by Brian Rowe
He did, and even though he was driving on snow, he managed to get the Beetle speeding upward of fifty miles per hour. Five more vampires leapt toward the back bumper but failed in their attempts. The hole grew wider, but instead of taking the car and the humans, it took more than fifty of the running vampires, killing them all with a long drop into the vast, deep Underground.
The hole stopped growing. The vampires stopped running. Ash left them all in the snowy dust behind him.
Brin pulled Paul on top of her and slammed the passenger door.
“Whoa,” Paul said. “That was close.”
Brin looked at Paul. Their foreheads were touching. Their lips were so close she could feel his breath on her chin.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, softly. “You didn’t leave me.”
She heard a relieved sigh from Dylan in the back, while Lavender was noticeably weeping, again. Ash wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“We made it,” Brin said. “We survived.”
“Barely,” Dylan whispered from the back seat.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Ash said. “I’ll feel safer when we’re back on the freeway.”
“We’re gonna be fine,” Brin said. “There’s nothing more to worry about.”
“There’s a vampire in my car,” Ash said in a condescending tone. “There’s plenty to worry about.”
“He’s harmless,” she said, trying to get comfortable in the passenger seat. “Aren’t you, Paul?”
He was no longer shoved against Brin. His butt was pressed against the front of the passenger seat, and his legs were shoved up against the glove compartment. He nodded. “I am.”
“You’re not gonna suck my blood?” Ash said.
“No,” Paul said.
“You’re not gonna kill me? You’re not gonna go all Max Schreck on me?”
Brin gave Ash a confused look. “Max Schreck?”
“From Nosferatu, duh,” he said. “Weren’t you paying attention in Film class last week?”
“Not as much as you, apparently.”
“I swear, this day,” Ash said, “it gives Nosferatu and Dracula and even freakin’ Twilight a whole new meaning.” He returned his gaze to Paul. “And by the way, I have to ask, how are you alive? I thought daylight turned vampires to dust!”
Brin turned to Paul, who gave her a knowing look. “That’s the other thing that makes you different,” Brin said. “The sun… it doesn’t kill you.”
He shook his head. “It does not.”
“So then why do you have to live underground?” Brin said.
He licked his cracked lips and stared at her for a moment, like he was keeping a secret from her. “I hope you’ll never have to find that out.”
She looked away, like she had said something that treaded on Paul’s territory. She figured he would give her the answers to all of her questions. Eventually.
Ash swerved to the left, then to the right, then back to the left, ensuring headaches for everyone inside his car. But the zigzagging promised good news: they were minutes away from the freeway.
“Almost there,” Ash said. “Cross your fingers.”
Brin didn’t need to cross her fingers. She felt positive they had escaped the creatures of the night (and day). As everyone in the car sat in silence, Brin couldn’t help wondering what she was going to do with Paul once they arrived in Grisly. She figured her mom would let him stay with them for a bit; there was a foldout bed in the basement, after all. But she didn’t know how her mom would take it, having a guy her age staying under the same roof as her daughter. And she wasn’t sure if Paul was going to be able to blend in with all the humans who preferred string cheese and apples over microwaved blood for an afternoon snack.
As the road kept winding, and as they reached the last mile before the freeway, Brin put her hands on Paul’s legs and leaned against the passenger side window, looking out at the tall mountains in the distance. She couldn’t believe that they had made it out of this nightmare alive, that only two of their six group members had been killed in all the mayhem.
She couldn’t believe the whole nightmare had happened, period.
What Ash said is right, Brin thought. What happened… it was like something out of a freaking horror movie.
Brin looked at Ash, who appeared calmer and less frightened as he concentrated on the snow-drenched road in front of him. Of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Brin was able to believe that vampires existed, that at least one of the vampires had decency in him, that the Underground and that circus of unforgettable horrors was one hundred percent real.
