The Vampire Underground

by Brian Rowe

  “What’s going to happen to them?” Brin said, scooting even closer.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  “Here. Let’s go down. We shouldn’t keep talking up here. They might find us.”

  He started moving, but Brin didn’t want to budge. She was happy with her spot; she didn’t want to move a muscle until she saw the first sign of daylight. But she wasn’t about to stop Paul. He softly kicked open a door latch and slipped down underneath the floorboards with the grace of an Olympic gymnast.

  “Uhh… Paul?” Brin said. “Where’d you go?”

  “Down here,” he said. “Scoot to the corner of the room and drop down.”

  She felt scared to go down, especially after Chace went down, after Sawyer went down, after Lavender went down. Brin preferred to stay above ground. She would have rather jumped to the top of the shack for a quick chat than go beneath the floorboards.

  Worst of all, darkness would overcome her, again. She wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

  But she crawled her way to the other side of the room anyway. She figured she needed to trust this guy, whoever or whatever he was.

  “Where’s the staircase?” Brin said, squinting, trying to see the empty space in the floor.

  “Staircase?” Paul’s voice sounded fainter.

  “Yeah. How do I get down?”

  “You have to jump.”

  “I have to what?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not far.”

  Easy for you to say, she thought. You live here.

  Brin lay on her back and stretched her left foot out. She tried to feel the open space, but the edge of her foot bounced against the floorboard and back up. She scooted farther left, to the back corner of the room. Again she stretched her foot out, straight this time, like she was performing yoga, and tried to feel for the space. Nothing.

  “Did you close it?” Brin said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t feel where the opening is.”

  She scooted her butt forward one more time.

  “I don’t feel—”

  The back of her head smacked the floorboard as she fell into a black abyss.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  She braced for impact, but she crashed not against hard dirt ground but a pair of arms that felt as soft as her velvety pillow.

  “I’ve got you,” Paul said, and Brin looked up to see his face in full view for the first time. His eyes were striking, the color of forest green. His brown auburn hair was short, wavy, and perfect, and his muscles, small but blossoming below his shoulders, glowed underneath an ancient lampshade.

  Brin looked up at Paul, and Paul looked down at Brin. Her left arm draped down toward the ground, and she realized in this moment she was the damsel in distress, and he was her Prince Charming.

  A prince who drinks blood and prefers to stay indoors, she thought.

  “You got me,” she said. “Now will you let me go?”

  “You want me to?”

  “Yeah. But first, could you—”

  He let her go before she could finish and she crashed against the dusty ground this Paul fellow called his carpet.

  “Thanks,” she said, facetiously.

  “No problem,” Paul said, not recognizing her sarcasm, sitting down at an old, grandfatherly table a few feet behind her. Of course he only had one chair, so when Brin stood back up, she had nowhere to sit down. “Sorry, I don’t have another chair,” he continued. “I rarely have company.”

  “Looks like you don’t have any company,” Brin said, surveying the dank room. She didn’t see any doors, except for a large metallic one behind her. The four walls that surrounded her were the extent of this guy’s home. There was a tiny twin bed in one corner, and a tall, impressive bookshelf in another. The last corner of the room had a giant cooler.

  “You want to sit down?” Paul said, motioning to the chair.

  “What’s in that cooler over there?” Brin said, ignoring his question.

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  Brin sighed. “I probably don’t.”

  He stood up from the chair, but she shook her head, leaning her butt up against the table. “I prefer to stand. I need to…” She looked around the room again. “Jesus. Don’t you get claustrophobic in here?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I would go crazy if I lived in a place like this.”

  Silence ensued for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve actually never had someone down here before.”

  She narrowed her eyebrows and shot him a confused look. “Never?”

  “No. I’ve been banished from the Underground for a long time. They don’t know I’ve returned. At least… I don’t think they do.”

  “The Underground?” Brin said. “What’s the Underground?”

  “It’s where we live. Well… where they live.”

  “The vampires.”

  Paul shook his head and tapped his fingers against his sides. “I told you. We don’t like to be called that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he said, “we differ from vampires in one major sense.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you ask a lot of questions?”

  Brin’s eyes went wide. “How could I not ask questions? Any normal person in my position right now would be asking a thousand questions!”

  “You’re probably right,” he said.

  “May I ask you…” Brin crossed her arms and sighed, thoughtfully. “How did you get this way?”

  Paul stared at her with his large eyes, two holes of green that surrounded a pasty white face. He didn’t say anything for a moment. But before Brin moved on to a less invasive question, he brought his hand to her leg and scooted up close to her.

  “I’ve been dead a long time. But the dead part? It’s actually been better than the part when I was alive.”

  “What do you mean? How long have you been dead?”

  “As I said, a long time.” He looked down, running his fingers against Brin’s leg. “The bastard turned me… before I could escape… before I could finally be free.”

