“I’ve seen your paradise,” I said. “There ain’t no place in it for me.”
“Amen,” he said and opened up again. Bullets seemed to come from everywhere and pieces of the table blew off all around me. I ducked back down and tried to figure out from the sounds where he was.
“I see him,” said Catherine, who was still standing through all of this.
I wanted to do this on my own, without her help, but I had to consider it. The preacher had my number and pretty soon the other one would show up. I nodded at her.
“The gun shop,” she said. “In the doorway.”
I poked my gun around the table and fired a few shots in that direction. There was a grunt, then the sounds of the preacher running away.
I picked up my hat off the floor and went along the edge of the room, to the door. When I had a look outside again, the street was empty once more. A bullet had sliced through one of the horses’ reins, and it had run off, leaving only two. The rifles were missing now.
I glanced up at the sky, checking for light. I had to end this before the dawn came.
All the other vamps came out of the back room, fangs exposed and snarling like wild dogs. Some of them had blood on their lips. They looked ready to charge out into the night so I stepped in front of the doors as I reloaded the gun once again.
“Where do you lot think you’re going?” I asked.
Old Bill stepped to the front of the crowd. He used to run the general store, back when they were still human, and he figured that gave him some sort of authority.
“After them,” he said. “Before they get away and tell somebody else about us.”
“They ain’t leaving,” I said. “They could’ve jumped on their horses just now but they didn’t. They believe they’ve got some sort of business here.”
That gave them pause. Bill eventually said, “Well, we really should get after them before the sun comes up then. Who knows what they’ll do to us during the day.” The others, looking a little worried, nodded agreement and started forward.
I cocked the hammer of my gun, and they all stopped.
“This ain’t no lawless town,” I said. “First one of you who tries to step out this door to commit murder, I’ll put in a coffin for good.”
“Hey now, sheriff,” Bill said. “You’re talking to your own people here, not them strangers.”
“I ain’t one of you,” I said. “I’m the law. And you’d better decide right now whether you’re willing to accept that or not.”
They didn’t look too happy about it, but they stayed put.
“All right,” I went on. “I want you to go to the rooming house. Hole up there for the rest of the night. Put somebody on guard in case they try to get in. I’m going after them myself. I’m likely to shoot anyone I see on the street.”
“And what are we supposed to do if they come in?” Kitty asked from the back.
“Then you can consider yourself deputized,” I said and left the rest up to them.
They went to the rooming house then, moving in a large, muttering group. No one took a shot at them. I wouldn’t have either, if I was out there watching.
Catherine was the last to go. “Let me come with you,” she said.
I didn’t say anything as I studied the night.
“You know I can help,” she said. “I’m better in the dark than you are.”
“This is no business for a lady,” I said.
She shook her head, then sighed and looked up at the stars.
“Why can’t you accept the fact that we’ve changed?” she said. “All of us.”
I watched dark shadows mix with the moonlight on her throat, but kept my thoughts to myself.
“Bill was right,” she said after a time. “What happens in the day?”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
She looked back at me, then at the ground. “I’ll be watching,” she said, and followed the others. She picked up Lester on the way, so he wouldn’t get burned up in the dawn, and threw him over one shoulder.
“Fire!” he suddenly yelled in his sleep. “The hellfire of God!” Then he started laughing and wouldn’t stop.
When the vamps were all inside, I untied the remaining horses and let them go. They broke for the edge of town and were gone in seconds, fading into the night like dreams. I suddenly felt very alone, and for different reasons than usual. Then I put it out of my head and went in search of the remaining members of the preacher gang, who wouldn’t be riding out of town to warn anyone else now.
I’d gotten lucky and hit the second man in a major vein. The blood trail led me on a winding trail through the scattering of houses off the main street until I found him lying face down near the funeral home. I rolled him over with my foot and kept my gun on him, but it didn’t matter much. He had two holes in his stomach and had given up on breathing. There was a medal pinned to his chest. He’d been a soldier of some sort.
There was only the woman left now, and I had a pretty good idea of where she was. Just past the funeral home was the abandoned chapel at the outskirts of town. I figured the dead man had been heading there. The only place in town the vamps wouldn’t willingly enter, and the only place that didn’t have other buildings next to it. The chapel was set off on its own, surrounded by a little graveyard with fallen-over markers. A good position to defend. She was probably in there right now, trying to pick me out in the dark.
I stepped up onto the funeral home’s porch and sat down on a stool by the door. There were no signs of life from the church. If she was inside, she was waiting for daylight. I didn’t blame her.
I looked at the bones of Apache out front, half-covered by dust now, and settled in for a wait.
I fell asleep there, and dreamed about going to visit Catherine. Something called me down the street, past the tumbleweeds and cobwebs that had collected again, up the stairs of her rooming house, past all the empty rooms and to her door. “Come in,” she said when I knocked. She was lying under the covers of her bed, naked.
