“We did,” Brianna replied. “We got lucky because we found Sam, or actually, because Sam found us.”
“He’s the only reason that any of us lasted even a day in New York,” Catherine said, “and he was the one who got us out of the city, too.”
“Only with your help,” I pointed out.
“I can’t believe that I couldn’t tell,” James said. “And you’re really not gonna… sorry, I don’t mean any offense by this, because you did just save Celia’s kids, but uh…”
“I’m not gonna eat you, if that’s what you want to ask,” I laughed. “I might be a vamp, but I’ve learned how to control it, so I just make sure that I have enough blood to stay strong and powerful, and that’s how I’m able to do shit like you just saw.”
“You were like a superhero,” Celia’s teenage boy said.
“What about you?” James asked Neko. “Are you a vamp, too? Because you ran into the fight, and you weren’t as fast as Sam or anything, but I thought maybe…”
“No,” the petite Japanese girl replied. “Sam is the only vamp. The rest of us are human. I’ve just done competitive martial arts my whole life.”
“So basically,” Catherine announced, “like Celia said, if anybody’s got a problem with Sam, they’ll have to go through us first.”
“You just killed six of the bloodsuckers who have been attacking us and taking our people,” James said. “That’s more than we’ve ever been able to do, so trust me when I say that I’m just grateful to you.”
“It’s just kinda thrown us for a loop,” a woman in the crowd said. “Since we didn’t know there could be good vamps and all, but if you wanna keep killing those bastards, then in my opinion, you can stay as long as you damn want to.”
“Yeah, I second that,” James said. “Actually…”
The gray-bearded man glanced around at the rest of the humans, nodded to himself like they had all just agreed on something, and then looked back at me.
“This might sound kind of strange,” James said, “but these are strange times, after all, and you were so incredible just now, that…”
“Go ahead,” I said when he trailed off. “Say whatever it is that you want to say. If you all would feel better if we left right away, then we will, but--”
“No!” James said, and his response was immediately echoed by the other humans around him. “No, that wasn’t what I wanted to say at all.”
“You want him to stay, right?” Celia asked.
“Yeah,” James said. “I want all of you to stay, actually, but Sam… how would you feel about staying for more than just a couple days?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think I speak for everybody when I say that we’d like you to stay for a good long while,” James said. “You could be our protector from the vamps downriver. Maybe you could even help us fight them, so we don’t have to worry about them anymore after you leave?”
“It would take a long time to plan and execute something like that,” I said. “Definitely more than a few days, anyway.”
“Would you all really want that?” Natalie asked.
As I glanced around at all the faces, each one nodded or said yes, and I realized that before I came along, they probably didn’t have much hope of holding out forever. Now that they did, they looked excited at the idea that they could kill more of them, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to do it without me.
“Yeah, we want that,” Celia said. “Please, Sam. We could really use you.”
“Will you be our protector?” James asked.
I could think of about half a dozen pros and cons right off the bat, but I knew that I couldn’t make a decision until I had talked to the girls and asked what they wanted to do. If none of them wanted to stick around, then that would make the choice easier, but if they were split on the matter, then we’d have to talk about it until we came to some sort of agreement.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe, but honestly, I’ll need to talk to the girls first before we decide anything.”
“Of course!” Celia said. “Take your time. I’m sure you’re all tired since you’ve been on the road so long, too.”
“I think we can give you an answer by tomorrow morning,” I said with a glance at the early afternoon sun. “That’ll give us time to rest and talk about it, and then we’ll have a night to sleep on the matter.”
“Thank you,” James said. “Whatever you decide, thank you for today. For just now. It was…”
“You were amazing, Sam,” Celia said with a smile. “And if there’s anything we can do for you or the girls, just let us know.”
“Um, I could use some lunch,” Catherine sighed, “if my uncle doesn’t mind taking us back to his cabin.”
“Sure thing,” James replied. “But Sam, do you, uh… do you think we need to be worried about the vamps at all? Do you think they’ll come back today?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “They’ll come back, but not today. They’ll want to figure out what happened to this raiding party first, so I think you’ll be alright for a little bit.”
“Thank god,” Celia huffed. “Those bastards think they can just waltz into town and kidnap our children right out from underneath us.”
“Now they know better,” James said as he reached over to squeeze Celia’s shoulder.
After James introduced us to a few more of the townspeople, we headed back to his Jeep to drive back down the winding road to his cabin. Every curve in the road made me think of all the bloodsuckers that could hide on the other side, and every thick cluster of trees on the mountain beside us made me imagine a possible ambush.
Red House might be small, but it was so spread out that it would be a hard town to defend. Of course, we didn’t have to stay and help at all, but I had a feeling that the girls would want to do at least something to help before we left, especially Catherine. So the biggest question now was really how much we could do for the town or, in other words, how much we could afford to do for them and not end up dead ourselves.
When we got back to the cabin, my armored truck was still untouched, and there were no signs that anyone had been there while we were gone. I doubted that the vamps downriver would send more than one raiding party at a time, but it was nice to see that Rhino was perfectly safe.
