He had to stifle a crazy laugh. It hit him then that after all this time, he might be going just a little bit insane.
A car door thunked shut outside. He whirled around to see Amber standing beneath the awning, hugging herself against a chill her thin sweater apparently couldn’t keep out. She took several steps and then stopped, frowning at something he couldn’t see on the other side of the building. Concerned, he stopped collecting processed junk food and walked outside. “What’s up?” He asked.
“Look,” she said. “And listen.”
He followed her pointing finger at the field beside the Shell station. A wire fence enclosed yet another livestock pasture—corn, tobacco, and leather-covered shit machines of one ilk or another pretty much described it all in northern Morgan County—that contained nothing but dried cow patties. A huge barn, outbuildings and the obligatory farmhouse rounded out the unremarkable scenery. He heard nothing but the scrape of the wind across pavement.
“Uh…okay,” he said. “I don’t hear anything.”
“You must be deaf!” With that, she took off at a determined march across the gas station parking lot to the fence, which she climbed with fluid grace. Justin followed, flummoxed.
“Mind telling me what you’re doing? That barn’s probably chock-full of vampires, you know. That and the farmhouse.”
She dropped down on the other side of the fence and waited for him with her hands on her hips. “There were cows out here the other day, when we came back from camping. I remember seeing them. We came out of the store and I saw them wandering all over this field. Everybody had already turned by that point, but here were these cows. And now they’re gone.”
“A lot of things are gone. They probably ran into a vampire that likes red meat.”
She deftly wove her way among the piles of cattle dung as if guided by some advanced shit-avoidance radar. Justin didn’t have this, and so he stayed close behind her.
And then she stopped so suddenly that he nearly ran into her. She turned to face him. “Hear it now? Listen.”
He did. The wind died momentarily, just enough for his iTunes-blasted ears to identify the unmistakeable sound of cows mooing.
“They’re in that barn,” Amber said. “And they’re alive. Someone’s been tending them.”
29.
Dad had liked The History Channel. He hadn’t been one for sports; while her friends’ fathers spent hours glued to the television during football and basketball season, her own preferred to watch college professors and white-haired ex-soldiers postgame wars that had ended decades and centuries ago. He especially liked World War Two documentaries—even though everybody already knew how that one ended. No suspense there at all. Bo-ring.
“The Second World War was the United States Navy’s war,” he once said proudly. “Us and the Merchant Marine. Your teachers will tell you that we sat around over here until the end of 1941, but that whole deal in Europe would have been a totally different hooraw without American naval power. And the Pacific? Half this world would be speaking Japanese without us. The other half would be speaking German.”
He talked to her about these things as if she thought them as fascinating as he did; he reminded her of the boys at school who would go off about last Sunday’s football game if she made the mistake of asking them about their weekend. Statistics, players, yardages delivered with a wild-eyed enthusiasm that Amber found smacking of Asperger’s Syndrome. She didn’t mind her father doing this—he was talking to her, or at least talking at her—but his inability to see that she didn’t care about any of it astounded her.
“Men like to know things,” Mom explained. “But it’s no fun for them unless they can show you that they know things. Usually boring things.”
He would watch his boring things with the intensity of a sports fan, seated comfortably in his recliner with a bag of popcorn and a bottle of beer. She learned early on not to ask him anything about what he was watching, because he would always tell her more than she wanted to know. One Sunday afternoon during her freshman year of high school, though, she caught him in the living room with his eyes riveted to the screen and his popcorn hardly touched. He didn’t even fuss at her when she grabbed a handful without asking.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back. He didn’t look at her.
She looked at the television. This was a different war, a later one with which she was unfamiliar. Color footage, lots of CNN. Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings—the newscasters of her childhood. Africans with assault rifles and bazookas. “Where’s that?” She asked.
“Somalia. Before you were born.”
“What happened there?”
“Sit down and watch. You’ll see.”
And so she did. As the clips and commentary played out, she recognized the fact pattern from Blackhawk Down, which she’d watched with Tara on DVD at a sleepover last year. Mildly interested and desirous of avoiding the algebra homework waiting in her school backpack, she sat on the couch and watched the whole thing with him, over half an hour. When it ended, she rose feeling slightly more educated and proud that she and her father had done something together—even if it didn’t involve talking. She looked over at him and asked, “So how did all those warlords get in power in the first place?”
“Somalia fell apart. A failed state. The government, police, military, everything basically dissolved and there was nothing but anarchy. Hence the warlords.”
“But why did anybody follow them? I mean, obviously it sucked and they weren’t making things any better. Why did those people shoot each other over some stupid popularity contest? Sounds like all these guys were a bunch of tools. I wouldn’t have wanted any of them in charge of the yearbook committee, much less my life.”
Dad took a drink of beer, smiling smugly. Her mother’s words echoed in her ears: Men like to know things. “Very simple,” he said. “Food.”
“Food and guns.”
