Black Leather Required

by David J. Schow

  Bridges was about to aim and fire when he went rigid, his yap stalling in the open position. "Oh. Jeezus. . ."

  Everybody looked at each other. It was poignant, in its way.

  Case rather savored playing oracle. This must be how Shack felt when he channeled some blast of psychic insight. "That 'dine, gents, has been solid for over twelve hours. Somebody better call the Guinness Book, because this is a first, as far as my experience goes."

  Top end before the average ghost dinosaur frazzed out was generally two hours. They came back, but they never lasted long; that was why the hazard factor had dwindled so quickly. This female Brontosaurus showed no signs of going away, and it was an adult, not a newborn.

  "A Maiasaur will be next," Shack said. "It will lay a full nest of eggs."

  Case reviewed all. What had he accomplished? To cease the mad forward rush, the stampede of the simple day-to-day, that might actually be nice. He reconsidered all he had done, from losing his virginity to greasing the Rex that had wiped out his dream car, and realized right here, in the middle of nowhere, he had already found a valuable kind of peace. He had never thought in such terms before.

  This really wasn't so bad, for a life.

  The valley was full of milling dinosaurs. They were waiting and they had the patience of eons, because they had known–if only instinctually–that their time would again come 'round. Case wondered if he could be adaptable as that Seward fella had been.

  "What do you reckon we oughta do?" Bridges asked Case. "Start shooting 'em? Is that why you bagged that one this morning?" The kid was actually worried.

  Case grinned. Drovers never told all.

  "Nope. I think we only need to do one thing, and that's find a way to welcome them home. No wars, no battles for dominance, all that useless military shit. You and I are the experts, Bridges. We oughta act like experts, and find out what the 'dines will need that we can provide, since they're coming home. Either we coexist, or we become the extinct ones. You get it?"

  "What about civilization?" said Jonas. "No dinosaur could ever be a Magritte or a Blake or a Dali." His education was showing.

  "Mm. More important, no dinosaur could ever invent Bic lighters or pop tops or bombs that suck away the whole atmosphere. Yes? That green and black Brontosaurus is the first one that's not just going to disappear. It's back to stay." Home again, he thought. The former tenants were resuming residence.

  He knew it would take awhile for them all to digest the potential of their new roles. Not everybody was going to like it, but Case wasn't worried. There was time, and time marched.

  Right now it was time to fire up another cigarette.

  Author's Note:

  "Dire Saurians" was the original title of "Sedalia," for reasons explained in the semi-sequel, "Kamikaze Butterflies."

  Those of you unschooled in the horrors of late-night Southern California TV deserve a footnote about car king Cal Worthington. Cal is still alive and well, and more people than ever know who he is thanks to cable. Cal replaced Ralph Williams, who replaced Leon Ames, a character actor who can be seen in films as far back as the 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue. In real life, Ralph Williams was a character about whom volumes of apocalyptic storytelling could be recorded. All three men used to buy up unused commercial time on local stations at cut rates; that's why their ads were so prevalent in the midnight-to-dawn trench. I'm afraid poor ole Cal has finally been usurped by the proliferation of commercials featuring real, live girls who are dying to talk to YOU for only $4 or so per minute.

  Nalgadas is obscure caló slang for buttocks.

  And yes, the La Brea Tar Pits contain only mammals. No dinos.

  A Week in the Unlife

  1.

  When you stake a bloodsucker, the heartblood pumps out thick and black, the consistency of honey. I saw it make bubbles as it glurped out. The creature thrashed and squirmed and tried to pull out the stake–they always do, if you leave on their arms for the kill–but by the third whack it was, as Stoker might say, dispatched well and duly.

  I lost count a long time ago. Doesn't matter. I no longer think of them as being even former human beings, and feel no anthropomorphic sympathy. In their eyes I see no tragedy, no romance, no seductive pulp appeal. Merely lust, rage at being outfoxed, and debased appetite, focused and sanguine.

  People usually commit journals as legacy. So be it. Call me sentry, vigilante if you like. When they sleep their comatose sleep, I stalk and terminate them. When they walk, I hide. Better than they do.

