Monsters in the Midwest ( Book 1): Wisconsin Vamp

by Scott Burtness

  Anger and fear burned away his shock. His plan of having a quick snack, just a little sip without anyone getting hurt had devolved into a stack of four dead bodies. By the time he’d settled Candy on top of the college boys and covered them as much as possible with bags of trash, Herb was weeping openly and trembling with rage. He needed to talk to Helen, set her straight, and it had to happen right now.

  Herb moved purposefully back through the patio gate, only to stop in his tracks as another stripper turned to look past her cigarette at him.

  “Hey jackass, go in the front and pay the cover like everybody else, or I’ll have your ass tossed out like yesterday’s news,” the brunette snipped, fixing him with a nasty glare.

  Herb recognized the girl that had accosted them inside, and quickly started to scrub at the bloody tear tracks on his cheeks. “Oh, it’s ok. I, um. I’m here with Helen.”

  The brunette squinted suspiciously before huffing in reply. “Geezuz. How many guys is she gonna go through tonight?”

  Herb swallowed loudly, eyes widening. “I just. Um. I guess I have no idea what you’re. Um. Helen and I need to get outta here. Like, now. Did you see her inside?”

  The brunette laughed a smoky laugh. “Put it back in your pants, tiger. I’m sure she’ll be along shortly. She was just stepping in for some color. I’m sure she’ll be along to satisfy your every desire,” she added with a sneer, “in just a few. So simmer down, hot stuff.”

  Herb moved for the door, but the brunette stepped in front of him. “Seriously, hornball. You can wait here for that tramp if you want. But if you wanna get inside, you go in the front or I have the bouncers beat you bloody.

  Not wanting to make things worse than they already were, Herb stepped back and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

  The silence stretched as the brunette smoked and Herb fidgeted. “Um. Nice night, huh,” he finally offered, unable to bear the silence any more.

  “Yup,” she replied, followed by another puff of smoke.

  “So, uh. You worked here for a while?” he asked politely.

  “Umm hmm.”

  “Uh. That’s cool. So, um. What’s color?” Herb asked.

  The brunette frowned. “Huh?”

  “Helen was going to get a little color. Before we. Ah. Leave.” Herb blushed, suddenly wondering just what he was getting himself into. “I just, ah. Didn’t. Don’t know. I mean. What’s color?”

  The brunette smiled, looking at him like he might be a little daft. “Well, you’re not one of her sharpest catches, that’s a fact.” She crushed out her cigarette. “The tanning booth. She doesn’t want those stage lights reflecting off a big pale ass. Blinded patrons don’t tip as well.”

  “Oooh, got it,” Herb responded. “Color. Sure. I knew that. I mean. Um. Makes total sense.” The stripper shrugged, the silk of her robe sliding up and down slightly with the motion. She fished another cigarette out of a pack and lit up.

  Herb tried to relax, but it was tough knowing there were three dead bodies on the other side of the fence. He was also still trying to figure out just what the hell had happened to Helen. She’d obviously been infected or whatever by him. But how? Then it hit him. He looked down at the unblemished skin of his palm, and remembered quite clearly when he’d cut it, remembered Helen licking it, the hungry look in her eyes. She was obviously pretty far gone at that moment, but Herb had no idea she’d get all vampy. But now, thinking back on the movies he’d watched he cursed himself as an idiot. Her drinking his blood is exactly how it was done.

  Too weird, he thought for the umpteenth time. Getting vamped by bug bite hadn’t really been covered in any of his research, and neither had turning the local waitress/stripper into a vamp while making out in the cooler at a bar. Herb was totally new to this whole vampire thing, and felt like he was making quite a mess of things. Like Helen, his thoughts reminded him, bringing his worries full circle to the present again. They really needed to go. He wanted to be long gone before someone decided to take out another bag of trash.

  A frown darkened his gaze. Something bothered Herb. He patted his pockets self-consciously, checking to make sure he had his car keys. Keys accounted for, he tried to surreptitiously check his fly to make sure his jeans were zipped. He shifted from foot to foot, wondering if maybe he had left the stove on at home. I haven’t cooked a meal all week, he reminded himself. But he definitely had that I-just-remembered-I-forgot-something feeling.

