by Jim Couper
Victor and Vanessa conferred while others continued to stare at the TV. Formulating an effective plan and arriving at a consensus had the same probability as a UPS driver knocking on the door with a blood delivery.
Victor ordered fellow vamps to go downstairs and push aside a heavy cooler that blocked the vault. With several buttons undone on her black blouse Vanessa sidled up to Bob and told him she needed someone to sample beer from a new supply they had downstairs.
Bob slid off his stool as if it had a Teflon coating and followed like a puppy. At the bottom of the stairs an open door revealed the vault.
“You first,” Vanessa said and after the drunken customer stepped in she slammed the heavy door and slid closed an old deadlock. She assumed her donor yelled for help, but baffling stopped sound from emerging. Victor led the push to put the cooler back in place and ordered a henchman to buy some rollers as the door would now be opened and closed frequently.
Upstairs they huddled and tried to draw up rules for use of their captive. Someone recited an old adage, “Two can stay on a pint a day.” Then someone asked, “Who gets the half pints?” Another replied, “Who needs it most?” Questions outnumbered answers and no one stepped forward to make decisions.
“When I saw him in his coin shop yesterday Valdor looked very pale.” A man in a black suit made the subtle suggestion. “He has two of our newly-resurrected living with him and has given them all he can get.”
“Vickie, the accountant didn’t look good either,” added a woman in a dark jumpsuit. “I take it she isn’t sipping. Similar situation.”
“We need more donors,” a man wearing a black tie and black beret asserted, slightly louder than others. At that moment a customer came in, a 50-year-old woman with a serious drinking problem who generally got wasted and stayed that way for as long as her money held out. She must have got additional dollars as she had previously complained that her money dried up.
Victor approached as soon as she entered. He wanted to captivate her before anyone else came in. “We have some new beer downstairs that we haven’t tasted yet and I wonder if you would like to try a free sample and give us your opinion.”
“What luck,” she responded. “I’ve come to the place with cheapest beer in town and you offer free samples.” She stumbled downstairs and got to the cooler as vampires pushed it aside. Barstool Bob started yelling and tried to get out. It took six men to push them both inside, close the vault door and secure it.
As hours passed customers straggled in and if deemed expendable Vanessa took them downstairs and added to the collection. Since 30 or more people disappeared every night the vanishing of heavy drinkers who kept to themselves would not be a media event.
Capacity was reached with five angry bodies locked up. Adding more became impossible without someone escaping. No one had contemplated the logistics. No one had figured out how to feed them and no one knew how to suck them one at a time.
“We could ask for volunteers,” said the black bereted vamp, postulating that prisoners might prefer order over chaos and be willing to help out.
“What about toilets?” another asked, ignoring the previous suggestion. Vampires never needed toilets, but humans had special needs. They created so much waste. Would the vault need a shower? Separate ones for men and women? The complexity so overwhelmed Victor and Vanessa that they regretted opening the vault. Each grabbed a pen and paper and started listing necessities. When the last item (battery powered lamp) had been jotted on Victor’s list he headed to Canadian Tire. Vanessa went to Superstore with her list. An hour later both returned, laden with supplies they hauled downstairs. Installation of a chain-lock, so the door could be opened a crack to talk to prisoners, came first. With the last screw in place Victor opened the door a few inches and the temporaries surged against it: six screws held. A drunk stuck his arm through and Vanessa grabbed it and pulled the appendage out as far as it would go while Victor held the door against its flabby bicep.
“Who wants to go first?” he invited.
“I really need some,” muttered Vinny shyly as he stepped forward and plunged his face into the forearm. “Missed,” he mumbled.
The arm’s owner shouted, “That hurts, damn it, what the hell are you doing?”
Vinny dipped forward again. “Missed,” he repeated as another cry of pain ensued. He tried a third time. “Missed.”
“Ouch.”
“Missed.”
Finding blood vessels in a flabby arm in dim light was like finding a vein of gold in a lava flow.
“I need a carotid,” Vinny declared and stepped back. No one else wanted to bite a purple arm that looked like a dog had gnawed it.