But she couldn’t believe that Ash had driven all the way from Grisly to Bodie to save them. If he hadn’t been there with his car, at that exact moment, she and Lavender and Dylan, and most likely Anaya too, would all be dead. What motivated Ash to come to Bodie in the first place? How did he know she would still be there? They had been best friends for years, but Ash had driven over three hours, in the middle of the night, through snow and sleet, merely to make sure she was OK? Ash had always been a special guy in her life, no doubt about it, but now she had to think of him as her savior and inspiration. He was, simply put, the greatest friend she could ever ask for.
“Thank you,” Brin said.
Ash didn’t look her way at first. But then he glanced at her, confused. He pointed to himself. “Me?”
“Yes, you, dummy,” Brin said. “If it hadn’t been for you…”
She put hand on his shoulder. He smiled, before bringing his focus back to the road ahead.
“It was nothing,” he said. “I’m just glad I trusted my instincts. I could just… I could feel it. I could tell something was wrong.” He sighed, loudly. “I didn’t know there’d be vampires, but I guess you learn something new every day, huh?”
He turned toward Brin. She wasn’t listening to him any longer.
“Brin?” Ash said.
She didn’t respond. She had her eyes fixated on something outside.
“Oh my God,” Brin said.
“What?” Ash said. “What the hell is it now?”
“It’s…” Brin squinted. “It’s an RV.”
“An RV?”
Brin sat upright. “Stop,” she said. “Stop the car.”
“What? No.”
“Stop the car, Ashley!”
He slammed on the brakes. He could see the freeway in the distance. They were less than a minute away. “What have I told you a gazillion times? Never call me—”
He wasn’t able to finish his sentence. Brin stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Everyone else stayed inside, including Paul, who scooted back against the seat and shook his head in bewilderment.
“What is she doing?” Ash said. “Anaya?”
Anaya was able to get the best look out her window. “She’s walking to the RV.”
“Why?”
Anaya paused. “There’s someone over there,” Anaya said. “It looks like... a little girl.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“Hello?” Brin said as she walked up to the RV.
It was tipped over on its side and covered in snow. She had seen correctly—a little girl was cowering and crying next to the overturned vehicle.
“My name is Brin. Can you hear me?”
The girl didn’t answer. She looked confused, like the RV accident had left her in a state of permanent shock.
She was pale in the face, but thankfully without any red in her eyes. Brin took a few steps closer.
“Do you need help?”
The girl said nothing. She had tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Was anyone else in the motorhome?”
The girl nodded.
“I’m so sorry.”
The girl finally locked eyes with Brin. She looked cold and famished, like she was in need of a jacket, a hot meal, and a friend.
Brin put her hand out. “You need to come with me,” she said. She knew that little room remaine
d in Ash’s Beetle, but the girl was little; they could fit her inside.
“Hmmph,” the girl finally said as stumbled over to Brin. It was more of a grunt than a word. Brin tried to ignore it.
“Can you speak?” Brin said. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Hmmph,” again. The girl started moving faster. Brin would’ve run back to the car if a red glow appeared before her, but alas, the girl’s eyes were normal. Brin felt safe.
She looks sick, Brin thought. She needs a hospital. Maybe in Bridgeport. Maybe they have a place.
The girl kept stumbling toward her. She was just a few feet away now.
Brin prepared herself to hug and comfort the poor girl, when a loud shout from behind turned her around.
“Goddammit, Brin!” Lavender shouted, marching at top speeds, a heated demeanor on her face. Ash stood to the left of the car, his arms crossed, like he had tried to stop her from escaping the vehicle. “We already saved your stupid vampire boyfriend. Now we’re sitting here for minutes on end while you talk to some stranger. Let’s go! I’m not gonna die out here because you’re being a dumb, inconsiderate bitch!”
Lavender grabbed Brin’s arm, but she shook it away. “What did you call me?”
“Let’s go!” Lavender said. The popular cheerleader, up until now fairly pleasant, was finally showing her true colors. “Let’s go, or we’re leaving without you!”
