CHAPTER TWELVE

Sharing and Caring

 

The one-footed hausfrau crawled free from the forest, with ragged vents like rotting gills torn in her flesh by the tree. Awareness bloomed inside of her. She could smell her prey fading fast, but the scent lingered like a thread of sweet perfume, sweet as befouled meat, sweet as fresh blood and dead flesh and cloying corpse-breath.

Inside, a pair of new—or, rather, old—emotions rose, two snakes twining around one another. In her mind’s eye she pictured the face of the one whose blood she took, and she was filled with a warm flush. She wanted him near her. She wanted his blood in her mouth. She wanted to hold him as mother and lover, her foul tongue in his ear, her wretched claws stroking his cheek.

And then she wanted to tear his ear off. And rip the skin free from his face. And crack his skull like a clam on a rock and eat what waited within.

She loved him so.

And she hated him dearly.

The blood inside her now was warm and empowering. The hausfrau rolled on her back, her mouth opening so wide that the jaw crackled and crunched. She looked down at her leg which now dead-ended in a putrid stump, bone shards jutting from the ruined meat like pins from a pincushion. It was then that instinct took hold, and she wished dearly for the foot to come back—within her, the blood began to stir, began to move, a slow and sluggish parade that felt like a hot rush through her body’s tangled channels.

The bone shards twitched. The meat around them swelled, then retreated.

With a sharp twist of pain, the bones shifted suddenly, clacking together—and, before her eyes, they began to merge: osseous crystals growing like coral until becoming one. Around the knitting bone, clumps of flesh rolled and stretched. Blisters rose and popped. Pus spattered against asphalt.

It wasn’t long before she could wiggle her new toes.

Toes that dead-ended in curved talons. Talons that would help her run, climb, and rend meat from bone.

The hausfrau stood, feeling the warm blood oozing around inside her body. She still had some left.

Around her, the moans of the lost and dispirited dead. Her rotting compatriots, each without the responsiveness and understanding she had recently come to know. They milled around, attracted by the commotion of the now-past RV, but uncertain what it even meant—they were operating on the simplest of urges, like moths drawn by flame.

The blood inside her demanded to be free.

One of the zombies stood near her, looking down at her with only the barest glimmer of curiosity—the park ranger outfit with the soaked-through nametag hung loose in some parts, where the flesh had retracted, and fit tight in others where the body had bloated with the gases of decay. Half his face seemed utterly unresponsive, disconnected from the other side.

She chose him.

The hausfrau moved fast. Her claws wrapped around the back of his head, twisting it hard toward her. She shoved him to the ground and as he moaned, she felt a squirming clot of blood come up out of her own throat and belch forth—a black slurry poured into his open mouth. Just to make sure, she held his unstable jaw open with her hand.

Later, when he stood up, his eyes flush with red, his tongue tasting the air, he looked at the gathered throng of undead.

He was no longer one of them. He was apart from them. He was above them.

Like her.

She had no more to give; if she did, she would’ve given it to others. But that was okay. She wasn’t alone now. And her prey was still out there, and the blood was inside him.

Together, the two creatures moved to hunt.

 

Coburn swung back inside the vehicle, and found himself face-to-face with the wide-mouth barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun. Gil’s face was tight with rage and his finger hovered right over the trigger.

“My daughter,” he said, voice shaking. “She got bit.”

The vampire craned his neck, felt the flesh and bone at his shoulder begin to knit—he moved to scratch it because good goddamn it always itched so bad whenever he had to heal up, but when he went to move his hand, the shotgun barrel pressed tight against his face. Almost up his nose, actually.

“Just notice that, did you?” he asked Gil.

“Did you do it?”

“Did I do what? Bite her? Ugh. No. I can smell whatever disease she has, and let me tell you, that does not make her all that appetizing.”

