Stars and Other Monsters

by P. T. Phronk

  He typed his passcode in. “South.”

  Fox leapt to the front of the truck bed and shouted at the driver, who picked up a radio and began yammering into it. Another of his men was on the truck too, and began treating Fox’s wounds with his own medicine. It probably wouldn’t work as well as Morgan’s.

  Howard began rubbing the contents of the vial onto Morgan’s back.

  “Thanks, Howard. Thanks,” said Morgan. As soon as the werewolf saliva touched his back, a sweet wave of numbness spread from the spot. “Hope it don’t turn me. I’m in a bad pickle here. But—ah, nah, haven’t lost much blood, have I? More pus than blood back there?”

  “Yessir. It ain’t pretty, but not much blood. Whatcha mean turn?”

  “Into one of them.”

  “A vampire?” whispered Howard.

  “No no, but you’re catching on, son.”

  He wouldn’t turn. Not a direct bite, just a bit of saliva, and he wasn’t drained enough for it to take hold. He could slather on more spit and recover quicker, but it was too risky. Probably would’ve been a nice way to get patched up though, wakin’ up as a brand new wolf instead of a broken old man.

  An SUV full of serious-faced men passed them, leading the way. Where did Fox get so many followers anyway?

  They stopped at a pawn shop for supplies before Fox pushed him for more directions. He interpreted the array’s output. Both of the numbers on the display counted down, and soon the convoy pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot.

  23. Let Me Get You a Drink

  MORE OF THE VICTIMS FROM aisle six woke up, freed themselves from the duct tape, then wandered the store. Soon, the place was humming with their groans as if it were a regular day of shopping.

  An apple rolled past Stan. He turned around. Bloody growled.

  The mulleted man in the trucker hat stood before him. Blood—Dalla’s blood—stained the front of his yellowed T-shirt. He sniffed the air, then smiled when he saw Stan sitting on the ground. Some of his front teeth had fallen out, and nubs of fangs tried to poke their way out of his inflamed gums.

  Stan tossed the box of cereal aside and tried to stand, but his legs felt like spaghetti. Before he could get to his feet, the newbie vampire was almost upon him.

  He realized he was still holding the garden shears.

  They snipped easily through the man’s jeans and flesh, but got stuck when they hit bone. Stan pulled the shears back and kept snipping as the man half-toppled, half-lunged at him. The next snip nicked his neck before his weight hit Stan, knocking the shears from his hands.

  The man straddled Stan, clawing at him. It took all of his strength to keep the gnashing teeth away from his face. Bloody clamped onto the man’s bloody leg, first pulling away the jeans, then pulling away the skin.

  Blood poured from the man’s neck onto Stan; it was the consistency of oil and smelled like a rusty truck. The man’s jerking motions splashed it on Stan’s hands, making them slick, making it harder for him to keep the monster away.

  The man didn’t seem to notice that a dog was ripping away at the bloody mess that used to be his leg.

  Stan’s aching, damaged hand slipped away from the man’s face. He felt the man’s lips hit his neck. He closed his eyes, expecting the sting of fangs that had haunted his dreams since Dalla entered his life.

  Instead, he felt only slimy gums. The man tried to bite harder, but all Stan felt were scratchy pinpoints among the puffy mouthflesh, not long enough to break through his skin.

  The man moaned as he instinctively gummed and licked at Stan’s neck. Stan wretched, then slammed his knuckles into the man’s bony face over and over until the vampire’s left eye bulged from its socket. Finally, he pulled back and looked at Stan stupidly, confusion and hunger merging into one lopsided expression.

  Suddenly his head jerked back. Bloody hung from the back of his mullet.

  Stan grabbed the shears, opened them wide, then put the man’s neck between the blades.

  Snip.

  His head jerked back further than it should have been able to, like a Pez dispenser with a bubbling hole where candy should have been.

  Bloody dropped to the ground. Stan squirmed from under the man’s legs, then opened the shears again and finished the job. He squirmed away from the spreading pool of dark blood.

  He barely had time to stand when Bloody barked at him and pointed at the front of the store. Fox was coming.

