by Alan Ryker
Roy started to speak, when Keith put a hand on his chest and stepped forward. "We've got this under control, Bill. So how about you leave?"
"I don't know if it really looks like you—"
"How about you leave while you still can?"
Sheriff Wheeler rested his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver. "Is that a threat?"
Keith nodded at the gun. "You think that'll even things up? We know who the better man is, and it's by a might bit bigger difference than that makes."
"We know the better man, huh?"
Keith spit at Wheeler's boots. "Irene settled that."
Sheriff Wheeler began to square up, and so did Keith, but Roy stepped between them.
"Please go, Sheriff. We're doing nothing wrong."
The two tall men stared at each other for a long while, but eventually Wheeler backed away.
"I'll be back to check on you boys again soon. And Roy, next time you better keep a tighter hold on his leash."
Keith stared after Sheriff Wheeler as he walked away. He didn't think that Wheeler was actually dumb enough to come poking around again anytime soon. Keith would love to put that bastard in the ground regardless of the consequences. He figured that was the biggest difference between himself and Bill. Neither of them had much to lose, but Bill seemed to care anyway.
"Good Lord that was close," Roy said. "That was so close. Why'd you have to bring up Irene?"
"Was sick of his game. Sick of the talk." Keith looked at Roy. Roy's hands shook, but he clenched his rake hard when he saw Keith notice. Keith patted his shoulder. "You go on home and clean up. Come 'round my place at seven."
Roy looked at the ashes. "You sure you don't need help?"
"No. Go on."
"Alright. See you at seven."
Keith sat on his porch, still covered in soot. He sipped from the beer in his hand. He looked at his watch. One. There were too many hours between one and seven. He was too worked up to do anything but sit there and drink his beer. He drained it, then went to the kitchen for another. The snake skull sat atop his fridge, and he stared into its hollow eyes. He grabbed the bourbon beside it. It was a liter bottle, about half full from the last time. He took it outside with him.
Sitting in the chair he chased slugs of bourbon with gulps of beer, and he remembered the day he buried Irene.
He remembered standing beside the fresh grave with Pastor Conway. He and the Pastor stayed as the others wandered away a few at a time. But when Keith looked up from the casket, Sheriff Wheeler and Deputy Thomas stood opposite him. The deputy whispered to Wheeler, but kept glancing at Keith. When he saw Keith notice them, he talked faster and tried to move Wheeler away, but Wheeler glared at Keith. He shrugged off the big man's hand and stalked around the grave.
"Seeing you here like this—"
"Sheriff, please," the deputy said, trying to press himself between them.
"—I can't help but say something," Wheeler continued.
Keith looked at him and waited for the man to give him an excuse.
"Sheriff, have some decency," Pastor Conway said.
"You already questioned him," Deputy Thomas said.
But Keith didn't hear them. He waited. Waited for Wheeler to give him a reason.
Wheeler didn't seem to hear them either. He said, "Eighteen years ago, she chose you. And it was the wrong choice."
"Sheriff!" Deputy Thomas said.
"Let me say my piece. I always knew there was something wrong with you, but I thought that she had you under control. I figure she must have thought so, too. But we were wrong. And because I made that mistake, she's dead."
The Sheriff stepped closer, and Keith waited.
"You're not a man. You're a rabid animal. You need to be put down. And I'm going to prove it. And I'm going to do it."
Keith waited.
"I know it was you. It wasn't equipment malfunction. You murdered her you—"
Keith punched Wheeler across his jaw and Wheeler dropped to the ground. The big deputy tried to grab Keith, but Keith shoved him into the open grave and onto Irene's casket. Keith sat on Wheeler and hit him again and again until Pastor Conway, who was no small man, dragged him off. Keith managed to stomp his boot into Wheeler's face once before he was restrained.
