Jim’s laconic tone came from the speakers. “94.3 WVMP Sherwood, Maryland. It’s 5:06 a.m., and that was Jan Davis with ‘Watusi Zombie.’”
I would have chuckled at the title if the sound of his voice hadn’t dropped the temperature in the car ten degrees.
“I have an important governmental type announcement for all you crazy early risers, so listen up.”
I glanced at Shane, who returned my worried look.
“In a joint order of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Department of Homeland Security, a mandatory curfew has been imposed for the town of Sherwood. Beginning at 1900 hours today, Tuesday, April thirteenth—that’s seven p.m. for us civilian non-pig types—all residents are to return to their homes until further notice. That means no leaving your house after seven tonight. Not tomorrow morning or the next morning, not at all until they say it’s okay.”
“An indefinite curfew?” Shane said. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Probably has more to do with zombies than chicken pox. But of course they can’t tell people that.”
Jim continued, “Sherwood residents are permitted today to acquire any necessary items to facilitate this extended quarantine. Area grocers have been instructed to ration certain items to ensure that no citizen lacks amenities.” He chuckled. “That means no one gets to hog all the Fritos and toilet paper.”
He read the notice in a mock-official voice. “Residents and nonresidents will be required to remain in Sherwood as of the time of this announcement. National Guard troops have been deployed to enforce this quarantine order.”
“They’re trapping everyone inside the town,” I whispered.
“The federal government hopes to return the town of Sherwood to normal operations within a week. To expedite this process, any persons susceptible to the chicken pox virus should report immediately to the county health department at 991 Center Street in Sherwood, where CDC officials will provide all necessary tests and health care provisions at no charge. Susceptible persons are those eighteen months and older who have neither contracted the virus previously nor received the vaccination.
“This is where it gets interesting, folks.” Jim returned to the edict. “The CDC, along with the state and county health departments, will conduct interviews with all residents to determine the identity of susceptible persons. Cooperation will be rewarded. Failure to voluntarily subject oneself or one’s dependent child to testing and quarantine, or withholding information regarding susceptible persons, may result in arrest for obstruction of justice.”
I shivered, as if someone had drawn the tip of an icicle down my spine. “They’re getting people to rat each other out.”
“Shh.” Shane raised the volume.
“Oh, here’s a bonus,” Jim said. “The IRS will provide no-penalty filing extensions to all those affected by the quarantine, seeing as you won’t be able to get out Thursday to send in your taxes.” Jim paused, and when he spoke again his voice was dead serious. “Just to be crystal? You can’t leave town. As of tonight, you can’t leave your house, maybe for several days. If there’s the least chance you could get sick with this plague, turn yourself in, or you’ll spend your dying day in a jail cell. They are not messing around.”
He gave the phone number and Web site URL for people to get more information, then read the whole order again, this time without editorial comment.
“I’ll repeat the announcement every fifteen minutes through the end of my shift, at which point someone else will have that unsavory duty. WVMP 94.3 will be the official source of emergency services information.” He recited the station phone number twice. “Let’s stick together, okay? Don’t go all every man for himself. See if your neighbors need anything. Look out for each other, and let’s get through this with as little drama as possible. Peace.”
Shane turned off the radio. “Who knows you never had chicken pox?”
“Outside of the Control and the radio station, just Lori, Tina, and Maggie. I had to make sure they couldn’t catch it from me at the bachelorette party.”
“Lori and Tina know not to say anything. And Maggie was debriefed after the first zombie attack, right?”
I pulled out my cell phone. “I’ll tell Lori to let her know what happened to me. I’m sure Major Ricketts made Maggie understand how important it is to keep vampires a secret.” And what would happen to her if she spilled.
Lori answered my call right away. “Hey.”
“Did I wake you?”
“Jim called at four thirty to tell us about the curfew.” She stifled a yawn. “David just left for the station.”
I told her all about the zombie “attack,” including the cheerleading antics.
“Oh my God, how bizarre,” she said. “That sucks you had to help shovel it up, what with your new sense of smell.”
“Eau de zombie will be the least of my problems if Maggie or Tina tells the authorities I never had chicken pox. Can you get to them and explain what happened?”
“I’ll call them right now.”
“Are you coming to the station with David until the end of the quarantine?”
“No, I better stay here with Antoine.”
“Bring him. Dexter would love to see his old kitty buddy. And I’d love to see you.”
She spoke slowly, the way I was getting really tired of people speaking to me. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to hang out right now.”
My chest turned cold. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“I’m your best friend.” My voice trembled. “I would never hurt you.”
“Not on purpose.”
“Not at all.”
“Travis once told me what he was like when he first turned. All crazy and out of control.”
“I’m not like Travis.” I looked at Shane for confirmation, but he kept his eyes on the road.
Then I thought of how much I’d wanted to eat Jeremy, and Monroe’s donor Sandy.
Lori spoke again. “I’ll think about it. It would be great to see you, check out your new vampire bod.”
“No.” I pressed the phone hard against my cheek. “Stay home. Just for a while. I promise eventually everything will be the same.”
