Venom & Vampires: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by Casey Lane

  “…reporting live from the south entrance of the Mall of America in Bloomington. Across the narrow street from where I stand, the police and other city emergency departments have responded to a rush of 9-1-1 calls stating some sort of gang warfare is currently taking place at the Radisson Blu Hotel, the only hotel attached to the mall by a skybridge.

  “This purported unidentified gang is described by multiple eye witness reports to be indiscriminately attacking, wounding, and even killing patrons throughout the hotel.”

  The camera panned to the hotel across the street and beyond the line of parked police cars. It showed a large cluster of response vehicles blocking the entire roundabout directly in front of the Radisson’s entrance. Policemen and emergency medical professionals were running in and out of the revolving hotel doors. There was a sense of panic in their actions that was also reflected in the newscaster’s breathless voice.

  “No official statement has been made yet by the authorities to substantiate these claims, but multiple gunshots have been consistently heard since I began reporting. Many people appear to be hurt, including several police officers and emergency personnel. They have been rushed by ambulances to nearby hospitals for treatment. I’m told we can expect more information from Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina and Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis at any moment, so please keep tuned to this broadcast.

  “Over the last hour, several cell phone videos and pictures of the supposed gang attacks within the hotel have been sent to the police and posted on the internet. You can check the Care-11 website to view those videos, but be advised the content is not suitable for all audiences, nor has the content been verified for authenticity…”

  “I’m on it!” Kevin tapped furiously fast on the laptop. He got a strange look on his face and peered up at me quickly before he flipped the laptop around to face us.

  There on the website, in living color and surprisingly excellent quality, was a short video of Rod and I standing near the table in the Firelake Cocktail Bar. The angle clearly showed us holding hands while we, along with T-bone and Ray Dean, stood watching the bloody James Franco swaying at the bar’s entrance. We all looked tense.

  My groan at being captured on video with Rod was overshadowed by Ray Dean excitedly telling everybody to look closely at ‘that bloody, sick bastard that ripped the throat out of their little friend Betsy!’ Unfortunately, I still saw Robert’s disgusted glare, Deb’s surprised shake of the head, and Quinn’s wide, impressed smile. I didn’t look at Jane or Liz.

  Kevin ran a couple more very short videos of the bar right as the attacks broke out. It all happened so fast, they were inconclusive blurs filled briefly with screaming, yelling, and those terrible howls in the background.

  The newscaster on the TV said the police were also entering the Mall of America, but then started repeating the same information, so Salty turned down the sound when T-bone announced breakfast was ready.

  “Oh my God!” cried out Jane, aghast. “What really happened at that hotel?”

  I said, “I’ll tell you everything while we eat, okay?”

  Visibly shaken, Jane clapped, asking everyone to take a seat at the kitchen table. She and Liz started serving plates of hot food while Deb carried around a tray with glasses of juice.

  Stopping next to my chair, Deb frowned over at Rod sitting by the fireplace. She lowered her voice. “Are those Law’s clothes?”

  I nodded and Deb, fully aware I had been unable to part with anything belonging to Law before tonight, gave me another unreadable glance before moving on. My face flushed. It was an idiotic reaction, but I felt like a terrible wife, as if I’d given the man a public blow job and not some old sweats and a too tight T-shirt. My mind flashed to the sex in the elevator. I was flooded with guilt, which I also knew was idiotic, but didn’t stop the feeling I had betrayed Law.

  Unfortunately, by definition, my feelings weren’t based off hard facts, but emotions, instincts, and rituals. Not that hungry to begin with, I stared morosely down at the plate of fluffy eggs, my appetite gone and my stomach twisted up with nerves.

  Ray Dean sat heavily down on my left, a heaping plate in his hand. He must have overheard Deb’s comment. “Yeah, Ram ain’t pretty enough to carry off these here tablecloths like me and T-bone. Acadia took pity on the poor boy’s ego and covered him all up.”

  “Damn your pity, Acadia,” Liz quipped lightly.

  I smiled faintly along with everyone’s chuckles while Rod looked into his coffee mug and shook his head. If I thought he was capable of blushing, I’d swear he reddened.

