Red, White, and Blood
Page 1
RED,
WHITE,
AND
BLOODD
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH
The President’s Vampire
Blood Oath
RED,
WHITE,
AND
BLOOD
CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2012 by Christopher Farnsworth
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farnsworth, Christopher.
Red, white, and blood / Christopher Farnsworth.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-58064-6
1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Presidents—United States—Election—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3606.A726R43 2012 2011049444
813′.6—dc23
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
BOOK DESIGN BY MEIGHAN CAVANAUGH
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
To Marv,
who started being my dad long before he married my mom.
Thanks.
An election is a moral horror, as bad
as a battle except for the blood.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Table of Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
JUNE 23, 1975, OJAI, CALIFORNIA
Jenny straddled Tom’s lap in the backseat, her tongue deep in his mouth. The Eagles wailed on the radio. He lifted his hands under her blouse to her breasts. She ground herself into his crotch and he let out a groan. Tom’s erection threatened to tear through the zipper of his pants. They’d been here so many times before. He knew he’d have to stop soon.
Tom and Jenny came to the overlook near the creek bridge every night now. They didn’t even make a pretense of going to the movies or out for a burger. Just hours of dry humping and kissing before curfew. Then Jenny, as if an alarm clock went off in her head, would pull back and rearrange her clothes, put her bra back on, and tell him to start driving home.
Tom thought he’d explode if this kept up much longer, but he forced himself to stay patient. As frustrated as he got, Jenny was the hottest chick he’d ever seen, let alone touched. Unlike most seventeen-year-old guys, he could be a little patient. Tom wasn’t about to blow this chance.
She moaned and ground harder. Tom’s eyes crossed under his closed lids. She broke away for a moment, both of them gasping for air.
“We should stop,” he managed to choke out.
She reared back from him. Her mouth spread into a grin. “Fuck that,” she said, and laughed. With one swift move, her blouse was off and over her head. “Fuck me,” she said to Tom.
He didn’t have to be told twice. His pants became a ball on the floor of the Buick. She shimmied out of her own tight jeans and underwear, and then pulled him on top of her again. God, they were both naked, this was really going to happen, they were really about to do it…
Tom hesitated.
“What?” Jenny said. “I swear to God, if you tell me you don’t have a rubber—”
Tom tried to look out the window. It was totally steamed over by their breathing.
“I thought I heard something.”
She smiled at him. She thought he was stalling. “You don’t have to be nervous. I want to do this. Really.”
“So do I,” he said. He thought he heard the sound again. Like something swishing through the tall grass at the side of the road.
“You didn’t hear that?”
She shook her head. “You’re not scared of the Char-Man, are you?”
They both laughed. The Char-Man was an old story, passed along from senior to freshman at Nordhoff High. Supposedly some guy was caught in a big fire back in the ’40s, and had gone insane from his hideous burns. Now he lurked in the woods near the bridge and attacked anyone foolish enough to be caught out after dark. It was a joke. Nothing more.
Sure, bodies had turned up over the years. A couple kids from school went missing. And yes, a few weeks ago, there was that story in the paper about the dead hitchhiker by the bridge. But bad stuff happened. Everyone said the same thing—“The Char-Man got them.” But they smirked when they said it.
Tom looked at her. This was what he’d wanted for so long. What was he waiting for?
“I’m not scared,” he said.
She smiled and leaned back a little. He could see everything. Jesus, she was beautiful.
All Tom could think was, Oh man oh man oh man oh man.
Then there was the terrible scraping noise of metal on metal.
Tom and Jenny both turned toward the sound in time to see the door of Tom’s Buick peeled away like the pop-top of a beer can.
A huge man stood framed in the weak glow of the dome light. He only stood there a split second, but Tom knew he would never be able to erase the image from his mind. A full-sized ax looked like a toy hatchet in one of his hands. His clothes were ragged leather, sewn together in irregular patches. And the smell—the smell was like a sewer below a slaughterhouse. It hit them like a physical slap.
Worst of all was his face: skin hanging on the skull in long yellowish drips, like wax melted and left to cool in place, crisscrossed with blackened scabs that oozed fresh blood.