  “Okay, girl. Just—just give me a second.” He took a breath, fighting a wave of nausea and spots in his vision. He wiped his hands on his jeans, picked up the shears, and went to face two evils.

  Dalla lay on her side in the main aisle. A trail of smeared blood led from the front of the store to her current position. She looked up, and her mouth dropped open when her gaze reached his blood-covered fist.

  “Stanley? It was you? You killed my baby? And how did you get out?”

  “You suck at tying me up. And your ‘baby’ nearly gummed me to death.”

  She let her head rest on the linoleum tiles. “He was only hungry. Hungry. I am so very hungry.”

  “Well uh, you better get over it, because he’s on his way. Fox, I mean. Presumably you figured that out, and all this wasn’t just for fun?”

  When she didn’t answer, he paced up and down the aisle, shears raised. In the Candy aisle there was a hefty woman in blood-soaked sweatpants with bits of duct tape still clinging to them. She shuffled along the aisle with a shopping cart in front of her, toppling boxes of candy canes into it.

  In an aisle of sports equipment, two teenagers dry-humped each other. The guy’s penis hung from his unzipped jeans, limp, flopping up and down with each thrust of his hips.

  He wandered back to Dalla. “They’re not exactly a trained army, are they?”

  “They weren’t quite crafted with care, were they? It was a rush job. They won’t last 48 hours. My babies will die to protect me though, see? And Stanley, whatever in the world are you still doing here?”

  Before he could formulate a response, Bloody barked behind him. He swivelled around to find the woman in the sweatpants bearing down on him, her mouth smudged with blood and chocolate. He elbowed her in the face, then opened his shears.

  “Off, dear, off,” Dalla said to the woman. “We need all the fodder we can get.” The woman backed off, frowning.

  “Did you just call me fod—never mind.” Stan sighed. Dalla’s eyes drifted shut. “Fine, just lie there. Real smart.”

  He walked to the front of the store, ignoring Dalla’s mumbling pleading for him to come back. A few customers still wriggled in their duct tape casings near the checkout. Dalla must have run out of steam before she got to them. He held a finger to his mouth, then carefully cut away their duct tape with the shears.

  “Quietly. Get to the back door. I’ve unlocked it. Hurry.”

  One by one, they ran to the back of the store.

  “That’s my food, Stanley!” Dalla screamed from down the main aisle.

  “Shit,” he mumbled as he cut the tape off the last customer. He could hear the squeak of the vampire’s shoes as she got to her feet, then clomping as she stumbled toward him.

  The customer screamed. As soon as her legs were free, she bolted to her feet and headed for the front doors. The motion sensor still worked; Dalla hadn’t bothered securing those doors.

  “Lord almighty, you’ve ruined it all. You murdered my child, and now you’ve tossed my meal away. I’m useless like this.” She sighed. “It’s gotta be you now. Go on then, hun, slice open that head-pedestal and give me a few big gulps.”

  Stan backed away, hand clasped to his spit-slicked neck.

  There was a crash of metal and breaking glass, followed by the rescued customer smashing through the glass doors. The doors slid open a second later, the motion sensor kicking in just a moment too late. Behind the door sat the front of an SUV, its headlights blinding. Another pair of headlights shone behind it.

  “Here we go,” Stan and Dalla muttered
at the same time.

  She closed her eyes, concentrating for a moment, then allowed herself to fall. Her feet left the ground and she soared sideways, shooting to the back of the store as if the whole Wal-Mart had been turned on its side.

  Men exited the SUV, each of them carrying a wooden stake and covered in a hodgepodge of silver trinkets. Stan bolted, slipping on the blood-covered floor before catching his footing.

  Dalla reappeared on top of a row of shelves, below a swinging sign that read Party Supply.

  “All of you!” she screamed, her voice raspy, making her sound older than she usually did, though certainly no older than she actually was. “Gather round. These men want to hurt me. Make sure they do not.”

  Her babies shuffled from the aisles. More men entered from the other vehicle. Still no sign of Fox.