Lori was quiet for so long that I checked to see if the phone connection was intact.
“Ciara,” she said finally. “I don’t think anything will ever be the same.”
A chorus of ewww’s greeted our arrival in the common room. Even Dexter ran away whimpering.
“God, you reek!” Regina said.
Noah grabbed a pair of towels from the hall linen closet and hurled them at us. “Strip, then shower.”
Shane let me shower first while he shaved over the sink. We didn’t speak, either from exhaustion or the leftover tension of this evening, renewed by our nudity.
When I reentered the common room, still in a towel, Regina was alone, standing in the kitchen area.
“That was fast,” she said. “I figured you two would be in there for days.”
“I’ve seen Shane wet and naked before.”
“Novelty worn off?”
I forced a beleaguered smile. “I spent the last two hours scraping up viscera. Right now, a harem of porn kings couldn’t keep me from a nap.”
She snickered as she pulled a serving-size package of blood out of the fridge. I checked the clock and frowned, realizing it was meant for me.
“Speaking of naked men.” She set the plastic container in the microwave. “I’m going to call that stripper guy.”
“Ken? I thought you weren’t interested.”
“We need to expand our resources. You’ll be sharing our donors, so until you find your own we should each get a new one, just to be safe.”
Safe. Who knew how much effort dead people had to put into surviving?
“I’m glad you took Ken’s card from our apartment. There wouldn’t have been time to go back today, what with the quar—” I stopped. A troubling fact tickle
d the back of my brain. Not did-I-leave-the-iron-on? troubling. More like a-piano-is-falling-on-my-head! troubling.
“What’s wrong?” Regina said. “You look paler than that zombie.”
“Ken.” I sat on the arm of the sofa, so hard it jarred my spine. “Ken.”
“What about him?”
“He knows I haven’t had chicken pox. I asked him before the bachelorette party, in case he was suspect—susceptamble.” My dry tongue couldn’t pronounce the word. “In case he could catch it.”
“Did you ask him directly, or did you ask someone at the stripper company?”
I rubbed my scalp hard, trying to remember. It seemed like months ago, and yet it hadn’t even been a week. “He texted me the playlist Wednesday night so I could burn a CD for his performance. I asked him then. Aaron hadn’t died yet, but we already knew it might be some kind of chicken pox.” I covered my mouth. “He’ll tell the authorities. What am I going to do? I can’t escape during the day.”
“Calm down.” She marched over to me and took my hands. “It’s going to be all right, I promise.”
“How?”
“We’re going to take care of Ken, you and me.” She rubbed my cold hands in her warm ones. “We’ll make sure he never tells a soul.”
“I don’t know about this.” I frowned at my image in Regina’s full-length mirror. She had turned me into a blond version of herself—complete with strapless, silver-studded black leather corset, long fingerless black lace gloves, and thigh-high boots that approached the hem of my black leather miniskirt. “I’m every vamp cliché in one package.”
“Ken likes this look,” she said.
“How do you know? You weren’t dressed like this when you met him.”
“I know the type.” She handed me her makeup bag. “You can do this part, I trust, while I get dressed?”
I sat at a small table in the corner of her black-curtain-draped room, in front of a magnifying mirror. The clock said 7:45 a.m. “It’s past time for my snack. I never got it out of the microwave.”
“I want you thirsty when he gets here at eight thirty. Damn, I left my favorite garters in Noah’s room. Be right back.”
I uncapped a tube of black liquid eyeliner, then leaned close to the mirror. Only then did I notice my hands were shaking.
“I can do this. It’s like the badger game, but with more clothes and no stealing.” After a pair of deep breaths, my hand steadied, so I tried again.
The door slammed open. My arm jerked, and the eyeliner brush poked me in the eye.
“Ow!” I glared at Shane. “Knock first?”
He shoved the door shut behind him. “What’s she doing to you?”
“We’re having a new donor.” I explained how we met Ken and why he needed to be corralled.
Shane listened with his arms folded, his jaw working into a near cramp. “So what’s with the Rocky Horror reject outfit?”
I wished for a cardigan. “She says he needs to bond with me so he’ll be willing to break the law to protect my life. I’m supposed to drink him.”
“And that’s it?”
“She said she’d do the rest.”
His eyes turned to slits. “The rest?”
I twisted the eyeliner tube open and closed. “I guess she’ll get him off.”
“With you watching.” His voice was flat and hard.
“I don’t have to watch. I can just hang out, and then drink when he—you know.”
“When he comes.”
“You told me that blood tastes better during the donor’s orgasm.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want you to—” He put his hands to his head. “Oh God, this is your life now.”
“It’s okay.” Other than the ick factor of seeing Regina in action, I was pretty curious.
“It’s not okay.” Shane started to pace. “You have no idea how not okay this is.”
“I’ve done worse.”
“That was when you were a crook.” He slammed his hand against his chest. “That was before me.”
“I won’t do anything with Ken. Regina’s the one he likes.”
“What guy in a room with two hot chicks is only going to want to touch one of them?”
He had a point. “I’ll tell him no.”