  Brin noticed that Paul now had two hands on her leg instead of one. She knew she didn’t have time to listen to this vampire’s life story; she needed to push this vampire away, jump out of the shack, and start running again, this time not three miles out of Bodie, but three hundred. But she also knew being on her own right now was the fastest way to getting butchered, and she felt safe with Paul, at least for the time being. She could trust him.

  I think I can trust him.

  Brin brought her hand toward Paul’s. “Who’s the man that did this to y—”

  “Shh!” Paul jumped up to his feet and leaned against Brin, clasping his hand around her mouth again.

  She didn’t say another word. She tried not to even breathe.

  All she could think was: Now what?

  “I heard something,” he said. “Stay here a second.”

  Brin didn’t like playing the damsel in distress, but she nodded anyway, and sat down on Paul’s chair.

  “Don’t move,” he said, before leaping up from the table to the ground above.

  Brin stayed put and curled into a ball. She started rocking herself back and forth before she realized it had been a long while since she last checked her cell phone, even though she knew it was more likely to have service at the center of Jupiter than here underneath this forgotten city.

  She didn’t have any bars at the top of her phone—surprise, surprise—but she was able to see the time. It was 1:01 A.M.

  Somebody has to have called for help by now, she thought. Six people left their families this morning, and six people were expected to be home hours ago. There has to be someone on the way. There has to be.

  Brin put the phone back in her pocket. She looked up toward the hole in the ceiling and realized she hadn’t heard any movement in over a minute
.

  “Paul?” she whispered.

  She leaned forward and turned in a way so she could look up at the floor above.

  As soon as she did, Paul crashed back down toward her.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ash felt ready to drift to sleep as he pulled into the small town of Bridgeport, just a few miles north of Route 270. The city was comprised of four quiet, depressing blocks, with nothing substantial to or from for at least sixty miles. It was Ash’s last stop to get gas before trucking on down to Bodie, so he pulled into the desolate Shell station.

  Most of the lights were off, and any Saturday night activity in town was nonexistent. Ash stepped out of his Beetle to see that only one of the four pumps was even in operation. He turned to the mini-mart. Even though it too looked dark, a faded OPEN sign was lit on the outside.

  He picked premium and swiped his dads’ Shell card—one of the beauties of driving for Ash was to get all his gas for free—before being greeted with a lovely little ERROR symbol.

  “Oh come on,” he said. He swiped the card again. Another ERROR. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He turned around and glanced in the mini-mart. It was ominously dark inside. He really didn’t want to go in if he could avoid it.

  Ash tried the card one more time. “PLEASE SEE CASHIER,” it said.

  “Shit,” he said, before gulping loudly.

  He dropped his keys into his tight jeans pocket and strolled toward the mini-mart, hoping the employee inside would be a bored, harmless teenager and not a creepy old man with knives for earrings.

  Ash opened the door and stepped inside. It wasn’t pitch black, but it certainly didn’t look like the place was open; worse, it didn’t look like anybody was around.

  He searched the counter for a bell.

  “Hello?”

  Ash stopped moving. He listened hard. A rumbling noise erupted from the hallway behind the counter. Then he heard screams.

  Instead of running in the other direction, however, Ash stepped forward. He moseyed on down the hallway, to an office that looked even smaller than his miniscule closet.

  He peered inside to see a young man with a scraggly beard and a short stature sprawled out on a computer chair. He was watching a movie on his laptop, and not just any movie.

  “Oh my God,” Ash said. “Is that the Nightmare on Elm Street remake?”

  The guy turned around, his mouth stuffed with Twizzlers. “I’m sorry,” he tried to say through his chewing, “are you a customer? Do you need something?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do need something,” Ash said, angrily setting his hands on his sides. “I want to know what you’re watching.”

  “What?”

  “What’s the name of the movie you’re watching?”

  The young guy turned toward his laptop, then back to Ash, confused. “It’s… uhh… A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

  “It’s an abomination is what it is!” Ash screamed, jumping into the little room and slamming the guy’s laptop screen down.

  “Hey! Don’t touch my shit, man! Do you want me to call the cops?”

  “Are you one of Michael Bay’s minions?” Ash said loudly.

  The guy didn’t look angry by his question, just perplexed.

  “Did you fail the third grade?” Ash said even louder.

  Again, the guy stared back bewildered.

  “Are you aware that this is an overdone, poorly acted, inarguably needless remake of a much better movie made back before your pathetic self was even born?”

  He shook his head.

  “You didn’t,” Ash said. “Well let me tell you something. You’re a part of, what I like to call, the Remake generation. You can’t think for yourself, because everything is spoon-fed, especially when it comes to the movies you watch. You put on any mindless entertainment you can stand to stare at for ninety minutes. Adam Sandler comedies… the endless summer sequels… and one unthinkable horror remake after another! What’s next, remaking John Carpenter’s Halloween? Oh wait. They did. Guys like you disgust me. Here you are, living out in the boondocks… at the very least you could have some culture in your life. And some knowledge. Because the real horrors in the world? They’re not the serial killers or the rapists or the thieves. Or even this blasted economy. It’s the numbskulls like you who choose to watch the remake of A Nightmare on the Elm Street rather than Wes Craven’s masterful original!”

