by M. Lorrox
He stops and turns. “What?”
Charlie reaches out and picks out a piece of zombie flesh from a seam in the bag’s leather. I’ll bring you my boot-black kit; you’ll need to clean that leather.”
Eddy nods. “Thanks, Dad.”
An hour before sunrise, Skip returns in his truck. Sitting next to him in the cab is a cooler filled with dog blood packs and ice. In the back of the truck he has suitcases he packed for himself and June, along with their archery bags. Also in the back, he has his go-bag that Charlie had relentlessly pestered him into putting together.
He pulls up in front of the gate and is about to grab his phone to call Charlie when the gate starts churning open. He pulls in, and Charlie walks out. He puts the truck in Park as Charlie lifts and drags the gate closed.
Skip hops out of the cab and grabs the cooler. He sighs when he hands it to Charlie. “Here you go.”
He takes the cooler with one hand and opens it with the other. Inside are a dozen pints of packed red blood cells. He closes the lid and puts his hand on Skip’s shoulder. “This is going to make a difference, buddy. I’d like to take one for Eddy and me—to help us get our strength back—but the rest should be saved for June.”
Skip nods and shrugs. “Whatever… And, umm, thanks for saving her, by the way. I don’t know if I ever actually said that before.”
Charlie takes a deep breath, pauses, then sets the cooler down. “I was trying to tell you about our family being vampires; I didn’t want to keep the secret from you. You and June are like family to us, and I’m so sorry this all happened.”
Skip shakes his head. “I never believed you.”
Charlie nods. “You’re pretty dense sometimes. Anyway, my point is this: turning June saved her, yes, but it also adds new challenges. I’m glad I was able to help, and I hope that you won’t resent me for doing what I did.”
Skip furrows his brow. “Why would I resent you?”
Charlie swallows and bobs his head. “Things are going to change, Skip, and it might take her a while—years, even—to come to terms with her new life.”
Skip looks at Charlie and can see how torn up he feels. You don’t get it, man. “Charlie, you not only gave a life back to her, you gave me my life back too. You saved us both. I will never be able to repay you for that.”
Charlie can’t help but chuckle. “Knowing me, though—” he winks at Skip, “—I’ll figure out a way for you to pay me back.”
Skip smiles. “We’ll see. I guess it’s time to load everything up, yeah?”
“Almost.” Charlie picks up the cooler and smiles. “First, I really need a drink.”
After Charlie has the most epic health tonic of his life—which is composed solely of red blood cells swimming in grain alcohol—he feels like he’s on top of the world. He also makes a health tonic for Eddy, but with the red blood cells and…tonic water.
Everyone has finished packing and is bringing the last of the things to the garage to be loaded into the trucks. Eddy has the technology all taken care of, bags for Minnie are all set, and Charlie has his weapons wrapped up in blankets for protection.
Sadie walks into the garage. “Charlie, dear, can you grab that old trunk of mine downstairs? I’m done packing it.”
“It weighs a million pounds, I assume?”
She smiles. “Two million. Thanks, babe.” She turns and heads inside to wake Minnie and get her dressed for the trip.
Charlie looks over the rest of the bags and other items that must be loaded. “Skip, can you and Eddy put the weapons and this guy—” he picks up the funny purple plastic trunk, “—in the back of your truck?”
“Sure. There’s plenty of room.”
“Great. Eddy…” He hands the trunk to Eddy. “I’ll grab your mom’s treasure chest and then we can load our luggage around it in the Jeep.”
“Okay.”
Charlie heads to the basement while Eddy and Skip haul things out to the pickup truck.
When they walk past the Jeep, Eddy peeks inside. June’s still asleep. “Hey, Skip, I was wondering…”
Skip struggles with the monk’s spade. It’s wrapped up in a blanket, and the heavy staff slides inside the bundle, making it hard for him to get a solid grip on it. “Uh, what’s up?”
“June will probably wake up on the way to DC, and I was wondering if I could ride along with you guys… I bet she’ll have questions about this whole vampire thing.”
Skip sets the spade on the bed of his truck and slides it in. “Sure, that’d be good. I have some questions about it myself.”