  The lightbulb above the door flashed and flickered like a bug light zapping a moth. Something in Herb’s chest pulled taut, snapped violently, and a wave of nausea wracked him. A moment later, Herb’s keen ears heard muffled voices and a knocking from inside. Hinges creaked and there was a sudden, piercing scream. While Herb sat stunned, the brunette reacted. Tossing her half-smoked cigarette to the ground, she ran to the door and pulled it wide. Another dancer stood a short distance inside facing a smaller door Herb hadn’t noticed before, set into the wall just past the vanity mirrors. From his perspective, it looked like it might’ve been the entrance to a small bathroom or closet. The girl’s hands were pressed tight to her mouth and her eyes were wide in terror, her bare chest tinged blue by a strange glow emanating from the room. As Herb looked in puzzlement at the scene, the fluid in his eyeballs started to boil. Gasping in pained shock, he twisted his face to the side while he brought an arm up to shield his eyes. Half-blind and acting on sudden instinct, he leapt up, ran through the door in the privacy fence into the dark lot beyond. Jumping into his car, he revved the engine and pointed his Pinto toward home, shaking hands gripping the wheel. A little color. She had just wanted a little color, he lamented. Oh Helen.

  Chapter 25

  It wasn’t just bowling night. It was finals night and Herb was as nervous as a one-armed kid at a paddy-cake contest. It had been almost two weeks since he’d hung out with Dallas and Stanley, and the past week had been tough. They were supposed to roll last weekend, to stay in what Dallas called “prime rolling form,” but Herb had begged off, pleading with Dallas over the phone that he still wasn’t feeling great and really needed to rest. Herb’s excuse was certainly genuine. He just hoped that Dallas and Stanley never learned the details. His visit to see Helen had really messed him up. There was no way he was going to try and bowl with the guys like nothing had gone down. Despite the thermometer stubbornly insisting he was a cool seventy-three degrees, he had felt feverish, complete with nausea, aches, pains, like someone was boiling a rusty vat of roofing tar deep in his gut.

  A suffocating malaise smothered him like a moldy blanket, wrapped with cords of deep paranoia. Every sound, no matter the source, was the police coming for him. Fever-dreams played out the scenes in stark detail. There’d be an investigation. Questions about the collection of twigs, jerky and cracked leather that used to be Helen curled up inside the tanning booth at Nekked’s. They’d find the brunette and ask about Helen’s acquaintances. Was she seeing anyone? Did she have any visitors? That brunette, she’d stand there smoking her cigarettes, describing between shaky puffs the awkward man who suddenly disappeared into the night. It’d take her a few minutes, the horror of the memory making it hard to concentrate. Then it would come to her in a flash. Herb, she’d say with conviction. His name was Herb. Minutes later, they’d find three more bodies in the dumpster, while at the same time some kids would stumble upon a fourth body stuffed under a log in the woods. Then there’d be a meeting, the Trappersville cops gearing up like the Frog Brothers. Stakes and crosses, holy water squirt guns, you name it. Faint sirens would reach his sensitive ears from miles away, growing to a skull-splitting screech as they circled his home. Then the blowtorch. Yes, of course they’d have a blowtorch. And a megaphone. “Come out, you demon, you hell-spawn! Get out here and maybe we’ll let you live!” But of course they wouldn’t let him live. Not Herb. Then the fire, great gushing geysers of flame. It would be so hot, so damn hot, like Herb was burning from the inside out...

  His vivid fantasies had left Herb cowering
in his home the remainder of the weekend, vacillating through periods of deep, guilt-wracked depression, manic turns where he’d plot his escape from town and try to work out the details of creating a new life in Nova Scotia, and long stretches during which he just felt too sick to care about anything at all. In his fever dreams, Herb figured his death was a foregone conclusion. It was really just a question of how. Angry mob, fever, or worse?

  Time, however, really does heal all wounds. By Sunday afternoon, the aches and pains became an ache or a pain, then just an ache, then nothing. As the sun headed for the horizon that evening, his temperature was checking in at a much more pleasant seventy-three degrees instead of a fever-wracked seventy-three degrees. He made it to work Sunday night because the only thing that scared him more than the cops was Ronnie firing him again. The Pinto bounced and jarred over rutted dirt roads that were little more than deer runs through the woods, driving ten miles out of his way to make sure he didn’t risk passing any overly curious cops. He stayed in the kitchen the entire shift, eyes downcast, avoiding the serve-through window as much as possible. If Dee thought his behavior strange, she didn’t comment. And Herb was too preoccupied to notice that Dee didn’t complain about a single order, send a single item back, or scold him for not reading the ticket.