The Char-Man. He was real.
Tom had no time to recover from the shock. The Char-Man’s hand darted into the car, impossibly quick, and yanked Jenny from the backseat. She fell on the ground.
Tom could hear her screaming. His own mouth was open and his throat was raw. He realized he’d been screaming the whole time too. He scuttled back as far as he could into the corner of the seat.
The Char-Man roared with frustration and reared out of the open door. A second later, the blade of the ax bit through the roof of the car directly above Tom’s head. It began to move, drawn back through the metal and upholstery like a knife. The Char-Man was literally slicing the roof open to get to Tom.
His eyes darted out the open door. He saw Jenny, frozen with shock.
He managed to form a single word. “Run!” he screamed.
That broke her from her daze. She got to her feet, tripped, fell, and got up again.
Tom heard the tortured metal of the car give way. The roof was suddenly open to the night sky, distant stars completely oblivious to what was going on beneath them. A shadow blotted them out as the hideous shape loomed above him. Tom’s eyes darted involuntarily back to Jenny, who barely seemed to be moving at all. She had just made the edge of the road when Tom heard the grunt from above.
The Char-Man had seen her, too. If it was possible to read that melted nightmare of a face, Tom saw frustration. The Char-Man was not about to lose one of his victims.
Tom saw the Char-Man lift the ax and cock it back over his shoulder. He knew what was coming next. He tried to yell, but the blade flew before Tom could draw a breath.
It spun end-over-end in a perfect spiral toward the back of Jenny’s head.
As if she could sense it coming, Jenny turned and looked. Tom saw tears streaming from her eyes as the ax whirled like a rotor through the dark.
Then, out of nowhere, a hand snatched it from midair.
For a moment, everything stopped. Tom and Jenny went silent. The Char-Man stood like a statue. They all looked at the man who had not been there only a second earlier.
He didn’t seem much older than Tom. He was just a guy in a cheap suit. He certainly didn’t seem anywhere near as powerful as the Char-Man. But he wasn’t afraid.
Tom could see one unusual thing about him: he wore, under the open throat of his shirt collar, a metal cross that glinted in the moonlight. It was so at odds with the rest of his outfit and his square haircut.
The young man looked at the ax, then at the Char-Man, and finally broke the awful silence.
“You dropped this,” he said. “By all means, have it back.”
He hurled the ax. It spun through the air even faster than before, a pinwheeling blur that ruffled Tom’s hair.
He seemed to hear the impact seconds after it must have happened. A deep, hollow thunk—as if the ax hit wood rather than bone and meat.
The Char-Man stared at the ax lodged deep into the space between his eyes. Then he toppled over.
Hands grabbed Tom. He was being hustled from the car by someone else—another man, not so young, wearing a suit as well. Clearly a plainclothes cop, Tom thought, despite the shaggy sideburns. The guy pulled a gun from a shoulder rig, and that was all the confirmation Tom needed.
“Come on, kid, move,” the cop said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Tom realized they were jogging toward the young man and Jenny. The man had given Jenny his coat.
“But—wait, what’s going on?” Tom wanted to know what was happening. Why were they running? “What about my car?”
They reached Jenny. The cop was still hustling them toward the road. A car waited there, exhaust puffing from the tailpipe.
The young man gave Tom a look that chilled him as deeply as the sight of the Char-Man. “Answers later,” he said. “Move now.”
“Who are you?” Tom asked.
“Shut up and get in the damn car,” the cop ordered, and Tom and Jenny complied. They piled into the backseat. The young man stood by the passenger side while the cop got behind the wheel.
Just as he put the car into drive, the engine died. The sudden quiet lay over them like a shroud.
“Ah, damn,” the cop said. He jerked at the shifter and tried to restart the car.
The young man stood by the door, watching the spot where the Char-Man lay. “Too late now,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”
“I can get it,” the cop said as he turned the key. He put his whole arm into the motion, as if he could hand-crank the engine back to life.
“No, you can’t,” the young man said. “It always works like this. The engine always stops. The phone is always dead. The police always go to the wrong address. It’s just the way the world is around him.”
