by Alan Ryker
“Dad's a rancher, not a cowboy,” Melinda said.
“Same thing.”
Sometimes Jessica wished she'd grown up with siblings. Other times she was glad she hadn’t.
“So,” Melinda started. She hesitated a bit. “Why are you out here?”
“Some people like to travel after they finish school. I'm just passing through. Hiking. Camping out. It's been fun.”
“That sounds awesome!” Todd said. “I wish I could do that.”
“There's not much to see around here,” Melinda said.
“You know, though,” Jessica said, “I've been getting a strange feeling. Has anything weird happened around here recently?”
Melinda pursed her lips and looked up. “Not recently that I know of.”
“Huh, maybe it's just a feeling.”
“No, you're right. Things have happened. Just not recently,” Melinda said.
“What do you mean?” Jessica asked, leaning forward. Fatty turned away from the boy, as if he caught Jessica's mood and remembered the hunt.
“Well, we used to get to run around and Mom and Dad didn't care where we went as long as we came back for lunch and supper,” Melinda said. “Now this is the farthest Mom'll let us go. And she didn't even let us come this far out until we drove her crazy once school let out.”
“Why are they so scared?”
“I think about a year ago a few people disappeared. No one will talk to us about it. I think it stopped, but they're still kind of scared.”
“I'm not scared,” Todd said. “And I like to play night tag and now we aren't allowed.”
They obviously weren't talking about her vampire. If he'd made any trouble, it hadn't gotten back to them yet. But she was confused. The reason she didn't know much about Krendel was that they didn't seem to have a vampire problem. They didn't have reports of animal attacks on cattle, which was Jessica's main clue. Just to be sure, she'd hunted to the west several times, and had never come across a vampire trail. But it sounded like they had had an infestation at the same time it had started at home. That made sense. The vampires were spreading steadily north. But why did Krendel no longer have a vampire problem? In her experience, vampires didn't just go away. When they found free territory with plenty of livestock, they dug in like ticks.
Jessica could think of only one possibility: Krendel had its own vampire hunter.
“I'm hungry,” Todd announced loudly. He started digging around in his backpack. “Are you hungry, Jessica?”
“We've got PB&J and Moon Pies,” Melinda said.
“Heck yeah! You don't mind if I have some?”
“Todd always brings a bunch extra. He calls them his 'provisions,'“ Melinda said, rolling her eyes.
“I knew we'd need them someday,” Todd said as he walked over with his arms laden with food.
They ate and chatted. They were good kids, and Jessica felt that maybe having some younger siblings would have been okay, after all. She imagined the Finneys playing night tag with vampires lurking in the shadows, and thought that what she did—hunting and killing monsters—was a good thing. Maybe she didn't do it for the right reasons, but she did a good thing, regardless.
After eating, she left the kids. It made her sad. She'd only just met them, and she couldn't engage with them on any real level, and yet that was the most genuine social interaction she'd had in a year. Her heart hurt, and she had to turn it off.
From the top of the hill she looked down at Krendel, probably three miles away. It was a decent sized town, with an actual main street. It had a bigger school system than you'd expect from the size of the town, due to the kids from several smaller surrounding towns being bused in.
Once Jessica crested the hill, she started jogging. Fatty seemed refreshed by their rest and by the Moon Pie. The sugar probably had his already-spastic little doggie brain buzzing.
Jessica thought about turning and waving to the Finney kids, who she felt sure were standing on the hill watching her. But she had to leave them behind, literally and in her mind. So she didn't. But when she killed her vampire, she'd do it for them.
She thought about the possibility of a vampire hunter in Krendel. At that point in the vampire's trail, it didn't seem to have hurt anyone or anything. That didn't mean that it hadn't yet, though. Who knew how far ahead of her it was, or what it had done between here and there. If it had attacked, as vampires do, especially super vampires built by idiot girls, then there might be another hunter on its trail. Jessica wondered if they would meet.
As she ran, she noticed that the vampire's path began to drift south. It had run almost due west for miles and miles. So it was purposefully avoiding passing through town. Jessica didn't stop her controlled breathing—one breath for every six steps—but in her head she breathed a sigh of relief.
Then she hit the county road that passed north and south through Krendel.
The vampire's curve had taken her about a quarter mile south of town proper. Houses were still more closely spaced there than on the prairie. As she passed through a yard, keeping as far from the house as she could, she saw that across the county road, sheriff's vehicles surrounded a house wrapped up in yellow tape. As Fatty began tugging her in that direction, she realized that her vampire had gotten hungry, and it had gone straight in a front door.
Vampires didn't do that.
But her vampire did. The vampire she made would do that. Because she'd made it strong, and she'd made it fearless.
Goddamn it.
Despite Fatty's attempts to continue on the trail, Jessica looped around further south, trying to avoid the notice of the sheriff and deputies.
Jessica had crossed west out of Sheriff Wheeler's territory. She didn't particularly like or trust him, but their shared guilt was enough to keep him off her back. A new sheriff, though, would distrust a wanderer, especially one carrying illegally concealed and modified firearms.
