The Black Goat Motorcycle Club

by Murphy, Jason

  His voice was the inhuman rattle again, but now there was a fragility to it. A sickness. "Take this," he said. "You and Ms. Boulet use it to decorate the thresholds."

  Whitey, uncomprehending, looked down at the purple bouquet in his hands. "Decorate the - "

  Varney turned on the old man like a serpent. "Yes. The thresholds. The doorways. Drape them across it. Every door leading into this building."

  "It'll keep them out?"

  "Not if you don't hurry, old man."

  Whitey nodded and got to work. Boulet took half of the flowers and looked to Hank. "I'm okay," Hank said in between ragged breaths. "Go."

  Varney extended his hand again, as if asking Hank to dance. "Come."

  Hank took his hand. It was every bit as cold as he expected.

  ***

  Varney lead him into the cramped confines of the lab. Hank could feel the man shaking. His steps faltered. He shrank inwards, wrapping himself in darkness. "You're hurt," Hank said.

  "I've been in that damned box for too long. This will pass." He let go of Hanks arm. "Patch yourself up."

  Hank nodded and went to work, starting with the shard of glass in his leg. No sutures left. He cleaned it, wrapped it tight, and gave himself a fat dose of lidocaine. It took the edge off, but there was a deeper pain there, down into the muscle. Then the one across his chest. Both of them were clean slashes from broken glass. No claw marks. He followed the lidocaine up with morphine. The warmth was immediate. After a quiet battle with himself, he'd barely talked himself out of a bigger dose, one that would let him just slump to the floor and smile for the next few hours. It was tempting. But Varney watched.

  "Take care with your opiates, Doctor."

  "I'm fine."

  "You weren't bitten or scratched?"

  Hank looked down at his shoulder. "No. That was from the glass. I'm up on my tetanus anyway." He offered Varney a weak grin.

  "It will take more than tetanus to help Ms. Boulet."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Are you really so foolish?"

  "Is she - ?"

  Varney moved in closer and Hank felt the lights in the room dim. He couldn't be sure if they actually did, but he felt it. "Come now, man of science. You saw what happened to Nurse Otero."

  "She changed."

  "Yes. She was clawed. Infected."

  "Why hasn't Bullet changed yet?"

  Varney shrugged. "Curious. Force of will, I suppose."

  "But she will?"

  Varney nodded slowly.

  Hank swallowed and tried to put his next question together in such a way that wouldn’t make Varney kill him. “Why didn’t you try to help Otero out there? Instead of tearing her apart?”

  Varney shrugged and it was something that was chilling in its humanity. “I didn’t like her.”

  Hank tried to tame his voice, but the thoughts came so quickly – all the questions he wanted to ask – that they rattled past each other on his tongue. He stuttered and trembled and tried to busy himself with odds and ends on the lab table. “You didn’t kill the guy in the room. Sawed Off. He was the next one you drank from. Why didn’t you just kill him? Why don’t you just kill all of them and get us the fuck out of here?”

  “Are you insinuating that I’m too weak to fight this battle, Doctor?” Varney said and his voice swelled with an unearthly bass that Hank felt in his teeth.

  “No. No. I’m not saying that.”

  Varney relaxed a bit. His shoulders seemed to sag and through the darkness that shrouded him, Hank thought he saw a smile that was rich with regret. “Because you would be right,” Varney said. “I’ve been in that box for so God damned long . . . This grudge, Doctor, between the Vucari and I, it has gone on for more years than I care to count. Trust that if I were capable of ending it so easily, I would have done so long ago. When I drank from that jabbering rube in the restraints, I did indeed want to tear him limb from limb and scatter the pieces about for all of his wretched family to witness. But I was, and am, quite tired and it would have helped nothing. See, the Vucari haven’t survived this long by cunning or intelligence. They’re just relentless. Tear them apart. Burn them. Put the ashes in the wind. They’ll still rise.”

  All of the questions withered in Hank’s throat. All but one. “So we can’t kill them.”

  Varney took a pen from the table and began to write on a legal pad. His penmanship was florid and gorgeous, like something from an old scroll. Midway through, he paused. His ears perked. He looked up, listening for a moment, then went back to work writing. Once done, he tore the page free and handed it to Hank. It was a formula. A recipe.

  "What is this?" Hank asked. “Silver? Where am I going to get pure silver?”

  “The boy’s cross in your pocket. Melt it down.”

  Hank’s hand went to the pocket and felt Nathan’s necklace. He must have tucked it away after taking it from Bullet. With it so close to his fingertips, Hank looked up at Varney and his eyes must have betrayed him. Varney waited for him to speak. “What if . . . this is the only thing keeping me alive?”

  “Doctor, I am the only thing keep you alive.”

  “It doesn’t protect us from them? The Vucari?”

  “Ask your friend, the one who wore it before,” Varney said with a smile.

  “What about the other crosses, the ones planted in your coffin?”

  “Those are forged of iron and copper. Nickel. We need silver. Ms. Boulet needs silver.”

  “So I’m a witch doctor now,” Hank said, looking down at the recipe.

  "Melt it down. Follow the instructions." He raised his head again and squinted, listening. "I'll be back."