After all, she was as much a member of our crew as any of the rest of us, so I’d be damned if I let anything happen to my armored baby.
“How about I fix up some lunch for you girls, while you all talk among yourselves?” James asked once we were back inside the cabin.
“That sounds great,” I said. “Thanks, James.”
“And, uh… can I get anything for you, Sam?” the gray-bearded man asked and then swallowed like there was a massive lump in his throat.
“No, don’t worry,” I laughed. “I’m fine for now.”
I would need some blood from one of the girls later to make up for all the energy that I had just spent against the fanged raiding party, but I didn’t feel weak or run-down, so I figured that I would be fine for a little while longer. Besides, James had only just discovered that I was a vamp, so I thought I’d give him a little bit of time before I drank from someone right in front of him.
After James headed to the kitchen to start on lunch, Erika grabbed a change of clothes for Neko and me from the armored truck. The Japanese girl only had a little bit of blood on herself, so once she was cleaned up, I hopped into the shower to get all the blood and brains off my skin and out of my hair.
I had intended just to take a quick rinse, but as soon as the hot water hit my skin, I realized exactly how long it had been since the last time I took a hot shower. I closed my eyes and let the water stream down my bare skin and wash away the sweat and grime, but then even after I was clean, I just stood there in a cloud of heat and steam. I had never gone without a hot shower for so long before, so I sure as hell had never been so grateful for one.
When my skin felt like it was just a
bout to reach the boiling point, I finally turned off the water, but I didn’t get out right away. Instead, I just stood in the steam for a few more minutes until finally, I felt more human than I had since… well, since I had turned into a vamp.
After I dried off in the steam-filled bathroom, I slipped into some new clothes and then rejoined the girls in the cabin’s massive living room.
“I don’t think that shirt can be saved,” I said as I sank down onto the couch between Natalie and Brianna.
“Then it’s a good thing we have extra,” Erika said with a smile. “It was an awful lot of blood.”
“Yeah, I think it would take about a million Tide pens to rub the blood out,” Brianna said. “It wasn’t like your favorite shirt or anything, was it?”
“No,” I laughed. “It was just something that I picked up on one of my supply raids back in New York, so I think I’ll manage to live without it.”
“So,” Catherine said as she craned her neck to look into the kitchen, “now that my uncle’s out of earshot for a minute… what are we gonna do?”
“Maybe we could start with, like, pros and cons?” Lily asked. “Like what are the pros of staying versus going? And what are the cons of both?”
“I have a few ideas,” I said, “but I’d really like to hear what you all think first, so if anybody wants to start us off, please go ahead.”
“I think we should stay,” Catherine said. “I know that’s probably not much of a surprise since it’s my uncle, and I know we all have to agree on it before we actually do it, but that’s my two cents.”
“I definitely don’t mean this to sound shitty,” Erika said as she tucked her black hair back behind her glasses, “but do you have any reasons other than the fact that you don’t want to leave your uncle at the mercy of the vamps downriver?”
“That’s definitely the biggest reason,” the auburn-haired girl replied, “but it’s not just him. It’s all of these people. We haven’t run into any other humans yet, you know? So it just seems kind of crazy to run away the moment that we find some.”
“I guess it is kinda weird that there’s so many humans still alive in one spot,” Brianna said. “Other than you guys, I don’t think I’ve seen a living human since… well, since Columbia.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay with them,” Lily said. “If we stay, then it’ll take us that much longer to get out to Colorado. Plus, we’ll be willingly going up against a whole town full of bloodsuckers, when we could just go around them and then keep driving to our destination.”
“But there’s no guarantee that Colorado will be any better,” Natalie said. “I know that we all have high hopes for Catherine’s family’s ranch, but anything could happen between now and the time we get there, so I just don’t want us to push through toward something that might not even be real.”
“Okay, but if you put it that way, then what’s the point of going to Colorado at all?” Erika asked. “That makes it sound like we should just set up here and ride out the apocalypse in West Virginia.”
“I don’t think anyone is saying that,” Brianna said. “I think what Nat and Catherine want to say is… sorry if I’m wrong… but I think you want to say that since this is the apocalypse, there are no guarantees anywhere, so we might as well stay somewhere that we know we can be helpful to, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Natalie agreed. “And nobody says it’ll be forever. We could just stay here long enough to help the town get back on their feet, and maybe to kill all those vamps upriver, too.”
“It would be nice to be in one spot for a while,” Brianna said, “especially since we don’t know anybody else between here and Colorado, so it would be harder to stop places when we’re not sure if they’re safe or not.”
“It’s not like Red House is exactly safe,” Neko pointed out. “If we stay and try to help the people here, we might die.”
“We also might die on the road,” Brianna said. “It’s not like we’re guaranteed a safe trip all the way out to Colorado.”
“Especially since even Colorado might not be safe,” Natalie said. “I’m with Catherine. What’s the point of being so badass when we don’t even help people who need it?”
