Nancy A Collins - 2010 - Population - 666

by Nancy A. Collins

  Stretched out on a bed of clean hay was a young woman dressed in a long white leather duster, a pair of white designer jeans, a long-sleeved white silk shirt, and a pair of very dark sunglasses. Her hair was long and as white as the clothes she was wearing, her skin as pale as a shut-in’s. Her hands were folded over her breast like that of the dead in repose. She did not seem to be breathing.

  Skinner pushed back the brim of his cowboy hat as he stared at the lady in white before him. So this was the vampire Changing Woman was so worried about?

  Although she did not look particularly dangerous, her scent told a different story. The odor that radiated from the unconscious woman rose like heat from a summer sidewalk. She reeked of blood, darkness, and violence, mixed with a tinge of madness. He felt an instinctual ill ease in her presence and fought to keep a growl boiling in his gut from escaping his lips.

  If what he had been told about vampire habits was accurate, the one in Neal McClain’s barn would remain immobile until sunset. This meant he had a few hours to get her out of the hayloft and into the lock-up before she woke up. Then he could question the creature at his leisure—and destroy it, if need be. He just had to figure out how to get her out of the barn and into town without causing a panic. Transients wandering through the area were nothing new, so it would be relatively easy to pass the intruder off as a road tramp seeking a safe place to sleep. All he had to do was find a tarpaulin to wrap her in to keep sun off her when he hauled her to the pokey. Skinner grabbed the vampire by the ankles and began to drag her across the loft.

  The kick to the sheriff’s gut sent him flying across the loft and into the wall of the barn. He grimaced in pain and clutched his mid-drift. His spleen was ruptured, damn it! To hell with inclusion and living in harmony and all that other politically correct crap! The kid gloves were off! He didn’t like shape shifting while in uniform, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

  He closed his eyes and allowed the change to wash over him. There was a wet popping sound, like someone pulling apart a stewed chicken, as his bones realigned and his musculature warped and twisted itself into a new geometry. His body hair thickened and grew coarse, spreading to cover his entire body. His ears became longer and moved higher up on his skull, while his fingernails thickened and curved in on themselves, becoming talons.

  He growled and grabbed the encumbering remains of his shredded shirt, tearing it from his body as he got to his feet. He stood there on his crooked hind legs, his yellow eyes blazing with anger. In total, it had taken thirty-three seconds to change from sheriff to werewolf.

  The vampire was on her feet, cautiously awaiting her opponent’s first move. Skinner bared his teeth in ritual challenge and the vampire hissed in response, exposing a pair of ivory-white, razor-sharp fangs.

  He came in low, clipping the vampire square in chest with his left shoulder. The force of his lunge carried them through the unsecured hay doors. The next thing he knew, they plummeted to the hard-packed earth below. Although the vampire absorbed most of the impact, the rough landing barely fazed her. Skinner quickly scrambled beyond striking distance.

  To his surprise, the vampire did not burn, bake, melt, crisp or otherwise spontaneously combust in the noonday sun. He nervously pawed the ground with his hind legs as he watched her casually knock the dirt off her pristine white jacket. Despite having fallen twenty feet, her sunglasses were still in place.

  “Why ain’t you on fire?” Skinner growled.

  The vampire stopped dusting herself off and gave the werewolf a look of disgust. “Screw you, Rover.”

  “Now wait a minute, ma’am,” Skinner said, holding up his forepaws, hairy palms outward. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” He tried his best to smile, but his snout made it look like a snarl. “This is all a big mistake.”

  “Yeah, and you made it, Rin-Tin-Tin,” the vampire sneered as she launched herself at Skinner, fangs bared. Skinner pivoted sharply, coming in close to his attacker, and delivered a hard right punch to her kidney. She groaned but remained on her feet. She staggered backward, spat a streamer of blood onto the barnyard dirt, and wiped the corner of her mouth on her sleeve. Upon seeing the bloodstain on the duster, she scowled. “Now you’ve really made me mad!”