Keeping a safe distance, Jessica eventually made her way back up to the vampire's trail on the west side of the crime scene. Fatty picked it up again and began dragging her along. The loose edges of Krendel sat to the north, but they quickly jogged past.
A few miles beyond the town, the vampire's path curved again, this time to the north. Jessica examined the horizon. And saw that her vampire's new trajectory had him travelling straight at another house.
She prayed that his hunger had been satisfied at the last house, but doubted it. Her only hope was the possibility that the track she followed was from early morning and the vampire was looking for some dark corner to hide in before the sun rose.
The house grew as she jogged toward it. As she drew closer, the details revealed the house to be old and pretty run-down. The white paint had cracked and peeled, and the remaining strips clung to wood dried gray in the brutal sun. It was big for an old farmhouse, two stories with a high peaked attic. Overall, it was an ugly thing that gave off even more menace than your average abandoned farmhouse, which always seemed haunted by the financial desperation that had filled it before it was left for ruin.
But the house wasn't deserted, because a number of cars sat fanned around the edge of a dirt turnaround at the end of the heavily-rutted driveway. And most were nice. A couple of big, shiny Ford pickups that didn't look like they'd ever seen a day of farm work. A Mustang sat beside a couple of restored muscle cars. Very strange.
There were no emergency vehicles, though. So if the vampire had killed the occupants of the house, no one knew yet.
Jessica climbed through the pasture fence onto a dirt road, and was then on the property surrounding the strange old house. She jogged across land that should have been an acre or so of front lawn, but it hadn't been mowed in long enough that it looked no different from the pasture except for the driveway cutting through it to her left.
The house had been built at a time before picture windows, but the smaller square windows stared out at her so that she felt vulnerable out in the bright open. She wondered if anyone in the house were al
ive, and if they were hostile to trespassers.
The vampire's track led straight up three rickety steps to the front door. She stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. The door was shut. Should she knock? Should she just walk in? The vampire could have killed everyone inside and holed up, waiting for night.
She was still frozen when Fatty bayed loudly. The volume that little dog could produce was impressive, and Jessica jumped hard enough that she nearly fell backwards down the steps. Then she knocked.
From inside the house immediately came the barking of dogs. Big dogs. Not long after that she heard heavy footsteps clomping toward the door on wooden floorboards. She could practically feel the vibrations coming up through her feet.
She considered running, but she needed to know.
A huge bearded man opened the door. He had long, scraggly hair and wore a Megadeath t-shirt stretched across his wide shoulders and plentiful gut. He glared at Jessica with bloodshot, tired eyes. She'd woken him.
His size was undeniably intimidating, but she only felt it for a moment. The fact that he loomed over her instead of backing up and giving her space pissed her off. She'd faced worse. She looked back at him with the blank Harris expression that drove bullies nuts.
Eventually, he said, “What?” His voice was as deep as she imagined it would be. He looked back over his shoulder. “It's just a girl. Can you go shut those dogs up?”
Their barks boomed through the hollow wooden structure so loudly that they hit Jessica's ears as a pressure as much as a sound. And she wasn't even inside.
“What?” he said again, annoyed.
“I'm passing through. I need to refill my water bottle.”
“No.” And he shut the door in her face.
She knew she should walk away, but she couldn't. She knocked. The dogs inside went nuts. She pounded on the door, which was suddenly jerked open.
“Bitch, what do you want?”
“Water.”
“Holy shit.” The big man stared at her as if he was considering squashing her. Jessica had one hand on Fatty's leash, and one hand in her pocket on a razor-sharp folding knife that she was already thumbing open.
“Give me your bottle,” he said through gritted teeth. She unclipped it from her pack and handed it over. “Wait here.”
As he walked into the house and past a couch, he said, “Gabe, watch her,” to a smaller guy who Jessica estimated wasn't much older than her.
She stepped inside.
The doorframe had recently been splintered at the deadbolt, but it had been fixed with a strip of steel screwed in to hold everything back together.
Jessica looked around the front room. It contained several bowed couches and a couple of unbelievably filthy recliners, but a nice big screen TV. Beer cans and ashtrays littered the wooden floor.
Jessica knew a party house when she saw one.
Gabe stood up from where he had been lounging and came over to stand by her. He was shirtless, and stroked his chest as he talked. He obviously worked out, but Jessica couldn't help but find his self-consciousness funny.
“So, what's your story?” he asked.
“Just passing through.”
He nodded and stroked his chest. “That's cool. Where you headed?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
The giant stomped back down the short hallway to the kitchen. He held out her water bottle without saying anything.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling. Then she turned to go.
“Hey, you wanna hang for awhile? It's a party here most nights. If you don't have any place to be—”
“Shut up,” the big man said. He walked forward, pressing Jessica out the door. She didn't plan on staying, anyway. She had to think.
He shut the door on her before she'd even made it down all four steps. Echoing from inside, she heard his booming voice say, “Are you an idiot?”
“Come on. She looked cool. And she's smoking hot.”
