Blood Harvest (Book 1): Blood Fruit

by Goodman, D. J.

  When she closed the refrigerator and turned around V was standing there. She slowly came up to Peg and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, sweetie. I promise you we’ll take good care of him later.”

  Peg knew how crazy it was to find that comforting, but she did anyway.

  Once they were in the truck V started driving, but they didn’t know where exactly to go first. “If she can really stay that fast she could have checked all the empty houses around here by now,” V said. “I don’t really know where to start.”

  “It’s… not any of the houses?” Peg asked, not really certain why the words came out as a question.

  “What do you mean?” V asked.

  “I don’t know, it’s just… not in any of the houses.” She was certain this time, but she didn’t know why. When she thought of any empty houses around here she felt a sudden annoyance and impatience. For some strange reason she almost felt like she’d already checked them. “The empty store. We should try there.”

  They passed a liquor store on the way downtown. Peg couldn’t help but stare at it as they went by. She also noticed that V slowed down in front of it before speeding back up and heading on their way.

  Oconomowoc was small enough that downtown wasn’t terribly busy at this time of morning on a weekday. They probably could have stopped out front and gone to look in the empty windows without anyone getting too suspicious, but V went right past the building and instead turned on the driveway that led to the back. The parking lot behind the buildings was small, holding only one other car at the moment behind the Chinese place, and just a few feet away from the lot a path led to the wooden boardwalk around the lake. The water level was high right now after the incredibly wet and cold spring, and the town might need to prepare itself for the possibility of a flood soon, but for now it was peaceful and innocent-looking. It was not at all the kind of place anyone should have thought to look for vampires.

  “Sorry Peg, but this looks like a dead end,” V said.

  “What do you mean?” Peg asked. She absently scratched at the skin on her arms. She felt oddly exposed out here, even a little sick.

  “Well, just look,” V said. She pointed at the back of the building. Peg had never really paid enough attention to downtown to remember what had once been here, but it looked like it had been empty for a long time. Leaves and litter had piled up against the back door and the padlock holding it closed had rusted.

  “I don’t know,” Peg said. That strange annoyance when they’d started hadn’t come back. She wasn’t experiencing that deep conviction that this was the incorrect place. But then she didn’t know why she should be paying that feeling any mind in the first place. It was irrational and she knew very well that she couldn’t trust herself to think clearly.

  The emotions hit her hard and fast, invading her brain and then disappearing before she could physically react. As they passed Peg stumbled slightly and V immediately moved to steady her.

  “You alright?” V asked.

  “I don’t know. I think so?”

  “What was that?”

  Peg shook her head. Trying to explain it would take too long. The sudden burst of emotions had been so clear and decipherable, but they hadn’t been hers. The most predominant had been fear, but not like any she’d felt in her life. Even after this morning she couldn’t say she’d ever been that terrified of anything. Peg didn’t even know what could possibly create that level of mind-numbing horror. And yet under that had been a conviction that was she was doing was absolutely the right thing, a certainty powered by one final emotion beneath all the others: a deep, pure, unquestioning love.

  “This is the place,” Peg said instead.

  “What? How can you be sure?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not… really sure what is happening to me. But I know. She’s in there right now. And I don’t think she’s alone.”

  V gave her a glance that lasted less than a second, but in that simple gesture Peg could see so many things going on in V’s head. She was probably concerned, and she had every right to be. Peg knew that what she had just said was not rational, and under the circumstances she could be forgiven for not being able to embrace logic. But V said nothing about it. Peg wasn’t sure if it was just V humoring her or if she actually trusted Peg’s judgment on this, but all she said was, “Then how do we get in? How did they get in?”

  Peg looked over the back of the building. Even on closer inspection it still looked like it hadn’t been disturbed. They hadn’t been able to give the front a very close look but it didn’t seem likely that they would find anything different, and the building was surrounded on either side by businesses that were open. That only left two directions. Oconomowoc wasn’t large enough that there was likely any kind of entrance from a sewer or sub-basement, so that only left…

  “The roof,” Peg said. “Maybe there’s some sort of maintenance entrance up there? If the thing that took Brian is as fast and strong as Zoey then maybe they could jump?”