  Before she could make a second lunge, a shotgun blast shattered the stifling afternoon heat like a thunderclap from on high. The combatants turned to stare at Uncle Johnny, who was pointing his pump-action shotgun at the vampire’s head. Tully stood behind his adoptive father, looming over him like a statue carved from granite. Next to the ogre was Neal McClain, armed with a pitchfork.

  “Freeze, lady!” Uncle Johnny barked. “This thing’s loaded with silver buckshot!”

  The stranger grinned broadly, exposing her fangs. “Go ahead and shoot—silver is no threat to me!”

  “Perhaps so. But I suspect gettin’ your head blown into itty-bitty pieces ain’t somethin’ you can shrug off.” He motioned with the barrel of the shotgun. “No funny stuff, or I’ll part your hair startin’ at your chin.”

  The vampire shook her head in amazement, a crooked smile on her face. “Werewolves, ogres and humans--what is this place, a supernatural dude ranch?”

  “What this is, ma’am,” Skinner said, trying his best to keep the snarl out of his voice, “is a law-abidin’ community of decent, peaceable folk. And you are under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  “Trespassing, for one. Assaulting a peace officer, for another.”

  “Peace officer--?” She stared at Skinner for a long moment, then began to chuckle. “Don’t tell me you’re the law around here!”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so. Now are you gonna come along easy-like, or do we have to get rough?”

  “What the hell!” she said, throwing her hands up in mock surrender. “Whatever gets me out of this damned heat the fastest!”

  ***

  Limbo’s jail was one of the few buildings left over from the boomtown days that had been made of stone instead of wood. Not only was it still in one piece, it also had the original iron bars on its solitary jail cell. The moment Skinner locked the door behind the vampire, she laid down on the bunk and returned to the death-like state he’d found her in.

  Skinner mulled over what little he knew about his prisoner as he shifted out of his wolf-skin and back into his human persona. On one hand she looked like a vampire: she had the pale skin, fangs, strength, indifference to pain, and instantaneous healing traditionally associated with the undead. But, on the other, she was capable of withstanding contact with direct sunlight and claimed to be immune to silver, which was lethal to werewolf and vampire alike.

  As he pinned his homemade sheriff’s badge onto the new shirt requisitioned from Uncle Johnny’s dry goods department, Changing Woman entered the cramped confines of his front office. She was dressed in her robes of office: an intact coyote pelt, its hollowed-out skull resting atop her head, the forepaws wrapped about her throat.

  “You caught the undead thing.”

  It was not a question. Skinner did not ask her how she knew. His mother-in-law had her own ways of finding out things.

  “I’ve got her locked up.”

  Changing Woman sniffed the air, a puzzled look on her face. “Her smell is strange. It is like that of a vampire, but it is not the scent of the creature I sensed the night before.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you were going to say,” Skinner sighed as he sat down behind his desk. He had hoped Changing Woman would have helped solve the puzzle the stranger posed. But now it looked like he would have to wait for sundown to find out exactly what it was he had locked up in his jail.

  ***

  The thing that used to be Silas woke up with meat on the brain.

  The urge to taste warm, living flesh between his teeth was as urgent as a full bladder. There was no language, no emotion, no memory--nothing but the need to feed. All other thoughts and concerns were wiped away, enslaved to a hunger that was as boundless as it was uns
peakable.

  He got to his feet, wobbling like a freshly foaled colt, and took an unsteady step forward. He sniffed the stale, damp air of the mineshaft. There was no live meat here. He staggered up the tilted floor towards the entrance, which shone like a magic gate to his transformed eyes. He instinctively knew that where the darkness was as bright as noonday was where he could find live meat.

  He stood at the mouth of the mine, his head tossed back like a hound catching scent. Snarling in hungry anticipation, he set off in the direction of the nearest prey, the drool pooling in his mouth and spilling from his lips in a steady stream.

  ***

  The woman in white opened her eyes as the sun set behind the mountains and the cool of the evening replaced the heat of the day. She unfolded her hands and sat upright. Standing on the other side of the bars, arms folded, stood a ruggedly handsome man in his early thirties, dressed in a denim work shirt and pants and wearing a handmade tin star on his chest.

