by Z. Rider
SUCKERS
A Horror Novel
Z. Rider
Dark Ride Publishing
PO Box 63
Erwin, TN 37650
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Suckers Copyright © 2014 by Z. Rider
Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise for commercial purposes without the prior permission of the publisher. Contact Dark Ride Publishing at www.darkridepublishing.com.
Editing: Ashley Davis
Cover design: DamonZa.com
Illustration: Nate Olson
Interior layout: Heather Lackey
ISBN: 978-1-942234-01-2
Summary
When worn-out musician Dan Ferry decides to take a shortcut back to the band’s hotel, he picks the wrong dark alley to go down. Within days of being attacked by a bat-like creature, he becomes consumed with the need to drink human blood. Terrified of what will happen if he doesn’t get his fix—and terrified of what he’ll do to get it—he turns to his best friend and bandmate, Ray Ford, for help. But what the two don’t know as they try to keep Dan’s situation quiet is that the parasite driving Dan’s addiction has the potential to wipe out humankind.
Robert A. Wells
1941–2001
Why Two Tons of Dirt? ’Cause that’s how much they throw on your grave, you know? —Ray Ford
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Danny Ferry slipped out of interest.
It had a way of happening, leaving him with one hand pushed into his jeans pocket, a bottle of beer in his other, and a vacant smile on his face.
A guy with a Two Tons of Dirt tattoo told him how their song “Light It Up” had gotten him through a shitty breakup. A girl with raccoon eyes gripped his hoodie sleeve with enameled nails as she talked about the other three shows she’d caught this tour—“But this one was epic.” Which wasn’t quite the way he remembered it, but they’d done their best, given the circumstances.
The split skin over his knuckles stung when he gripped the beer a little tighter.
Another guy, looming like a yeti in wire-framed glasses, asked if he had a sponsor deal with Epiphone, and were they working on a new album yet?
No one asked about his knuckles, the drying blood still bright, the scab moist and fragile. The bruise pulsed off rhythm with the Dead Confederate album piping through the club’s PA system. And the rest of him…was just a body, a placeholder. Keeping his spot while his brain stepped into limbo. Fans fed him, literally and spiritually, and for that he was grateful, but tonight…tonight was just one of those nights.
The bottle of half-warm beer wasn’t helping. He dragged himself back to the moment, rubbed at his eye, and tried to listen to a skinny guy with cut-off sleeves telling him about his own band—well, sort of a band. They had a bass player, and his cousin had picked up a guitar at a pawnshop, but the neck was loose. It would go out of tune halfway through a song. Or maybe it was his cousin’s playing. Anyway, Two Tons was a huge inspiration, and he wished his cousin could have gotten off work to come to the show, see how it was done—hey, what effects pedals did Ray Ford use?
The skinny guy’s eyes widened as he spoke, looking past Dan’s shoulder.
A hand clasped him from behind. Ray said in his ear, “Ready to go?”
“Seen Jamie?”
“He said don’t worry about him.”
Which was cause to worry. Jamie and his up-and-down drug problem—up more than down, or down more than up, depending on how you looked at it.
Ray tugged him by the back of his hoodie.
“Thanks for coming,” Dan said as he let Ray pull him along. “Thanks for being there for us.” The raccoon-eyed girl reached out. He clasped her fingers, a split-second physical connection with another human being before he turned away for good.
“He was in the green room,” Ray was saying. “Hanging out with a couple chicks. I think he’ll be okay. Us, on the other hand—you want to catch a cab or walk it?”
The club hoarded heat from the earlier show, the ceiling fans in the rafters swirling it around. The sink bath he’d taken between their set and coming out for the after-party hadn’t held up for long.
“How far?” he asked.
“Just a few blocks, right?”
Fresh air. Peace and quiet. “I’m game if you are.”
Ray pushed through the crowd, a half-weary smile on his face as fans reached out. He had a knack for not letting people stop him to talk. Dan followed, giving a thanks here, a couple of “See you again soons,” though he had no idea when they’d be coming through again. After two years on the road, he was starting to wake up forgetting he actually had an apartment and his own bed, a bathroom he didn’t have to share with anyone.
Somewhere.
They went through to the back, leaving the crowd behind. Ray pushed the exit open. A gust whirled in, skimming Dan’s cheeks. His face relaxed. His shoulders loosened. As he went down the concrete steps, his strides became easier. And, miraculously, nobody was out there.
“Much better,” he said from the sidewalk.
“You ain’t whistlin’ Dixie.” Ray already had a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
Sweat cooled the back of Dan’s neck as he sucked in a lungful of air. He rolled his shoulders and looked at the sky, yellow lit and dense, the city’s lights reflecting off the clouds.
A lighter rasped. Ray cupped his hand around the flame, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked the cigarette to life.
They headed up the incline side by side, Ray’s shoulder hitching when his weight fell on his right foot.
“Gonna see someone about that?” Dan asked. During the set, Ray’d managed to play down the limp he’d gotten from the pedal board that had landed on his foot, but out here with just the two of them, there was no need to put on a show.
“It’ll be fine.” He’d sworn nothing was broken, but knowing how Ray felt about doctors, Dan was skeptical.