  They're really not as smart as popular fiction and films would lead you to believe. They do have cunning, an animalistic savvy. But I'm an experienced tracker; I know their spoor, the traces they leave, the way their presence charges the air. Things invisible or ephemeral to ordinary citizens, blackly obvious to me.

  The journal is so you'll know, just in case my luck runs out.

  Sundown. Nap time.

  2.

  Naturally the police think of me as some sort of homicidal crackpot. That's a given; always has been for my predecessors. More watchers to evade. Caution comes reflexively to me these days. Police are slow and rational; they deal in the minutiae of a day-to-day world, deadly enough without the inclusion of bloodsuckers.

  The police love to stop and search people. Fortunately for me, mallets and stakes and crosses and such are not yet illegal in this country. Lots of raised eyebrows and jokes and nudging but no actual arrests. When the time comes for them to recognize the plague that has descended upon their city, they will remember me, perhaps with grace.

  My lot is friendless, solo. I know and expect such. It's okay.

  City by city. I'm good at ferreting out the nests. To me, their kill-patterns are like a flashing red light. The police only see presumed loonies, draw no linkages; they bust and imprison mortals and never see the light.

  I am not foolhardy enough to leave bloodsuckers lying. Even though the mean corpus usually dissolves, the stakes might be discovered. Sometimes there is other residue. City dumpsters and sewers provide adequate and fitting disposal for the leftovers of my mission.

  The enemy casualties.

  I wish I could advise the authorities, work hand-in-hand with them. Too complicated. Too many variables. Not a good control situation. Bloodsuckers have a maddening knack for vanishing into crevices, even hairline splits in logic.

  Rule: Trust no one.

  3.

  A female one, today Funny. There aren't as many of them as you might suppose.

  She had courted a human lover, so she claimed, like Romeo and Juliet–she could only visit him at night, and only after feeding, because bloodsuckers too can get carried away by passion.

  I think she was intimating that she was a physical lover of otherworldly skill; I think she was fighting hard to tempt me not to eliminate her by saying so.

  She did not use her mouth to seduce mortal men. I drove the stake into her brain, through the mouth. She was of recent vintage and did not melt or vaporize. When I fucked her remains, I was surprised to find her warm inside, not cold, like a cadaver. Warm.

  With some of them, the human warmth is longer in leaving. But it always goes.

  4.

  I never met one before that gave up its existence without a struggle, but today I did, one that acted like he had been expecting me to wander along and relieve him of the burden of unlife. He did not deny what he was, nor attempt to trick me. He asked if he could talk a bit, before.

  In a third-floor loft, the windows of which had been spray-painted flat black, he talked. Said he had always hated the taste of blood; said he preferred pineapple juice, or even coffee. He actually brewed a pot of coffee while we talked.

  I allowed him to finish his cup before I put the ash-wood length to his chest and drove deep and let his blackness gush. It dribbled, thinned by the coffee he had consumed.

  5.

  Was thinking this afternoon perhaps I should start packing a Polaroid or somesuch, to keep a visual body count, ju
st in case this journal becomes public record someday. It'd be good to have illustrations, proof. I was thinking of that line you hear overused in the movies. I'm sure you know it: "But there's no such THING as a vampire!" What a howler; ranks right up there alongside "It's crazy–but it just might work!" and "We can't stop now for a lot of silly native superstitions!"

  Right; shoot cozy little memory snaps, in case they whizz to mist or drop apart to smoking goo. That bull about how you're not supposed to be able to record their images is from the movies, too. There's so much misleading information running loose that the bloodsuckers–the real ones–have no trouble at all moving through any urban center, with impunity, as they say on cop shows.

  Maybe it would be a good idea to tape record the sounds they make when they die. Videotape them begging not to be exterminated. That would bug the eyes of all those monster movie fans, you bet.

  6.

  So many of them beleaguering this city, it's easy to feel outnumbered. Like I said, I've lost count.