“Ash wouldn’t leave me here.”
“No,” she said. “But I would!”
“This girl needs help!” Brin shouted, trying to ignore the fact that Lavender had threatened to leave Brin and Ash behind. “We can’t just leave her here!”
“You don’t know her! She could be another freaking vampire for all we know! Come on!”
Lavender grabbed Brin’s arm so tight that she couldn’t escape. She tried to pry herself away, but Lavender was stronger than she let on.
“Let go of me!” Brin shouted. “Let me—”
Lavender let Brin go, by kicking her in the stomach, sending her down against the snow.
“Hey!” Ash shouted in the distance. “What the hell was that!”
“This is all your fault,” Lavender said, ignoring Ash, her hands pressed to her sides. “If it weren’t for you, Chace would still be alive.”
Brin was in shock. She couldn’t believe it. All this time, she thought the feisty Anaya was the villain of this adventure. But it had been Lavender all along.
“Paul and I,” Brin said, “we saved you guys...”
“Shut up, you bitch!” Lavender screamed. “You get in the car right now or I’m kicking your little faggy Ashley friend in the balls and leaving you both here to die, just like Chace, just like—”
Lavender didn’t get a chance to say Sawyer’s name; instead a scream erupted from her lungs so loud it echoed all the way back to Bodie Ghost Town.
“What…” Brin didn’t know what was happening.
Lavender hunched over, her mouth agape, and she turned to her right. The little girl was hopped up on Lavender’s back, sinking her teeth deep into her neck.
“Oh God!” Brin shouted.
“Get her off me!” Lavender shouted louder. “Oh my God, it hurts!”
Brin wanted to help her. But she could only sit and watch, as Lavender grabbed the girl by her hair and pulled her head away from her neck. The girl took a small, gory chunk out of Lavender’s neck before Lavender flung her hard against the snowy ground and started racing toward the car.
Lavender looked ready to faint, but Brin rushed up to her quickly and grabbed her arms. Brin took one look back at the little girl to see that she wasn’t just licking the blood off Lavender’s flesh; the girl was eating the flesh.
“What the hell—”
“Get in the car!” Ash shouted.
Brin kicked Lavender into the back and then fell into Paul’s arms in the passenger seat, as Ash turned on the ignition and sped back down the road.
“You OK?” Dylan said to Lavender.
The girl snapped. “Do I look all right, you piece of shit? Owwww!” She had her hand slammed up against her neck. It was a small flesh wound, and the blood wasn’t dripping down her shoulders as much as Brin thought it might. But Brin knew it was an unsanitary turn of events, to be sure, and that the wound didn’t mean good things.
She peered up at Paul, selfishly thankful Lavender had walked over to chastise her, because if she hadn’t, she would have been the one with the chunk out of her neck.
“Is she gonna turn into a vampire?” Brin whispered softly to Paul.
He shook his head. “No. There wasn’t enough time to suck the blood out.” He looked in the back seat to see Anaya checking out Lavender’s wound and trying to calm her down. Paul leaned his face toward Brin’s, their lips almost touching again. “The weird thing is… that little girl didn’t look particularly interested in her blood. She looked interested… in her flesh.”
Brin shook her head. “Whatever. I’m just glad the death toll is still two, and only two.”
“Yeah.” Paul didn’t look too confident about his following statement: “She’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be fine,” Brin repeated, and she rested her head against Paul’s neck, of all places, as Ash pulled out onto the US-395 freeway and started heading back to Grisly, Nevada.
Chapter Forty-Four
After Ash dropped off Anaya, Dylan, and Lavender at their respective houses—while pale and sweaty, Lavender insisted she was fine and didn’t need to be taken to urgent care—he made his final stop at Brin’s driveway.
Ash turned to his right. Brin was still sitting on top of Paul.
“Home sweet home,” Ash said.