Frustrated vampires pushed bottled water, toilet paper, soap, blankets and hot dogs through the door’s gap. A portable toilet wouldn’t fit and neither would a lamp. Fearing that angry inmates would overwhelm them, the vampires dared not open the door to deliver supplies or gather blood.
Five temps relentlessly thumped weak shoulders and fat hips against the door and predictably six new screws started to loosen and the gap widened. The size and number of screws required to secure a door against surging shoulders and smouldering anger was as foreign to vamps as the recipe for blood pudding. When the donors within the vault stood back and gathered their forces to make a unified charge Victor and friends pushed first and got the door fully shut and bolted. Victor announced a trip to Wal-Mart was required and he would be back in 15 minutes. “Meanwhile,” he ordered, “get rollers under the cooler. I’m getting worn out pushing it back and forth. And place a keg of beer by the door.”
He returned on schedule with a bag under his arm, took out two rubber wedges and placed them beneath the door. “Unlock it,” he said and Vanessa turned the handle. Someone on the other side rammed it until it jammed against two wedges just before testing the fragile chain. Three lengths of rubber tubing came out of Victor’s bag. He plunged three tube ends into the keg by the door and shouted. “Here’s your free beer.”
As soon as the other ends of the tubes were pushed through the door crack, slurping sounds could be heard. Irritated voices shouted “my turn.”
“Why should we give them free beer?” a vampire named Vince questioned. Victor explained that a drunk temp could be handled far more easily than a sober one. “They will drink themselves into a stupor and then we can have our way with them. We need some more captives. This is brilliant. Once these ones get good and drunk we’ll see who comes into the bar next.”
The vamps wanted to leave the captives to their self-destructive behaviour, but when they closed and locked the door the three drinking tubes crushed. After much head scratching Vanessa noticed a hole where an old skeleton key once turned. Only two tubes squeezed through, but the door shut and a bolt slid across to secure it.
Victor, Vanessa and other vamps went upstairs and watched for TV updates. Little of interest appeared. After an hour they headed downstairs, put wedges in place and cracked open the door. No shoulders bashed against it.
“Do you need more beer?” Victor shouted.
“We need a goddam toilet, someone pissed all over.” The voice had a slur and Vanessa couldn’t tell if the slur was faked or if it came from a real drunk. Temps could be tricky.
“Here’s the deal,” she replied. “We’ll open the door and you can come out and use a toilet. We’ve got food for you and coffee. Just one at a time. There’s nothing to worry about. Molson brewery is sponsoring this so all you have to do is drink beer and be happy.”
She opened the door and Bob came out along with a seepage of urine, vomit and a stench almost as bad as a herd of zombies. He zigzagged across the room and stopped when he hit a wall. “Toilet?” he mumbled and Vanessa kicked a portable potty towards him.
“Pwivacy, I gotta have some pwivacy.”
Vanessa used her feet to push the toilet to the vault and opened the door. She caught sight of several bodies either sleeping or unconscious on the floor. An insufferable stench hit he
r nose like a dose of ammonia. A woman had half her clothes missing and Vanessa wondered if the men raped her. What have we done, she considered? It looked so simple an hour ago.
Bob zigzagged towards the vault and its toilet. Vinny and Vince pounced on him. He sank to his knees while they siphoned noisily from his neck. They didn’t take enough to render him unconscious, just enough to satisfy immediate needs. Vanessa shone a flashlight around the vault and saw a mess of horizontal inmates. She stepped in and pushed canines into the thick neck of the woman with underwear around her knees. Never had blood felt so good. All but Victor and Vince joined her and took turns sipping from other bodies and squirting excess into bottles.
Outside the vault they laughed about their exploits, patted each other’s backs, high-fived and joked about captives who could turn beer into blood. Someone shouted that they had created a blood factory and Vanessa added, “We should rename our place Vladimir’s Blood Bar.” Loud laughter erupted.
Wine kegs made good seats as, outside the vault, they sat and joked about their captives. New blood refreshed with a welcome ecstasy. Never had they been so happy. Angry words from a female within the cell broke the spell.