  “Good evening, ma’am. The name’s Roy,” he said, with a tip of his Stetson. “Roy Skinner. I’m the sheriff around here. But you know that already. You also know I am what’s commonly known as werewolf. Now, if you don’t mind me asking—what exactly are you, and what is your business in Limbo?”

  “That’s what this place is called?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How apropos,” she chuckled. “To answer the first part of your question—I am a vampire hunter.”

  “Isn’t that a rather odd occupation, given your condition, Miss--?”

  “Mors. Perhaps. But I am not your usual vampire, Sheriff Skinner.” She reached up and began unbuttoning her blouse. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

  “Now, wait a minute, lady!” Skinner protested, his cheeks turning red. “I’m a married man!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to seduce you. I simply want to illustrate my point.” The vampire opened her shirtfront, exposing her bare torso. “Now, how many vampires have you seen walking around with one of these?”

  Skinner stared in amazement at the thing the vampire wore between her pert, ivory-white breasts, his embarrassment overcome by astonishment. “What did you say your name was, again?”

  “Mors,” she replied as she re-buttoned her shirt. “Pallida Mors. My friends call me Lida.”

  “So I should call you--?”

  “Let’s keep it at ma’am for now, why don’t we? Now, as for why I am here in your delightful little village, I am tracking down a vampire who goes by the name of Varrick. He fled Santa Fe after I killed his minion—a ghoul.”

  “Ghoul?” Roy grimaced at the thought. “I’ve heard about ‘em, but I’ve never seen one.”

  “You haven’t missed much. Varrick creates them to cover his tracks. The ghoul abducts victims and brings them back to his lair. Once they have been drained, Varrick allows the ghoul to eat its fill of meat and dispose of the leftovers elsewhere. The abductions and deaths are usually blamed on random serial killers.”

  Skinner gasped. “The Santa Fe Slasher!”

  “Give the man a Kewpie doll!” Pallida drawled. “Varrick fled the city when he realized I was on to him. Perhaps he thought he could trick you into providing shelter to a fellow supernatural.”

  “It’s your opinion, then, that he did not come here out of a genuine desire to give up his existence as a predator?”

  “Are you kidding? Varrick knows I’m after him. The first thing he is going to do is make another ghoul to replace the one I destroyed, then he’s going to set about building a brood as fast as he can. In Santa Fe he let his ghoul devour his victims before they could resurrect. But the situation here is different. He needs others of his own kind, ones he can control, to protect him.

  “Varrick will immediately start remaking every human he can get his hands on in his own image. And with each conversion, his contagion spreads exponentially. In less than a week every human in the vicinity will be turned into vampires.”

  Roy unlocked the cell, swinging the door open. “If what you say is true, then I need your help, and I suspect you just might need mine as well. That’s a real, um, interesting piece of jewelry you got there, ma’am,” Skinner said, nodding to her chest. “Care to tell me how you came into possession of it?”

  “I got it the night I was attacked by a vampire---seventy-five years ago,” she replied. “His name was Varrick.”

  “Do tell,” Skinner said, raising an eyebrow. “You and I need to talk. We can do that far more comfortably at my house. Besides, my wife should have dinner waiting, and I’m hungry enough to eat the tail off a hobby horse.”

  ***

  Roy Skinner’s home was a whitewashed two-story adobe located near the Coyotero Tribal Center. A bedraggled chicken with feathers the color of dirty laundry strutted about the front yard, clucking to itself. The otherwise rustic appearance of the building was offset by the solar panels affixed to its flat roof.

  “Kasa!” Skinner called out. “Penny’s loose again!”

  The front door banged open and Kasa shot past her father and his guest, her ears flat against her skull.

  “Sorry, Daddy! I’ll get her!”

  The chicken took off in a dead run, but was quickly snatched up by its owner.

  “Henny-Penny is my daughter’s pet,” Skinner explained. “But she hates being cooped up, so to speak. She’s always escaping and getting into the garden.” He motioned to the neatly arranged rows of squash, corn, and other vegetables that occupied the back yard. “If my kids weren’t so attached to the damned thing—and if she wasn’t such a good layer—Penny would have ended up in the stew pot awhile back.”

