by Dixon, Chuck
“I got paid. I got something in exchange for my work. What do I get out of this?”
She turned to me, eyes smoky under bangs slick with damp. “You get to live forever.” She turned away.
“Is that for real? We don’t die? I’m just going to go on and on?”
“Until someone stops you, mon petit.”
I lay back on the bed atop the brocaded spread.
“But I live like this. Alone except for you. Never seeing daylight. Either in a coma or hungry. I’m not sure this is such a great deal.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then why did you make me like this?”
I felt the mattress move under me. She was beside me on the bed, her head resting on my shoulder, a leg thrown over my stomach. Her long nails played over my chest.
“Maybe I was lonely, mon petit.”
I didn’t say anything. I was still dealing with the idea that I had a lot more years ahead of me. Middle age was something I had started thinking about. Not like a mortality thing. More career concerns. I was worried that I wasn’t moving up the earnings ladder the way I thought I should have by age thirty-five. Those worries were all irrelevant now. Stupid even, in hindsight.
“So how long have you been alive? You said you were in Paris when the walls came down.”
“The Germans. They surrounded the city. Cut it off. People were eating flowers. And horses.”
“Was this like the Nazis and stuff like that?” I had only a basic cable education in history.
“Not those pigs. It was before that. Before cars and streetlights. Before I became as you see me.”
“Some German turned you?”
“No. The cannons and bombs fell on the city. They drove a tribe from their lair. They came to my parents’ house looking for a place to hide. And feed.”
Her nails scraped furrows over my chest as she spoke.
“They turned me. I joined them. When the city fell and the Germans came in, we left Paris. Those were hard days. I left the tribe after that. I have been on my own.”
“All that time?” I said.
“There were others I hunted with. Never for long.” I wondered how long I had.
We lay entwined like that until the sun, unseen from our shelter, came up. Not speaking. Not moving. I felt Roxanne go limp against me. The dark blanket of sleep fell over me. Before I surrendered to it, I spoke to her.
“Can you do something for me?”
“What is it?” she said. Her tongue was heavy.
“Can you stop calling me mon petit?”
I felt her cheek rise into a smile where her face rested on my chest.
“What about ‘mon chaton?’” she said.
“What does that mean?” I said.
“My lover,” she said. Her voice faded away. She nestled against me.
“Sounds good.” I sank into a darkness sweet and deep. Of course, it was just another one of her lies.
11
We had enough blood in the kitchen fridge to see us through another night.
Since we didn’t have to hunt, we spent the evening in. I channel-surfed on the big screen in the living room. Roxanne couldn’t sit still.
“You need to move the car,” she said.
Nothing on the tv was interesting to me anyway. It all seemed shallow and unreal now. With immortality to look forward to, the problems of all those people on television seemed more trivial than ever.
I drove the Impala to a parking lot next to the community tennis courts and left it there. I walked back past houses either dark or lit by the shuddering blue light of tvs. A pair of late-night joggers passed me. A man and woman. Earbuds in place. Fluorescent strips glowed on their windbreakers. Little reflective strips on their sneakers flashing as they bounced along. The man raised a hand and nodded a greeting.
“Nice night,” I said.
They trotted by me. I could smell their sweat, taste the salty tang of it on my tongue. Their elevated heart rates beat in my ears. I turned, stopping by the curb to watch them move around the curve of the street until they were out of sight. I was full, satisfied, by my meal of hospital blood. But there was still a stir of desire as I watched the joggers move away into the night.
They’d never know how close they came. I was a thing to fear.
I was a thing that made the dark frightening.
That made me dangerous.
That made me a monster.
I came back to the house already in a bad mood to find Roxanne climbing the walls. We argued over whether to stay or go. It got hot. She threw a Rent-A-Center lamp at me. It shattered against the fireplace mantel, sending plaster everywhere. She stormed off to somewhere in the house. I let her.
By dawn, she hadn’t returned, and I lay in the big queen bed alone until the hammer of sleep dropped on me and I was out for the day.
I have no idea what roused me. The scrape of a key in the lock.
A shuffle of soles over hardwood floors.
My eyes opened, and I jerked up on one elbow.
There were voices from downstairs. One boomed up to me louder than the others.
“And then we’ll check out the bedrooms.”
12
It wasn’t like waking from the deep sleep. The closest I can describe it is coming around after anesthesia. I remember waking up after getting my wisdom teeth out. My mother by the bed, patting my hand and speaking my name. I wanted nothing more than to sink back into the cotton candy dreamland the drugs had taken me to.
This was like that, only deeper somehow. It took all I had to roll out of the bed and stumble to the door. I fought the need to lie down with every step. My eyelids felt like they were being drawn down by hundred-pound weights. The whole world was canted to one side. The door to the bedroom seemed to get farther away, not closer.
I made it to the hall and slid along with my back to a wall to hold myself up. The voices rose up from the foyer, echoing in the two-story open space.
“All the appliances are included, and the central air was replaced just last year.”
