Now that more of Nat’s blood was in my system, I felt energized as we hurried forward through the woods, and even though I certainly felt like I could have taken on another bear, I was glad that we didn’t run into any more problems on the way back to the Jeep.
James drove us back to town in just a few minutes, and when we reached Red House, I noticed that people had already started to fortify their houses a little bit more. A few of them waved as we passed, and I wondered what else the girls had been up to while we were gone, other than the fact that Catherine had clearly started to boss people around and tell them how to prepare for the bloodsuckers.
When we reached downtown Red House, the rest of my women came out of the general store all at once to greet me. There were only a few people around now, compared to the scene this morning, and I directed James toward an empty section of the parking lot, so we could have a few minutes alone before any of the townspeople came over to check in.
The moment that James turned the engine off, the five other girls surrounded our vehicle, but Natalie didn’t even wait until her feet touched the ground before she spoke.
“Sam fought a bear!” Natalie said as she hopped out of the Jeep.
“You did what?” Erika’s pale-green eyes went wide behind her glasses.
“It was rabid, so I didn’t have much of a choice,” I said with a shrug. “And we were still too close to the bloodsuckers for us to use guns so… yeah.”
“Oh, my god,” Catherine said as she bit her lip. “As if you weren’t already badass enough.”
“Do you need more blood?” Neko demanded.
“Yeah, you’re not hurt, are you?” Brianna asked.
“No, I’m okay,” I said with a smile. “I took some from Nat when the fight was over, but thank you.”
“Damn, Spike,” Catherine said and then gave a whistle. “I thought you went to spy on the bloodsuckers downriver, but I guess that wasn’t enough of a challenge for you, huh?”
“It’s not like he chose to fight the bear,” James said. “That creature just came out of nowhere, and you should have seen how fast Sam moved. Don’t give him a hard time about it, when he saved both our lives.”
“Catherine is just teasing me,” I laughed, “but I appreciate your support.”
“Yeah, what’s that about, Uncle James?” the auburn-haired girl grinned. “Are you suddenly more loyal to Sam than you are to me?”
“Take it easy, Catherine,” I snickered. “We’re on the same team, remember?”
I was curious about what answer James would give, but I didn’t want to pursue the question anymore at the moment. I had a feeling based on how her uncle had acted after I fed from him that his top loyalty would always be to me now, but there was no reason to make Catherine feel bad about that, especially not when she was so excited to have found her uncle alive and in one piece.
“So what have you all been doing while we’ve been gone?” Natalie asked.
“Aren’t you gonna tell us what you found downriver?” Lily demanded. “Other than a rabid bear, I guess.”
I caught them up as quickly as I could, and I was glad that none of the townspeople were around at the moment to hear how bad the situation was. We would share the information with them soon enough, but I wanted my women to hear it first so we could start to think and plan things for ourselves before we involved the people of Red House.
“Shit,” Catherine said. “That sure as hell doesn’t sound great.”
“No, the odds are definitely stacked against us,” I said.
“They were also stacked against us in Brooklyn Heights,” Erika pointed out, “and Sam got us out of there, didn’t he?”
“Well, we do have plenty of guns,” Lily said, “so I guess that’s something, right?”
“Of course, it is,” Neko said.
“We also have a home-turf advantage,” Brianna said. “If they try to attack us here, everybody in Red House knows this area a lot better than the bloodsuckers downriver. So we could use that to our advantage.”
“That’s what we’ve been working on since you left,” Neko told me, “to answer your question about what we have been doing.”
“What do you mean exactly?” I asked.
“Fortifications and barriers,” Neko replied. “To make our home-turf advantage even stronger.”
“That’s what we were doing inside just now,” Brianna added. “We were trying to get some more supplies, even though the general store is a little bit tapped out on resources at this point.”
“They haven’t gotten any shipments since all this shit started,” James said. “We’ve all got plenty of canned goods to eat, and a lot of us grow some of our own food, too, but when it comes to non-food stuff… yeah, pickings are kinda slim, you know?”
“So if resources are limited at stores in town,” I began, “then what kind of fortifications have you been building?”
“We’ve got a bunch of shit erected to block the northbound access to Red House,” Catherine said, “just in case the vamps try to go around the river and come down that way.”
“We also have everything ready to block the southbound access,” Erika said, “but we were waiting for you three to get back before we put that up.”
“Will we be able to move the barriers pretty easily if we need to get in and out of town ourselves?” I asked. “What are they made from?”
“I wouldn’t say that they’re, like, super easy to move,” Lily said, “but it’s definitely possible to move them out of the way. It would just take a minute.”
“They’re water-filled construction barrels,” Erika said, “but we wove barbed wire in between all of them to keep them together, and we thought we could also throw some cement blocks from the masonry supply yard in the bottom of the barrels to give them some extra heft.”
“Yeah, except we didn’t know how hard that would be to move back and forth across the road,” Brianna said, “so we haven’t done that part yet.”