  Tonight might be a good window for moving on. Like them, I become vulnerable if I remain too long, and it's prudent operating procedure not to leave patterns or become predictable.

  It's easy. I don't own much. Most of what I carry, I carry inside.

  7.

  They pulled me over on Highway Ten, outbound, for a broken left taillight. A datafax photo of me was clipped to the visor in the Highway Patrol car. The journal book itself has been taken as evidence, so for now it's a felt-tip and high school notebook paper, which notes I hope to append to the journal proper later.

  I have a cell with four bunks all to myself. The door is solid gray, with a food slot, unlike the barred cage of the bullpen. On the way back I noticed they had caught themselves a bloodsucker. Probably an accident; they probably don't even know what they have. There is no sunrise or sunset in the block, so if he gets out at night, they'll never know what happened. But I already know. Right now I will not say anything. I am exposed and at a disadvantage. The one I let slip today I can eliminate tenfold, next week.

  8.

  New week. And I am vindicated at last.

  I relaxed as soon as they showed me the photographs. How they managed the documentation on the last few bloodsuckers I trapped, I have no idea. But I was relieved. Now I don't have to explain this journal–which, as you can see, they returned to me immediately. They had thousands of questions. They needed to know about the mallets, the stakes, the preferred method of killstrike. I cautioned them not to attempt a sweep and clear at night, when the enemy is stronger.

  They paid serious attention this time, which made me feel much better. Now the fight can be mounted en masse.

  They also let me know I wouldn't have to stay in the cell. Just some paperwork to clear, and I'm out among them again. One of the officials–not a cop, but a doctor–congratulated me on a stout job well done. He shook my hand, on behalf of all of them, he said, and mentioned writing a book on my work. This is exciting!

  As per my request, the bloodsucker in the adjacent solitary cell was moved. I told them that to be really sure, they should use one of my stakes. It was simple vanity, really, on my part. I turn my stakes out of ash-wood on a lathe. I made sure they knew I'd permit my stakes to be used as working models for the proper manufacture of all they would soon need.

  When the guards come back I really must ask how they managed such crisp 8xlOs of so many bloodsuckers. All those names and dates. First class documentation.

  I'm afraid I may be a bit envious.

  Author's Note:

  When Ellen Datlow solicited "Unlife" for her anthology A Whisper of Blood, she requested some sort of afterword. Here it is, with minor modifications:

  This is a vampire story with no vampires in it.

  From punk vampires to porn vampires to gay vampires to vampirism-as-AIDS, vampire fiction has become the Star Trek of horror. As a genre it is by and large ultraconservative, moribund, demographic, derivative, totally safe and utterly dull, dull, dull. Grave wavers who wet themselves over today's endlessly recycled bloodsucker mung might do well to exhume and rediscover the only two fundamental American vampire novels of this century–Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and Les Whitten's Progeny of the Adder. From them sprang, ultimately, the entire culture of pop vampirism as we know it today.

  Distaste for such an adulterated gimmick as traditional vampirism played a big part in the creation of the abovementioned books. It's the ultimate challenge: Transcend me if you can.

  It is the oversaturation of vampire lore made palatable and romantic, and the trivialist's lust to accumulate ever more of it, that is itself a new form of vampirism.

  The vampire hunter of "Unlife" is a creature who feeds off your hunger to believe in vampires.

  To that list of two, today, I'd add Lucius Shepard's The Golden, if only for the rich, nourishing nature of its prose.

  Scoop Makes a Swirly

  Scoop gagged and vented a crawful of raw sewage, heroically attempting a rollover so he might inhale, for once. The task would have been simpler had he not been securely duct-taped to a corpse.

  He lolled like a harpooned manatee and the bloated dead body submerged him afresh, to reluctantly gulp whatever the millions of New Yorkers above him were currently flushing down their toilets.

  Scoop would have been face-to-face with his dead dance partner if its head had been left . . . and that made things, well, disgusting.

  The handsome young news professional who had read yesterday's broadcast of the Bulldog Edition had mentioned something about rain being on the way. That would be some grand picnic–to drown in the waste products of the Apple as its sewers topped off, bursting their ancient, crumbling arteries every few blocks and burying him, Mikey, alias Scoop, alive.

