Crooked Fang

by Carrie Clevenger

  “Idiot. What the hell is wrong with you, Serv?”

  “Ow!” He whimpered and rubbed his head. “What did I do wrong?”

  I yanked a few bags out of the box and carefully unfolded them. “Okay, so I’m going to lift him up and you just get his legs in the bag.”

  Serv nodded, and I grabbed dead Freddie under his arms and hefted him in the air. After a little fuss with the bag, we wrestled the corpse feet first into it and yanked the plastic up around his legs. Freddie was a pretty small guy so we got him almost all the way in, fit another bag over the exposed head and shoulders then lined the trunk with about three more bags. He didn’t fit. I jerked him back out of the cavity and threw him on the ground.

  “Now what?”

  “Now I get to take the fucking spare out,” I said, turning the giant wing nut to free the spare tire from the floor of the trunk. “This is starting to be a pain in the ass.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t go around killing people then.”

  I could hear the smug in Serv’s voice. I didn’t have to look. “Shut the fuck up and hold this.” I shoved the loose tire into his stomach. He grunted and scowled. Freddie fit in the trunk on the second attempt. I slammed the deck lid shut. “Let’s go.”

  Serv dropped the tire, where it rolled a few feet and fell on its side, close to the grass. “What about a shovel?”

  A digging tool would come in handy, yup. “Just get in the goddamn car. Pretty sure I can get one out of the garage without waking everyone inside like you.”

  “Or the dead.” He snickered.

  I walked away to avoid hurting him.

  Getting rid of dead bodies was harder than people thought. Corpses stuck around for a good while and had all sorts of alerts attached to them. If buried, they rotted in the dirt, and left a faint impression, even if grass regrew. If burned, bones were left behind. If disposed of in water, they’d blow up like a balloon after a time and buoy to the surface.

  I had to bury Freddie deep, which meant a little spade wasn’t going to do the trick. The full-size shovel looked big enough for the job and was accessible without the need to shuffle shit around as much. I had to angle the handle up in the backseat a little to get it to fit.

  We drove down the twisted road that ran around the lake and threaded into the national forest about two miles away. Signs posted warned that the park was closed after dark and pointed the way to campsites. I was coming down off the blood buzz, and starting to have second thoughts about whether I’d get away with murder.

  Serv kicked back in the passenger seat and drummed his fingertips on his knees to the music though it wasn’t loud. The song was appropriate though–Crowned By Fire’s Get Under The Dirt–making me laugh just a little. Serv side-eyed me and shook his head. A sharp turn sprang on me in the headlights and I jerked the wheel, jolting him.

  He straightened in his seat and ran his thumb under the seatbelt. “What’re you going to do if they come and ask you about him?”

  “I’m going to deny everything.” I kept my eyes on the road. Guilt rumbled deep inside my heart. I wanted to get his ass in the ground, cover him up and forget he’d ever crossed my path.

  “Have you ever taken a life before?” Serv leaned forward a little.

  “I’ve been around a lot longer than you. What do you think?”

  That seemed to satisfy him. He kept quiet until I parked the car and killed the lights. Serv carried the shovel while I got body detail, hefting it out of the trunk in one awkward motion and over my shoulder. The bags crinkled as we made our way deep into the woods, past the point of seeing or hearing anything from the road. The only things around us were trees with big-eyed owls hooting from the upper branches.

  I threw Freddie down hard enough to make him fart. Serv raised an eyebrow and sniggered. Truth be told, so did I.

  A breeze picked up and in the dappled silvery light of the moon, Serv looked all ethereal. Hell, we were mythological creatures. There’s no way to express how weird that felt to be the fucking unicorn.

  I accepted the shovel from Serv and started to dig. The ground was cold and not very loose, so it was work. Displaced dirt skittered over dry leaves as I shoveled. It was a lulling task–lean over, stab the blade into the dirt, lift, toss. To make the hole as deep as I dared to still have time to escape before sunrise, I took extra care.