  Tuesday was much the same. He took the most round-about way to work, hid in the kitchen, convinced that the next second, the very next second, the authorities would arrive to deliver his comeuppance. But by Wednesday, the cops hadn’t burned down his house, the FBI hadn’t sent in professional vampire hunters from helicopters, and the Air Force hadn’t dropped a tactical nuke on an evacuated and condemned town formerly known as Trappersville. Heading into work Wednesday night, Herb felt the tight coils of fear slowly loosen a bit and he took his first deep breath in days. Feeling bold, he drove the regular route to work, parked in his usual spot instead of hiding his car behind the dumpster. He’d even managed to shave and comb his hair. While still challenging tasks to manage without a reflection, exploratory patting of his face and head reassured him he’d most likely done a passable job.

  Walking into Ronnie’s through the back entrance, Herb almost collided with Lois as she stepped outside.

  “Oh my gosh! Lois. Hi. Um, sorry,” Herb apologized, quickly stepping to the side, realizing that they had almost touched. Almost, he thought, warmth spreading in his belly.

  “Hey Herb. How are ya?” she asked distractedly as she fished in her purse for a lighter.

  Good, he responded easily. Or meant to, except there was no sound. Well, he realized belatedly, there was a sound. A sort-of wheezy release of air through a constricted throat, barely audible over the chorus of crickets chirruping industriously. A mouse farting might’ve made a similar noise, but of course Herb couldn’t be sure since he’d never heard mice fart. His mouth might have worked in a vain attempt to give some semblance of shape to the reedy squeak, but honestly, Herb wasn’t entirely sure if his face had moved or not. All he knew for certain was that Lois had talked to him, the mouse in his throat farted in return, and she thankfully didn’t appear to have noticed. After stepping past Herb, she lit her cigarette and stood staring into the night, oblivious to Herb’s inability to move or breathe just a few feet away. Swallowing hard, he finally convinced his lungs to reengage. Bright little flecks of lights hovered around the corners of his vision until the night air started to clear his head.

  As he tried to remember what he was going to say before his voice left him high and dry, Lois looked back at him.

  “Hey, you and Dallas are friends, right?”

  Herb felt his head nod up and down of its own accord.

  “Is he like, I mean. What’s he like?” she asked.

  Herb frowned. “Dallas? He’s um, well,” he trailed off, a stream of images flashing across his mind’s eye. “Well, he’s Dallas. You know, Big D.”

  “Hmmm. OK.” she finished, turning back to study the night sky through exhaled clouds of smoke. Herb turned and entered the kitchen, too many thoughts moving through his head at once to allow any particular one much consideration.

  They didn’t exchange many words after that, outside of her sending through orders and offering the occasional, “Thanks,” or “Huh. That actually looks pretty good, Herb,” as she picked up food from the serve-through. A hundred times and more, he almost asked why she wanted to know about Dallas, and a hundred times and more he choked back the words just as they soured the tip of his tongue and backs of his teeth. Dallas, he muttered to the dark cloud hanging over his head. Why was it always Dallas?

  Later, as he finished packing his bowling bag, the dark thoughts still clouded his mind. He and Dal had been pals for so long, years and years, because their relationship functioned on well-established rules. Herb was Herb, but Dallas was Dallas. He was the ringleader, the alpha-dog, the undisputed king. But ever since that night of shooting pool and hustling the Vikings fans, Herb found himself wondering about his natural role in the order of things. He was stronger now, faster, and kinda knew some kung fu, or rather, some instinctive vampirey equivalent that was close enough to count in his book. He could see in near perfect blackness and hear the creak of the tendon before the finger pulled the tab on a can of Milwaukee’s Best from across a crowded bar. He could put the whammy on people and make them think just about whatever he wanted, and if you cut him, he healed. And not just healed healed. He healed like, really, really fast. He even got busy with a stripper that had shot down Dallas! Before she turned herself into jerky, he reminded himself with a guilty twinge. But the truth of things stubbornly lodged itself in that space where his self-confidence would’ve resided if he’d had some. Before last week, Herb would’ve believed snowmen would live to retirement age and take up pinochle in Hell before he’d get the sexy stripper instead of Dallas. And that, ultimately was the issue. In all their years of friendship, Herb had never gotten something instead of Big D. Now, when that was finally starting to change, Lois asks him about none other than Dallas. As he pulled tickets, pushed an assortment of dead animals around the flat top grill and pulled fries from the fryer, Herb started to imagine a different world. A world without his best friend. A world without Dallas.