  The party atmosphere had subdued in the room after that news broadcast. Rod and Uncle Coop stayed seated over by the fireplace. Rod passed on the food and Uncle Coop continued to clean my gun, but the rest of us quietly ate.

  I played with my toast for a minute and then pushed my plate away. Sitting back, I looked at the thirteen faces around the table that I liked and avoided the one weasel prick.

  “What I have to say is going to sound unbelievable. I’m asking you to all listen until I’m finished and then we can go from there.”

  I got a bunch of nods and “Okays” around mouthfuls of food.

  From the other end of the table, Robert motioned towards the TV. “Why don’t you start by telling us how you came to be wearing a blonde wig and dressed like a…dressed that way in the hotel bar tonight, Acadia? How did you meet your football friends?” He chuckled, but the mirthless sound did little to hide the malicious insinuation of his words. “There must be a good story there.”

  I was judging the distance to place a .45 round from the Kimber between the weasel prick’s eyes, when T-bone spoke up. “You really askin’ a woman a crazy question like that, man?” The smile he aimed at Robert was sharp. “Why even Ray Dean wouldn’t be so dumb to ask no woman why they dress the way they do.”

  “Hey, big mouth,” Ray Dean retorted, slamming his fork down. “For your information, I told Acadia how much I loved that wig of hers. Didn’t I, darlin’?”

  Everybody laughed and it cut the tension, but Jane shot Robert a dirty look and Liz shot him the bird. That was the sign of true friendship, since both those women would give their right kidney to know how I came to be holding hands with Rod Ramaldi in that bar tonight, too.

  My Uncle’s voice was level, but Robert dropped the smug smile when faced with Coop’s cold stare. “Let’s stick to the important questions.” He nodded at me. “Go on, Niece. You called us all here for a reason.”

  Salty looked away from the TV and his expression was serious, the playful twinkle gone from his eyes. “I recognize that old notebook. Tell us what happened tonight.”

  Not looking at Robert, I started by describing the attack on the Knutsons in the parking ramp. I told them about the bar attacks, the convulsions and vomiting, and the slaughter, but glossed over my personal reasons for being at the hotel as simply meeting some friends. I also skipped over the part of the dead bodies coming back to life and went on to describe our escape with the borrowed bus.

  When I paused, nobody was eating anymore. They were all staring at me with varying degrees of uneasiness to outright fright. Barbara, Ray Dean, and T-bone had surprisingly, remained quiet, only adding the occasional murmurs of agreement to my story when appropriate. I didn’t know what Rod thought of my story because I avoided looking his way.

  Restless, I stood up. “The media is wrong. That was no gang attack. Until we have more facts, we’ll call this an infection. I think it’s very fast spreading. It turns people into crazy monsters that have a compulsion to tear apart anybody around them, eating them or killing them, or both. I don’t pretend to know what is causing it, but that’s what happened tonight.”

  Robert shifted impatiently in his chair. “Oh for crying out loud!” His voice went high in mockery, “A fast spreading infection.” He snorted and glared at me down the length of the table. “Based on what facts?” He raised a hand to encompass everyone in the room. “Does she real
ly expect us to swallow that load of crap?”

  Barbara’s face was earnest, her voice soft. “Acadia’s telling the truth. I don’t understand how it could happen either, but I saw a man try to bite her face off!”

  Relieved Barbara left out the bit about me shooting the man’s head off in response; I listened to Jane rush to reassure Barbara they all believed me, but were somewhat in shock.

  I was never worried if everyone but Robert would ultimately believe me, they all knew me and trusted me. My main concern was getting their help to put everything we have into reinforcing King Farm into a safe refuge for us all. That meant agreeing quickly to a plan and cohesively working as a team. We had to immediately gather the people on the farm that we needed or cared about, get more supplies, and build up crucial defenses in a very short time. I had to scare the crap out of all of them.

  “Let me finish because the more we sit around and talk, the less time we have to prepare and get ahead of this thing. Our lives are going to depend on the decisions we make over the next couple of days. Can someone keep watching the TV for new developments while we talk?”