“Oh my God,” Brin said, finishing wiping all the vampire make-up off her face with a wet rag from Ash’s glove compartment. She sat upright and brought her arms to the dashboard.
“What?”
Brin looked at her friend. “I just can’t believe I’m here, Ash. Last night… in those tunnels… I had this feeling… I wasn’t gonna get out of there.” She bit down on her bottom lip and nodded. “But we did.”
“You’ve already thanked me,” Ash said. “We’re fine now. Let’s just try to go back to normal… if that’s even possible.” He glanced awkwardly at Paul, then back at Brin. “Is he really gonna stay under the same roof with you?”
Paul smiled at Ash. “I can hear you, you know.”
“I’ll be OK,” Brin said, and she opened the passenger side door. She laughed to herself: the first thought that entered her head upon exiting the car was that she had French and English homework due tomorrow morning.
Paul stepped outside the car, too, and walked toward the garage door. He stopped, as Brin leaned back down inside the car.
“I’m gonna have to pay you back for this,” Brin said. “Someday, somehow.”
“I just hope you’ll be OK,” Ash said. “I saw some crazy stuff in the last few hours. I can’t even imagine what you’ve seen.”
“It doesn’t seem real. I don’t know how affected I’ll be about it considering I feel like it was all some cheesy B-grade vampire movie.”
“Which you know you’re the biggest fan of, right?” Ash smiled.
Brin smiled back. “Oh yeah.”
“What vampire movie do you think we’re gonna start in Barker’s class tomorrow?”
“I shudder to think. Dracula: Dead and Loving It?”
“Or how about that Twilight spoof, Vampires Suck?”
“Oh God, I hope not.” Brin started laughing. It felt good to laugh. She hadn’t laughed at all in the last twenty-four hours.
“Hopefully it will be one of the classics,” Ash said. “I love the classics.”
“I know you do. I do, too.”
“And you’ll learn, someday soon, that Alfred Hitchcock is the greatest director of all the classics. Watch one of his movies with me. Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window?”
“Are they scary?”
He shook his head. “A lot le
ss scary than anything you took on this weekend.”
Brin smiled, but then shrugged. “Ehh… I don’t know…”
“Please?”
“Well… maybe.”
Ash smiled. “I’ll take a maybe.”
“Bye.”
“Take care.”
Brin closed the door and watched as Ash pulled out of her driveway and sped down the desolate street out of her neighborhood.
She turned around and immediately felt a chill run down her spine. She had forgotten, for a split second, that a vampire stood on her driveway.
“So here we are,” Paul said.
“Yes,” Brin said. “And in the sun! You sure you’re OK?”
“Fine,” he said. “I mean… a little nauseous, I won’t lie.”
“Oh!” Brin rushed forward and grabbed Paul by his hands, whisking him toward her front door. “I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I thought daylight didn’t hurt you.”
“It doesn’t kill us,” Paul said. “But it does make us feel sick after a while. We prefer to be indoors if possible.”
“Underground?”
“Even better.”
Brin approached the front door. She set her hand on the doorknob. “We have a basement. With a fold-out bed.”
“A basement would be perfect.”
She knocked quietly on the door three times and stepped inside. She nearly motioned for Paul to come in as well, but she stopped him from entering when Brin’s mom appeared at the end of the hallway. She wore a cheap pink bathrobe, and had no make-up on her face. She looked like she had been up all night.
“Brin,” Tessa said with disappointment. “There you are. You know, you could’ve called me if you were gonna stay over at Ash’s. I know you’re almost seventeen, but you really need to think about letting—”
Tessa didn’t have time to finish. Brin already had her arms wrapped around her. She pressed her cheek up against her mom’s and tried not to cry.
“It’s so good to see you, Mommy,” Brin said. “I love you… I love you so very much.”
Tessa didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally: “You haven’t called me Mommy in years.” Then she took a step back and analyzed her daughter from head to toe. “You look awful, honey. How did your movie thing go?”