Ray whistled a bit of a song they’d been working on, one they’d started in Cincinnati or St. Louis, or maybe it was the one from Kuala Lumpur. They reached an intersection, and Ray jerked his head to the right, still whistling, no cars passing as they made their way up a street fronted by two- and three-story brick buildings, the shop windows in the lower floors dark. It could have been Any Small City, USA. Might as well have been. Dan slowed to look up the side of a gray stone building to its gargoyle-guarded roof ledges. “Where are we?”
“I dunno. Three, four blocks away.”
“I meant—”
“Bet that alley cuts it down to two.” Ray nodded at a dark mouth between a bookshop and an art gallery. “And I’m pretty sure we’re in North Carolina. Asheville, because I remember mountains when it was light out, but I’ve been known to be wrong.” The blacktop where the alley met the street crumbled in under the glow of a streetlamp. Beyond that, shadows.
They looked at the alley with their elbows poking out, their hands in their jacket pockets. A breeze lifted Dan’s hair at the back of his neck.
“It’s dark,” he said.
“Mmhm.” The cigarette bobbed between Ray’s teeth. “Other option is walking up to those lights up there, over a block, then back down.”
Dan stifled a yawn and blinked back the exhaustion prickling his eyes.
“Straight across is looking like a pretty sweet option right now,” Ray said.
“Okay, but if the boogeyman jumps out, I’m shoving you in its direction. What with your handicap, I should be able to get away clean.”
“
You’re a pal.” They stepped off the curb and crossed the empty street, traffic lights at the end of the block blinking yellow.
“Kinda smells,” he said as they crossed into a darkness that made shapes float in front of Dan’s tired eyes as they tried to adjust, like shadows moving at the edges of his vision. The alley smelled like rotting food.
His boots scuffed the pavement. Ray’s had a crisper click, but not by much.
“How’s your hand?” Ray asked.
Dan flexed it. The scab shifted over the raw scrape and the duller bruise beneath. “No real damage.”
“Tell that to the wall,” Ray said.
“He’s lucky it was the fucking wall.”
Ray ground his cigarette on the asphalt without comment. “So what do you want to do?” he asked.
“Finish the tour.” They had a handful of dates left. A handful. So close to the end.
“And then?”
“Take a fucking break.” He shrugged out of his hoodie, clutching it in his fist as they walked. “After that, I’ll let you know.”
“He needs to get into rehab,” Ray said.
“He needs to be someone else’s problem for a change.” His shoulder bumped Ray’s. He hadn’t realized he’d been veering. The soft nudge set him back toward the middle of the alley, like a pinball in molasses. A yawn rose through him. He tipped his head back and stumbled toward Ray again.
Ray gave him a one-handed push back.
Exhaustion weighed on his muscles, made his eyes want to shut—his tiredness didn’t care that he was still walking. But at least he was going to undress soon, stand under a spray of hot water, and climb between clean sheets, where he could black the fuck out until it was time to haul himself on the bus for another round.
He gave Ray a half-hearted shove.
“Hey now,” Ray said. “Watch my toe.”
The sharp flap of wings sounded—papery, fast.
Dan canted his chin upward. A dark shape hurtled at the edge of his vision. He moved to dodge it, but his head was whipped aside, hard, before he could get out of the way. He stumbled, the dull thump of impact replaying in his head. He brought a hand to his cheekbone. “Shit. What the fuck?”
Ray glanced toward the sky as he walked back toward Dan. “Are you okay?” He tipped Dan’s chin toward the light.
Blinking away water at the corner of his eye, Dan said, “Did you see it?”
“Just a blur. Heard it more than anything. You all right?”
His cheek throbbed in time with his bruised knuckles. Ray touched it, and he winced.
“Bad?” Ray asked.
“No. Well, like someone with a boxing mitt punched me in the face, but I’m okay.” Except for his heart racing at a hundred and eighty beats per minute.
“That was fucked up,” Ray said.
“Fucking bird or bat or something must have been drunk. Let’s get out of here?”
“Hey, I’m right with you.”
They took a few steps, and the sound came again—wings flapping, fast. They picked up their pace, Ray’s left boot coming down harder than his right. Adrenaline prickled Dan’s skin, made his stomach do the kind of flip you got when you crested a hill too fast. A thud hit off to his left. Ray stumbled forward with a grunt.
Dan spun, walking backward fast. “Are you all right?”
“What the fuck?” Ray looked over his shoulder, still moving. “Fucking thing dive-bombed my back.”
Dan turned back around. The alley outlet grew near, the street beyond deserted but wide open. He threw a look over his shoulder.
Nothing but alley.
Nothing but the clap of their footfalls.
Then the beat of wings.
The signal to move the fuck faster left his brain on a slow train to his legs. He ducked as the flapping overtook his hearing. The thing smacked into the back of his neck like a softball, pitching him forward. His hand opened in surprise, his hoodie spilling to the ground. His boots stumbled over broken asphalt. His knee connected hard with the ground.