  Salty saluted me with the clicker and I nodded my thanks. “I don’t know if anybody else knows much about smallpox, but it’s a modern comparison to what is happening now.”

  Ian spoke up and said he’d read a lot on that subject, too. I smiled fondly at the middle Canadian brother. He always had his head stuck in a science book or was listening to a podcast, so I wasn’t surprised he was interested in the history of pandemics.

  “The disease had a mortality rate of roughly thirty-five percent of those it infected. There were an estimated five hundred million people killed from the disease during the 1900’s alone. Five hundred million!”

  “That many! I had no idea.” Jane’s soft brown eyes were anxious; glancing over at her daughter, sensing whatever I had to say was going to be bad for our current situation.

  “I know, neither did I,” I agreed, chagrined. “What were we doing in school back then?”

  Never too serious for long, Liz’s retorted, “We didn’t think we were mortal, much less give a damn about the past mortality rates of some cured disease. I think you were more interested in boys on Harleys back then, Acadia.”

  I made a moue at that disastrous memory while Deb hugged herself and shivered, saying, “I remember learning about smallpox. I was so relieved to know it was the first disease ever eradicated.”

  T-bone cut his eyes back to me. “Go on, girl, I know you ain’t done yet with all that smart talkin’. Lay it on us.”

  “In Epidemiology,” I began officiously, amused to see T-bone roll his eyes and Ray Dean frown.

  Ian supplied helpfully, “That’s the study of how diseases spread and can be controlled.” His smile was so bashful towards the football players that even those two belligerent badasses couldn’t take offense.

  Off to my left, I heard Rod’s low chuckle, but I still didn’t look in his direction. He was a sexual pied piper. I only had to look at the mooning women around me. With the exception of Deb, ever since Rod walked into the room, they’d all been unable to stop smiling and peeping his way. No doubt his golden voice and good looks wove their song around the will of most straight women between the ages of puberty and menopause. Luckily, I was tone deaf, and if I never looked Rod’s way, blind as well.

  I frowned, irritated to be thinking about Rod again. I buckled down. “Right, thanks Ian. In Epidemiology, there’s something called the basic reproductive number, or R-zero, of a disease or virus. Boiling it down, the higher the R-zero, the harder it is to control an epidemic because more people are getting infected at a faster rate. Smallpox R-zero value was high at five to seven persons infected by one infected person.” I glanced around. Robert pointedly studied his phone and maybe everybody else wasn’t on the edge of their seats, but they were paying close attention. “Smallpox was deadly, but there was still a survival rate and it was infectious at only certain points in the disease. The infected crazies tonight attacked every person within reach and never slowed down.”

  I rubbed my face and then dropped my hands with a huge sigh. There was no easy way to break it to your family, friends, and worst enemy that zombies were real and at our doorstep. You just had to do it and be prepared to be laughed out of town.

  Always able to read my moods, Liz urged, “Just say it, Acadia. What are you so worried about?” She spread her hands, “Beyond what you just said.”

  “I’m worried about an epidemic because I think the people wounded by those mad dog killers are going to become infected and turn into killers, too. That’s bad enough, but what absolutely terrifies me was what I saw before running out of the bar. You know those piles of people they had attacked and left for dead?” I gazed around. It was meant as a rhetorical question, but most the people sitting at the table nodded yes. “Yeah, well, they started coming back to life and convulsing on the floor with the same infected symptoms.”

  There was complete quiet in the room for a moment while this sunk in. Robert’s expression twisted into a sneer of disbelief.

  “Fucking A, you mean like zombies?” whispered Kevin incredulously. Polite and courteous, normally the brothers didn’t drop the F bomb around women, but nothing was normal tonight.

  “I mean exactly like zombies.” I was relieved somebody else had said the Z word out loud first. “I’m no scientist, but if they passed the infection to their dead victims within minutes, the R-zero has to be astronomical. People will get infected and then infect others similar to what we’ve seen in the movies or read in books. My friends and family, there are over 3 million people around us in the eleven county metro area of Minneapolis-St Paul alone. There are roughly 530 million people in North America.”

