Darklands: a vampire's tale

by Donna Burgess

  After a few moments, she shoved the girl away, disgusted. Surely there was more inside her than mere survival instinct. The girl fell hard onto her ample backside.

  “Get the hell out of here! Now, before it’s too late for you!” Susan said. She wiped her mouth clean and laughing softly, slid down the brick wall. She lay down on her back and stared up at the starless sky between the buildings. She drifted into a light doze as she waited for Devin to come and find her.

  There was no way to know how much time had passed before he appeared. It felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few brief moments.

  “You awake?” He asked.

  Devin still cradled the baby in his arms, but he had tucked him into the warmth of his coat.

  “Yeah, I’m awake.” Susan answered. Her throat felt like gravel.

  “So? What’s wrong?”

  Susan sat up slowly. “I’m not supposed to be this way, Devin. I’m supposed to feel something. Right?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. A headache was coming on. Soon, it would be a roaring bastard. She took a deep breath.

  Devin put out his hand and pulled her to her feet. “It’s not as if she was a bloody girl scout, you realize.”

  Susan drew her coat tighter around herself. They walked away from the hotel district and toward the old residential section without another word. Her brain felt like it had swollen to a size too large for her skull. What had that girl ingested? And if it made her feel this shitty, why on earth would she do it?

  The scent of rain made the air smell clean for a change as they climbed the stairs of a weather-beaten beach house. The impression of life was unmistakable there. Someone had carefully arranged a collection of seashells along the paint-peeled porch railings, and the pale glow of a reading lamp filtered through a sheer curtain to the left of the front entrance. It was a warm light, and Susan wished they were back in Devin’s bed with his long limbs tangled heavily around her, instead of out in the cold, salt-kissed night. A harsh breeze drifted in from the Atlantic, mere yards away. Several wind chimes of varying materials and sizes dangled along the front edge of the porch, and they clinked, chimed, and jingled as the wind tickled them.

  Devin had returned the baby to the laundry basket his mother had left. The child slept soundless and snug with one tiny fist balled tightly and pressed against his rosy mouth. Every now and then, he sucked at his knuckles, the sound like a damp kiss.

  “Are you sure this is wise?” Susan asked. Her eyes wanted to drift closed, and she willed herself to remain awake. For an instant, she considered asking Devin if they could take the child, but that was stupid. She wasn’t even human anymore. How the hell could she expect to take care of a baby? Even when she was human, she had failed miserably at that.

  “She’ll do what’s right. That’s why she remains out here, untouched.”

  He placed the basket in front of the door and pressed the bell. The buzzer sounded tired; the bell was broken. Bending down, he placed a small kiss on his first two fingers and then placed them on the sleeping baby’s forehead. Quickly, he and Susan moved off the porch and into the shadows, waiting and watching. After a breath, the door squeaked open a sliver. The door opened wider, and a river of whitish-yellow light bled out onto the baby and basket.

  A round, elfin-faced woman of indeterminate age knelt, grimacing as her knees creaked loudly. Cautiously she pulled back the blankets, and then breathed the smallest gasp of surprise. She picked up the basket and vanished back into the warm confines of the house. Susan heard the rusty tumble of old locks turning.

  As they started away from the house, Devin slipped his arm around Susan and pulled her close. It began to rain.

  ***

  As the first light of morning painted the sky orange, they walked toward the Rover. They were arm-in-arm in the pale rain, just as they had walked twenty years before, but this time, Susan nearly dozed on her feet. She was woozy from whatever the piggy-girl had used to pollute her flabby body. She tried to recall what had happened earlier, but everything came in pieces and disjointed fragments. Her back ached, and she wondered vaguely what she had done to hurt herself.

  “What are we, Devin?” she asked, her tongue as thick as a slab of meat behind her teeth.

  Devin was silent a moment, contemplating. Finally, he said, “We are stories without an end.”

  Susan lolled her head against his shoulder. “Any story worth a damn has an ending.”