“Guns to a certain point, but mainly to the extent that they enable somebody to control access to food.” The knowledgeable smiled grew. “See, dictators rise to power when they develop a monopoly on something that the people need. In a functioning country, it might be something like stability, strong leadership, national pride. Back in the Middle Ages, it was access to Heaven—you went against the Pope, he’d excommunicate your ass and you’d end up in Hell forever and ever, amen.”
He shrugged.
“In Somalia, it was food. Those people couldn’t have given less of a shit about nationalism. They just wanted to eat. And guys like Mohamed Farrah Aidid controlled what little there was. The UN would send grain and rice and stuff over there, and his gunmen would grab it.”
His eyes actually twinkled. Listening to him talk, Amber got the funny feeling that he liked this story; that he found what Aidid did somehow admirable.
“Genius, in a way,” he continued. “That was a guy who saw an opportunity and went for it. I mean, you ever want power, Amber? You ever want to be Queen of the World? Find something that everybody needs, something there’s not enough of. And control it. Sons of bitches will fall in line to kiss your ass all day long. Just to get that commodity.”
He smiled.
“Oil’s a nice one, for this day and age. But the best is and always has been food. Aidid and these other ones lucked into a golden opportunity when Somalia fell apart and people didn’t know where their chow was going to come from. Because nothing takes a back seat to chow, nothing. Religion, nationalism, freedom, nothing. When people get hungry—I’m talking about starving, not like you when you’re waiting for your fish sticks to come out of the microwave—they’ll do anything to get full again. You give them food, they’ll follow you anywhere. But you have to keep them hungry, feed them just enough to where they don’t forget what it feels like to starve. So they understand what’s going to happen if they buck you. So that they understand this is your bus, that you’re driving it and that if they want a ride, they better fall the fuck in.”
He laughed then, an amused, self-satisfied sound. It made Amber’s insides squirm.
“These guys on my boat all think, we’re so badass. We’re on an attack sub. We can hide under the water and blow shit up in Iraq or Iran or wherever we want. Guys on the boomers think, we’re so badass because we run around with these nuclear weapons that no one’s ever going to use. People think that is power. Cruise missles, ICBMs. It’s not. You want to know the most powerful weapon in the world, Amber?”
He stared at her, waiting for her answer.
“What’s that?” She asked.
“A bowl of rice,” he answered. “Chow. You control that, you control everything.”
Bound for the barn, she felt as single-minded and unstoppable as one of her father’s cruise missiles. She stared at the great doors on their rollers. Her legs followed the boom of bawling cattle.
“Are you planning on opening that thing up?” Justin asked from behind her.
“Yes.”
“If the farmer is still alive, he might not appreciate this. Why don’t we at least knock on the door of that house first?”
“What time is it?” She asked.
“Shit, I don’t know…nine or something. Why does that matter right now?”
They reached the corrugated metal doors and stopped. Several strands of hair had escaped the confines of her ponytail and she brushed them out of her face. “Have you ever heard of a farmer that screws around until nine and leaves his cattle in the barn? These people work sunup to sundown. Only farmer that would do something like that is a dead one.”
“Why’s the city girl suddenly an expert on animal husbandry?”
“Because my dad spent his last couple years of foster care on a farm,” she replied. “And he told me. Help me out, here.”
“We’re fucked if this is another vampire trick. It’s going to be game over all the way.”
“It’s not a vampire trick and there’s no one in there. Come on.”
She grabbed a handle on one of the great roller-mounted doors while Justin seized the other. On a count of three, they pulled in opposite directions and the doors slid open with an ease that seemed incongruent with their size. No sooner had a gap appeared between the two than the first cow came charging out of the interior and into the sun, bellowing. It headed for the pasture and the watering pond, followed close behind by another, and another, and another. A deluge of black, white and brown animals poured out into the barnyard. A young calf stumbled but kept up with the rest of its herd—not a one of which charred or smoked.
Amber pressed herself against the door to avoid the onslaught of trampling hooves. As the stragglers lumbered by, she looked over at Justin, who stared back with wide eyes. When the last of the cattle ambled out into the morning, she peeled herself off the door and stepped inside the barn. Justin didn’t challenge her.
They found themselves in one of two long feed alleys flanked by pens constructed from steel tubing. The metal building looked the size of the gymnasium at her high school and maybe even larger, concrete and hay beneath their feet instead of polished wood. Up above, open ridge vents with their covers propped open allowed the entry of morning air which, while pleasantly cool, did little to dissipate the thick atmosphere redolent of dung, decomposing straw and the stink of confined animals.
“Smells nice,” Justin remarked.
“Someone’s been feeding them,” Amber said. “Someone’s been getting them in here at night and letting them out in the morning.”
“You think maybe the farmer got turned but maybe decided to stick around and tend his herd?”
Before she could answer that, a weak bellow—more like a bleat, actually—from the far end of the barn interrupted her thoughts. Drawn by the noise, she marched along the feed alley and the open pens to an enclosure in the back corner where a single brown cow lay on a bed of straw with stripes of golden sun from the ridges cast across its body. Its labored breathing wheezed like some ancient machine. It stared at them as they approached, but it didn’t get up.
“Careful,” Justin warned.
“There’s sunlight on it.”