I knelt on the floor and said, “Please.” She looked at me, then got up. Before I could react, she threw herself out the window. I jumped to my feet and went down the stairs three at a time, then back out onto the street. She was halfway down it already, running away. I raced after her, drawing my gun.
“Please!” I shouted. “Oh, please!”
But her bare feet kept pounding into the ground like the dynamite we’d used to clear mountains on the railway, taking her away from me.
The sounds turned into the drumming of hooves, which woke me. I was up off the stool with my eyes open in time to see a riderless horse galloping down the street, hooves slamming into the ground like a sledgehammer. For a moment, in the dim light of early morning, I thought it was Apache. Then I realized it was one of the preacher gang horses. It tossed its head at me as it went past, and I looked back to the chapel to make sure Apache’s bones were still there.
That’s when the whole world reared up and knocked me to the ground. Everything went dark for a moment and then I found myself lying face-up in the street, the taste of blood in my mouth. I could tell from the numbness in my shoulder that I’d been shot solid. I tried to move, but it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. There was a roaring in my ears. I tried looking around but could only move my head a little. My badge was lying in the dust beside me, knocked off from the impact. My Colt lay a few feet beyond that.
Then the woman appeared above me, a rifle in her hands and another bible sticking up out of the pocket of her duster. Up close, I could see she was thin as a ghost, the skin stretched tight across her bones. Her eyes were pebbles in dry sockets.
“Nice try, you son of a bitch,” she hissed, “but there ain’t nothing except a miracle that can save you now.”
Some of my strength was coming back, bringing with it a fair share of pain, but it was too late. She had me where she wanted me.
“What the hell are you anyway?” she asked. “I’d say you were a man, but
no man with a soul left would live in a town full of vampires.”
“I’m the law,” I tried to say, but it came out only as a breath that she couldn’t hear.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said. She sighted down the barrel and winked at me. “When you and all your damned friends meet our maker, you tell him Famine sent you.” Her finger tightened on the trigger. Then loosened as a terrible howling came from up the street. Her eyes hardened even more at what she saw there.
I managed to turn my head enough to see.
It was Catherine. She’d been watching like she said, and now she was running right at us. Catching fire from the rising sun as she did so. First her dress lit up, and then her very skin. The howling came from her mouth, as she flared up like a human candle. Fire burning away every inch of her.
“What in God’s name,” the woman breathed, at the same time I screamed.
Then Catherine hit the preacher woman as hard as a locomotive going full steam, and she suddenly wasn’t above me anymore. Her rifle fired into the dirt as Catherine bore her down to the ground and rolled around with her. Her duster caught fire and then they were both making pain noises and pawing at themselves.
I pushed myself up to my feet, grabbed my gun, and shot the preacher woman three times. She stopped moving. I ripped off her duster and threw it, and myself, over Catherine.
When I’d smothered the flames, I wrapped Catherine in the duster, so the sun couldn’t touch any part of her. She didn’t move in my arms. We lay there for a few more minutes while I gathered my strength, and then I took her into the shade of the funeral parlor. I left the other woman to burn there in the street. Several pages of the bible came loose and went sailing down the street like floating candles. Somehow, they didn’t touch a single building. They landed in the ravine and started a bonfire, burning up all the tumbleweeds and exposing the skeletons of those first vamps I’d thrown there so many years ago. When the flames were at their height, I threw in the latest bodies.
Catherine was burned bad. She was still breathing but wouldn’t wake up. I moved her out of the coat and into wet blankets at the rooming house when night fell, but it didn’t help any. She just lay there on our bed, deathly silent, twitching a little every now and then.
The other vamps hung around the halls, pale faces turned my way whenever I stepped out for a breath of air. They pretended like they couldn’t smell the blood from my wound. The only one I let get near was Doc Pederson, and that was just to bandage my wounds. He didn’t even touch Catherine.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he said.
She was like that for three days. I finally decided I had to do something else. On the fourth night, I collected her up in my arms and took her to the chapel. The others stood in the street and watched as I carried her through the doors. I wasn’t sure what would happen. Nothing did.
I laid her down on the altar and got on my knees for the first time in a long while. Said a few words aloud. Then I settled in to wait.
We’ve been there ever since. My own wound is infected, and some days the fever nearly knocks me out. Doc Pederson checks it when I come out for food and water, but he doesn’t look too optimistic.
Once, he said to me, “You know, if it gets too bad, we can always stop you from dying.” I knew what he meant and told him to forget it.
He won’t come into the chapel, so I change Catherine’s bandages and trickle water from a sponge over her broken skin. She moans and cries out sometimes, but never wakens.
Old Bill came to the door one night with my badge. “Thought you might be wanting this,” he said. “Or maybe just needing it.”
I didn’t move, didn’t even look at him. When he went away again, he tossed the badge into Apache’s bones. “You can’t stay in there forever,” he said.
Catherine is stirring more and more now. Crying out and thrashing in her sleep. I hold her hand and talk to her about things we did so long ago that I’m not even sure if they’re real or imagined.