Chapter 10
Even though she'd chided him for his hermit-like ways, Jessica felt guilty about not visiting her uncle more often. She liked him. She knew that uncles got to be the fun ones, but it wasn't just that. Sometimes she felt more similar to him than to her own father. She wouldn't ever tell her dad, but she respected Keith more.
And Keith needed her. He and Irene had always enjoyed having her around. She guessed it was because they didn't have any kids of their own. And now that Irene was gone, she felt like he needed her to keep him from disappearing inside himself.
So after her dad came back curiously filthy from "hunting" with her uncle, she dug through her clothes until she found her keys and headed down the road.
She knew she'd find him on his porch, and there he sat, sleeping in his chair when she pulled up. But he didn't wake up when she got out and slammed her car door. She saw the cans of beer and the mostly-empty bottle of bourbon lying on its side.
Jessica walked up the steps and patted Keith on the shoulder.
"Keith."
When he didn't respond, she shook him a bit. "Keith! Uncle Keith!"
He muttered but didn't wake up. God, it had probably only been an hour since her dad left him, and he was already passed-out drunk. She hated to get in other peoples' business, especially with the problems she'd had, but she really might have to talk to him about his drinking. She'd heard her parents worrying about how bad he'd gotten. What had finally shaken her out of her stupid rebellious stage was when she understood how much she was hurting the people who cared about her and compared that to how little she got from the drugs and the partying.
She sighed and picked up the bottle of bourbon. A little bit of amber liquid sloshed in the bottom. She took a small swig and scrunched her face and shook her head. She usually drank beer, and when she drank liquor, she mixed.
Jessica gathered up the empty cans of beer and awkwardly opened the screen door. She dropped the cans in the trash, dumped the bit of bourbon into the sink, then dropped the bottle into the trash, too. Then she opened the fridge.
Nothing but beer. The man lived on alcohol and junk food. She'd definitely have to talk to him.
She grabbed a can, opened it, and sipped as she looked at the pictures on the fridge. There were a few pictures of her as a little girl, and a few pictures of Keith and Irene. She slipped one of those pictures out from beneath a magnet.
Jessica had been young enough when Irene died that she didn't miss her too much, except for Keith's sake. But she remembered Irene as being tough with the men but very kind to her. Irene taught her how to play Pitch, and then let her be her partner. She was so good that they always won, even when Jessica made mistakes, as a little kid would.
As Jessica replaced the photo beneath its magnet, she noticed the rattlesnake skull sitting atop the fridge. It seemed to menace her with its fangs. They seemed to reach out to her. She almost picked it up, but hesitated and finally withdrew her hand without touching it.
Back outside she sat on the porch rail.
"Keith."
Keith continued to sleep in his chair. She finished off her beer and sat it on the rail. Then she picked Keith's cowboy hat up off the porch and set it over his face to protect it from the western sun.
Chapter 11
"Keith," Roy said. "Keith!"
Keith sat up, his hat falling from his face. "Huh?"
"Jessica said you were passed-out drunk. What kind of example are you setting?"
Keith held his head in his hands. He could feel his heart pounding just behind his eyes, trying to crack his skull open. "Jessica was here?"
"Yeah, she said she tried to wake you up for a few minutes. She said she'd promised to visit more of
ten. So what's the point if you're going to be unconscious?"
"Was she angry?"
"No. She acted like she thought it was funny, though I think she's worried. I'm angry. And aren't we supposed to go? You look terrible."
Roy had showered and put on clean clothes.
Keith pressed himself up out of his chair. He felt a bit wobbly, but tried to hide it.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look—"
"I said I'm fine!" Roy jumped a bit and Keith felt bad. He knew he deserved some dressing-down. "I just need some water."
"I bet you do," Roy said. "How much did you drink?"
"I don't remember," Keith said. "All of it, I guess."
"All of it," Roy said. He stifled a laugh. "Well, chug down some water and get your gear. The sun's gonna set soon."
Roy was right. The sun sat low in the sky, almost touching the horizon.