  Stan hid in the Furniture section. As he ducked into the aisle, he saw Dalla topple from her perch on the shelf, hitting the ground in the Party aisle with a thunk.

  He picked up Bloody and put her in the cupboard of a microwave hutch. Her wet nose pushed against Stan’s hand, wriggling to get out, but Stan pushed the door shut.

  “Stay, girl,” he said. When Bloody’s snout poked out from between the doors, Stan slammed his fist on top of the cupboard. “No,” he said. “You stay until this is over, then you run, and you keep running. I’m not losing you.”

  He peeked around the corner. Fox’s men had formed a line by the doors. They fidgeted with their stakes and fiddled with their trinkets as they waited for orders. Dalla’s army shuffled from the aisles uncertainly, some of them with their fists raised, some more aware that they were now monsters and trying to bare their puny fangs. Between the two armies lay the customer Stan had tried to save, glass embedded in her face, dead as a doornail.

  Fox would arrive soon, Dalla was passed out in the Party aisle, and her army wouldn’t last long. Stan had chosen his side, and as he stared at his side about to get their shitty vampire asses kicked, an idea wriggled itself into his mind.

  Dalla’s army struck the first blow when a young woman with pink dreadlocks lunged at one of Fox’s men. He tried to defend himself with his stake, but the young vampire was fast. She dodged, clocked the man in the face with her fist, then leapt on him as he stumbled backwards, wrapping her legs around him and biting at his scalp. A silver medallion against her skin hissed.

  The rest of Fox’s army took action, charging at Dalla’s babies with stakes raised.

  Stan moved. He slipped into the middle of the melee while they were distracted. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the vampire with pink dreadlocks separate from Fox’s goon, smoking black marks on her arms and legs. Fox’s goon was blinded by the blood pouring from his scalp, though, and as he fell to one knee she lunged again.

  A vampire in a ratty brown suit jacket latched on to another goon’s leg.

  Stan reached his goal without getting noticed. The dead customer’s neck was bent at an odd angle. Her face sparkled with broken glass. But the pool of blood around her wasn’t too wide. That was good. He balanced the arms of the garden shears around his neck, then grabbed both of her wrists and pulled. She barely budged; dammit, bodies were heavy.

  Nearby, Fox’s goon stabbed the brown-suited vampire in the shoulder. The vampire touched the wound, then looked around frantically, but he was surrounded by chaos. He looked up, and his eyes squinted with concentration. Suddenly, he rose into the air. The goon’s leg was still in the vampire’s grip, making him somersault backwards, then he was dragged into the air too. The two of them hurtled into the rafters. Both of them hit the ceiling with an echoing clang, splattering the white beams red.

  Stan tugged the dead customer toward the smear of blood left by the dreadlocked vampire’s victim, who was now being dragged further into the store. As he hit the fresh blood, the customer began to slide a little easier.

  The brown-suited vampire and his victim fell to the ground further along Stan’s path. The man’s head split open like a smashed coconut, leaving a fan-shaped splatter of blood and brains. Stan hopped over it, then pulled at the customer’s wrists. She slid easily; brains made excellent lubricant.

  The going got easier as the customer got oiled up with a good layer of gore. Soon Stan was shuffling backwards down the main aisle, toward the Party section. The rest of the battle shifted away from the doors, too, with pairs and trios sparring in the aisles.

  As Stan reached Dalla, there was a tingle in the air; the hair on his arms felt prickly. She was slouched against a shelf of piñatas, mumbling to herself. He dragged the dead customer to her, then held a wrist to her face.

  “Drink.”

  She drank, chugging the dead customer’s blood like he’d brought a tall glass of cold water on a hung-over morning. The moment a drop of blood touched her lips, color—light splashes of pink on her pale cheeks—returned to her face instantly.

  Stan adjusted his glasses and looked into her cold eyes.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes. Now I am. Thank you, Stanley. I must have misjudged the amounts there. I’ve never been great with recipes. You’re so good to me, you know that?” She caressed the side of his face with her fingertips.

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Do I ever have a plan, dear? You’re the one with the details.”

  Stan frowned. “Okay, remember what I told you. Fox is a child. A scared child with a new toy.”