  She stumbled, and Devin braced her to keep her from falling on her face. “Hang on, now,” he told her, chuckling softly. The freezing rain numbed the skin of her face and neck as they made their way inward, away from the deserted beachfront toward the lone vehicle parked among the tall weeds that pushed stubbornly through the broken and cracked pavement. Susan stumbled again, and Devin snatched her off her feet.

  “You’re going to fall and smash your face.” Like a prince from a fairy tale, he carried her to the truck.

  Finally, he put her back on her feet and pinned her against the passenger’s side door with his warm body. Looking up at his beautiful face, she realized she had not even thought of Michael this evening. Maybe she no longer cared. Michael had been everything once, but perhaps that had been because they were alike. That was no longer true. Inside the truck, she rested her head on Devin’s shoulder and stifled a yawn with her hand. Devin cranked up the heat, and they pulled away, the headlights cutting through the steely, slanting pinpricks of rain.

  Susan eased into a light sleep as they crossed the bridge back into the main part of the city. Devin flipped on the radio—some old jazz standard—and rested his hand on her thigh, his wicked fingers slipping between her legs.

  After what seemed like only moments, the Rover pulled to a stop.

  “Wake up. We’re here.”

  He shook her shoulder lightly and kissed the tip of her nose.

  She opened her eyes. “I’m up.”

  Devin hooked his arm around her, and led her into the warmth of the big house, his home, and her home now, also, if that was what she really wanted.

  In the bedroom, she sleepily undressed herself; Devin, ever the gentleman, helped her, tossing her clothes and then his own onto the chilly wood floor. As he pushed her down onto the feather bedding and thrust into her, she tried to imagine Michael for a moment and found she couldn’t get a clear picture of him. An odd twinge of despair needled her brain, as if mourning the death of a lover instead of the death of a relationship.

  Devin’s face hung above her, brows knitted in concentration, lips parted slightly. What did those fools back in Hamilton think had happened to her? Did they think she had died? Well, then they would be right, she supposed. Did they think she had gone crazy and fled her screwed up, humdrum life? Well, maybe that was a good assumption, as well. Perhaps they reckoned she had grown tired of Michael but didn’t have it in her to break it off with him.

  What did Michael think? Had he just simply let her go and moved on? Had she hurt him? Did he even really care? Did anyone outside this house care?

  chapter twenty-eight

  After years of working the E.R., Michael had little trouble altering his waking hours. But this afternoon, he lay awake. The white-yellow light of day oozed through the small opening between the wall and the plywood barriers Kasper had sloppily nailed up.

  His mind refused to shut down for more than a few moments at a time. He tried to imagine who might have occupied this room before. There were plain white walls with snatches of tape here and there. Kasper had given him a stolen blanket to cover the bare mattress. There was a particleboard bookshelf, empty except for a broken alarm clock. It was impossible to tell how old the owner of this room had been, or the gender. A single, adult-sized tennis shoe lay sole-up in one corner.

  Room. Tomb. Michael shivered.

  Maybe the person who had slept in this bed, dreamed in this bed, was now one of those things. Transformed? Jesus, he was beginning to think of these things as normal occurrences. Since when wa
s becoming a fucking vampire normal? Maybe he was losing it.

  Later, he would prowl the streets with a guy who was undoubtedly off his rocker, wearing a damned Matrix costume and a sawed-off shotgun strapped to his ribs. That was a good indication that he was not exactly stable these days himself.

  Of course, the standards around these parts were low, judging from the things he had seen so far. Last night, as he skulked the district of ratty bars, taverns and porno shops, looking for any indication that Susan and McCree might have been in the area, he saw two men converge on a boy who could have been no more than twenty and beat him down.

  The two had obviously been of the same species as those creatures that had attacked his car when he had first arrived in town. Catlike, feral, they had spotted the young man for what he was—an innocent and a mortal. They had pulled him into the doorway of one of the condemned hotel entrances and proceeded to do God only knew what to the kid. The boy’s horror-filled screams haunted Michael. He had done nothing to stop it, just as Kasper had directed.