Keith parked his truck beside the Irvings' property. He and Roy jogged across their pasture toward the creek. They slid down the bank and sloshed through the water. The going was far more difficult in the dark, but they made it and settled down behind some brush across from the big strange tree.
Keith brought his shotgun to bear on the dark cavern beneath the tree.
"Do you think we're too late?" Roy asked.
"No."
"It's dark with all these trees. Can't tell where the sun's at."
Keith hushed him.
It was dark. Keith held a flashlight against the shotgun, but didn't know if it would be enough.
Keith heard the vampire moving before he saw it. The soft earth it shoved aside made only a soft sound. Keith nodded to Roy, and Roy nodded back.
The vampire's white flesh caught the little moonlight that strained down through the canopy. Still, it was just an undefined gray smudge in the dark. Keith tried to get a shot, but it scuttled through the heavy root system. Then he heard a light snuffling sound. Then a shriek.
The vampire burst from beneath the tree and raced up the bank. Keith flipped the flashlight on with his thumb and tried to draw a bead on the vampire. It tore at the ground and the trees with its hands as it ran, hurtling itself from side to side and steadily up. All of Keith's concentration went to trying to predict where the thing would step next, when the night suddenly exploded, and so did the vampire's head.
Roy had taken the shot. The vampire lay twitching on the opposite bank.
"Goddamn it, Roy!"
"What?"
They scrambled across the creek. The headless vampire's limbs still moved. Its clawed hands flexed spasmodically.
"You blew its head clean off," Keith said.
"Sorry."
"I told you to aim for the body."
"I'm sorry! It surprised me, okay? I didn't expect it to move that fast."
Keith dragged his eyes away from the vampire and looked at Roy. Roy's eyes were huge. Keith chuckled. "It sure did move. Must've smelled us."
Roy forced out a laugh. "Moved like a big spider. You think it'll heal?"
Keith looked at the body. Its twitching was subsiding.
"No."
"Brandon healed."
"I'm betting it needs its head to heal."
Roy nodded. "That makes sense." He poked at the vampire's foot with his boot. "So what do we do with it?"
Keith and Roy stood in the back of Keith's truck. Keith held the vampire beneath its armpits. Roy held its ankles. Keith counted as they swung it back and forth, then chucked it onto the charred remains of Brandon's shed.
The vampire's limbs and joints seemed looser than a human's. It lay atop the ashes in a twisted pile. Keith tossed the largest chunks of its head beside it. He'd gathered up the bits that seemed identifiable as human in case anyone came to check on the gunshot. They wouldn't, but still.
"Maybe we should have re-buried it under the tree," Roy said.
"It stinks too bad. Someone would have found it."
"I know. I just want to be done with the thing."
"We're nowhere near done."
Roy sighed. "I know." He looked Keith up and down. "You okay? You look like crap."
"Thanks," Keith said. "I'll be fine."
Roy hopped out of the back of Keith's pickup. He climbed through the fence and started towards across the pasture towards his own house, but stopped and turned back. "Hey, you want to go to church with us in the morning?"
"Tomorrow's Sunday?"
Roy laughed. "Yeah."
"No."
"I just thought… We've talked more in the past couple days than the past couple years. So I thought maybe… Nevermind. See you after church."
Roy started for his house again. Keith opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't know what he'd say, so he shut it again.
Chapter 12
Dennis examined the cone of brains, blood and bits of skull sprayed out from where the vampire had fallen, and smiled. Yes, he'd wanted to eat that vampire himself, but he decided to offer it to Keith as a scapegoat.
He knelt where the corpse had leaked out a pool of blood onto the grass and dipped his fingers into it. The brothers hadn't been gone long, but the blood was already tacky. He licked his fingers, then scooped up more. He couldn't help it.
He stopped himself just short of licking the ground and stood. That's when he noticed the Irvings' big dairy barn.