  She looked away from him. Was she even paying attention?

  “He acts confident, but you’ve been what you are for—”

  Her eyebrows raised, a hint of a smirk on her face. Careful.

  “A few years. Even if he can destroy buildings with his mind, he barely knows how he’s doing it. You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re an evolved killing machine.”

  “Maybe …”

  “Definitely. But what matters is making sure he knows it. He’s nothing without his act.”

  Stan wondered if he was getting through. He wondered if what he was saying was even true. He wondered if it even mattered if it was.

  She groaned, then shook her head, as if she just realized where she was. The tingling in the air intensified. Glass crashed at the front of the store once again.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  Stan nodded. “I believe so.”

  He crawled to peek down the main aisle.

  One of the remaining doors at the front of the store shattered. Through it came a ghostly figure—the vague outline of a head and shoulders, drawn in specks of glass and dust. A footprint formed in a smear of blood.

  The figure brushed off its shoulders, then began to solidify. Fox filled in the outline. His mangled face was pulled back in a humourless, toothless grin.

  “Where is she?” he growled.

  24. Social Contract

  DALLA WAS GONE BY THE time Stan turned around.

  Under the florescent lights, the footprints all around looked bright red, like fake blood. Further down the Party aisle, two of Dalla’s babies were feasting on a man who still held the stake that he had been forced to drive into his own eye socket. The monsters tore him apart, and Stan watched with detached curiosity, as if it were a movie.

  He turned his attention back to the main act. One of Fox’s minions approached Fox with a dripping body in his arms. With the frizzy brown hair and flowery dress, it could have been Dalla, but of course there was no way that a man could have overpowered the vampire. Especially not after the snack Stan had brought her.

  One moment, Fox was pulling back the woman’s hair to check her face. The next moment, Fox’s fist was where his minion’s head used to be. A moment later, a red ring of splatter hit the floor.

  “Vampire!” shouted Fox. He waited a moment, then, “Come out! Come out or I’ll make you.”

  From the aisles, Dalla’s babies peeked their heads out. One of them held a severed head by the hair, grasping it daintily like it was her shopping bag. They left long footprints as t
hey shuffled into a circle around Fox.

  Stan was reminded of the monstrous cats in Dalla’s basement.

  “You,” said Fox, pointing at the vampire with the pink dreadlocks. “Tell me where she is.”

  A childish smile overtook her face, then she shook her head. She pointed at Fox, then looked around at the others. “Kill,” she said.

  “Kill,” agreed another one.

  “Uh huh,” said a man in a Bud Light T-shirt.

  They lunged.

  Fox sighed as the dreadlocked vampire almost reached him. He closed his eyes and concentrated. There was a low rumble, then the newbie vampires flew backwards into the air. A wave of force lifted an entire shelf from the ground. Aisles of chocolates, batteries, toothpaste, Christmas ornaments: all of them wrenched free from the floor, spilling their contents. The vampires fell to the ground, splayed on their backs in a half-circle around Fox.

  The next row of shelves began to lift. Then the next.

  “Oh f—” Stan managed to mutter as he realized what was happening. He ran for the back door, but it was too late; the wave was already about to hit him. He’d be exposed. The shelf beside him freed itself from the ground.

  He leapt at it, grabbing on to a hook that held up a row of wigs. The shelf lifted, and he could feel it buckling in the air. The shelf behind him did the same a moment later. Then he heard clinking and swishing as racks of clothing lifted next.

  Looking sideways, Stan had a bizarre view of the electronics section floating ten feet off the ground. Power chords hung out of the bottom like the roots of ripped up shrubbery. Below that were items that had toppled from shelves. Among them, Stan spotted a DVD of Fox’s previous movie—that one about the superhero NASCAR driver. He had the sensation that he was making eye contact with the scowling picture of Fox on the cover.

  “Vampire!” shouted the real Fox. “Why are you hiding? Don’t be shy. I love to, you know, engage with my fans directly. It’s rare that one is so devoted as to murder my fiancee and steal my newborn baby, and I really want to, well—”