He let out a sharp cry at a needle-prick of pain in his neck. He reached over his shoulders, trying to get a hand under the thing to protect his neck. Hot and rubbery and writhing—not the thing itself, but underneath its skin, like it was a coarse leather pouch dug from a hot riverbank and full of squirming things.
Ray’s shin banged his sides. His fingernails scraped Dan’s fingers as he scrabbled for purchase on the rubbery mass. Coated with something like sweat, the thing was slick and slippery, and Dan’s mouth flooded with saliva at its texture, the thought of it clinging to his skin.
The thin, sharp pain in his neck grew hot, like a needle sterilized in fire. He cried out again. His vision grained. The asphalt in front of his knees swelled and heaved. His stomach bucked, and everything he’d had to drink after the show shot back up.
Through the pounding in his eardrums, he heard Ray yell, felt Ray’s foot hard against his back. A surprised yelp followed, a confusion of feet over pavement. Wings flapped, and the needle pulled free of his neck.
Ray spilled to the ground behind him.
Clamping his hand against his nape, Dan looked upward, acid burning the back of his throat. The creature—whatever the fuck it was—grew small against the yellow-tinged night.
His fingers slipped in a warm slickness. Imagining blood, he clenched his teeth.
The thing pierced the underbelly of the clouds and disappeared.
CHAPTER TWO
Ray scuttled across the pavement. “Are you all right?” He grasped Dan’s wrist. “We’ve gotta get the fuck out of here. Are you okay?”
Am I okay? Can I move? I can’t move. A dark spot swooped across the gray clouds behind his eyelids. His hand slipped a little. He clutched harder.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Ray dragged him to his feet.
Once he discovered he could move, moving was easy. With Ray clutching a fistful of his shirt, they took off, their boots pounding the final twenty feet of alleyway. They spilled onto a wide, desolate street. Ray yanked him to the right, and there was their hotel, a yellow glow casting across the dark carpet beneath a blue-and-gold awning. Their boots slipped on the mat as they threw themselves at the door, hoping the damned thing wasn’t locked.
A cool blast of A/C stole Dan’s breath as he stumbled into the lobby. Far to the left was the front desk, elbow-high polished wood with a narrow alcove behind it for the desk clerks, none of who were present at the moment.
“Nice,” Ray said. He tugged Dan toward the elevators.
A thin, wet trickle licked the inside of Dan’s wrist. He squeezed his eyes shut as his footsteps sank into the lobby’s thick rug, letting Ray lead him by the elbow. He imagined blood oozing between his fingers. He didn’t want to look at how much. As Ray punched an elevator button, lightheadedness washed over him. He braced himself against the cool wall. “How bad is it?” he managed, his voice like a wire stretched between poles.
“It’ll be okay,” Ray said.
“Should we call an ambulance?” His face was clammy. The floors dinged off. His knees felt like hinges, about to fold.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Ray asked.
The door glided open.
“How bad is it?” He lifted his hand, turning so Ray could see.
Ray’s fingers, feather-light and a little raspy, sent a shiver down his spine. He wondered what Ray was seeing. How bad was it? His face went cold at the memory of that thing on him. Bile flooded the back of his throat. He swallowed it back.
“Did it get you?” Ray said.
“What?” He clamped his hand over his neck. “It fucking bit me.”
“All you’ve got back there is a mosquito bite.”
The elevator doors slid shut with them still standing outside it.
He felt the wetness with the tips of his fingers. “But I’m bleeding.”
Ray shook his head.
“Are you sure?” He let Ray look again, and Ray’s touch did it again
—a light vibration going right through his vertebrae.
“I don’t see anything. It just looks like you’ve been scratching an itch. Which, if you got bit as much as I did while we were in Florida, is no fucking surprise.”
“I haven’t been scratching.” His insides churned again. He braced his shoulder against the wall. “It bit me.” He looked at his hand. Whatever was wet on it was colorless. He’d imagined a virtual glove of blood, dripping down his wrist, up his forearm. Instead, a tinge of pink colored the crook of his thumb.
“Your cheek’s bleeding a little.” Ray touched it, and Dan wanted to bat his hand away. That tingle again.
Movement from the lobby drew their eyes—the desk clerk, still on her goddamned cell phone. “I’m not bleeding,” he said, his voice flat.
“Your cheek is. Do you still want to go to the hospital?”
“There’s nothing back there?” He rubbed it.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Holy shit.” He pressed the elevator button. If he didn’t have to go to the hospital, he wasn’t going to the hospital. Two things they didn’t need: news all over the internet about the bass player for Two Tons of Dirt getting attacked, and some doctor deciding to keep him around for testing. They were so fucking close to the end of this—the last thing he wanted was to come back for rescheduled dates. “That was fucked up,” he said.
Ray huffed a laugh.
“What the fuck was that out there?” Dan asked as they stepped into the elevator.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
The doors slid closed. That felt safe. That felt good. They were in a box, solid walls on four sides, solid floor under his feet. A small box with no shadows for anything to hide in.
“What’d it look like?” he asked.
Ray held his hands apart. A small cat could fit between them. Jesus. The doors opened. Dan put a hand out to keep them open as Ray said, “I never felt anything like it. Fucking… I can’t even describe it.”
“You think it was a bat?” Dan said.