“Cool.” Eddy sets down the purple trunk with ease. “I’ll grab some bungees to tie this stuff down.”
Skip nods and pushes on the trunk to slide it deeper into the truck’s bed, but it doesn’t budge. Jeez… He leans into it and pushes with both hands. It grinds along as it slides toward the cab. He sighs. Vampires… He heads back to the garage as Eddy is stepping out.
Eddy smiles at him, then abruptly looks off to the side—down toward the street corner. “Uhh…”
Skip glances to where Eddy is looking, then hears a loud -CRASH- as the front end of a big, beat-up cargo van bursts through the fence. “Whoa!” Skip jumps back.
Eddy drops the bungee cords and glares at the man behind the wheel. He doesn’t recognize him. Eddy grits his teeth and clenches his fists.
The van took out the corner of the family’s fence, and now it drives along the edge of the front yard and the road, smashing the length of the fence as it goes. A horn starts blaring, but it’s somehow coming from the edge of the yard near the street corner. When the van reaches the gate by the driveway, it swerves back onto the road. It leaves behind a wake of shattered boards and that sound.
A loud, blaring horn—a sound that will attract any zombies in the area straight toward them.
Eddy sprints toward where the sound is coming from—the corner where the van first crashed through the fence. He winces as he tosses boards aside as he hunts for whatever is making the noise that is cutting through his brain like a hot javelin. He squints as the sound threatens to overwhelm his senses. When he sees the flared metal bugle of an air horn, he quickly presses his hand against the bugle to muffle the sound.
He tosses another board aside and sees a homemade device made from a truck’s air horn bugle welded to an air canister. Looks like they broke the trigger off. Good!
He wraps his fingers around the rim of the bugle and grabs it. He runs and jumps onto the road, then starts chasing the van. It’s thirty yards ahead and has its pedal floored, but Eddy is gaining.
Charlie heard the crash and is outside in time to see Eddy zipping by in a flash. “EDDY!”
Almost…now! Eddy switches the horn to his other hand and throws it. He doesn’t lob it upward like a human would in order to make the distance to the van; he whips it like a baseball. He launches his body forward with the throw so much that he almost loses his balance, but he regains it with his next stride. He looks up just in time to watch the horn reach its target.
-PFOUGH!-
The air horn shatters through the van’s back window. The compressed-air canister is punctured, and as it continues its trajectory toward the driver, it explodes into a great white cloud. The sound and pressure from the explosion was plenty to startle the driver; he swerves one way, then back in compensation. He barely misses a parked car on the side of the road, and then he drives off. White smoke pours out the hole in the back window.
Eddy slows to a trot, then turns around to head back to the house.
Minnie stands next to Sadie. She wipes the sleepiness out of her eyes when Eddy walks back into the driveway.
Sadie clears her throat. “Was that necessary?”
Eddy smiles. “It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.”
Charlie laughs. “That’s ma boy!”
Skip shakes his head. Wow… “Oh, Charlie, Sadie, would you mind if Eddy rides with me and June? It might be nice for her when she wakes up.”
“You know people.” Sadie puts her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
After loading everything into Sadie’s Jeep and Skip’s truck, they’re just about ready to drive off. The sky grows lighter and lighter, and the sun will peek out over the horizon in minutes. The vehicles are parked along the road in front of the house, both the engines are running, and everyone is situated and buckled in…except for Charlie.
He stands just outside the front passenger door to the Jeep. “Rusty! Come here, Rusty!”
Rusty sits on the roof of the house, panting.
“Rusty! Get your ass over here!”
Rusty stops panting, tilts his head to one side, then leans over and scratches at his ear with his hind leg.
“Rusty! Rusty, Rusty, Rusty! C’mon, you bastard!”
Sadie yells through the door. “Hey! Watch your language! We have neighbors.”
He turns around and gives her an amused look. Seriously?
She scowls back.
Charlie turns to call Rusty one more time. “Rus—hmm.” Where’d he go? “Rusty?” Charlie looks around but doesn’t see him anywhere.
He shrugs and turns around to get in the Jeep.