  You're really in the shit now, the bees in his brain hectored.

  He tried once again to revolve, a potty paddle-wheeler. He managed to suck just enough stale air to keep him alive for one more roll in the sludge.

  It was during special, personal moments such as this that Mikey paused to reflect on his unique talent for slam-dunking himself into this bad neighborhood, time after wretched time. Apparently, his definition of bad stuff admitted to no ceiling. Details his memory fought to obscure were gleefully supplied by the brain bees, those pestersome voices that functioned as his own personal harpies.

  The bees replayed Mikey's tapes, savoring the ins and outs of how he had come to be bobbing for turds beneath the busy city streets, taped wrist and ankle to the dead meat of a gentleman he'd only wanted to shoot in the head.

  "Jesus H. Christ, esquire," said Doc Auto, frowning. He had this con-expression he always made whenever Mikey darkened the portals of his clandestine, members-only practice. Doc Auto was good, one of the best and most discreet in his slightly extralegal field, but he had a tendency to speech make. Mikey suffered the lecture while the Doe gave him the once-over, twice.

  "Looks like you broke at least three toes. You've still got a nine-millimeter slug stuck in the meat of your triceps. You've also got two more holes, shoulder and calf, where the bullets punched through clean. Had to be steel jackets. You have dislocated your right shoulder. I would estimate you've pissed away about a pint of blood, not counting all the scrapes, superficial lacerations, and punctures. You want a cigarette?"

  "Does it have a filter?" Mikey avoided looking at the counter mirror in Doc's examining cubicle.

  "Health conscious. That's good." Doc Auto affected a capaciously-pocketed medical smock that was generously stocked with peppermints, Tootsie Rolls, smokes, gum, Hershey's Kisses, toothpicks, and antacids in three jolly flavors. Beneath the smock, the good doctor wore an Auto Ordinance .41 caliber Action Express, snugged into a Shark pop-away holster. Near his opposite armpit, Doc packed two spare magazines of ammo. He wore tiny John Lennon specs and had a lush Santa Claus beard. He acted paternal, as though the disaster area that was Mikey's body was no biggie; all in a night's work as an independent contractor.

/>   "You win a cigarette if you bite on this for me," Doc said. He positioned a horseshoe of sterile rubber between Mikey's teeth. "Come on, you can bite harder than that."

  "Teefhurtz," said Mikey.

  "Just bite."

  Mikey bit down as Doc Auto stuck a Number Ten hemostat directly into the entry hole on his upper arm. By the time Mikey could make an insane caveman noise, the Doc had pincered the flattened slug and zipped it free as easily as tweezing a nose hair. He held the mutilated bullet up so Mikey's eyes could see it, as soon as they uncrossed and he stopped screaming.

  "What'd I tell you," said the Doc. "Steel jacket. You know, getting shot is bad for you, Mikey."

  Mikey tried to spit out the horseshoe but it hung up on his top row of teeth. He had chomped into it a good quarter of a inch. "You wouldn't have an aspirin in this joint, would you?"

  "Too much aspirin's bad for you, too."

  "Doc, I've just about overdosed on quips and one-liners for tonight. Bad guys always use them before they shoot; everybody watches too goddamned many movies."

  "So who tried to kill you?"

  "Can we talk about this later? AaaaarrGHH!"

  "My office, my rules." Doc continued his antiseptic swab-down of Mikey's minor injuries. "Who wanted to wax your ass this time?"

  "Wentworth, first," said Mikey sullenly. "Then the Cherub."

  "Whoa, lad!" Doc Auto actually jerked his swab back. "Why am I wasting my time and talent on you? Wentworth and the Cherub? You're already dead. How come you're breathing at all?"

  "I'm a better shot than I used to be."

  "I thought you said no one-liners." Doc decided to keep patching up. He was no longer tending good ole Mikey, he was now repairing a killer, if only an inept, half-dead one. "So. . .who lived?"