  There was stunned silence again while those numbers sank in. I stopped at Ray Dean’s chair and patted his wide, freckled shoulder. “After seeing dead people start clenching their jaws on the floor, even Ray Dean here can do the math on this one.”

  “Hell if I can, Acadia, and don’t you dare be askin’ me to, neither!” Ray Dean blustered in alarm. It felt good to genuinely smile.

  Jane let out the breath she’d been holding with a loud whoosh. “Oh no, the dead people were coming back alive in the bar,” her voice rose in distress, “like in “The Walking Dead”? I love that show, but I don’t want to live like that! I don’t know how to fight my way out of a wet paper bag and I’ve always been a slow runner!”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t ever leave you behind,” Quinn promised, and reached across the table to squeeze her mother’s hand.

  “Were the white shirts shamblers or the “28 Days Later” fast runners?” Ian’s eyes were round with excitement behind his frameless glasses while Jane moaned in fright at the thought of that terrifying movie.

  It was bizarre to be basing all of our references on fictional TV and movies, but what else did we have as a common point of reference? “They didn’t appear to move that fast or seem very coordinated, but there were so many people in the bar, I couldn’t really say. Babs?”

  “Me, either,” Barbara replied, and then added, “but they swayed and jerked a lot. Acadia, don’t forget how they held their mouths clenched open like this.” She demonstrated a severe underbite and Quinn nervously burst out laughing, but slapped a hand over her mouth. Kevin grinned at her.

  “When that man who killed Betsy first entered the bar, he blinked nonstop and strained to see, as if he was myopic.” I noticed how eagerly everyone turned to listen to what Rod had to say. He nodded. “So did his pals that followed him in, right before they attacked. It was like their vision had an extra hard time adjusting to the variance in lighting. Maybe that’s why they stood there blinking and swaying before attacking; they were waiting to see their prey.”

  T-bone moved restlessly in his chair. “Yeah, I thought that was some strange shit, too.”

  “The whole group was acting that way before they started convulsing. We’ll need to keep that in min
d.” I drank a bit of juice, my throat dry and my heartbeat speeding up just recalling those moments.

  Hugh, the oldest Canadian brother, had just started to speak when Robert could no longer contain himself and he rudely interrupted.

  “Zombies! You ran into some gangbangers that were high on some new drug, just like that reporter said. Dead people do not come back to life, Acadia, regardless of what you think you saw tonight.” He cast a quick, apologetic chuckle Uncle Coop’s way, as if he meant no disrespect while disparaging me. “I’m not saying Acadia’s lying, but a hysterical, drunken woman is prone to imagining all sorts of ridiculous things.” He added in a voice full of venomous concern, “We all know what stress poor Acadia’s been living under these past months while trying so hard to fill Law’s shoes running this farm. It’s been too much. A zombie infection? Give me a fucking break,” Robert scorned contemptuously and stood up. Dusting the toast crumbs angrily from his plaid shirt, he said to Salty. “Thanks for dragging me out of bed for this dog and pony show, but I’ve got an early morning.”

  Barbara’s knuckles were white as she gripped the table edge, but she leaned forward bravely and glared down the table. “Acadia wasn’t drunk or hysterical. She saved my life tonight.”

  Robert’s cold smile was suggestively nasty. “Sure she did, cupcake, but are you really the best judge of what happened tonight?” His eyes dipped to her breasts. “Weren’t you boozin’ it up and coming on to these famous football jocks, too?”

  Blushing with angry embarrassment, Barbara looked down at her hands and didn’t respond.

  Bobby offered me and the unseeing Barbara an apologetic, rueful face before saying quietly, but forcefully, “Come on, Dad, that’s enough.”

  My friends and Sean also erupted in an indignant buzz of angry retorts. Robert wasn’t a popular man around the farm at the best of times. I quickly glanced to catch Rod’s response to Robert’s verbal attack, wondering if he’d act the gentleman and jump in to defend Barbara or me. Our gazes met briefly while he sipped his coffee. It was long enough for me to see his lazy, watchful amusement before he went back to watching Coop reassemble my gun. My uncle’s shoulders were tense, but he didn’t look up or say a word.