“No, you won’t. He has all the power. He could end your life with one phone call.” Shane was on the verge of hyperventilating. “You’ll do whatever he wants.”
I caught the accusation. “Because I have no principles?”
“Because you want to survive. It’s what you’re best at.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
He sank onto Regina’s bed. “I never wanted this for you.”
My insides curdled. He hated what I’d become. “You’d rather I died.”
“No.”
“Yes. It would’ve been perfect. I’d be a beautiful corpse you could howl and scream over, like Mary with Jesus in that Station of the Cross thing. Then you could waste away mourning me, wallowing in your misery like the tragic figure you always wanted to be. Maybe even follow me and end it all. This time for good.”
He stared at me, his face an impassive mask, and when he spoke, it was in a low growl. “I’m mourning you now, Ciara.”
My breath stopped, and I wondered if it would ever start again. That novena he prayed was for real. I was dead to him.
I stood slowly and slipped off my engagement ring. “Here.”
He gaped at it without taking it. “You don’t want to get married?”
“I’m not the person you proposed to. Ask me again.” I grabbed his wrist and slapped the ring into his palm. “Ask me when I’m a vampire.”
As if by reflex, he took my left hand. “Will you marry—”
“Don’t ask now.” I stepped back, out of his grip. “Ask when I’m a real vampire, and you can live with what I’ve become.”
Before he could speak again, Regina entered. “What are you doing?” she said to him. “She’s not nervous enough, you have to lay a guilt trip on her?”
I rose to his defense. “You expect him to be happy I’m prostituting myself?”
“I don’t expect anyone to be happy about anything. I expect obedience. That’s what will save you.” Her tone softened a bit. “Besides, you’re just role-playing.”
“Playing the role of a prostitute.”
Regina ground her teeth but kept her voice level. “When you were a con artist, you played make-believe to trick people out of money. Isn’t keeping yourself out of government custody—keeping yourself alive—worth more than money?” She clutched her hands together, maybe to keep them off our throats. “Ciara, I want you to live. I want that more than anything in the world right now.” She glanced between us, looking embarrassed at her display of emotion. “Except maybe that Bauhaus Burning from the Inside vinyl import.”
Despite her attempt at levity, pain filled her dark eyes. No doubt she was remembering her poor husband dying a second, permanent death.
“She’s not Jack.” Shane got to his feet to face her. “And she’s not doing this.”
“I already told Ken it would be both of us,” she said. “We can’t risk disappointing him.”
“Then I’ll go in her place.”
“Great idea. ‘Hi, I’m the fiancé of one of the girls you want to shag. Let’s talk.’ He’d be gone in a heartbeat, assuming his heart still worked.” She brightened. “But if it turns out he swings both ways, we’ll call you in. How’s that sound? Compromise?”
“No compromise. She’s not going.”
“Shane.” Regina said his name in a steel-spike voice. “You know what that blood-sex connection does to a donor. It’s not enough for him to be in thrall to me and have me tell him not to rat her out. A direct bond is the only way to guarantee Ken’s silence.”
“No,” he whispered. “Not the only way.”
Regina and I each took a step back from him.
“Are you saying—” My voice shook. “No, you can’t be saying
that.”
“He is.” Regina stared into his eyes. “Girl, what have you done to him?”
“Just get Ken here,” Shane growled. “Have him come through the back door so David doesn’t see.” His fingers clenched into claws. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“No!” I wobbled forward on the spiked heels. “This is insane. You can’t kill him.” In his fifteen years as a vampire, Shane had never taken a life, on purpose or by accident. Hell, sometimes he went hungry instead of biting his donors when they had a cold.
Regina scratched her head, as if considering it. “She’s right, you can’t kill Ken. There’s a paper trail.”
“And hey—murder?” My voice pitched up. “It’s wrong.” I pointed at him. “Plus, it’s a sin.”
The darkness in his eyes told me he didn’t care. “My soul means nothing next to your life.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, then Regina cleared her throat.
“On that romantic note, Shane, can I talk to you out in the common room? I think I have a solution.”
He broke our gaze with what looked like a great effort, then stalked ahead of Regina out the door.
Behind his back, she pointed to the makeup case in my hand, then at my face. At the last moment, she reached around the door into her closet. She snagged something shiny off a hook on the wall.
Handcuffs.
“Wait.” I stepped toward her.
“Sorry.” She slipped out of the room.
I lunged for the door. It was locked, or someone very strong was holding it from the other side.
I planted my feet and pulled the knob with every muscle in my body. My hands slipped, landing me flat on my butt.
Shouts erupted from the common room, followed by a crash. Shane yelled a long string of profanities, which were suddenly cut off. Everything went quiet, except Dexter’s frantic barks coming from our room.
“Shane!” I threw myself at the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Let me out!”
I stepped back to get momentum, squared my shoulders, and made one last run at the door. On my way there, it opened. I crashed into Regina, who caught me before I fell.
She set me on my feet. “Let’s get you made up. Nice and dark. Zero points for subtlety.”
“Where’s Shane?” I asked her over the sound of Dexter’s howls.
Bring On the Night Page 23