  “How many children do you have?”

  “A boy and a girl. Twins, actually.” He looked around, sniffing the air. “Speaking of which--Kasa, where’s your brother?”

  “He’s playing over at Spotted Pony’s.”

  “You go on over to Spotted Pony’s house and fetch him. I want both you young’uns close to home tonight.”

  “Yes, Daddy!” Kasa dashed off on her errand, clearing the low adobe fence in a single bound.

  “Lord, that child loves to run,” Skinner chuckled, shaking his head in paternal admiration. “You’d think she was part greyhound!” He held the front door open and turned to look at his guest. Pallida stood in the dooryard, silently taking in the home garden and the clothes line full of laundry, a far-away look on her face. He removed his hat and motioned for her to come inside “Come on in and set a spell. I’ll introduce you to my better half.”

  The interior of the Skinner home was cool and shady, organized around a wide hallway that ran down the middle of the house. The fifteen-inch thick adobe walls were coated in softly hand-troweled stucco the color of buttercups. Peeled and trimmed tree trunks served as the rafters for the twelve-foot high ceiling in the great room. A fire was already crackling in the kiva fireplace in the corner, providing protection against the cold of the high desert night.

  “Roy? That you? We’re having chili con carne tonight.”

  An attractive young woman with brown skin and ebony hair stepped out of the kitchen, followed by the warm, welcoming smell of simmering spices and corn bread.

  “I hope you don’t mind me bringin’ company, honey.”

  Bonnie froze, staring at the stranger in her house like a coyote bitch blocking the entrance of her den. “Is that her? The one you found in the barn?”

  “Yes and no. She’s the one I found in the barn—but she’s not the vampire Changing Woman caught scent of.”

  Pallida stepped forward, smiling without showing her teeth. “My name is Pallida Mors. I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Skinner. It’s quite a homestead you have here. I know all too well how hard it is to keep house in such a rustic setting.”

  Bonnie’s gaze traveled up and down Pallida’s body, from her designer sunglasses to her white boots and back again before she spoke. “Yes, well, it’s all part of Roy’s master plan for Limbo. Please excuse me,” she said, with a smile that wa
s more a show of teeth. “I have to get back to my cooking...”

  “Don’t worry about setting a place for me. I don’t eat...chili.” Pallida turned to Skinner. “I’m afraid your wife isn’t quite sure whether she likes the idea of me being in her den.”

  “Please don’t mind Bonnie, Miz Mors,” Roy said as he unbuckled his gun belt, placing the holster inside the roll-top desk next to the fireplace. “I don’t think you were quite what she was expecting.”

  “Believe me, it cuts both ways!” Pallida chuckled. “A werewolf lawman with a wife and kids? I can honestly say I’ve never run across anything vaguely resembling you and your family before, Sheriff Skinner. If you don’t mind, what, exactly, did your wife mean when she said this house was all part of your master plan?”

  “Limbo is designed to stay below radar,” he explained. “That means remaining independent of the public power grids and other utilities. Doing without electricity, public sewers and natural gas is easy enough for us weres. However, the same can’t be said for our human friends. And, to be frank, many of us in the were community have become accustomed to the niceties of modern technology.

  “That being said, there is no electricity outside of the general store, and what few appliances we own are propane or kerosene powered, including the refrigerators. As you may have noticed on our walk over here, most of the homes in Limbo are equipped with solar panels, which are used to heat our water and charge batteries.

  “Every home is outfitted with a rainwater harvesting system, which is used for bathing, cooking, and irrigation of private gardens. Most of the homesteads such as ours also have freshwater wells. Because of the critical importance of well water in such an arid climate, there are no septic tanks in Limbo.

  “The majority of the homes within the town limits have been retrofitted with graywater systems, which recycle the wastewater generated by each household. By utilizing aerobic micro-organisms to biologically convert solid waste into fertilizer, each family is able to provide much of its own compost for their garden over the course of a year.”