Gil’s jaw tightened. Tears burned hot at the edges of his eyes. Coburn tried to imagine what the man was feeling now—the certainty that his daughter was infected, that she was going to die, that all of life was hopeless. He thought for a moment about staring deep into the man’s eyes and twisting the knobs and pulling the levers behind the old man’s gaze, forcing him to fight against himself as he tilted the shotgun back, back, back… until the barrel rested under his own chin.

But something stopped him. Again, a little nagging pang, a nibble of perhaps not guilt but rather, the memory of guilt.

It was really fucking irritating, that feeling.

“You sonofabitch,” Gil said. From down near his feet, the terrier growled, teeth bared.

“The dog’s right, Gil. You’re mad at me, but why? She became zombie chow,” Coburn said. “Not my fault, Dad. Where the hell were you when some undead fuckwipe thought she looked like a tasty treat?”

Behind Gil, the nurse—Leelee, was it? What kind of name was that?—tended to the girl, who lay across a cock-eyed pull-out couch. Kayla didn’t look good. Sweat beaded on her brow. Her eyes rolled around in the sockets.

“I’m fine,” Kayla said, though it was clear how wrong she was.

“Shh,” Leelee said, wiping a damp sponge across the girl’s brow.

“This is all your fault,” Gil hissed at the vampire. “It was talking about you that made her run off half-cocked in the first place.”

“Sure,” Coburn said. “Let’s blame the blood-sucking monster.” He paused, shrugged. “Well, okay, a lot of the time that’s actually a good idea. This time, not so much, old man.”

Cecelia came up behind Gil, once again became the devil on his shoulder, her wild-eyed hateful face staring stakes right through the vampire’s heart.

“This is awfully familiar,” Coburn said. “Didn’t we do this last night? With the gun and the threatening and the bullshit? If I remember correctly, that didn’t go so well for anybody. You really think you got the jump on me?”

Gil blinked back tears. “Damn right I do. Not a half-inch between this gun barrel and your head. You willing to take that risk?”

“He saved me,” Leelee said, looking up from Kayla’s tomb-white face. “That has to count for something. He didn’t have to.”

“He only saved you so he could use you like a snack, later. Ain’t that right, vampire?”

Coburn didn’t say anything. He didn’t see any reason to lie.

“Kayla wants him to stay,” Leelee protested.

Gil barked back: “Kayla’s a kid. A sick girl. She doesn’t get a say.”

“You’re very angry, Gil,” the vampire said. “Your daughter’s over there, only hours from becoming one of those moaning, mumbling mule-kicked assholes, and you won’t throw the girl a bone and let her pet vampire stay the night?”

Gil pulled the trigger.

Or, rather, tried to.

Coburn knew it was coming. It wasn’t so much a precognitive thing as it was a preternatural sense of everything that went on around him. That simple, tiny act—the motor mechanism of a finger tightening around a trigger—was preceded by a number of little clues. Gil’s eyes narrowing. His heart beating faster. His jawline tightening, the tendons in his arm drawing taut. As if upon pulling the trigger he knew that it was going to make a big boom and a messy result, and his body flinched before it happened.

But the vampire couldn’t have that. The girl had convinced him of a good thing, and he wasn’t going to let some cranky old fucker ruin it. Fuck it, he hoped it wouldn’t come to this—this being messy and all—but he couldn’t have this old man shooting him in the face, either.

Gil struggled to pull the trigger and couldn’t. He also couldn’t look away from the vampire’s unswerving gaze.

“Shoot him!” Cecelia said.

“I’m… trying,” Gil said through clenched teeth.

“It’s like this,” Coburn said, smiling. “The real story here isn’t how this is my fault but rather, how you’re a bad Daddy. First, you’re obviously not very nice. Second, you’re totally kidding yourself if you think this cradle-robbed brat cares anything for you besides the fact you’re the silverback with the guns and the food—” At this, Cecelia bristled, screaming at him to shut up, but he did no such thing. “Third, you want to blame me but really, the fact your daughter’s dead meat—I mean that literally, dead meat—is because you let her out of your sight. You could’ve tagged me last night, if you were fast enough. If you were strong enough. But you’re not. You’re old. Which makes you slow. And weak. I can’t imagine how that feels. Probably pretty shitty. So shitty, in fact, that I wonder if it’s me you really want to shoot right now.”