  As he strode from the room, Hank couldn’t help but stammer one last question. “Varney . . . why? Why are you helping us?”

  Varney thought for a second, but didn’t turn back around to face Hank. After a moment, he said, “Spite.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  Varney’s face swirled and his lips twisted in disgust. “Because fuck Gideon.”

  With that, he was gone, leaving Hank alone. Hank needed that moment, too. He needed to let everything sink in. His life had become a Christopher Lee movie on late night cable. Only now, instead of the music swelling with an overwrought orchestra and Peter Cushing leading a buxom brunette to safety, it was the upheaval of everything Hank knew. Science. Faith. Common sense. All of it was upended.

  Hank studied the sheet of paper. It wasn't anything he was familiar with and the terminology Varney used was literally ancient, but he recognized the descriptions. Along with the silver, these were ingredients that he had, using equipment in this room. It was simple. And he knew what it was.

  ***

  Whitey watched her. Bullet's every move was more frantic than the last. He'd never seen her like this, even throughout the shitstorm that today had turned into, he'd never seen her scared. But that's just what she was right now. She was terrified. For the first time in an hour, Whitey lowered the gun. He set it next to a column in the center of the ER after throwing a cautious look through the gaping hole to the parking lot. The wolves weren't there. Well, they were there, but they were keeping out of sight. The flowers worked. Wolfsbane. Just like in the damned movies. They would come up to it - not too close - give it a sniff, and then scurry off back into the shadows, whimpering. Still, he'd prefer an AR15 with a few clips of silver bullets. Even he could tell that a few purple petals scattered across the entry wouldn't hold up for long. It was a fig leaf. And it probably just pissed them off. Yeah, after Varney's battle outside, the Goats were running low on patience. It was just about time for them to quit fucking around. And when that happened, well . . . thirty more shotgun shells wouldn't help, much less the three he had remaining. But now, the only badass among them - the only human one - seemed to be losing her shit. And if there was anything Bullet was, in the years he'd worked with her at the hospital, it was cool.

  She took a leather restraint, whipped it around a plaster column
, and belted herself to the pillar. Leaning into it, she tested it for strength. It held, but she pulled it tighter anyway. She looked up to see him watching her. Her eyes were incandescent with fear. It unsettled Whitey in a way nothing else today had. "Get out of here, Whitey," she said.

  "What?"

  "It's not safe to be near me."

  "Hell, Bullet. Next to you is about the safest place I've been all damned day."

  "You need to go." She checked the strap again, making sure she was locked into place. Then she calmed and looked up at him with pleading eyes. "Whitey, please. It's coming. The change."

  She pulled the top of Dr. Hank's bloody, tattered lab coat open. Where there had been scratches and gouges were now light spots and streaks. Almost completely healed. She pulled her lips back over her teeth. Whitey took a step back. They were only mostly human. New teeth - fangs - jutted from the gums behind and around her formerly perfect, natural set. She lowered her lips, and then her head. "I don't want you to be here for this, Whitey."

  Whitey set his jaw and stepped as close as he dared, close enough for her to get him had she wanted. "Well, tough shit. I ain't goin' anywhere, darlin'."

  She smiled and Whitey could tell she wanted to cry. It made him uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as seeing her scared. "Anyways, you're gonna make one hell of a sexy werewolf."

  Bullet laughed. Whitey chuckled along with her until she looked up again, dead serious. "I don't know that this is going to hold me." She nodded at the strap across her waist that held her to the column.

  "Guess I'll cross my fingers."

  "You're a good man, Whitey."

  He smiled again and ran his fingers through his long beard. "I know it. This is supposed to be my day off."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  9:45 PM

  Lane Oliver sat on the edge of his bed, dangling his feet. The toes looked alien to him. Every time he looked in the mirror, it was a completely foreign experience. He hated what was left of his face. His skin hanged off of the bones and the bones exuded a sadness, as if they, too, were ready to melt away and leave him just a pile of dust in that filthy bed. And the bed was filthy. It smelled like urine. He couldn't help it. He'd pull the catheter out in his sleep every time. Sleep was all he did lately. Twenty-three out of twenty-four hours. The nurses were good enough to keep him soaked in morphine, allowing sleep to come. The morphine dulled the pain. The cancer made him tired. So it was just a waiting game. He'd wake up every morning or night or afternoon, sigh, and go back to sleep. It wasn't like anyone came to see him anymore. He'd driven them all off. When he was young, he'd watched his father die from cancer. Papa was already a mean son of a gun, but the cancer made him meaner. And Lane, while he watched it and tried to help, vowed that he would never be like that. He'd never scream at nurses or spit hate at those who were just there to see him, to show him that he was loved. And they had come for that. He didn't have much to leave to them, just a small, two-bedroom, post-war house with no heating and a window unit to keep him cool during the summer. He wasn't rich. That was no secret. His kids knew there wasn't some old man's lifetime treasure hiding beneath the floorboards. But they came anyway. It was nice, at first, but after a while, it turned sour. He turned sour.

