elliot knew he was a god to them. There were steps carved into the lofty stone triangle, leading up to him, and the steps were stained red. Blood red.

  Stacked along the walls of his temple were thousands of skulls, some bleached white, some still dripping.

  The sea of worshippers held out their arms to him. Beckoning. Imploring.

  He moved down the familiar route to the throng waiting below, listening to them call out his name. "Huitzilopochtli, Huitzilopochtli," they screamed, their faces twisted with adoration and fear. Some began tearing at their own flesh with the knives in their hands.

  As Elliot reached the base of the pyramid, they fell silent. The wind ruffling their bright feathers, their torches guttering, were the only sounds.

  As one, two hundred thousand people held their breath, looking to him. A feeling of expectation hung in the air, a hush so palpable he could reach out and touch it. Time ceased.

  Gazing toward the summit of the pyramid, he gave a signal to the people gathered there. They were his priests, sworn to him.

  Twenty thousand men, women, and children kneeled before the priests, their faces serene. They gazed down at their god with love.

  He basked in their adulation a moment. Gave another signal.

  And the stone knives of his priests cut out the hearts of those who knelt. The wet blades traced faint, arcane glimmers in the moonlight as they went about their work.

  The chosen were slaughtered in a matter of seconds. Even as they died, they called out their god's name.

  The priests held the severed organs high, some still beating

  And flung them to the crowd waiting below.

  Blood erupted from the butchered bodies in geysers of scarlet, collecting in pools, spilling down the steps, gathering speed as it went.

  By the time the blood reached Elliot, it was roaring like a waterfall.

  The hot liquid came in waves, striking him in the chest, then his face, covering him, drowning out the screams of his worshippers as they went into a frenzy. He was their god and he had tasted their blood.

  He found it good.

  Then the pyramid was gone and Elliot was back at the Navajo graveyard. The taste of blood was in his mouth. He leaned over the bike and threw up.

  Bobby took a step, went sideways.

  Elliot backpedaled some more, trying to get the bike turned around.

  The blood stopped, reversed itself, ran back up the pole toward Bobby, and disappeared inside of him. He tried to take a step forward. Couldn't. His legs would no longer support him. He slid down the side of his Caddy, finally coming to a sitting position with his legs straight out in front of him.

  The tip of the pole sticking out of Bobby's back left a long scratch in the paint.

  "Bobby, I saw something from the past, a pyramid." Elliot struggled for the words. "People dying, blood running down the steps. There must have been—"

  "Fifty thousand dead. I had fifty thousand people killed over a five-day period at Teotihuacán." Bobby saw the confusion on the boy's face. "That's outside Mexico City." Bobby's face clouded with thought. "That was a long time ago, over five hundred years."

  There was no way for Elliot to measure five hundred years. "But why did you kill them?"

  "Sacrifice. At the time, I was the sun god of the Aztecs." Bobby's foot was twitching, beating a tattoo on the stones. "The killing was their idea; they believed blood was the only thing that would bring the sun back each day. So I gave them blood. I didn't want to disappoint them." He looked inward and Elliot knew that the thing inside Bobby was reliving the moment. "I have been many gods in my time, Quetzacoatl, Thaloc, Coatlicue. Many gods."

  "Quetza …," Elliot faltered.

  "Quetzacoatl," Bobby explained, "the feathered serpent, the god of learning and enlightenment. Pretty funny, huh?" Bobby laughed, then coughed, his face going slack with pain. "I tried to stop all the killing. Only my subjects didn't want that, they grew to like the taste of blood. And after a while so did I." Bobby's eyes went cloudy. "Gods are what their worshippers make them."

  "But why do gods have to kill people?"

  A faint breath. "Gods need their sacrifices, Elliot, or they die."

  Bobby seemed to grow tired. His eyes closed.

  Opened.

  And the old Bobby was there, smiling his familiar cocky smile. He turned his head and saw the scratch on his car. "Oh man, would you look at that? I just had this baby painted."

  "Bobby, it's you. What happened to that… thing?"

  "Shut up, you two. And listen. That thing's very busy right now, keeping me alive." He reached up and began pulling the pole out of his stomach, grimacing at the pain.