“I know. You start smelling grilling hamburger, back the fuck up.”
But she didn’t smell anything other than hay and dung, because this animal hadn’t turned. It was sick, or perhaps getting ready to drop a calf. She knew nothing about cattle but her inner six-year-old drove her to pet it, speak to it, offer whatever comfort she could.
As soon as she entered its stall, it began to bellow and kick.
Justin grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back. “It doesn’t like you,” he said.
“Obviously.”
But the cow demonstrated no such antipathy when Justin stepped around her and approached it from the head, taking care to avoid the powerful hooves. He laid a hand on its skull and stroked its fur. Its chest rose and fell rapidly in tune with its breathing. Amber shuffled in as close as she could without pissing it off. “What’s wrong with it?” She asked.
“I don’t know,” Justin replied. “But I think it has something to do with that shit over there. Look.”
She followed his pointing finger to a set of buckets in the corner of the pen. In one bucket, a length of hose and a funnel peeked over the rim.
“And look at this. On its neck.”
“I can’t see it.”
“Look. It’s been cut.”
He pointed at the beast’s neck. She had seen the bloodstain earlier but had taken it for just another spot on its coat. The dawn of understanding rose in her brain. Why Dad and his crew weren’t as skinny as the creatures from Wal-Mart or the ones that had charged out of the high school; why the cow was so afraid of her.
I carry his blood. I have his scent.
“You can’t see it from where you are,” Justin said, “but there’s a scar on the neck where somebody cut this thing and then sewed it up. They did a shitty job. What do you think…”
She cut him off. “He’s farming.”
Justin looked from the cow to Amber. He rose, wiping his hand on his jeans.
“That’s how he became their leader. That’s how he controls them. He controls their food.”
“Motherfucker,” Justin muttered.
“All the people are gone. They’re either dead or they turned—either way, they’re no good to a vampire, not anymore. They’ve drained whatever animals they could catch. But he didn’t. He found these, and he kept them. He bleeds them every night. And he gives the blood to the ones that have pleased him.”
“Wow.” Justin chuckled weakly and shook his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Amber, but…in a strange way, I’m kind of impressed.”
“You know what this means, right?” She asked.
He blinked at her.
“It’s never going to stop,” she said. “Not with him. And now, not with her, either. Some of these things might die off, but his crew will survive. Because he’s farming.”
“So that means…”
“We can’t leave.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, suddenly cold. “Not yet. We have to finish this first.” She swallowed. “We have to finish them.”
Justin took a deep breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. He nodded, exhaling slowly and staring down at the stricken cow. He closed his eyes.
“I think I know where they are,” he said.
30.
Heather awoke to a memory. An old one, the aftermath of a prehistoric fight whose genesis existed nowhere in her recollection. Amber had been a baby then, not yet able to walk. Mike had gotten mad about something—she couldn’t remember what. Something she’d done. Or hadn’t done.
You’re lucky you have me, you know that? You’re so fucking stupid, it’s a miracle you remember to breathe.
She remembered packing her car after he left for work that morning and sitting in the driveway of their tiny house on base. Strapped into her baby seat in the back, Amber screamed. She wanted out. She didn’t like the straps hol
ding her in, holding her back. Restricting her every movement; chafing her soft skin. She wanted to be free.
Heather laid her forehead on the steering wheel and cried. Not so much from hurt feelings; by that point, she had grown used to being called stupid, ineffective, unthinking, blah blah blah, she didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. She cried out of frustration, because after all that, she was still sitting in the driveway. She hadn’t even started the car.
“Why does he do this?” she asked no one. “Why can he say anything he wants to me? Why does he do that?”
The answer came simply:
Because he can.
Right. Because on a very fundamental level, he knew that no matter what he did, she wouldn’t leave.
Now she stared through the windshield at the house where the Mike-thing and his entourage had sought shelter for the day. Sun poured over the brown grass and bathed the porch, the shutters, the roof. It turned the cab of the truck into a miniature greenhouse, raising the temperature to an almost uncomfortable level despite the autumn chill outside. As it did this, it asked a question:
What now?
Indeed. She hadn’t considered what she would do if she made it through the night in the woods. With the gun pointed to her head, the idea of survival had been a luxury she couldn’t afford. Had she allowed herself to think beyond the next breath, she might have thought beyond the morning, and then the day. She might have disconnected from the peace she’d made with dying. And then when Mike finally decided to call her bluff and charge, she might have hesitated to pull the trigger. Maybe not long, but long enough to matter.
She reached over and cracked the driver’s window. Cool morning air from outside flooded the cab and made her almost sleepy again. She inhaled a chestful of it with her eyes closed, considering her next move. Tired as she was, she couldn’t afford to take a nap right now. She would have to walk until she found a functioning automobile. Mike’s entourage had left their keyless vehicles at the edge of the woods, and while she would check under the floormats and behind the sun visors for spare keys, nothing was ever that easy. The old truck would run if she fueled it, but without a container and a hose to siphon with the fuel in the gas tanks would have to just stay there. Probably forever.
The Last Days of October Page 17