Skip doesn’t know where Rusty is—or where he was—but now that Charlie is climbing into the Jeep without him, Skip hollers from his pickup. “Do you need help catching him?”
Charlie steps back down and walks over to Skip’s window.
“Do you want some help? I mean, you can’t just leave him.”
Skip is being completely sincere, and if Charlie wasn’t so pissed at his dog, he would find Skip’s concern for Rusty to be completely hilarious. Charlie leans on Skip’s window. “Rusty is kinda special. He takes care of himself.” He pushes off the truck and pivots to walk away, then pauses. He turns back to Skip. “Besides, that dog gets off on driving me nuts. He’ll torment me till the end of my days.” He walks toward the Jeep.
Skip leans out of his window. “But, you’re leaving him here?”
Charlie glances back but keeps walking. “Yep. I’m sure he’ll catch up to us in DC. Let’s go. Oh, and remember: keep your windows rolled up.” He climbs into the Jeep and shuts the door.
Skip shakes his head and looks at Eddy. “What? He’ll catch up?”
Eddy takes a breath, then sighs. “Don’t worry about it.” He puts in his earphones and starts a playlist.
The Jeep starts pulling away. Skip shakes his head and sighs, then shifts the truck into gear and follows.
Later that morning, a Zombie Disposal Unit is dispatched to collect the trail of corpses. They start outside of town near dispatch, and then travel along the same paths the trucks had taken the night before. In gloves that stretch up to their elbows, National Guardsmen Adam and Luke lift and toss each corpse into the back of a specially modified garbage truck. Whenever the loading area is filled up, they engage the lifting and storage mechanisms of the truck—smashing the bodies and piling them in the main compartment. Thick black goo drips out of the sides of the truck and onto the pavement. It cooks there in the hot sun into a harmless but wretched licorice of gross.
It’s past lunch when the truck reaches the last zombies on the road—right at the spot where the SUVs had crashed into the field. The Guardsmen jump off, toss the bodies into the loading area, and both are pleased that they’re done for the day…until Luke notices the field.
“Uh, Adam?”
“’Sup?”
“I think we’ve got a problem.”
“Yeah, is it that today was supposed to be my day off, but instead some fudging yahoos John McClane’d all over town and made this the sludge-bucket shift from hell?”
“Noooo…”
“Is it that I desperately need a shower, and a beer, AT THE SAME TIME?”
“Nnn…hmm. Well, probably that too, actually.”
Adam looks at Luke with disdain. “Well, what already?”
Luke points off into the field at the mounds and mounds of bodies that are baking in the sun.
Adam looks for a moment, then turns back to Luke. “Nope.”
Luke turns his head and gestures with his hands. “What do you mean, ‘nope’?”
“Nope.” Adam jumps on the truck and pats the side.
Luke jumps up and pats the side as well, shaking his head. You can’t just say nope…
An hour later, the fire department douses the corpses with kerosene and lights them up. The thick black smoke that rises high above the field can be seen for miles. The fire chief folds his arms across his chest as he watches from the roadside. This is only the beginning.
“Dance, baby, dance like the world is ending.”
—AWOLNATION
First, thank you so much for reading this book; I’ve worked like a crazy person for years to pull this off. You reading it—and hopefully enjoying it—makes all the work worthwhile. I’m a brand-spanking-new author, this is my first book, and this is my first series. I had no clue what I was doing when I started, and after years of listening to industry podcasts, taking classes, participating in local meetups, and reading all I could, I feel like I figured a few things out. Selling and marketing and all that biz is still beyond me, so *fingers-crossed* we’ll see what happens. I’m hopeful that I can keep writing this and other series, so if you liked the book, leave a review and tell your friends!
Now, before I talk about all the people that helped me, I want to say something to you… Yeah, YOU, brilliant and sexy-brained reader. There’s a ton of fun things happening with the Infinite Vampire series, including real-world Easter Eggs that are waiting for you to find them and prizes waiting to be claimed. So, if you like to smile and prefer that to frowning, then join my fan-list and get those face-muscles warmed up. Sign up and learn more at https://EasterEggs.InfiniteVampire.com
…
Back already? Great!