  “You’ll see things here that are like something from a horror movie. The only way to survive is to pretend you don’t see it,” Kasper had said.

  So, Michael had slinked through the shadows like a pathetic rat. Uncertainty was the name of this game, and hopes of finding Susan came and went with the tide. But right now, all he could do was lay and wait for the sun to grow dim and for Kasper to wake, ready for the night’s hunt along the smelly congregation of taverns, headshops and topless bars along the oceanfront.

  He closed his eyes and imaged he was kissing Susan’s warm mouth. What would he do if he found her? He knew the one thing he would not do, and that was alert Kasper.

  ***

  Later, Michael swam in the mire of dreams and thoughts that were too thick to allow him to surface. A touch, flittering at the collar of his t-shirt. Could it be a spider? Michael jerked awake, swatting at his neck.

  The black twin eyes of a shortened shotgun were trained on his face. Behind it, Kasper was scowling.

  Michael sat up quickly, his heart pounding.

  “Kasper? What are you doing?” His mouth was dry.

  "She has you," Kasper snarled. He switched on the bedside lamp.

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  Kasper knelt beside the bed, and the sour stink of wine filled the cloying air. He reached over and tapped the roughened tip of his finger hard against Michael’s temple. “Here. I know. I know what’s inside that brain.”

  Michael winced and blinked against the harsh lamplight. He couldn’t answer. There was no reason to deny the obvious. Instead, he countered, "Why are you in here?" He squinted to see Kasper’s face, lost in the too-bright, yellow cast. The man was obviously very drunk, and that was never a good sign. Even the most stable person could become mad with drink, and Kasper was not exactly stable.

  "Maybe I should go ahead and kill you now," Kasper muttered, his words running together crazily.

  “Why? What did I do?" Michael asked. His breath caught in his chest. Shit. Don’t snivel, you wimp.

  Kasper cocked the gun. “You know what you plan to do, you weak little bastard. You’re gonna try an’ warn her.”

  This was no bluff. Michael knew he needed do some fast talking if he wanted to keep his head. "I haven't changed my mind, you silly fuck!" he shouted.

  “It's only a matter of time before you're just like the others," Kasper whispered.

  “Listen. She doesn’t want me. You hear what I’m saying. Susan doesn’t want me. She wants to be with him.” The words spilled out, and they stung as they played in his ears. “It’s over. I’m going back to Reading.”

  Kasper lowered the gun and nodded. “It’s for the best, anyway, Doc. She’s as good as dead.” He snorted a short, bitter laugh. “You don’t want to be here for what she’s gonna get.”

  He left the room then, and Michael sucked in a long, deep breath and hoped his heart wouldn’t pound through the cage of his ribs.

  When he was sure Kasper had fallen asleep again, he grabbed the gun Kasper had given him and his few other possessions and slipped out into the safety of the blossoming daylight.

  chapter twenty-nine

  It had been a week since Michael had escaped Kasper’s drunken accusations, and still there had been no sign of either Susan or McCree. Michael made his way toward the extreme south end of Charlestowne Beach, away from the crowds and the dilapidated commercial buildings. He stuck to the shadows, but it had become evident that the Deathwalkers had extremely acute senses of both hearing and smell. They would find him and pounce easily enough, if given the opportunity.

  The homeless slept in the caverns of alleys and unused building entrances, but other than those few transients, this section of the city was deserted. Rows of ramshackle beach houses stood dark and silent in the cutting Atlantic wind. Hotels loomed like bent old men.

  Michael was nearly asleep on his feet, having spent the last seven nights in the overpopulated area of the shoreline only a few miles back. He had rented a room, stinking, filthy and roach-infested, on the second floor of a porn shop on the boulevard. He had hardly slept for fear of who, or what, might pay him a visit. He had dozed sitting in a lumpy chair in the corner of the room, drapes drawn tight across the windows to block out the sun and hide him, his gun gripped in his fist. He had jumped awake at every little sound. At night, he had searched, but with no luck. Dread gnawed at him. Had Kasper gotten to her? He would not leave Charlestowne until he knew for sure.