  Early on, the doctors were guarded with his chances. They would shrug, non-committal, saying treatment was his choice. He had good insurance and enough saved up to pay for it. It wasn't top of the line cancer treatment, but it was as good as any old fellow like himself could expect. It was harder than he'd anticipated. Much harder. Rather than take it with a smile and come out ahead, it devoured him, spirit first. He'd never realized how vain he was, but this put it in perspective. Even at seventy-four, he'd had a full head of gray hair. He was proud of it. It was all gone. He'd had rosy cheeks. Gone. A spark in his eye. Gone. So when he realized just how the treatments themselves had worked in tandem with the sickness to destroy all of that, he couldn't take it. It was vanity and vanity was a sin, but that's how it was going to be. Worse than the mirrors were the looks on his family's faces. The pity. They'd wince when they walked in the door. That was the worst. He knew he looked awful. He didn't need them to remind him. Then they'd start talking to him in this lilting baby voice, as if he were too feeble to carry on a conversation. Sure, he was weak now, but then it just irritated him. So he became mean. He became cruel. He attacked his sons and their wives, their kids. When they just sat and took it with an uncomfortable smile, he got worse. He got personal. He'd even make things up, things that it hurt him to say. Seeing them mad or offended was better than the pity. It was better than them staring at him like he'd risen from the grave by mistake and that it was their responsibility to gingerly lower him back in, telling him all the time how much they loved him and how much they were thinking about him and praying for him. It was humiliating, so he humiliated them. Finally, they stopped coming. He cried at first. When the hospital was quiet and the lights were dim, he cried to himself. He wanted them there. He needed them. Just seeing those grandkids made him feel like he could jump up out of bed and be done with it. Almost. But it was better this way. Now, he told himself it was better that they didn't come because he was sick of them. He hated them and their condescension. It was their henpecking that had kept the treatments from working. They hadn't let him get better, he told himself. This sick old man was their grudging responsibility and seeing him like this sickened them, like they were looking at some toothless hobo - equal parts pity and disgust. But in the quiet moments in the night, when he mostly had the hospital to himself, he felt the truth creep back into him.

  Now he felt the shadow. It was like a rush of painkiller through his veins. He gripped the side of the bed with shaking hands. There was no one in the doorway. He heard no footsteps coming from the hall. "Hello?" he said.

  "You called me," the voice said from the darkness in the corner of his room. Lane felt a lump form in his throat.

  He tried to stare. He tried to make some shape out of the shadows. Finally, the man emerged, as if floating to the top of a pool of ink. The vague shape of a face. He could tell where the eyes were, could make out the shape of shoulders, but that was all.

  "You came," Lane said. "I called you. I reached out with my mind and you heard me."

  The man said nothing.

  "I know what you are."

  "Do you?"

  "Yes. Yes, sir. I do."

  The man was inscrutable. He just stared at Lane who, in his urine-stained hospital gown, suddenly felt more naked than he ever had. "I've been paying attention. I know what's going on. Been listening. Everybody around here thinks I'm already dead. And that I don't see what's going on around here. I do. I know what's happening here tonight ain't Christian. And you're . . . I guess you're a demon, right?"

  The man laughed and Lane slid back on the bed. The laugh was real, a deep baritone, but with some undercurrent of metal scraping against metal. A picture on the wall - some generic watercolor of a cowboy on the range - tilted askew.

  "You may call me Varney."

  "Mr. Varney, when you came here, I felt it." Lane tried to find the right words. He clutched at his gown. "I felt it here, in my chest. I thought you'd come for me. I thought you were death."

  "Have you seen death, Mr. Oliver?"

  "No. I've only seen these walls. For months now, just these walls. No angels coming for me. No devils, neither. Until now."

  Varney stepped forward, just a bit, but the shadows came with him. "And is that what you see now? A devil come to take you away?"

  "Are you?"

  "No."

  Lane nodded and thought on it for a moment. "I'm almost disappointed. You're a vampire?"

  Varney didn't answer, didn't nod.

  "I saw you drink Nurse Otero's blood. Can't say I'm too sad you did that." Lane chuckled, "She's meaner than I ever was."

  Lane found himself staring at his toes again. Varney waited for him to speak. The air in the room thickened. "I don't want to die, Mr. Varney."
/>
  "Hmmm," Varney said. "I've heard that before, Mr. Oliver. And yet all of us act as though we have any choice in the matter."

  "You do."

  Varney's eyes narrowed. "Stop being coy, Mr. Oliver."

  "What? I -"

  "You didn't call me in here for idle chatter. If you're going to ask, then ask."

  Lane swallowed hard. "Will you . . . turn me?"

  Varney looked at him and the silence in the room grow heavy. Finally, Varney spoke, "No."

  Lane hadn't known what response to expect or even how he'd react. To ask was as far as he'd thought it through. He stuttered. "I . . . please? Look at me."

  "No. And you've been robbed of enough of your dignity. Hold on to the rest of it by not begging."

  Lane shut his mouth and felt flushed with anger and embarrassment. "Fine. Fine. I just can't sit here and rot like this."

  Varney moved into the doorway and looked over his shoulder. "Don't worry, Mr. Oliver. You'll meet your end before the sun rises. I fear that we all will."

  ***