“No, that’s a good idea,” I said. “The idea is to make it as difficult as possible for the vamps to just blow into town in their vans or trucks. So if they try to drive through the barrier, it’ll fuck their vehicle up, and they’ll have to get out and go on foot.”
“What if they get out and just move the barrier first?” Natalie asked.
“That’s why we need guards stationed at either end of town,” I said, “so they can shoot any vamps who try to get around the barriers.”
“That makes sense,” James said. “But will you just move the barrier whenever you need to drive in or out of town?”
“I think we should keep several vehicles outside the barriers,” I replied, “so they can be our transportation anywhere that’s not in the center of Red House. That way, we only have to move the barriers when it’s absolutely necessary.”
“People have also been fortifying their own houses a little bit more,” Catherine said. “Just so the vamps can’t walk right in through their front doors and snatch them, you know.”
“That’s good, as a backup,” I said, “but I think I might actually be about to piss off a lot of people.”
“How do you mean?” James asked. “I doubt you could do much wrong in their eyes after everything you did to save Celia’s kids.”
“I don’t think people should stay inside their individual houses,” I said, “at least not until we take care of the vamps downriver.”
“So you think we should bring a lot of people back to my cabin?” Catherine’s uncle asked.
“No, not that,” I replied. “Other than the guards that we post at either end of town, I think everyone needs to stay right here in the center of town.”
“That does make sense,” Natalie said. “It’ll be easier to defend Red House if everybody’s together instead of spread out across a couple of miles.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “It’ll just require a little bit of coordination in terms of food and lodging, but between the church, the post office, the general s
tore, and the other shops downtown, I think there’s enough spots right here for everybody to stay.”
“That seems logical,” James said with a nod. “What would we do about food?”
“Everybody can bring some supplies with them,” I answered, “and later, we can schedule groups to run out together and restock supplies from their homes.”
“Do you think people will go for it?” Catherine asked her uncle.
“They will if they want to live,” James snorted. “I’ll get on the radio and start to spread the word.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
As James walked a few paces away so he could start to walkie-talkie everyone through the town’s emergency network, I turned back to the girls to make more plans on how we were going to defend Red House. I scanned the downtown to see what needed to be reinforced and which buildings would be the easiest to defend, and I felt Natalie start to study the area around us at the same time.
“Okay,” I said and then took a deep breath. “If there’s enough barbed wire, we could surround this whole downtown area with it, right? Sure, the vamps could jump it, but there’s a chance that it would slow them down a little, especially if we made it really high with just one gate in and out.”
“I like what you’re thinking,” Natalie said with a nod.
“If there’s not enough barbed wire, we could always take some from people’s farms,” Catherine said. “Desperate times, desperate measures, all of that good stuff.”
“Also true,” I said. “So if we get a good fence around downtown, that means we would just need to make sure the buildings themselves are as secure as possible.”
“We can board up all the windows on the bottom floors,” Natalie said, “but we should leave the windows up top open, so we can shoot out of them.”
“How do we keep the vamps from just jumping up and coming inside through the second story windows?” Brianna asked.
“Uh, shoot them first?” Neko shrugged. “Or something like that.”
“That’s one way to deal with them,” I said, “but we could also have some sort of removable barrier up top, and we could use the same thing to reinforce the actual doors.”
“Like what?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “If there are plenty of cement blocks, and if someone has a couple of moving dollies, then we could just make a column of cement blocks to move back and forth from in front of the doors and second-story windows.”
“That could work,” Natalie said. “Plus, we could add a bunch of nails and spikes and shit to the edges of the roof, in case the vamps jumped up, grabbed a hold of the roof, and tried to swing themselves in.”
“For sure,” I said. “Obviously, we’ll also need guards in the mountains and along the river, too, but this will all at least be a really good place for us to start.”
“I’ve started to send the word around,” James said as he rejoined us by the Jeep, “and so far, everybody seems pretty open to it. Of course, they’re also scared shitless, so I guess it’s not too much of a surprise.”
“Then how would you like to start to work on some of the buildings with the girls?” I asked.
“Like I said,” the gray-bearded man replied. “Whatever you need, Sam.”
“Then why don’t you and Catherine take the church?” I asked. “You can start to add nails and barbed wire to the edge of the roof.”
“I’ll get the ladder,” James said.
“Brianna and I can do the same thing with the general store,” Neko volunteered.
“I’ll help board up the windows of the post office,” Erika said. “Lily, you can help me if you want to.”
“Good, then Nat and I will start to build the fence around downtown,” I said, “and we’ll move on from there once more townspeople start to show up to help.”
After we all started working on our respective buildings, it didn’t take long before the citizens of Red House all showed up to help us. I directed them onto different task forces, and before long, we had really started to fortify the buildings downtown.
By late afternoon, I really began to feel good about our progress, but just as I congratulated myself for how much we had gotten done, someone suddenly shouted from the direction of the church.