I had tons of help while creating Blood 4 Life and launching the Infinite Vampire world, and my gratitude extends far beyond whatever I can put into words here. This whole crazy thing started in a friend’s hot tub, while drinking a bourbon-barrel aged beer with my brothers. Without them, our collective humor, (probably that beer—it was high-gravity), our treasured “Scheming Sessions,” and their continued support of this project, there’s no way Infinite Vampire would even exist. So, bro’s: good-job.
I started playing with the ideas and characters in the IV world in 2009. Then in 2014, I started writing the story into novels. I can’t thank my partner Lily enough for putting up with me and my shenanigans. I’m talking about listening to me go on and on about nothing but IV, how we’re terrifyingly close to running out of coffee, and that I need her to read yet another version of a novel. She is my primo alpha-reader, no BS advisor, and all-around badass everything. I couldn’t have done this without you!
Zack, my history and science advisor, never ceases to amaze me…nor does his turn-around time on a readthrough. Do you even sleep, bro? Adam: your knowledge and skepticism of photons, as well as your expertise in bioscience and genetics has been crucial. Luke, my crazy-idea-man: you’ve sure kept me on my toes... And to think, “Rusty” might not be a part of IV if it wasn’t for you and your dog. I can’t even begin to imagine such a horror.
My other beta-readers: I really appreciate all your time, comments, and suggestions, and I’m sorry for all the explicit vomiting present in some of my early drafts… Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery, right?
After incorporating suggestions from my beta readers, it was time for a professional editor. When I went looking one that fit, I hired a few and sent them all the same document. The standout winner has been formally adopted into the M. Lorrox family—not technically, of course—and has done a great job of fixing my crazy punctuation. I’m talking abo
ut you, Ashley Elizabeth!
Now here’s a funny story: I’m me—right?—and I wanted to do things that people don’t do in published books. I reached out to seasoned “pros” and asked for their advice. Exit all those who said, “Yeah, you can’t do that.” / “That won’t work.” Enter the man who said, “Interesting, I’ll see what I can do.” John Gibson formatted this book for print and digital distribution, and I think you’ll agree: he did a fantastic job!
What else? Oh yeah, one more story: I met Mr. Morgan Freeman at a film festival in 2003. At one point at the afterparty, I wanted cheese (story of my life), and at the snack area, I found this drunk guy molesting the cheese platter… It was gross; I blocked most other details—sorry/not sorry. Then, I assume Mr. Freeman wanted some cheese, because he appeared nearby. Drunk, cheese-assaulter guy redirected his annoyingness toward Mr. Freeman, trapping him.
I’ll never forget the moment when I looked up and into Mr. Freeman’s piercing eyes; he was in serious trouble. Those eyes were asking—no, they were begging me to save him.
Now, I’m sure I was the highlight of his evening and probably of that month, and I’m also sure that he remembers what happened next in perfect detail. For everyone else, I will do my best to relate this story as accurately as possible.
I punched out the future-cheese-registry guy, Mr. Freeman swooned at my amazing show of machismo, and I caught his extremely taller body in my twentysomething arms. In that “Everything is going to be okay” deep and reassuring voice of his, he looked up at me, choked back a tear, and said, “Hollywood needs better writers; you should write.”
Yup. Scouts-honor it happened pretty close to that.
Truth be told, I wanted to write Infinite Vampire as a movie script, because the voice of Vitruvius suggested it, and who was I to argue? However, because I wanted to explore the world and its characters, I decided to make Infinite Vampire as a series of novels… So, in a weird way, this book is ultimately all thanks to a hot night in Tennessee that I and Mr. Freeman will never forget.
BTW, Mr. Freeman, in all seriousness, I hope you got the book I sent and that you liked the story. You really made an impression on me, and in a roundabout way, it helped me discover my calling—creating worlds and sharing them with others. The character I modeled after you is introduced in the next book, Queen’s Gambit, and he’s a total badass! Gimme a call if you want to grab coffee and chat about life—and no worries, I’ll work around your schedule. -M.