As if on cue, Gil struggled against himself—but the man’s puppet strings were tight in the monster’s grip. Gil tilted the gun back, back, back…

“Oh, my God,” Leelee said, suddenly. She wasn’t even talking about the whole situation with the shotgun. The nurse made a sound somewhere beneath a stifled sob and a laugh, looking down at Kayla. The wet sponge fell out of her hand. “She’s healing. She’s healing.”

Coburn decided to end the charade, snatching the shotgun out of Gil’s hands and pushing the old man and the girl aside. He stood over Leelee and, sure enough, the bite on the girl’s shoulder was healing up.

Before their eyes.

The purple striations and red tendrils of infection retreated. The flesh slowly rebuilt itself. Scabs dried up and tumbled away like rust off metal.

Coburn knew how it went, because he’d seen it enough times with his own flesh. Even now, his own shoulder—like hers—was healing up.

Except she wasn’t dead. Kayla was very much alive.

Well. This was new. Quite the curious wrinkle, actually.

“I think she’s going to be okay,” Leelee said.

Ebbie peered back from the driver’s seat. He laughed, ebullient.

Inside, Coburn’s dead heart shuddered. It did that whenever he felt a moment of pleasure—breaking an enemy’s neck, guzzling the blood of a difficult victim, eating fine food or drinking a rare wine. But this had none of the earmarks of such an occasion, and it felt odd. He decided to ignore it, and tamp that feeling down. It was of no use to him in this situation.

Coburn instead brushed a sweaty lock of hair away from the girl’s forehead. Her eyes stopped rotating in their sockets and she found his gaze.

“Hey, vampire,” she said.

“That’s me.”

“Thanks for saving me.”

“I’d say you saved yourself.”

He stepped away then and let Gil reach his daughter. The man bent over her, holding her. Her weak arms hugged him right back.

Leelee smiled at the vampire. Cecelia just scowled. At him, maybe. Or maybe at the fact that her lover’s irritating daughter wouldn’t be tap-step-shuffling off this mortal coil and that chapped her ass. He hoped it was a mixture of both.

Now that everybody was feeling warm and fuzzy about this sudden turn of events, it seemed like a good time to set the agenda.

Coburn cleared his throat, thumped the butt of the shotgun against the floor of the RV. All eyes fell upon him.

“The vampire has the floor,” he said, winking. “Okay. Now that the girl isn’t going to immediately expire and try to eat all our brains, I’ll tell you how this is going to go. The girl convinced me of her plan. I was skeptical at first, but hell with it, she’s right. The world’s shit the bed and I need food. Further, it’s increasingly clear that you weak-kneed blood-bags are going to get yourself nibbled to death by zombies if you don’t have someone like me watching over you. So, that said, here’s the scoop: you’re my herd. I’m your shepherd. But we’re not friends. I’m a higher being. An ascended creature. You’re the dumb cattle. I’m the smart—and if I may say, handsome—cowboy. I’m with you for the duration. Don’t like it? Don’t care. You talk back to me, I will break your fingers. You try to run from me, I will break your legs. You try to hurt me”— and with this, he looked right at Gil—“then I will hurt something or someone you love. Kayla invited me to join your little posse, and I accepted. That means I’m not going anywhere except where all you cats and kittens are going.”

“You’re a monster,” Gil said, but his words were toothless, without the fire behind them that he’d previously stoked.

Coburn shrugged. “And water is wet, old man.”

The vampire scooped up his rat terrier. Creampuff licked his hand, the little dummy. He headed toward the back of the RV. “During the day, the main bedroom is mine. When she’s up for it, send the girl back.” He saw them all tense up. “Don’t give me those looks, I don’t mean what you think. She’s going to be the liaison between you dumb animals and me, your ever-charming keeper.”

He whistled as he closed the accordion door behind him.