“After what happened last night? Seriously? I'm going back to bed. Hungover as shit.”
Jessica started walking back the way she came. The vampire had definitely been there.
Fatty didn't want to go, but she tugged at his lead until he relented. But instead of following the vampire's trail back out, he turned off at an angle. He definitely smelled something.
Then Jessica noted the burned patch of grass. A small one. Fatty walked right through it and kept going, to another and another. They grew larger. Between the scorched spots, the grass was trampled down. She followed Fatty until she stood at the edge of a huge burned patch.
Only one item had survived the flames. She walked into the patch and kicked it, then picked it up and dusted it off. The watch. The big watch. The glass was blackened, but it was unmistakable.
Her vampire was dead.
She kissed her rattlesnake rattle, then started walking back the way she had come. Exhaustion almost overwhelmed her. Soon she'd passed back into the outskirts of Krendel.
They'd killed her vampire, a vampire many times stronger, faster and meaner than any they might find in the wild. So they must have been vampire hunters.
She thought back to them. The bearded one, so huge and aggressive. The smaller one looked athletic. She guessed she could imagine it. Judging from the number of vehicles parked outside, more of them probably lived in the house. They had a pack of big, mean dogs.
It would explain why she'd never found any vampires out that way. But they didn't feel like the type to her. Then again, who would guess that she was the type? They were big and male, so they had that up on her.
But they weren't ranchers. They definitely weren't ranchers. Did they have the law on their side? They didn't look like the type who would. A rancher would never tell about the vampire infestation. A rancher capable of it would do what she did, what her uncle did. If the government found out about the vampires feeding on cattle, they'd all lose their cattle, their land, their entire way of life. The communities were already dried-up husks of what they'd once been. If the government moved in, they'd blow away completely.
Of course Sheriff Wheeler didn't want the government involved any more than the ranchers did. No sheriff would, for the same reason no rancher would. Besides, out there you took care of things yourself. You didn't turn to the government.
But they weren't ranchers and didn't have the same stake, and Jessica wondered how much their law knew.
As she passed by a dilapidated old barn, she knew that she couldn't let things lie. She put her .40 and her .25 in a plastic baggie, buried them beneath a fallen section of the barn's roof and headed for Krendel.
The walk into town took her right past the house surrounded by deputies. She saw no more point in hiding. She was out in the open and looking for answers. With her illegal weapons gone and her vampire dead, she had nothing to hide.
Though the back door should have opened inward, it was exploded out and lay on the porch. Half the door frame had been pulled completely out of the wall. Her vampire had walked in the front door and gone out the back door. But she wanted to know what it had done in between.
She stood outside the front of the house and watched. Other people watched too, from their porches and their neighbors' porches. They watched with unconcealed curiosity. They watched her, too.
A young deputy leaned against a sheriff's car, watching her. He made no attempt to conceal looking her up and down as she approached.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“Looks like breaking and entering.”
“No one was hurt?”
“I can't talk about that right now.”
“Town this size, everyone'll know by morning if they don't know already.”
He smiled and leaned in close. He had a thin mustache, but nice eyes. “Okay, but don't tell nobody I told you. There's some blood and signs of a struggle, but no bodies.”
No bodies? That's what vampires left behind, bodies, drained of blood. Why would the vampire take the bodies?
“Not at all. This is a quiet little town. Quiet enough that a drifter with a bruised-up face walking in off the highway would have people talking for a week, let alone one walking in after something like this.” He still smiled, still leaned in like he was telling her a secret. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The change took Jessica aback. But she had expected to be held in some suspicion. “I'm Jessica. I'm just passing through.”
“This isn't the Appalachian Trail or Europe or something. What are you doing on foot? And what use do you have for a machete? Hacking your way through a wheat field?”
“I'm on foot 'cause no one would pick me up.”
He laughed. “Pretty thing like you? Not only would any number of these rednecks pick you up, but they'd carry you to your destination on their backs if you asked.”
“Well that's good, because after I get something to eat, I'm gonna try to find a ride out of here.”
“You didn't have nothing to do with this,” he said. It wasn't a question. There were certain advantages to being a girl. “But once the sheriff hears about a drifter passing through, he'll want to question you.”
“I just got here. I can't tell you anything.”
The deputy's face got softer. He nodded. “Listen, there's no reason for you to get caught up in this mess, but these people have all seen you.” He gestured with his eyes to the porch-sitter audience. “You need to keep going into town. I'll tell the sheriff that you said you were headed to the diner and I told you to stay put there. But you don't go to the diner, just keep on going through town. Head to the water tower. I'll pick you up there in a couple of hours and drive you to the county line.”
“Why would you do that?”
He shrugged a little. “Why can't a girl ever do what she's told? I can't get into it. I'm not even certain myself, but I don't think you should stick around.”
She nodded. “I appreciate your concern—”
He scoffed.
“I really do. But I'm tired and I'm hungrier than I think I've ever been, so I'm headed to the diner. I suppose if your sheriff wants to come find me, he can. I've got nothing to hide.”