“Get off me: if you want to play you have to pay.” A slapping noise followed and a man moaned. That spurred another round of laughter. Normally they resisted the rare urge to laugh, but Vanessa suggested that their new hilarity could prove beneficial in melding with society.
"That captive woman breaks my heart," mumbled a dour vamp who didn’t want to admit the situation had a funny side. Her tragedy should have outweighed the humor, but a huge smile spread across his olive colored face. The vamp wearing a black beret mockingly strummed air guitar and entertained the coterie around him with an adlib of an Elvis classic,
"Ever since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell;
It's down the end of Main Street, at Vladimir’s Blood Hotel."
Singing and dancing had never been part of vampire heritage. Victor’s downturned mouth and his dark stare showed he despaired of bizarre behaviour from his comrades. Nevertheless, his bereted buddy finished his impromptu song,
"They all drank at the free-beer well
then got locked in a cell."
A chorus of cheers and giggles followed. Victor realized the alcohol content of prisoners’ blood must be off the charts and now his companions were drunk. Vampires didn’t get drunk, couldn’t get drunk. Alcohol had never affected them, but they had never sucked from a tank of drunks. Victor slammed the vault door, locked it and stomped upstairs leaving laughter behind. What else, he wondered, could go wrong with his wretched idea of harvesting blood from captives? He no longer cared if temps had toilets, water or anything else. His disgusting hostages laughed last by intoxicating his friends.
25
Where Doogie led, Mort followed. Through woods and along narrow mountain trails they zigzagged, nonchalantly and apparently randomly. Mort didn't utter a word of complaint: he had time on his hands and nothing on his mind.
From time to time Doogie unearthed hidden, half-buried bodies that Mort could never have spotted. Using a sixth sense the little grey whale pulled them from dirt and gravel and placed dark sunglasses over their eyes. With a shove and hand gesture they fell in line and marched like good soldiers. Those missing stomachs and brains formed the bulk of a platoon that swelled to nearly 100.
The centuria followed Doogie’s instructions perfectly although they seemed to have no clue as to what they were doing or why they were doing it. Those resurrected, whose life had not ended at the teeth and nails of zombies, and who retained brains and innards, proved problematic. They wandered off in search of food and had Doogie not reined them in he could have lost them. Reining in required a thin rope looped around the waist of each brained recruit, keeping them together like a gaggle of tots on a field trip. Whenever they heard the noise of an army patrol Doogie and Mort undid the ropes so the unruly rebels could disperse and hide like the others. Often the army found the mavericks, but sometimes they found the army.
Mort and Heady patrolled left flank, Doogie took right and two lieutenants who seemed to understand Doogie, kept tabs at the rear. The threat of a full onslaught by the army scared Doogie because the reek factor increased by the hour. Eau d’ Zee hung in the still air like a big, hard-to-miss target. With the aid of discarded, near-empty, aerosol cans, including paint, WD-40, insect repellent and sunblock, Doogie disguised the air and eventually the mix of zombie stench and sprays became so strong and pervasive that determining where it originated was impossible.
As they walked, Doogie asked Mort, in his burbling voice, “Were yoo wed?” Mort had been practicing his speech and, as Doogie predicted, it had improved. After he walked a mile without shoes his mental acuity and energy level took an upswing. Confidently Mort replied, “Yeth.”
“Me tooo,” said Doogie. “I droowned just twoo moonths and she toook a noow grooom. Not sooon forgot the lesson I taught.”
“What dith oo do?” Mort asked and his words sounded right.
“I undoood her stoomach, oopened her nooodle and scoooped. Left blooody body for her pooodle and her noow groom. Yoo doo that tooo?”
“No. I ath Uncle Althert.”
“Whoo he?”
“He wath in bathoom.”
“I knoo it. Wooomen! How aboot kids?”
“I dithn’t eath kids.”
“Noo. Save them: they groow big.”
“I hath lithle boy and lithle girl. I wanth to see them.”
“Woould be good. Want yoour wife too?”
“She vowed, for bether or worth. Thith ith juth a bad patch.”
“And she vowed till death doo yoo part − yoo dead and parted.”