  The wet sucking sound reached them over the idling bike.

  Sweat coated Bobby's face and he was breathing in shallow gasps. "Little buddies, you got maybe a minute or two… before I come after you." Bobby gritted his teeth, forced out the last words. "I'd be hauling ass if I was you."

  Elliot needed no further urging. He got the bike turned and he began going through the gears. Within seconds, he and Timmy were running flat out across the rocky ground, without lights. The bike took a couple of stiff hops and Elliot prayed the tires would hold.

  Memory and luck would be the only things keeping them from hitting something.

  The graveyard faded into the night. The last thing to go was the white cross.

  A quick look over his shoulder showed Elliot a set of car lights popping on. This wasn't fair. Bobby had said at least a minute. It hadn't been a minute. He crouched low over the bike, trying to cut down the wind resistance, but his old Kawasaki was maxed out.

  "Hurry up, Elliot, he's coming."

  A second set of car lights popped on.

  And a third.

  The three cars all moved out onto the plain and began casting around for Elliot's trail. In the distance they looked like fireflies looking for a place to land. The ground was rocky and tracks would be hard to find, but Bobby knew this country as well as Elliot.

  A car horn sounded, a bray of triumph, and Elliot knew Bobby had found the bike's trail.

  The three cars moved in unison, heading straight for them. They picked up speed, hurtling through the darkness.

  The teenager had a moment of despair as he watched them coming on. There was something strange about the way the cars were bunched together, and he realized there was only one car chasing him. Bobby's car. The other two were still chained to the Caddy and Bobby was towing them along behind.

  Elliot could hear them clanking as they bounced and collided with each other. The metal groaned and occasional sparks would fly up when the cars hit a dip, but nothing could hold back that old Caddy. Or slow it down. The massive V8 sounded like thunder as it moved closer.

  The three sets of headlights lit up the night, and Elliot knew there would be no place to hide. The Caddy was close enough to see Bobby's face now, close enough to see the painted grin was back in place. There was something in the seat beside the vampire, slouched low, bulky, shapeless.

  The car came on, rising, falling, a disembodied white wraith floating on the night, disconnected from the earth, pulled along by the ropes of light hooked to the grill.

&nb
sp; The wraith was materializing. Growing clearer.

  Ever clearer.

  Bobby's bloodless face swam into focus, dark hair whipping in the wind, cigarette dangling from his lip. The tip was a glowing red coal. He let out a yell, honked the horn when he saw the bike, as though he had just happened to spot a few friends on the street.

  The Caddy pulled up alongside Elliot and Timmy, close enough to touch. "Hey there, little buddies, how you doing?" They looked over.

  Bobby had passengers with him.

  All the dead people from the graveyard had been loaded into the white Caddy: Doralee, Nicky, and Martin Strickland in the back, arms around each other; Chester and some unknown Indian in a white hat up front.

  Every time the Caddy rocked, their heads all lolled in unison. Synchronized sightseeing, dead style.

  Elliot realized that for Bobby to load that many people in the car so quickly meant one thing—Bobby had started as soon as the bike was out of sight. He and Timmy had barely gotten out in time. That thing inside Bobby had almost hypnotized them.

  "Why are you doing this?" Elliot yelled at Bobby.

  "Because this is a game. And I don't like the game to be over with too soon." Bobby reached over, took the white hat from the Indian, and put it on his own head. He cocked it at a precise angle in the rearview. "How's it look?" he yelled at Timmy.

  For an answer, Timmy shot Bobby the bird and buried his face in Elliot's back.

  Bobby laughed and grabbed something from the floorboard. It was the stick used to spear jackrabbits, the same one he had pulled from his stomach.

  They veered away from the Caddy and it followed, a clanking train without tracks. Accelerating, the white car pulled up beside them. Bobby swung the stick backhanded, catching Elliot across the nose, busting cartilage. "That's for not teaching your little brother some manners."

  The pain was so intense that Elliot blacked out for a second. The bike wobbled, almost went down.

  Elliot skidded to a halt.

  The Caddy tried to do the same, but the weight behind the car was too great and it slewed sideways, throwing huge gouts of white dust into the air before finally coming to a halt.