“Maybe. Who knows though? Nothing like this that we know of has ever happened before, right?”
“Well yeah, nothing that I know of.”
“What about any of your movies or books? You like all that kind of stuff.”
“Usually it’s just a bite from another zombie that gets you, and then you die and turn into one. Or it’s like a virus that spreads or something. This is different.”
“Alright. Well, it’s almost dark now, so you should let Phantom out to do his duty. I’ll put the rest of this away.”
“His duty?” I was confused.
“Nature is his toilet in the evening. That’s what he prefers.”
“Ohh…I get it. Weird, but I get it.” I went over to the front door and opened it, and Phantom ran out quickly, streaking across the lawn. “So I should just wait for him?”
“He’s usually pretty quick. He doesn’t like to stay away from the house for too long. What cat would, with how much you spoil him?” He grumbled this last part to himself.
“Oh come on, don’t start that again.”
I looked back out to the front porch and jumped in surprise to see Kirk standing there.
“Hey! What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to stop by, see how you were doing.”
“Who’s that Audrey?” My dad called out.
“Kirk!” I said back happily. And maybe a little guiltily?
“Oh, great! Does he want dinner?”
“Sure,” Kirk said, smiling. “That would be awesome.”
I opened the door for him and Phantom came streaking back in, hissing slightly at Kirk as he passed him.
“Wow. Sorry about that,” I said, sort of surprised.
“That’s okay. He always does that to me. Remember?”
“Right! I’m just a little out of it lately,” I laughed nervously. Great, now I sounded like some ditzy moron.
“If you guys want to go hang out in your room Audrey, that’s fine. I’ll be cooking for just a little bit.” My dad smiled at us both. I hated this. What other dad let his fifteen (almost sixteen) year old daughter go hang out in her bedroom--alone--with a boy? I was such a reliable prude. I sighed mentally.
“Kirk?” I asked him.
“Sure. Sounds good.”
We headed down to my room and I couldn’t help but feel a moment of déjà vu from last night as I saw him step over near my window. I sat down on my bed and he sat on my window seat. That was his usual spot. We studied together a lot and watched movies in here too. My dad completely trusted him. More importantly, my dad trusted me, I guess. But I still don’t think my dad would have liked him here in the middle of the night. I was about to bring up that exact thing when Kirk started speaking.
“So Audrey,” he began, “I think I can fix the whole zombie problem you have going on.”
My mouth just sort of flopped open stupidly and I stared at him, not knowing what to say. Holy shit. Did everyone know about this now?
Kirk gave me his amazing smile and I knew nothing that came next could be remotely good.
Chapter 5
“I have a proposal that you might be interested in.”
A proposal? I thought. What the hell? I continued to stare mutely at Kirk.
“You see, I’m a vampire and I think I can change you now before it’s too late.”
“Wait…wait.” I stood up quickly from my bed and began pacing back and forth. Man, I was beginning to do a lot of this lately. “I can’t- I just don’t understand.” I stopped and looked at him. “Are you screwing with me right now?”
“No Audrey, I’m-”
“Because I swear Kirk, I am seriously not up for any kind of prank at the moment. And how in the hell did you find out I’m turning into a zombie?! I mean, I just barely figured it out myself! And it like, just happened!” I raised my arms in exasperation and let them fall back down to my sides again. I wanted to scream loudly, at Kirk…at anyone really. Instead I just stared blankly at my bed, completely confused. He was a vampire? What was I supposed to do with that? Should I run or something? I looked up at him and he was looking back at me patiently. Okay he seemed completely normal. And who was I to judge really, I was about to become a full-blown flesh eater. I mean, we’d known each other for two years already and he’d never done anything to me before.
“Audrey, I’m sorry.”
“Right. So…you’re a vampire? What do you mean? No, wait. First just tell me how you knew I was turning into a zombie. Let’s start with something I can maybe understand.” I sat back down on my bed, facing him, with my legs dangling down and I placed my hands on my lap, bandaged hand lightly on top of the normal one.
“Well, first of all, I could smell that.” He looked down at my bandaged hand.
I looked down at it now as well and said, “What? It has a smell?” I lifted it up to my nose and sniffed a little, but all I could catch a whiff of was the antiseptic that had been used by Agnes. As I continued sniffing though I caught a very slight musty odor, but I thought maybe that was only the bandage itself.
“You won’t be able to smell it.” He smiled at me and looked down at his hands as he spoke, “Haven’t you ever noticed anything weird about me? I mean, we’ve known each other now for what, two years?” He looked back up at me and met my eyes with his. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, sure, we’d known each other for two years and three months now (not that I was keeping track or anything), but I never really thought there was anything weird about him. I was weird! At least, that’s what everyone at my school always told me. Maybe now that I actually thought about it, that’s why Kirk and I got along so well--we were both weirdos. Huh.
“Okay but how do you know I’m turning into a zombie just by the smell of my hand? You’ve met a lot of zombies before?” I waited nervously.
“It smells like decay.”
“Oh man, I knew it would be something gross like that.”