“What about the home association fee?”
“It’s quarterly at three-oh-five. That includes your cable. And you saw those tennis courts, right?”
I wanted to look for Roxanne. I had no idea where she was, or even if she was still in the house.
“Jesus!”
They’d found the smashed lamp in the living room. They’d find the blood packs in the Sub-Zero next. I couldn’t remember if I’d wiped the blood drops off the kitchen counter.
“I’m terribly sorry. This has never happened before.”
“Well, we’re not staying here. There could still be someone here.”
“You’re right. Let’s go back to my car.”
I heard the beep of a cell phone being tabbed. Three beeps. 911. The babble of voices faded as they exited the house. The front door slammed with enough force to be felt through the carpet under my bare feet.
I ran from door to door, calling for Roxanne in a stage whisper. No answer.
Like I said, we’d drawn the blinds and drapes in every room. Still, muted sunlight came through the windows and around the gaps in the treatments. It was enough to add queasiness to the stupor I was already in. Bedrooms, baths, and a bonus room. All empty. Roxanne had either found a hiding place already or was long-gone.
I lost track of time in my search. I stood at the top of the stairs, steadying myself with a hand to the newel post. I steeled myself for the climb down the steps to the first floor. The staircase swung like a rope bridge in a high wind. There was more sunshine leaking in on the first floor through the windows to either side of the front doors. The sliders in the kitchen had no blinds. I’d be unprotected against the light down there. I had to find Roxanne before anyone else came in.
The front door opened. I stepped back into the relative gloom of the second floor. Two cops came into the foyer. Their hands were empty, but their tread was wary, and their manner tense. Their heartbeats were racin
g, although their voices were level. One stood by the open door with a hand resting on the butt of his holstered weapon. Blinding afternoon glare sprayed in behind him. I covered my face with my hands and backed away toward the bedrooms. The other cop moved into the house, calling out that a police presence was here, and anyone in the house had to make themselves known now. The click of light switches being flipped. As quiet as I could I made my way back to the master bedroom. I thought about the closet. I thought about locking myself in the bathroom. Even in my muddled state, I rejected those hiding places.
The calling voices of both cops came closer. They were climbing the stairs, blocking any chance of escape. Like I could leave the house in broad daylight. Floorboards creaked in the hallway. I dropped to the carpet and rolled under the bed. The dust ruffle dropped down behind me. I lay on my back with my head turned to watch the open door.
Somewhere, doors opened and closed. The section of hall I could see from under the bed grew brighter as blinds were pulled and drapes parted. A pair of polished brogans came into view and stepped into the room.
“The hell?”
The shoes moved across the carpet faster now. A ripping sound as the duct tape came away. Sunshine blasted in, creating a rectangle of fire coming through the gap between the bottom of the ruffle and the carpet. I shrank in from the sides of the bed to the center. My eyes were pressed tight. I could still feel the sickening glow touching the bare skin of my arms and face. I suppressed the moan trying to rise up my throat.
Both cops were in the room now. I couldn’t follow what they were saying to one another. The radiance all around was beginning to sear my skin. Their voices were excited. They pounded around the room pulling closets open. I could hear rubber soles squeaking on the bathroom tile. The shower curtain rings clinked as one of them searched the tub.
They stood at the foot of the bed, talking. I tried to hold my breath until I remembered that I had no breath to hold. A radio crackled. They exited the room at a run. Feet on the stairs. The front door slamming shut.
I lay there in the sudden silence roiling in the furnace-heat washing over me. The hair on my arms crinkled and turned to gray ash. It felt like the flesh was shrinking on my bones. If I stayed here any longer, the cops would find a pile of charcoal when they came back.
I had to get out of the light. I crawled out from under the bed on my belly on the side opposite the uncovered windows. With my fingers clawing, I pulled myself toward the walk-in closet. The cops had left the folding doors open. Crossing the bars of sunlight between me and the sheltering dark inside the closet was agony. Each beam felt like a scalding whip across my back.
I made it to the closet and rose on one knee to pull the accordion door closed. There was a painful bar of light coming through the gap under the door. I pulled my t-shirt off and stuffed it as best I could across the foot of the doorway.
I crept into the deeper dark at the back of the closet and curled up in a ball in a far corner. My whole body stung as though I’d been flayed from head to foot. The enclosed place filled with the stink of burned hair. My arms were ashen black. My face was probably the same.
The cops would be back, and they’d find me here. This would look like more than just simple vandalism. The blood packs in the fridge and the kitchen trashcan made sure of that. They’d find me. And they’d find Roxanne if she was still here.
There wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. I huddled in the dark and gave in to the utter exhaustion that was drawing me to oblivion. Within seconds, the burning pain was gone. I slipped away into restful senselessness.
13
Roxanne was dragging me across the yard behind the house. I don’t remember her pulling me from the closet or the house. We were out in the dark of the backyards. She was helping me around swing sets, pool fences, and picnic tables.