He'd driven past it plenty of times back when he was alive. It stood out. For one thing, it was really big. For another, it was modern looking, all made of metal. This wasn't one of the collapsing heaps that stood on most of these old boys' properties, a more scenic version of a car on cinderblocks. No, the Irvings had the biggest dairy operation in the area, and they had a serious barn to match. And something about it sparked Dennis's imagination.
He crossed the pasture in no time and slid the barn's big metal track door open. He could see just fine, but he flipped the light switch. Down the central aisle, a row of suspended fluorescent lights buzzed to life one by one.
Dennis had never seen the inside of the barn. It was even more modern than the exterior. The floors were concrete, not dirt, with a channel for mucking the stalls running down each side of the aisle. Dennis could see that the channels could be flushed almost like a toilet.
The milking stalls were all high-tech, too. Dennis had heard that happy cows made more milk, and he thought that these were probably some happy, milky cows. He walked down the aisle, running his claws along the steel bars. Then he found a big coil of rope and smiled.
Matthew and Rachel Irving were good, God-fearing, hardworking folk, so Dennis had never spoken to them. Whenever he'd happened to be in their vicinity—at the convenience store or at a ball game—they always acted like he was stinking up the place. He'd never done anything to them. He'd never gone out of his way to intimidate them or make them feel uncomfortable. And still they acted so superior that they intimidated him. They went out of their way to make him uncomfortable.
So he found it very satisfying on a personal level to kick in their back door.
He was already standing at the foot of their bed when Matt Irving said, "Rachel?"
"What was that?" Rachel said.
Matt sat up. "I don't know." He flipped on the bedside lamp.
Dennis smiled at them, grabbed them each by an ankle, and dragged them out of the house. He felt better and better about himself as they flailed around and screamed and he pulled them down stairs and around corners and over wood and rock and finally concrete and tossed them into neighboring stalls.
He bound their wrists and ankles with rope and tied them to the stainless steel bars. Rachel sobbed silently. Dennis liked that. Matthew sat with his eyes clamped shut and his jaw set in impotent rage. Dennis liked that even more. He leaned on the gates of their stalls and admired them.
"Dennis, why are you doing this? What have we ever done to you?" Rachel said. She hiccupped between words, and tears streamed down her pudgy cheeks.
He could tell them. He could describe how it
felt to be snubbed for no reason by a whole town. But he didn't want to give them the satisfaction. They would never be able to make him feel small again, anyway. No one would.
"You never did anything to me," he said. "Don't take this personal."
"Then why are you doing this? What do you want?"
"Rachel," Matthew Irving barked.
Dennis liked that Matthew seemed to feel that he still had some amount of control. He would enjoy taking that away from him.
"I've been inspired by your setup here: your barn, your cows. I used to think you ranchers were a bunch of ignorant hicks. Now I see the truth. You're higher on the food chain, so you keep those lower on the food chain close to hand. You never worry about going hungry. That really inspired me. Only an idiot goes hunting every night when he can keep his meals leashed up."
"I don't understand," Rachel said. "Is this about drugs? What are you talking about?
"The natural order," Dennis said. "And you happen to be lower on the food chain. So like I said, it's nothing personal. You're just the first cattle in my herd.
"But Matt," Dennis said. "Just because you raise cows doesn't mean you have to fuck one! No offense Rachel." He laughed.
"How high are you?" Matthew said.
"Matthew!" Rachel said, but Matthew kept going.
"What are you on? Even you aren't usually this incoherent."
Dennis spoke at the same time, almost to himself. "All I hear is 'moo.'"
"Sheriff Wheeler is going to have a field day with you."
"All I hear is 'eat me.'"
"Matthew, stop antagonizing him," Rachel said through her panicked sobs and gasps.
Dennis jumped the gate to Matthew's stall and began to close in, and smiled. And showed his mouthful of fangs. Finally, Dennis saw the hard man break, he saw the sense of superiority meet with reality, and it was the best high he'd ever felt.
"Stay away from me!"
"All I hear is, 'I am fat and juicy and fit for slaughter.'"