  “That’s great. They can jump but we can’t. So that still leaves the question of how we…” V sighed and went into the back of her truck.

  “What are you doing?” Peg asked.

  “Getting ready to reacquaint myself with some of the skills of my misspent youth,” V said. She pulled out her keys and unlocked a metal trunk near the cab. The first thing she pulled out was a tire iron. She handed it to Peg and then went back in, this time revealing a shotgun.

  “Do I even want to ask why you keep that in your truck?” Peg asked.

  “Hey, you have no idea how idea how often I need to shoot something on a daily basis.”

  V loaded the shotgun and handed it to Peg to hold as she took the tire iron back and went back to the door. “You know how to use that thing?” V asked.

  “Sort of. I stole my dad’s pistol and shot at cans in a farmer’s field once. Almost killed one of the cows by accident.”

  “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing. Just aim it at the door in case anything pops out when I open this. Remember that it’s going to have a lot more kick to it, so be care you don’t lose control and shoot me by accident.”

  V put the pointed end of the tire iron under the latch holding the padlock. “You ready?”

  “No,” Peg said.

  “Too bad,” V said. “Let’s rescue some shit, huh?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The rusted metal snapped after several very hard tugs. Peg held the butt of the shotgun up to her shoulder, doing her best to mimic the posture of everybody she’d ever seen use one on TV and being very much aware that she was probably doing something wrong with it. She wasn’t even sure what doing it would do for her if whatever took Brendan had Zoey’s speed. She would probably be dead before she realized she was supposed to pull the trigger.

  V stepped back like she expected the door to swing open, but it stayed closed. She looked back at Peg and something in her stance must have worried V. “Maybe I should be the one to hold that, Peg. Now that the lock’s broken you can open the door. But let me go in first, okay?”

  Peg nodded and handed the shotgun back, instead taking the tire iron and holding it out in front of her like a weapon in her right hand. With her left she grasped the door handle, waited a moment for V to get into position, and then opened the door.

  The door opened outward with a suitable creak. They both waited for several seconds to see if anything came out or sounded from inside, but there was nothing. They leaned into the doorway and peered inside.

  Peg had expected it to be pitch black inside but instead found it surprisingly bright. The interior consisted mostly of a wide-open empty space, and the light coming in from the front windows illuminated most of the building. V cautiously stepped in and Peg followed.

  “Careful,” Peg said. “We don’t want anybody passing by out front to notice us in here.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know about this,” V said. “It’s way too exposed. Doesn’t seem like a very good hiding p
lace.”

  Peg had to admit that it didn’t, but she was still certain they were on the right track. She tried to reach into herself and make the sensation from earlier happen again, but she didn’t feel anything.

  She walked further in and carefully surveyed everything. Peg still couldn’t guess from the interior what had once been here. Any and all trace had been stripped away. The carpet had been torn out to expose the bare boards in some places and concrete in others. The walls were exposed drywall, some of it with patches of what looked like mold growing on it, and old electrical cords poked out of the walls where there had once been light switches and outlets. There was a walled off area in the corner that looked like it had been an office, but the door was missing and a quick check inside revealed only a particle board desk that would probably wimp apart if she touched it. That only left a door in the other back corner.

  “What about that?” Peg asked.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to look,” V said. “But I’ve got to tell you, I really think this place is a dead end.”

  Peg looked again at the floor. The concrete area was near the front, but all the rest was thick, sturdy wood that only looked unsafe in some areas.

  Think for a second, her inner voice said. Why not just use concrete on the entire thing? This building is old, almost as old as the rest of the city. And a building like this would have had…

  “A basement,” Peg silently mouthed at V. If she was right then someone might be directly underneath her at this very moment listening in on the entire conversation. “Ten bucks says that door goes into the basement.”