“I mith Calculuth and Abacuth and Malady.”
“I knoo. Little joy in oour cooold hearts. Memories doo no goood. Under log lies anoother.” Doogie stumbled to a huge horizontal tree trunk, rolled it over, kicked away some leaves and pulled out a full-bodied comrade.
“Welcome, fooot sooldier, tooo mooonlight army.” He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his bag, plunked them over the new recruit’s eyes, pointed, and pushed her to a spot where he wanted her to walk. Mort could not perceive any degree of comprehension, but the soldier wandered to where Doogie indicated and disappeared in the mob.
26
After saying goodbye to Joey and before spending the evening attacking mundane chores around her house Jane called army headquarters and learned the previous night’s death toll stood at 29 citizens. Rural residences had become the enemies’ target and Peachland was essentially a rural community, spread along a lakeshore and up a mountainside. Unless soldiers stood guard at the entry to every home there would always be insufficiently defended dwellings. Older wooden homes did not have steel doors, alarms or high windows. Homeowners frequently went to sleep and away for vacation without locking doors.
According to army headquarters four lurchers had been killed in the night and an additional three had been captured alive. Jane wondered about use of the word alive. Only one soldier had died, but many received wounds from friendly fire when army units surrounded zombies and panicky soldiers started shooting. Bullets went through the enemy like spoons through butterscotch pudding and hit their fellow privates in the head, chest and privates.
Transfer captured zombies to jail cells would happen within an hour, said the Colonel. Jane insisted the drug dealing murderer must go elsewhere if more undead were to fill her cells. The Colonel agreed to take him away and lock him in a storage trailer.
Everything had happened so quickly, Jane thought as she waffled between vacuuming the carpet and attacking dust on her garage sale furniture. One day she arrested a teenager for tagging a wall and next day the gutted body of a senior citizen appeared on a back stairway. Then a badly beaten hairdresser said, from his hospital bed, a zombie ate his leg and other parts. A trailer park got hit by a band of marauders and more people started talking about undead. The army arrived, to
ok charge and soldiers on a pier took losses.
Some people appeared to have suffered vampire bites. Now creatures from horror stories packed her cells, stunk up her office and moaned for brain. She couldn’t believe it. No fiction was stranger than Peachland’s truth.
Sgt. Dougherty now had no jurisdictional power and the tranquil town where she was born and raised had become the source of national hysteria. Helicopters buzzed overhead like bees around a hive and boats, packed with photographers peering through giant lenses, hummed up and down the lake. People she knew had died at the hands of the most foul creatures imaginable and her cells overflowed with decomposing demons. She could hardly conceive that living, reeking monsters from hell threatened her town. Stubborn citizens felt likewise and refused to evacuate lest their precious homes be ravaged while they were absent. How could windows and doors be worth more than life, she wondered.
Tomorrow Santa, Frankenstein, Dracula and the Easter Bunny would make impromptu appearances at Lakeside Park. Maybe the hand of God would sweep across the sky and drown the town with 40 days worth of rain.
The floor creaked, the wind whistled and pine cones crashed onto a roof that needed to be reshingled. Carefully and quietly Jane moved from room to room, turned on every switch and wondered if light was the great white hope. She checked her flashlights and placed one on the kitchen table, one on top of the TV and one in her pocket. Slowly she opened a small, dark walk-in closet in her bedroom. Years ago its bulb burned out and she never replaced it because she knew where everything hung. Assuming no living thing hid among her clothes she reached in and felt for her police belt. Something cold snapped on her wrist and she jumped backwards falling onto the bed, rolling off the far side and landing on her feet ready to fight. The clothes cupboard remained black with sketchy shadows. A thin satin belt now rested on the floor, curled in a circle. It must have fallen on her arm, she thought. Her flashlight revealed nothing behind the clothing, but its rays couldn’t reach the very back. Closer she moved, prying left and right with light and ducking down to aim a beam across the floor, fearing it would land on a pair of dirty feet. Sweat beads merged and rolled down her back as she poked light into the last bleak corner, grabbed her police belt and realized she had never experienced fear in her own home. A screaming phone startled her.