“It’s not throughout your whole body yet...” He trailed off and I glanced up at him. He was looking at me as if he had x-ray vision and I could feel my cheeks suddenly burning with color.
“See? You still have some regular blood flowing through you.” He smiled and I began fumbling for one of my pillows, placing it over my lap and chest. I suddenly felt very exposed.
“Okay so you’re saying you can smell the decay then?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I could tell there was a change in you, biologically, when I caught your scent tonight, and I just sort of…figured it out.”
“But how did you come to that particular conclusion? I just don’t get it.”
He was quiet for a brief moment and then said, “It’s something that comes with what I am now, and also…I’ve seen things in books. Magickal crap… I like to go to Magick Eye too you know. It is how we met.” He grinned at me then and I looked down at my lap again.
“Well…I don’t know how I feel about that.”
He shrugged and got up from the window seat, coming over to stand in front of me. I looked up at him with eyes that felt like saucers, wondering what he could possibly be thinking. “I know you don’t have a lot of time left.” He took my bandaged hand from my lap and held it gently in his. “I can help you now and prevent you from fully changing into a zombie, Audrey. You won’t have to kill your dad.”
I flinched a little at that and looked at my wounded hand in his. I wished at that moment that I didn’t have a bandage on… Oh stop it! I thought to myself. This was a serious moment. He was confiding in me and trying to help me at the same time. And he was my friend. Did I actually believe he was a vampire? I don’t know. I mean, why not? I was currently on my way to Zombieville and I had just learned that Agnes was a real spell-casting witch, so…sure. I believed it. “How old are you, exactly?”
He laughed and said, “Seventeen. I’m not super old or anything. I’m still pretty new to all of this.”
“Well what exactly does ‘all of this’ consist of?”
“Audrey! K
irk! Dinner’s ready,” my dad called out from the hallway.
“Crap.” I took my hand back from Kirk’s and threw the pillow I had on my lap back to the head of my bed and hopped up quickly. I looked at Kirk. “Later?”
“Of course.” He walked around me and opened my bedroom door for me.
“So chivalrous.” I strolled by casually and he laughed.
We headed out to the dining room and saw that my dad had already set the table for the three of us. He always enjoyed when we had company over. It gave him an excuse to get out what he called his “fine China”, which was really just a set of collectible H.G. Wells cover art plates, with each plate displaying different artwork from various H.G. Wells novels. My dad was a big sci-fi geek.
“I made spaghetti!” he said, bringing out the garlic bread and the sauce. My dad’s spaghetti was awesome, and the recipe had been passed down through the family throughout the years.
I glanced at the garlic bread and then up at Kirk curiously and he gave me a slight smirk and shook his head no. Well, that answered the no garlic question.
“I’ll grab the noodles!” I said, heading into the kitchen.
__
Dinner went by without a hitch and my dad allowed Kirk and I to watch a movie, seeing as it was a Saturday night.
“Try not to be too loud with it though, okay? And let me know when Kirk leaves?”
“Sure Dad, no problem.”
He walked slowly off to his room, appearing almost as if he were sleepwalking. I felt bad for him. He was keeping up a normal appearance for Kirk’s sake. I guess I could have told him that Kirk knew now, but that meant I would have to tell him the other part that Kirk had told me and I wasn’t exactly ready for that yet. I still needed to find out more things for myself anyway.
We went into my room, and I closed the door behind us. I stepped over to my movie rack and began searching for something to put on.
“You’re not actually planning on watching something, are you?”
“Keeping up appearances here, hello? Sheesh, for a vampire you’re not that stealthy.”
“Ha ha. Just put on something we’ve seen a million times so it won’t distract us.”
“Kung Pow it is then.”
“That movie will always distract us. Put on The Wedding Singer or something.”
“Okay fine.” I started the movie and then sat on my bed again, facing him. “So…speak.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You were going to tell me what being a vampire consisted of.”
“Well…that’s kind of a lot to tell in only an hour and a half. Maybe you should have put on Lawrence of Arabia.”
“No one needs that kind of torture.” I shook my head in annoyance at the memory of that horribly boring movie and then said, “Come on Kirk. What all is there to tell that’s so hard? And if you can’t explain it that easily then why should I be convinced that you should change me? Who’s to say I won’t still want to eat my dad? Or Bruce, or some stranger? I know that I’ll have to eat people still. So what’s the difference?”
“There’s a huge difference. You’ll still be in control of your mind, unlike if you turned into a full-blown zombie. You can still eat regular food and pass yourself off as human. You can still be with your dad. Isn’t that what you want?”
I was quiet and thought for a moment about what he said. Of course it made sense. I thought about Agnes trying to find something to help me now and Bruce maybe being able to work with Agnes. If they could maybe figure something out, then I wouldn’t have to do something as drastic as becoming a vampire--if that even worked. Who knew at this point? “That is what I want, I mean of course. But my dad already told Bruce everything. And apparently the lady whose fault this is--partially--is trying to work on something to help with it. She’s the reason I didn’t change overnight anyway. And if she and Bruce work together, maybe they can find something else. Like, an alternative plan or something? Other than me becoming any form of the walking dead I mean. No offense or anything,” I added quickly.