“What are you talking about?” Tom demanded. “He’s dead. We’re safe now, right?”
A bellow of rage answered him. Tom looked over at the body by his ruined car.
Slowly, the Char-Man rose, the ax still deep in his skull.
“God damn it,” the cop said.
“Don’t blaspheme,” the young man said.
Tom was speechless. Jenny just kept saying, “No, no, no, no, no,” over and over.
With one hand, the Char-Man gripped the handle of the ax. A firm yank, and it came loose. His face was now split in half. Tom could see the wound filling with blood, the skin dripping over it already. In a moment, it would be one more scar among many.
The cop had his gun up. He turned to the young man, who stood waiting. “You sure about this, Cade?”
The Char-Man advanced on them one slow, confident step at a time.
The young man—Cade, the older guy called him—smiled. “Looking forward to it.”
Tom turned to face him. He was about to ask if the guy was out of his fucking mind. You’d need a tank— Hell, you’d need an army to kill that thing.
But he stopped before any of that could leave his mouth.
He saw teeth. Not teeth. Fangs.
Cade wasn’t human, any more than the Char-Man. They were both something other.
Cade moved. Tom blinked, and he was gone—there was a puff of dust on the ground, and then he was on the Char-Man. Together, they hit Tom’s car hard enough to crumple the frame.
The cop stepped out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door. He waved impatiently to Jenny and Tom. “We need to run,” he said.
Tom and Jenny were still moving like molasses. Their bare feet hit asphalt. It was like they couldn’t get their bodies to respond. They couldn’t stop looking at the Char-Man. Tom didn’t know why everything seemed so goddamn slow.
The cop tried to pull them along. Jenny wouldn’t budge. “We can’t just leave him,” Jenny said. There were more sounds from the fight—awful, inhuman sounds.
Tom looked back. Cade didn’t look like he was winning. The Char-Man swung the ax at his head, driving him back toward Tom’s car and the edge of the overlook. A few more steps and he’d be backed up against empty air.
Cade stepped toward Tom’s car rather than closer to the ravine. The move cost him. The Char-Man took a big chunk of flesh from the side of Cade’s ribs.
Cade curled in pain. His back was exposed to the Char-Man, his arms against the car for support.
The Char-Man lifted his ax with both hands and prepared to deliver the final blo
w.
“We really should have run,” the cop said.
The ax fell like a meteor from the sky.
Tom heard something. He realized what it was later. But he saw the fanged smile again and he knew that the Char-Man had been fooled just as they had.
Cade spun, impossibly fast again, and got under the hulk of the Char-Man. Unbalanced, falling forward, the Char-Man was helpless as Cade lifted him up into the air.
Right over the door post of the car, jagged and exposed from where the Char-Man had torn back the roof.
The Char-Man landed with a sickening noise. The door post tore through his abdomen, pinning him like an insect in a shoe-box diorama.
It didn’t kill him.
He wriggled and struggled. Tom realized the Char-Man was trying to get a handhold or foothold so he could push himself up and off the metal that impaled him.
But Cade would not give him the time or the chance.
Cade was already at the front of Tom’s car, pushing as hard as he could. The car moved. Tom had set the emergency brake. It snapped under the strain.
The wheels rolled freely after that. Driven by nothing more than Cade, Tom’s car began rolling toward the edge of the overlook.
The Char-Man seemed to realize what was happening. He doubled his efforts. He began to turn, to try to tear the door post through his side rather than pull himself off it.
He almost made it.
Then Cade sent the car over the edge and down into the ravine.
Tom didn’t know why, but he had to see what happened next. Without thinking, he ran to the edge of the overlook.
The car bounced once on the rocks and crumpled. Then it rolled over, crushing the Char-Man before it slipped into the water and vanished.
Cade stood there for a long moment. Tom realized Jenny and the cop were both right next to him. They all watched the surface of the water.
Nothing. Not so much as a bubble.
“Is he dead?” Jenny asked.
Cade seemed to ignore her. “Try the car,” he told the cop.
The cop walked back to the road. Tom heard the engine start like it was still on a showroom floor.
“Dead enough,” Cade said to Jenny. “For now.”