  Serv wandered around in a sloppy circle, hands in pockets before returning to the gravesite. “Xan, I think you’re deep enough in there.”

  I don’t know how long we’d been there or how long he’d been talking to me. I hurled the shovel out of the hole in resignation.

  “Give me a hand,” I said and took his, clutching the hole’s edge to climb up out of it. Once I crawled out and brushed off, I tossed the corpse into the grave, and started to scoop shovelfuls of dirt on it until I couldn’t hear the bags crinkle anymore. Serv helped me as much as he could by shoving dirt down into the hole with his feet and then his hands. We didn’t even give the bastard a moment of silence, but walked back to the car where I tapped as much of the grave dirt off the shovel as I could on the pavement behind the car. I took another bag from the box and wrapped the business end of the shovel in plastic before sticking it in the backseat.

  “We don’t talk about this again.” I slid behind the wheel while Serv got in on the other side.

  “Fine by me.” He fiddled with the controls on my radio, and I let him. After all, he’d just helped bury my mistake. We had a new understanding. By sunrise, Serv and I were safely back at Pale Rider, the shovel was stowed in the garage again and no one was the wiser.

  I guess I felt bad about taking a human life but I was more concerned that one of those Wretched zombie-things would come around again. And what if it was Serv outside next time, or even Charlie? If they were vampires, I could only hope they weren’t able to come out in the daytime. Carrying a gun seemed like the best solution, but if I was forced into a situation where I had to discharge a firearm, it’d likely bring more unwanted attention than I could really handle. I worried about someone coming to ask about Freddie, if that was his real name. He’d been so fucking certain he was saving me from what? Becoming one of those zombie Wretched things? If that was going to happen, surely I’d devolved by now. As it was, I looked the same. I wasn’t expecting any more developments.

  * * * *

  Tabby fascinated me for more than a few reasons, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted from her, if anything at all. But I kind of hoped she’d come back to Pale Rider. She was sweet and smelled good. She didn’t smoke and, as far as I knew, wasn’t much of a drinker either. She also made a damn good snack.

  Serv started hanging out with Elaine more and more, and often showed up late for rehearsal and sometimes even our shows. She was all he talked about. I guess he thought he loved her. I’d catch him sneaking out with his Martin in hand, and since he hadn’t really used the guitar in some time, I knew something was brewing.

  But then they started fighting. He’d storm back in at fucked-up hours, pissed off. Probably around the third time, I finally asked what was up.

  “Nothing.” He blew past me into the kitchen. I followed him to find him peering into the fridge.

  “What do you think are you doing?” I folded my arms over my chest and leaned against the doorframe.

  He shut the door hard enough to jostle the condiments in the door pocket. Bottles clinked. “I don’t fucking know.”

  “What’s going on for real? You barely even stay here anymore.”

  “Nothing is going on.”

  “Well, it’s got you looking into the fridge. What do you expect to find in there? You’re a bloodsucker, remember?” I smirked.

  “Fuck off. I’m just frustrated.” He glared at the refrigerator. “I wish I could eat. Or drink a cola. It’s all blood and liquor, all the time. I want a ham sandwich. An apple. Something.”

  I sighed. He was preaching to the choir there. “How long have you been one of us anyway?”

>   Serv pressed his forehead to the door then pushed away from it to spin and face me. “Why do you care?”

  “Because you’re acting human.” I lowered my voice so no one would hear me. “You always have.”

  I hadn’t really asked him much about himself. Vampires weren’t exactly voluntarily chatty about their pasts, considering some of us didn’t want to remember the night in question.

  “A couple of weeks before you guys took me in.” He stared at the floor. “Maybe three years now.”

  Well, that explained why he looked so damned new. He was practically an infant in the wide world of bloodsuckers. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Did you want to sit down and talk about it?”

  “Why? Do you? Why would you care, Xan?” He brushed past me to go back out into the bar area. All the lights were turned out save for a few neon beer signs Charlie left burning at night.