Once, she tried to bring my wrist to her mouth, and it took everything I had left to pull back. Every now and then she has coughing fits, which get so bad they threaten to tear her apart. Like something inside her is trying to fight its way out.
During the days, she is as quiet and still as the inside of the chapel. I sit on the steps, looking out into the empty badlands for signs of more riders.
Yesterday, I picked the badge up out of the bones and put it on again. Old Bill’s words keep hanging in my head. “You can’t stay in there forever.”
Right now, though, there isn’t anything else I can do except wait. Wait and see just what forever is.
CRAVAT OF THE DAMNED, by Zach Bartlett
“Sephiroth,” he said, as I descended the basement stairs. “That’s what I want my vampire name to be.”
“You don’t need a vam—”
“Sephiroth Ravensbane. It’s Japanese.”
“You don’t need a vampire name!” I found myself shouting, having overestimated my own patience. “I was born as Vernon, I got bitten as Vernon, and I’m still Vernon. The alliteration is just a coincidence. You still have to be Brice.”
“Brice Ravensbane!” he cooed, like a teen girl mentioning a crush.
“Fine, fine, change the last name. It’s not like you’ll have much of a legacy to pass it down to at this point.”
After composing myself, I noticed that he’d modified his attire since the previous night. While he was still wearing a T-shirt and oversized black trousers that were made from some kind of plastic, he had also donned a black velvet cape and what appeared to be an elaborate napkin collar. I’m not sure where he managed to find them—they certainly weren’t part of my evening wear, which is essentially all I have in the house.
“What are you wearing around your neck?” I asked.
“Just something to hide the bite marks.”
“I gave you bandages last night. What is that, a doily?”
“It’s a cravat,” he said, with something resembling pride in his tone. “A lot of the guys in Interview with the Vampire wear them.”
“Well, this isn’t the 18th century, and even back then you’d look like an outright ponce wearing that.”
“Can I keep the cape?”
“Can you find one that isn’t velvet?”
He glanced at the floor and pressed his fingertips together, twisting them idly.
“I, uhm, I like velvet,” he muttered.
I didn’t see why he even needed fancy accessories when he insisted on residing in the basement, but I decided to let him keep the things on the grounds that it would stop him from complaining about them for the rest of the night. With the matter settled for the time being, I was able to coax him out for some more rudimentary “vampiring lessons,” as he’d termed them. While his fashion sense may have been unwavering, there was at least hope to improve his nocturnal etiquette and feeding habits.
I motioned for him to follow as I turned to leave, and hoped that he wasn’t going to hold the ends of his cape and flap his arms while he walked.
* * * *
Now before you go off and start assuming all sorts of things about me, let me say that it was absolutely not my intention to recruit such a fool into the ranks of the undead. Being a creature of the night, however, tends to remove one from the scope of modern culture, and I hardly think I can be blamed for not being caught up with recent publishing trends.
You see, after spending a number of years inhabiting museum storehouses and other safe yet helplessly dank locales, I’d finally found a relatively nice abandoned house to settle down in. The previous owners were found dead with all the doors and windows locked from the inside, and such events can give even the most wonderfully designed houses a reputation that frightens off potential home buyers for decades. After making sure it was free of squatters and vermin I boarded up the windows, for practical reasons as well as to further enforce the haunted house aesthetic.
My new home was quite comfor
table if a bit spacious for my needs, and I was able to dwell undisturbed for nearly three months before I realized the flaw in my reasoning. Nobody was going to buy the house and discover me, that much I knew. But I had overlooked the fact that large empty houses, particularly those that come to have the “haunted” reputation as mine does, tend to attract groups of curious teenagers who aren’t welcomed in the numerous social circles that have better things to do than sneak around in abandoned houses on Friday nights. I was soon to discover precisely why the more gregarious types avoid them.
It began one night when I was busying myself in the upstairs study, and heard a sort of rapid creaking sound coming from the first floor. I was quick to investigate the source of the noise, assuming that rats had managed to get in somewhere. The creaking continued at a steady rate as I descended into the main hallway and followed it into the dining room, where I discovered a set of fingers trying in vain to pull a board off of one of my windows. After a final bout of shaking and muffled curses the fingers withdrew, having realized the futility of trying to pull at a window boarded up from the inside.
A shuffling from outside preceded a sharp knock at the window, followed by another that dislodged one of the boards. I drew back into the darkness of the hallway as two more boards fell in a similar manner, the last one bringing a crowbar in with it. I could now hear the intruders talking.
“Damn it, you weak-ass fruit!” one of the voices said.
“Stop calling me that, I can do like five hundred push-ups! I still knocked the hell out of that board,” said the fruit.
“Yeah, but your fruity self couldn’t hold on to my damn crowbar worth a damn,” said the first voice. He spoke with a certain authority that his vocabulary didn’t seem to qualify him for.
“What does it matter, we’re going in there anyways,” said a third voice.
The Vampire Megapack: 27 Modern and Classic Vampire Stories Page 27