  He couldn’t remember when he had last eaten anything substantial. His limbs were heavy with fatigue. As a physician, he knew better. He had allowed his body to become dehydrated and depleted of nutrients.

  Earlier that evening, he had liberated a knapsack from an abandoned beach store and packed it with granola bars, bottles of water, candy bars and power drinks that he had also stolen when the cashier had turned his back to fetch a pack of cigarettes for a customer. He hated stealing, but he had nothing now. His wallet was gone, along with his car and identification. If he died, nobody would ever know what had happened to him.

  Out here, the small houses had become shabby long before the fall of the area. The lawns were scrubby, sandy, and weed-infested. Weeds also popped up through splits in the sidewalks, driveways and the broken pavement of the road. The streetlamps had been broken, and on the walks below, the glass caught and reflected the fat, moon-like shards. Many houses were boarded up as if a hurricane was swirling just off the coast. The boards had gone black with rot. Graffiti decorated some of the boards, while others were left untouched. Were the boards to keep out intruders or sunlight?

  The first house Michael had chosen had been flooded by a storm at some point. Toxic, black mold climbed the walls like an entity from a Japanese horror flick. The odor was overwhelming, and he had scarcely stepped through the door before backtracking.

  The next house had obviously been spared the wrath of the storms, likely because of its proximity to the dunes. Tucked behind a sweeping mound of sand and reeds, it was nearly impossible to even see the ocean from the back deck. Hell of a view, Michael thought grimly.

  Entering the houses was a gamble he would have never entertained under normal circumstances. A few weeks ago, intruding on a bum or a runaway druggie with a gun would have been a great concern, but that was now small potatoes when a stray Deathwalker might be sleeping out the daylight in the cover of shadow.

  Stringy, leaning dune grass and weeds laid claim to the front yard of the house he had chosen next. Two of the front windows were broken, smiling jaggedly at him. In some places, white paint had peeled away in sheets. Shingles had blown from the roof and were now laying scattered around the yard. A short length of yellow plastic tape wavered in the breeze. Was it crime tape or the remains of a party streamer? It was too worn and tattered to tell.

  Creeping across the lawn, Michael removed his pack from his back. He stopped in the shadows of the overgrown crepe myrtles and knelt, rummagi
ng through his things until he found a flashlight. He straightened up, replaced the pack across his shoulders and headed up the winding stairs of the deck to a side door. The boards groaned under his steps. Judging from the splintered frame, someone had jimmied the door open, but the moisture had swelled it so that it was jammed. Michael shouldered it hard to nudge it open enough to enter.

  Just as he stepped inside, the sky opened, and an angry rain plummeted down. No matter what already resided inside the decrepit place, Michael resigned himself to take care of him, her, or it. Anything was better than wandering around in the dark and the freezing rain.

  Inside a smallish kitchen, Michael again took off his pack. He laid his flashlight on the counter and checked his gun, even though he knew the safety was off, and it was loaded and ready. He picked up the gun in one hand, his light in the other and stood quietly, listening for anything that might indicate he was not alone.

  The house smelled awful with odors he was not accustomed to—he was a doctor, after all, not a coroner. Rot. Animal droppings. Mold. Death. Second thoughts about staying in the house crept into his head, but the next one might be just as bad, if not worse.

  Lightening illuminated the windows for a breath, just long enough to see a fat and sassy rat scurry across his boot. He stepped back with a gasp.

  He trained the light around the kitchen. The décor was mid-seventies suburban—an avocado refrigerator and range, and gold, orange and green wallpaper with a funky pattern straight from the “Bob Newhart Show.” The place must have been vacant since Michael was a kid, or else a rental owned by extremely cheap property owners. On the refrigerator door, tacked up with magnets shaped like apples, oranges and bunches of grapes were snapshots of a couple of kids, a boy and girl, about eight or nine. From the little girl’s Dorothy Hamill hairstyle and Brady Bunch clothes, he placed them somewhere in mid-decade. Underneath the photo were the names “Joey” and “Jeana” in bold blue and pink lettering.