  I went behind the bar, pulled out a fresh bottle of whiskey and motioned for him to follow me upstairs. We went to my room, and I closed the door behind us. I handed him the bottle and sat on the mattress.

  He took a chair at my desk and spun the cap off. “I hate whiskey.”

  “Give it over then.” I held out my hand.

  He shook his head and took a drink, following it with a grimace. “So, what do you want to talk about?”

  “I’m here for whatever you have to say.” I reached over to the cable spool that served as a table by the wall and picked out a glass. I kept a few in case I had company. “But you gotta share the booze.”

  He laughed. “Fair ’nuff.”

  I stood and he met me halfway to fill my glass.

  His story started out like a lot of ours did. Unsuspecting, preyed upon by a hungry vampire. Shit, he was only twenty-three. Barely had a chance to do anything before he was dropped as a bloodsucker.

  “She looked me in the eye and told me she had plans for me. I asked her what. We went outside in the alley behind the club and that’s where she bit me.”

  “Jesus.” It sounded a lot like my story. Stupid me, tempted by a hot ass in red leather. Only mine had bothered to take me to her house first before doing the deed.

  “She sucked on my neck, and then fed me her blood. It’s the same for everybody, pretty much. Right?” His gaze shifted from beyond the far wall to me. “Right?”

  I nodded.

  “Anyway, after I drank from her, I felt sick. She asked me where I lived. I told her nowhere.”

  “So, you were just out on the street?” I didn’t know that. “What was her name?”

  He stared at the bottle, as if the answer was printed on the label. “Jane. And yeah. I was kicked out of my house by my stepdad when I was seventeen. I stayed with a girlfriend for a year, and beyond that, anyone who would give up their couch or piece of floor. And there were nights when I had nowhere to go, so I’d go wherever I could to stay warm and catch some sleep.”

  I never had to experience life on the streets when alive. My dad had done pretty well with his restaurant and had one of the nicest cars in the neighborhood, a black Pontiac Ventura. “Dude, I didn’t know that.”

  He shrugged. “Jane took me to a hotel room and everything was going okay. She watched me as I died, and while I lay there unable to do anything, she said she had to go do something. She left and never came back. I don’t know what happened to her. I never saw her again. I was chased out of the room at checkout time and had to hide in a fucking closet until the sun went down because the light hurt when it hit my skin.”

  At that moment, he changed a little in my eyes. He went from a little prick, to a vamp with a past life, just like me. I guess I was too wrapped up in my own resentment and misery to take notice. “So you answered the ad for Pale Rider almost right after you changed.”

  “Yeah. I was more interested in the room, really. It was harder to live outside and with different people after I became a vampire.” He snorted. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  We drank a little and I played some music while we switched subjects and talked about this band or that. But I was horrified. Being changed had been monumental in my life. And, as much as I claimed to hate my sire, I had to hand it to her that she had made sure I was schooled on the art of being fanged.

  Serv never had anyone show him anything. He was essentially orphaned right after. And I used to kill vamps like him and his maker for that kind of reason. Until I got sick of it. Of looking others of my kind with a desperate situation in the eye and putting a bullet in their faces at point-blank range.

  * * * *

  I kept a lookout for more pet zombies and stake-wielding maniacs in the weeks that followed. Fucking zombie vampires. Wretched, Freddie’d called them. I knew of a couple of types of vamps, and that was more of a caste system than anything else. I wasn’t made a vampire to lie around fancy mansions and wear ruffly shirts while bitching about the meaningless of my existence. I was put to work. I was changed so I could do the work. It was a miserable existence, but I really hadn’t had any sort of choice in the matter. I was told where to get my weapon, where to fire it, who to fire it on, where to sleep and what to eat. There was no glamour in hanging out in alleys waiting for dirty vagrant vampires to bother staggering out the back to retreat before the sun came up. I was working hard to forget that time before. My life was in Pale Rider. I was fucking retired from the extermination business.