  V gave Peg a concerned expression, then pointed at her ear and then at the floor. Apparently she’d come to the same conclusion. “Peg, I’m sorry, but I really think this is a dead end.”

  Peg moved as quietly as she possibly could. The wooden floor looked sturdy and heavy, but she wasn’t sure if anything beneath them could hear their footsteps through the wood. “Where else are we even going to go?”

  V followed Peg to the door. She pointed to Peg and then the door before pointing at herself and then the shotgun. Peg nodded and took a position similar to one she had outside. There was no reason to assume anything would pop out at them this time, either, but it was better to be safe.

  V talked as she readied the shotgun. “We can go try that empty house over on…”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence, nor did Peg even get to grabbing the door handle. The door slammed open, smacking Peg hard in the arm and throwing her against the nearest wall. The thing that came out was a blur, although perhaps not nearly as fast as Zoey. Peg had been unable to see when Zoey moved, but she could still follow this thing. It immediately went for V. V all of a sudden seemed sluggish. Despite the thing’s speed Peg still thought she maybe had enough time to shoot, but the thing had already batted the shotgun aside by the time V pulled the trigger, causing it to fire wildly into the ceiling.

  For some reason the thing slowed down even further, and Peg thought she could finally start to make out its shape. It was humanoid, at least, with two arms and two legs, but there was something off about its proportions, especially around the head. It was wearing something that might have been a black hoody, but the area hidden under the hood seemed oddly flat.

  The thing ripped the shotgun from V’s grip, and V continued to act like she was moving through syrup. Whatever it was doing to slow her down, however, didn’t seem to be working on Peg. Peg pushed herself off of the wall and swung the tire iron at the creature. Even if it was moving slower she still couldn’t keep up with it, and the thing managed to dodge mostly out of the way. The heavy end of the tire iron caught the pocket of the hoody and got caught for a moment, tearing the cloth and exposing pale, almost gray, flesh beneath.

  At that moment the thing stopped and faced her, finally giving Peg a clear look. Definitely a human, or at least it had been at some point. It was a boy, maybe in his late teens or twenties, and rather tall. He’d probably been handsome once, but his facial features now seemed wrong, more like the approximations of a face that someone had made too flat and too broad. The hood hung over his head in a limp sort of way that implied maybe his head had been smacked a couple times with a shovel.

  He opened his mouth to speak, exposing the same mouthful of wicked sharp teeth as Zoey, although something else in there seemed missing. Peg didn’t have the time to figure out what it might be.

  “Fruit,” the boy said. Such a simple word, but everything seemed wrong about the sound. It was too harsh, too raspy, the noise of someone who might have learned to speak from listening to the voices on a radio station that wasn’t tuned in properly. Then he ran at her.

  Again he seemed to be moving slower, almost but not quite normal now, and this time when Peg swung the tire iron the boy couldn’t make it out of the way in time. It hit him in the arm, harder than Peg would have expected, and she could hear the audible snap of bones. He didn’t scream or react to the blow in any way, instead grabbing at the tire iron with his remaining hand. There was a brief struggle, but the boy’s strength was greater and he wrenched it out of her hand. He took a swing at her, which to her surprise Peg dodged. The next one, however, hit her square in the hip. Pain flared up through her left side and sent her tumbling. Even as she hit the ground the boy was standing over her, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and lifting her slightly off the ground.

  “A combination of things will be pleased,” he said, or at least that was what she thought he said. His voice was such a harsh slur that it was hard to be sure. Peg might have asked him what he meant, but she didn’t get the chance. Another shotgun blast roared and slammed him off her. He flopped off to the side like a rag doll.

  V stood ten feet away, still holding the shotgun in Peg’s general direction. For several seconds she didn’t do or say anything. She just stared at Peg. Finally she spoke in little more than a whisper.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  V didn’t say. She just stood there, never letting the shotgun lower.