“Walk, damn you,” she said.
I found my feet and managed a stumbling gait. She gripped my wrist and led me between the houses. It was full dark now. A healing dark. My skin still burned from the sun, but the searing pain had faded in intensity to a kind of constant tingle. I went to scratch at my arm, and Roxanne batted my hand aside.
“You’ll make it worse,” she hissed.
“We have to get to the car,” I said.
“They took the car away. There is no car.”
We came to the end of the block. She took the lead, moving in a crouch between houses. She waved me ahead, and together we crossed the street and into the shadows between houses across the block.
“I can’t make it any farther,” I said. I collapsed against a central air housing.
“You stay, and you will be found. You’re not dying, only weak from hunger. You have to feed.” She took a grip on my hair and yanked me upright.
Roxanne had fed. I could smell it on her. A thick beefy smell. The blazing heat of want built in my gut. My tongue flicked over my lips.
“I’m hungry, Roxanne,” I said. It came out wheedling like a spoiled child.
“First we get a car. We have to get far from here.”
My mind was muddled, confused. I sensed an urgency close to fear in her voice.
The next block of houses backed onto a wooded section. We tramped together over the uneven ground and across a runoff stream, startling some deer watering there. The strand of woods ended at a two-lane road. Keeping to the shadows of the trees we followed the road to an intersection where a group of businesses was clumped on each corner. A Walgreen’s, a tire store, a BK, and a gas station with a food mart. We crouched behind a hedge that ran along the back lot of the food mart behind the dumpsters.
“We need to steal a new car,” she said.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
“You can’t steal a car?”
“Can you?”
“I’m not a criminal.”
I almost laughed at that until I felt her hand on my arm, clamping down hard.
“There,” she pointed.
An SUV had pulled up to the pumps in front of the food mart. A guy in sweats popped out from behind the wheel and hustled toward the store. White vapor spilled from the exhaust. The SUV was running. That meant the keys were in it. It also meant that there was probably at least one passenger still in the car.
Roxanne shoved me forward. She kept shoving until we were at the gas pumps. I crept around the driver’s side and reached the door in time to see Roxanne pulling a shouting woman out the passenger-side door. The woman swung a fist that Roxanne slipped away from. Roxanne whipped the woman’s face with an open slap that sent the woman reeling between the pump islands. She came down hard on her ass with a squeak.
“Get in. Drive.” Roxanne slid into the seat.
I got behind the wheel, popped us into gear, and went screaming off the lot to make a lurching left through a yellow light. I floored it down the two-lane we’d come up.
The trees and houses gave way to open fields either side of the road. I recognized the road we were on. It was a surface road that joined a wider boulevard that led east to the interstate. The world was shimmering blue under a half-moon. The only lights visible were the occasional farmhouses set way back off the road. We passed a few cars coming the other way. The headlights were like onrushing comets that blinded me. Roxanne found a pair of sunglasses up on the visor and slid them onto my nose. They helped to cut down the glare if not the piercing pain of the headlight beams.
I was weak and dazed. It was a fight to keep on the right side of the white line snaking toward us out of the dark.
“I don’t feel right,” I said.
“You’ll be fine when you feed. You’ll heal. Everything will be all right,” she said.
“How did you get me out of there? Where were you today?”
“I found a place in the attic over the garage as you should have done.”
“But the police. Why didn’t they find me?”
“They did not come back for a long time. I watched them tow your car away.”
“They weren’t watching the house?” She made a huffing sound.
“You think the world is like a detective story. You believe the police turn out in droves over someone breaking into an empty house?” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was mocking me or the police.
“The blood in the refrigerator.”
“There are all kinds of sick people in the world. They are not looking for us, mon petit.”
“You promised not to call me that anymore.”
“Je suis désolé, mon chaton,” she said. It came out as an exaggerated coo. It was me she was making fun of.
“You fed. I can smell it on you. You smell like takeout cheeseburgers.” The ball of flame in my stomach licked higher.
“So, I fed.” She shrugged.
“That’s why you’re in such a hurry to get away. What did you do?”
“I fed.” She looked away toward the utility poles flashing past.
“Damn it,” I said. I hit the wheel with the heel of my hand.
We merged onto the boulevard lying bilious yellow under halogen lamps. I could see the glow of the interstate overpass ahead of us. We’d be up the ramp and gone within minutes.
The blooping noise behind us repeated twice before a siren’s wail started up. A galaxy of red and blue lights washed over us. Strobing high beams stabbed at my eyes from the rearview mirror. I turned to look behind. Two city police cars were racing one another toward our back bumper.
14
“Drive faster,” Roxanne said.
“In this piece of shit?” I looked at the dash. The needle was bobbing over empty. We should have waited until they filled up.
The cop cars were gaining on us, horns honking along with the droning sirens. They’d have us boxed before I could make the on-ramp.
“They can’t catch us,” she said. She was turned in the seat to look back. The crazed lights played over her eyes, making them glow red, then blue, then red again.