  Certain liberties were gained by leaving the vampire lifestyle, like finding cute girls and snacking off them after a good set with Crooked Fang. I barely needed sleep, so I helped Charlie out during the day as long as I didn’t have to wander out in the sunlight. I stocked his coolers. I cleaned the bar. I cooked for him when he felt weak.

  He loved corned beef hash for some reason. I could cook pretty good, since I’d worked in my dad’s restaurant way back when I was a teen. He sat at the kitchen table with a smile while I fried him up some.

  “Put a little ketchup on it.” Charlie eyeballed me while I spooned out more of that hateful shit. It looked and smelled too much like dog food to even remotely make me nostalgic for eating.

  “How much?”

  “You go ahead and get you some too.”

  I held my nose and shook my head. “No thanks. Cooking it is torture enough.”

  “It’s a wonder you don’t waste away to skin and bones, boy.” He grinned. “I think I’ll have a beer today.”

  “With that shit?” I pulled his favorite brew, a Milwaukee’s Best, out of the cooler and popped it open for him before bowing with a flourish. “Happy coronary.”

  Sometimes Charlie’d hide in his room and just not come out at all. He thought I didn’t know, but he hid a guitar and practice amp in his room. He never played out loud, just on headphones I think, because sometimes I’d hear the bare strings twanging away in there. I never bothered to question him about it, because to me, music was natural. Hell, people who never played anything at all were beyond me. How did they fill their days? Writing stories? Playing video games?

  I didn’t understand kids and their pastimes, but I was chalked up to being one of them because of the way I looked. But on the inside, I was an old man, and getting older. Me and Charlie were alike–on the inside. He was a veteran, and been through a lot too. He’d lived a different life before Pale Rider also, and that was the exact reason I identified with him. But the license to act like a dumb twentysomething came in handy. If everyone thought me to be some residual kid with an attitude problem, that was fine by me.

  I did know my manners, and right from wrong for the most part, and when I found Tabby at the bar about a week later, chatting with Bea and knocking back drinks left and right, it was obvious that trouble was lit up someplace.

  Tabby was irritated, maybe a little hurt and definitely pissed off judging from the look in her eyes. Plus Bea was making really obvious gestures that she wanted me over there, probably so she could take care of the other customers. Elected by force, I crushed out my cigarette and reluctantly left my seat.

/>   Tabby had been crying. She smelled like sweat and was a little shabby around the edges. Her face was free of makeup, her blue hair pinned back from her face on both sides by yellow barrettes. She clung to her beer, fingernails bitten down to the quick. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and took a long pull from the frosted bottle.

  Take care of her, Bea mouthed silently, pointing to her drink when she wasn’t looking.

  I gave a nod and perched on the barstool next to her, motioning for a whiskey. “And a water for her.”

  Bea cocked an eyebrow but complied.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here again. Do you live nearby?” I accepted the tall glass of whiskey from Bea, who took that as her leave in order to tend to the growing crowd of people gathered at the register.

  Tabby rested her head on her arm, and rolled it on her neck slightly before lifting it to nod. She blinked at me like she’d never seen me before. It took a few seconds before her gaze registered a flicker of recognition. I mean how many other tall, long-haired, tattooed bassists did she know?

  “I hate men.” She dropped her head back on her arm.

  I snorted and lifted the glass to my lips. “That makes two of us.”

  “You are one,” was her muffled reply, interjected by a disguised sniffle. “Anyways, I’m not looking for company.”

  “I’m here for a drink.” I motioned to her beer. “You’re here for a drink. I don’t think that makes us meeting at the bar odd at all. What number is that for you? I’d think Bea have cut you off by now.”

  Tabby shrugged. “Yeah well, she didn’t.”

  I took another drink, easing back on gulping it down. I had a feeling I would either be driving or at least calling the woman a cab, and cabs charged an arm and a leg out there in the backwoods. Tabby didn’t resist when I took the near-empty bottle from her hand. From the reek of alcohol emanating off her, she was pretty far gone. “You should sit up. If Charlie sees you like that, he’ll make you leave, courtesy of Pinecliffe’s finest.”