  Chapter 26

  As the sun waned on the horizon and shadows moved implacably across the trees toward his home, Herb continued getting ready for the big night. Excitement danced a mad jig with his apprehension, the two spinning around and making him burp repeatedly. The Men’s Adult League Final Championship was the spectator sport in Trappersville. The league was sanctioned and everything, and the winning team walked away with a sweet trophy, a nice cash prize and their names on the Roll-Masters Hall of Fame board behind the shoe rental counter.

  They’d been rolling in this league for years and had only made the finals once. It was 2003 and they’d bowled a hell of a season. It was down to the wire between them and Fancy Dan’s team for a spot in the championships. The weekend before the final night of regular season bowling, when Herb, Dallas and Stanley were set to square off against Fancy Dan and his compadres, Dan twisted his ankle, fell and broke his wrist at a Prince concert in Milwaukee. Refusing to let a sub take all the glory, Dan pulled his team out of the league. His teammates were pissed, but it did allow Dallas, Herb and Stanley to get in. Stanley called it a “silver lining.” Dallas called it a custom-made miracle and ordered bowling jerseys for the three of them. Green and gold, with “King and the Pins” across the back and a cartoon rendition of Dallas’s truck Deloris smashing through a bunch of bowling pins. Actually, Dallas got four jerseys, and immediately had the guys all sign one and put it in a big picture frame. His plan was to sell it on eBay after they won the finals.

  Sadly, Dallas never got a chance to eBay that jersey. They got shut down pretty quick. Dallas bowled well, he always did, but Stanley and Herb pretty much sucked from the start. Stanley complained that it was the restrictive nature of the jersey and said it didn’t lay properly across his shoulders. Had it been 100%
cotton, it might’ve performed better, but cotton-poly blends didn’t have the same elasticity as good old cotton, according to Stanley. Herb was more direct in his search for a scapegoat, blaming his performance on the ridiculous amount of beer they drank the night before, the day of, and during their first game. Dallas took the loss pretty hard and didn’t come round much for a week or so after that night.

  What Dallas had dubbed “The Big Letdown of 2003” was buzzing at the front of Herb’s brain as he dressed in his bowling best. After a long, steaming hot shower, he donned his best jeans, clean undershirt, and the new, 100-percent cotton bowling jerseys they had ordered special for this year’s finals.

  The jerseys were top-of-the-line. Custom made by a specialty t-shirt shop in Oconomowoc, they were black with dark red trim on the lapels, red piping on the sleeves and matching, blood red buttons. Nice, sure, but it wasn’t the piping or buttons that made them magical. The trio had sent a photo with their order form. Further art direction was provided by Dallas over the phone, with Herb and Stanley offering helpful suggestions over his shoulder. The resulting airbrushed caricature of the trio on the back of the jersey was more than they could’ve ever hoped for.

  Dallas had opened the plastic bag containing the first jersey, drawing the smooth fabric out of the bag with the care and attention paleontologists reserve for the most precious of fossils. The three sighed in unison, stunned by the beauty of the airbrushed artistry on the black fabric. As the team captain, Dallas was in the center, with Herb to one side and Stanley to the other. Rather than typical caricatures accentuating flaws in comic fashion, the airbrush artist had latched onto their best features and brought them out in sophisticated detail. Dallas’s strong chin and sharp jaw looked stronger and sharper, his head tilted slightly forward over a broad chest. Herb’s stubble-clad cheeks looked rugged rather than frumpy, and his rebellious hair, captured perfectly by the artist, conveyed edgy and hip instead of disheveled hedgehog. Even Stanley looked tough. Their expressions were serious, focused, committed. Arced above them in pearly white, the words “King and the Pins” virtually glowed with divine radiance. Each of them held a bowling ball in front of their chest, each ball depicting a word from the phrase “You’re. Going. Down.” They were professional jerseys, powerful jerseys, winning jerseys.