A second later, I heard the sound of something crunch against the gravel. I spun around to face the sound, and instantly, I saw what had happened. The ladder had slipped out from underneath Catherine’s uncle, so now James laid sprawled out in the ground with his leg twisted awkwardly beneath him.
And even from where I stood, I could see the shard of bone that had shoved its way out through the skin of his calf.
Chapter 14
“Don’t move!” I shouted and then sprinted toward him.
But from the looks of it, James wasn’t going anywhere. He laid completely still against the gravel, and the closer I got, the more blood I saw. I felt the monster inside me rise up at the smell of so much blood, but I pushed the feeling down and tried to focus on how to save the life of Catherine’s uncle.
I reached his side first, but the girls and all the people who had come to help us all gathered around just a few seconds after that. Instantly, I dropped to my knees beside him to try to see just how bad the injury was, and when I did, I clenched my fists.
One of the bones in the gray-bearded man’s shin had poked through his skin and clear through his jeans, and the pain of it must have made James pass out. It looked like a pretty clean break, but it was also a complete fracture, and I didn’t know how to just pop it back inside his leg… or if we even could. And even though the broken bone looked bad, I was more concerned at the moment by the pool of blood underneath his leg, especially as more blood continued to gush out with every beat of the man’s heart.
“Uncle James?” Catherine cried out as she ran toward us and skidded to a halt beside him. “Is he… oh, my god, is he… fuck!”
“Is anybody here a doctor?” I demanded as I looked up and started to scan the faces of everyone in the crowd.
“No,” Celia’s teenage son said, “but there’s a vet just up the road. She takes care of horses and stuff.”
“Take two people with you and go get her,” I said. “Now!”
The teenage boy and two other humans took off running toward their truck, but I knew that James probably wouldn’t make it until the vet got here, not unless I did something about it first.
“Anybody got a knife?” I asked.
A dozen people all reached out to offer me a pocketknife, so I just grabbed the closest one and sawed away at James’ pair of jeans to cut them off above the knee. As soon as I ripped away the fabric, the wound looked even worse, so I knew that I really didn’t have much time left.
“Brianna and Erika, keep him still in case he wakes up,” I muttered. “And Nat, watch the crowd for me, would you?”
“What are you gonna do?” Catherine murmured as she turned her big dark-brown eyes on me.
“I’m gonna try to save his life,” I said.
I lowered myself toward the gray-bearded man’s leg, examined it until I found where the majority of the blood was coming out from, and then leaned forward to lick up the blood from his skin. I heard a few people in the crowd murmur, but nobody made a move, so I swallowed a few mouthfuls of his blood until I had cleaned up the worst of the blood on his skin.
Once I cleaned up most of the blood, I was able to see the wound more clearly, and even though it continued to gush out one wave of blood after another, I knew that even if I couldn’t fix the bone itself, I should be able to at least stop the bleeding.
I moved my mouth toward the fractured bone itself, swallowed one more mouthful of blood, and then licked the edges of his skin that had been torn open by his fractured bone. After just a few seconds, his leg stopped bleeding, so he wasn’t at risk of bleeding out.
Even if one of his shin bones was still sticking out of his fucking leg.
I raised my mouth from his leg but was care
ful to lick the last of his blood off from my lips, just so I didn’t look too scary to the townspeople. I glanced at James’ face, but fortunately, Catherine’s uncle was still passed out, and I thought that would probably be better, anyway.
After all, he’d probably wake right the fuck up whenever the vet came and tried to set his leg.
“Erika, do we have any kind of medical supplies inside Rhino that could help with this?” I asked.
“We’ve got antibiotics,” the techy girl replied, “and some pain relievers, but we don’t have any kind of crutches or splints or anything like that.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “I just figured that I better check.”
“What do we do, Sam?” Catherine whispered. “Is my uncle gonna… is he gonna die?”
“Of course he’s not gonna die,” Neko snapped as she moved over to stand beside Catherine.
“Okay,” the auburn-haired girl murmured. “He just…”
“He just lost a lot of blood,” the petite Japanese girl said, and then she laid her hand on Catherine’s shoulder. “People lose blood all the time, and they’re completely fine.”
“So what now?” Natalie asked.
“Can we get him anything?” Celia asked as she elbowed her way to the front of the crowd.
“Ice, if you have any,” I said, “and whatever kind of bandages you have, just in case the vet doesn’t have any that will work for a human.”
“Deb, go get some goddamn ice!” Celia barked at another woman. “Bud, you get bandages from the store, and get whatever else you find that might be helpful!”
Deb and Bud dashed off to try to find some supplies for us, but I knew that James was going to need more than a little bit of ice and some compression bandages if he ever wanted to walk again, or even just if he didn’t want to lose his fucking leg.
It was a good reminder that even in the vampocalypse, there were other ways to get injured or even die that didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with actual bloodsuckers.
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 21