Kirk stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable, and then he began shaking his head. “They’re not going to find anything. Don’t you see that? Hoping for that is just…stupid.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“No I’m not calling you stupid! I’m calling you naïve!”
“Is that any better?!” I stood up, getting pretty annoyed. He stood up too and took a step towards me.
“Audrey, I’m giving you an opportunity here. You’re on a serious time limit. Can’t you see that?”
“I know!” I threw up my arms angrily and grabbed my head in exasperation. “I’m freaking out! But I don’t want to be dead! And you haven’t really told me much about what you are now or what you eat, besides the occasional human meal!” I turned away from him and flopped down onto my bed, putting a pillow over my head. I didn’t care if I was being immature.
“The occasional human meal,” he said, and laughed sharply. “That’s a funny way to phrase it.”
I turned my head and looked at him from under my pillow, “Why is that funny?”
He put his hands up to his face and began rubbing it, appearing to be tired. But when he removed them his eyes had changed color and he had grown fangs.
“Whoa.” I sat up quickly and curled up against my headboard, putting the pillow in front of me. “You look…scary.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and turned his solid black eyes to mine. “I eat people, Audrey. I have to. It’s not that I want to…well I mean I do now, but I need to in order to survive. Sure, sometimes the occasional blood bag from a hospital will work, or an animal here and there if you’re really desperate; but straight from the source is what you really need, sad to say.”
“Can you control it?”
“Of course! I would never-” He drew his fangs in suddenly, and his eyes went back to normal. “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to see what I looked like, that’s all. I would never hurt you or your dad, or Bruce, or anyone else for that matter. Unless I had to, of course.”
My eyes opened wide with fear at that last sentence and he quickly said, “No, no…I mean I would never hurt anyone I know, or that I’m close to. I would never…feed from them either. I only feed off of people--strangers mainly--when necessary. I say ‘eat’ and that makes it sound really bad. I have actually only killed a handful of people.” He looked at me again and saw my obvious confusion now at this statement.
“You’re wondering how I don’t kill all of my victims.”
“Pretty much, yeah,” I said, nodding my head.
“Think of vampire bats. They land on other animals and take a nibble here and there, and then fly away.” He looked and saw the next question forming in my mind and said, “No, I can not change into a bat.” He laughed a little, “That would be pretty cool, but no. How it works is I just take a little blood from several different people on the nights that I hunt, heal the wound and move on. Easy.” He shrugged and smiled at me.
“But how do you keep them from freaking out?”
“We have the ability to hypnotize people, or glamour them. I guess that’s the more popular term. So I glamour, feed, heal…and then move on.”
“Why don’t you just eat one person, and kill them? I mean, what’s stopping you from doing it that way?”
“I don’t know. I guess…I just don’t have to? I know there are plenty of others who do. I just don’t want to if I don’t see a good enough reason.”
“So, who have you killed?”
“People who deserved it. Let’s just leave it at that. I’m not perfect Audrey. I have a temper.” He stared straight ahead now, not looking at me.
“Okay… So who changed you? Or how did you become what you are?”
He shifted on the bed and turned towards me. He seemed to hesitate and then said, “I was given a choice. Similar to what you’re going through now. Not the whole zombie thing, but
still a big, difficult decision. And this was what I chose.”
“Well what-”
“Don’t bother asking me what the choice was between, because I’m not ready to talk about that yet.” He saw that I looked a little embarrassed and quickly said, “I’m sorry. It’s just…sensitive.” He smiled apologetically at me.
“I get it. It’s fine.” I smiled back and relaxed a little more. Now that I knew he wasn’t going to pounce, I guess I could feel normal again. Well, as normal as I could possibly feel considering the circumstances: a soon to be zombie and a vampire, as friends. Could we get any weirder? Maybe now was not the best time to ask myself that question.
“I know that you’re a…vampire…and everything--and that alone is going to take some getting used to--but it’s just so weird to me that you’ve killed people.” I looked at him and asked, “Were they at least bad? I mean, I know you said they deserved it; sooo…is that what you meant? It’s just, everyone’s reasoning for why people ‘deserve’ to die isn’t always the same, you know?” He seemed kind of surprised by this and I quickly began clarifying what I was trying to say. “Look, I have a really high regard for your opinions Kirk, and I think that when you tell me someone deserved it, they probably did. And I get that you’re a vampire and it is technically in a vampire’s nature to kill people. At least it is in every book I’ve read about them and every movie I’ve seen starring them.” I smiled slightly and continued, “I’m just trying to understand, is all.” I leaned forward and touched his arm lightly.
“Audrey I’m not going to tell you anything like that to make you feel better about the fact that I’m a vampire or that, yes, I killed people. Whether or not they deserved it, they’re dead now. And that is something I’m responsible for.” He pulled his arm away from mine and stood up, keeping his back towards me.
I was quiet, not really knowing what to say. This was making me feel incredibly awkward right now. What in the hell are you supposed to do when your best friend tells you they’re a vampire and they want to change you into one as well to try and save your life?
Who is Audrey Wickersham? Page 6