  “V? Are you okay? You look like you’re still whammied.”

  “Whammied?”

  “You know, whatever he did to slow you down?”

  “Slowed down,” V said, finally letting the end of the shotgun drop. “Right.”

  “Zoey said something about losing control on the night he took her. Like mind control.”

  “Sure,” V said. “Guess that was it.” There was a really strange look on her face like she was trying to figure out something in her mind, but Peg didn’t have the time to think about it. They still had to deal with whatever this guy was.

  For the moment they appeared to be safe from him, but Peg couldn’t guess for how long. V’s shotgun blast had taken him square in the side and thrown him to the floor several feet away. He wasn’t moving and certainly appeared dead, but Peg didn’t believe it. If this guy was a vampire like Zoey then there was no telling what he might be able to survive. She stood up and grabbed the tire iron, then slowly approached his body with V coming up behind her. She kept the pointed end hovering over him as she bent to get a closer look.

  “Peg, we should get moving,” V said. “Maybe there’s too much shadow in here for someone to see us unless they were really looking, but there’s no way no one heard the gunshots. Let’s find them and get the fuck out.”

  “No, not yet,” Peg said. She had to get a closer look at this guy. Not only did she need to be sure he was dead, but she wanted to understand. If this was the person who had taken Zoey all those years ago, the person who had permanently warped both her sister’s and her own life, then she needed to have more information. He might have some ID on him, or something else that might give her a clue.

  The first thing she noticed was that the massive wound in his side wasn’t bleeding, or at least not much. V had gotten him good, but the whole only dripped tiny beads of thick, dark liquid. It didn’t look like blood, although Peg couldn’t imagine what else
it might be.

  But that wasn’t even the strangest thing. As she looked up to his face the odd proportions of his head appeared even more off than earlier. His head was slightly turned to the side, but the hood, still in place, looked oddly deflated. Still keeping the tire iron ready, Peg reached up with her other hand and pulled back the hood.

  “What the holy flying fuck of God?” V asked as the both saw what was underneath. “I mean seriously, what the actual fuck in the ass?”

  Peg hoped she didn’t expect an answer, because she was completely incapable of giving one. Nothing she’d ever seen or done had prepared her for this. The adrenaline of the past two days had been keeping her from thinking too hard on everything, but everything, even the worst most catatonia-inducing moments, had at least been something her mind could conceive on its own. Death, kidnapping, beheadings, fucking vampires. All these were things that her imagination at least had some kind of baseline for. But this… this…

  Major Tom to Ground Control, the voice in her head said, oddly more distant than usual, we have a major problem here. We are about to lose any and all connection with reality. Please advise.

  The guy’s head consisted of his face… and that was it. Beneath the hood there was nothing else, no skin, no skull, no brain. The neck stopped roughly beneath the area where the ears should have been. The skin there was torn, gray, and brittle, flaking off a little when Peg pulled back the hood. At the front the skin continued to the chin and the rest of the face, but that too ended around the cheeks and the top of the forehead. Peg understood now, or at least as much as anyone could reasonably expect of her, why his face had seemed so out of proportion. The other side, the part should have been inside his head, still had some fragments of bone and muscle clinging to it, but most of it had been removed. The whole thing should have just flopped into a gory mess on the floor since there was nothing holding it together.

  Except that wasn’t quite true either. There was something holding his face together, but Peg didn’t have any word to properly identify it. It was a mass of some kind, pink, spongy, and pulsing in irregular intervals. Greasy gray and green tendrils of flesh radiated out from it, some of them connecting with the inside of the nostrils, others merging with the remaining muscle hanging in strings around the mouth. It took Peg several seconds before she realized the strange red stalks of meat protruding about half-way up the face—also heavily infested with the moist tendrils—were the various muscles and tendons that should have connected the eyeballs to the brain. The pulsing mass, apparently, was all this had controlling the entire body.