“Um, other than the fact that it helps us stay alive?” Erika raised an eyebrow. “But still, I guess I understand what you mean. What’s the point of anything if we don’t help people who need it?”
“Call me sentimental,” Lily sighed, “but I don’t want to see any of us die just because we decided to be helpful.”
“We wouldn’t die,” Catherine huffed. “Not if we were careful, anyway, and not if we plan everything out super well.”
“That’s true,” Erika said, “and it would be nice to be in one spot for a little while.”
“Plus, Uncle James has electricity!” Catherine said. “And that means he can cook us shit, and we can eat hot meals!”
“Ooh, and coffee,” Brianna said.
“Well, hell, if there’s coffee,” Neko said with a roll of her eyes, but she smiled at the pretty blonde.
James brought in lunch for the girls before we could finish our discussion, and as soon as I saw the plates of food, I wondered if it might be enough to change the girls’ minds and make them all want to stay. He had made fresh paninis filled with roast beef, cheese, and peppers, and he had cooked a little bit of pan-seared okra on the side, so each plate had its own personal little chimney of steam as he set it down in front of each girl.
“Dang!” Catherine grinned. “Now you all know where I get my culinary skills from.”
“You didn’t get them from your dad, that’s for damn sure,” James chuckled. “Eat up, and when we finish, I’ll disappear again, so you all can keep talking.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
“Hey, if you are gonna stay here, then the least I can do is show you that I know how to give people a little bit of privacy,” James said. “This cabin is plenty big for all of us, so that wouldn’t be a problem.”
After the girls finished lunch, I decided that it might be better to take a break from our discussion and explore the town a little more before we came back to make a decision. So I had James drive the Jeep again, and we rode around Red House just like we had earlier in the day, only this time, we took all the side roads and back roads that we came across, just so we could get a complete picture of the area that we might stay and try to defend.
It would be difficult but not impossible. If we barricaded each end of the road that led into town, that would certainly help, and of course, we’d have to set up some kind of guard station or blockade along the railroad tracks and at the river itself just beyond the tracks. Then the biggest problem that remained would be the mountain itself, but we might be able to set up some sort of treehouses to serve as guard outposts. That ran the risk of our people being divided and picked off piecemeal, so it wasn’t clear that was the best idea, either.
I was sure that there were other ways to fortify the town that I hadn’t thought of yet, but if we did stay, then I was willing to bet that Natalie knew a hell of a lot of them. My girlfriend had been a constant surprise since the start of the vampocalypse, and even though it had taken a whole population of bloodsuckers to unleash her wild side, I loved that I now got to see just how much she knew about guns and survival skills.
By the time we finished another tour of the area, it was early evening, so I figured that we could talk for a little bit, get some supper, and then make our decision to sleep on it overnight. Once James went outside to do some work on his cabin’s outdoor fortifications, we all settled into the leather couches of the living room again and picked up where we had left off.
“So basically, these are our options,” I said after a few minutes. “Option one, we set up in Red House for a while, and we stay here however long enough to help the people here and to get rid of all the vamps downriver. This would let them survive on their own whenever we leave, and it would help ensure that C
atherine’s uncle will stay safe.”
“I’m just gonna add one thing to that list,” Natalie said. “If we stay, it will also help Sam to get more powerful. There’s a whole town of humans here that he can feed from, and once they know that he drinks from us and we’re fine, I bet they’ll let him drink from them, too. Can you imagine how powerful he’ll be with a hundred different types of blood?”
“Ooh, solid point, Nat,” Catherine said.
“Alright, that’s fair,” I said. “So then option two is that we thank James and Red House for their hospitality, and then we leave in the morning and wish them luck with their vamp problem. Then we keep heading west toward Colorado right away, instead of just after an indefinite delay here.”
“Well, damn,” Lily sighed. “When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound like much of a choice.”
“Yeah, I agree with Lily,” Erika said. “It sounds good in theory to try to keep ourselves safe and just keep driving, but it also seems pretty, uh…”
“Heartless?” Brianna suggested.
“I didn’t want to say it, but… yeah,” Erika said. “I don’t know how we could just leave all these people to become vamp food, or worse.”
“There’s even, like, kids and shit,” Lily said. “I don’t want to just leave them and let them all get turned into human cattle.”
“That would be some pretty bad karma,” Neko murmured. “Goddamn it. Fine, my vote is to stay, too.”
Catherine clapped her hands together and just grinned.
“Plus, I can’t argue with anything that means Sam might become more powerful,” Neko added.
“So how many of you want to stay and help?” I asked. “I know that’s definitely a yes from Nat, Catherine, and Neko.”
“Me, too,” Brianna said.
“And me,” Lily said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Erika sighed. “I’m nervous, but… well, I know it’s the right thing to do.”
“What about you, Sam?” Catherine demanded. “You never really told us what you thought.”
“I think it makes more sense to stay,” I said. “I know we all want to get out to Colorado, but it’s not like we’re really on a deadline. Colorado will still be there whenever we’re done here, and since we can set our own schedule, there’s no reason not to stay and help these people.”
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 16