  The guy finally swallowed his last Twizzler. “Can I help you with something?”

  Ash’s forehead perspired not just beads of sweat but blotches of it. He looked ready to scream. But he remained calm. “Yes,” Ash said. “My card doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “OK. I’ll meet you at the front.”

  Ash nodded. “OK.” He made his way back to the counter, and the round-faced twenty-something cashier followed him close behind.

  “All right,” the young man said as he approached the counter. “You’re on the first pump, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I see your card?” Ash handed him his gas card. The cashier examined it. “Is this you? Marcus Gorman?”

  Ash shook his head. “No, he’s one of my dads.”

  “One of…?”

  “Just give me sixty dollars on the first pump, please. I’m in a hurry.”

  The guy started punching buttons on the machine before turning back to Ash. “What’s the hurry? It’s one in the morning.” He handed him back the card.

  “Mister, my morning’s just begun.”

  Ash signed the receipt, then marched back to his car. He filled his Beetle with enough premium to get him to Bodie and all the way home.

  He pulled out of the station, looking in his rearview mirror one more time to see that the cashier was away from the front desk, and most assuredly back inside his sad little office.

  “At least it wasn’t the Halloween remake,” Ash said with a snarl. “Or I might’ve killed the guy.”

  Ash drove slowly through the ominously silent Bridgeport. He found it odd that this wasn’t the ghost town. It was Saturday night, yet the town was completely devoid of people.

  “Can’t imagine what New Year’s Eve is like out here,” he said with a chuckle.

  As Ash reached eighty miles per hour on the slim two-lane freeway past the town, he realized he was probably going to have to either sleep in the car overnight or stay in one of the run-down motels back in Bridgeport. He didn’t have the energy to stay up all night.

  Ash was in a daze. He didn’t know what he was doing out here anymore. The idea of driving to find Brin had seemed appropriate at the time, but now he felt like his best friend was nowhere near here, and that she was probably back in Grisly by now, snug in her bed, snoring loud enough to wake up all the inhabitants of Diablo Shadows.

  “She’s not here,” he said. “She’s not going to be h—”

  Ash stopped two things—his rambling and his car.

  He turned to the left, his car idling in the middle of the road, to see the turnout for Route 270 and the sign for Bodie Ghost Town.

  Then he saw the CLOSED barricade.

  “Psh,” he said, shaking his head. “What a waste of time this was.”

  He looked over his shoulder to see that no other cars were coming and going down US-395. He was the only schmuck out in these parts in the middle of the night.

  Ash backed up, veered the steering wheel to the left, and started turning around. He figured that if he sped ten miles over the speed limit the entire way back, he could get home in two and a half hours. That would put him on the driveway, into his bedroom, under his covers, before 4 A.M. He didn’t have any plans for Sunday. His dads wanted him to see the newest Bradley Cooper movie with them in the early afternoon, but he could take a pass on that if he wanted to. He could sleep in super late, just the way he liked it on a lazy, uneventful Sunday.

  He turned the car around and prepared to head back to Bridgeport, when he looked b
ack at the barricade one final time. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. It was only five degrees outside, and he didn’t want to get out of the car. But he knew, now, that he had to.

  “What the hell?”

  He pulled his Beetle to the side of the road and stepped outside. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but it was still mercilessly freezing out. His cheeks fell victim to the cold, and by the time he took his fifth step, his hands had gone completely numb.

  Ash marched toward the right side of the barricade and looked down at the snow to see the large tire marks, the kind a van would make, a van that might house a group of six kids looking to make a movie.

  He walked back to his car. He wanted to leave. He wanted to go home.

  But Ash turned around again. He could feel it in his gut.

  “You’re out here, aren’t you, Brin?”

  He didn’t hear a response. All he was met with was silence.

  Chapter Thirty

  One of the deformed, drooling vampires hooked his claws against Brin’s face and brought her down to the dirt ground. He opened his mouth, revealing a pair of dark yellow fangs.

  “No!” Brin shouted. “No! Stop!”

  She formed a fist with her right hand and slugged the grotesque creature in the jaw. She hit him hard, causing his black blood to spray in every direction.

  Irritated and thirsty for blood, the vampire pushed his elongated hands against her chest and brought his teeth down to her neck.

  “Paul! Help!”

  She could see him brawling with the other unwelcome creature on the opposite side of the room. But her attention changed quickly from Paul to the creature behind her trying to eat her face.

  She grabbed the vampire’s gray hair and pulled it back, but he didn’t budge. She tried to kick him away, but he was too strong. Nothing she did worked. He leaned his chest against her back, pushed her head down, and grinded his teeth up against her neck.

  “Get off!” Brin shouted, trying to push him away with every ounce of her being. “Goddammit, get off! Help! Pleeeeeease!”

  Help finally came. Paul swung the decapitated head of his vampire opponent against the head of the vampire currently on top of her. She closed her eyes and her mouth as blood splattered against every inch of her face and neck.