Bloodthirst in Babylon

by Searls, David

They climbed a steep set of stairs, into total darkness. Paul’s hands began acting as eyes, feeling blindly for walls and obstructions. The place smelled of dust and rancid chicken, beer and cigarettes and body odor. Flies buzzed and he could imagine other creatures slithering out of his way as they tiptoed over groaning floorboards.

  “Jamey, shut the door behind you,” Mona called out. Not loudly, but too loud, as far as Paul was concerned.

  The door squealed shut, leaving them in darkness even more complete than before. No one had brought flashlights because Mona had told them they wouldn’t be necessary. When the light suddenly snapped on, Paul and Todd grunted in breathless shock.

  “It’s alright,” Mona soothed. “Worst thing the light’s gonna do is make them stir a little.”

  “Yeah?” Jamey said, voice quaking. “They’re such light sleepers, how come I’m here?”

  Paul figured he couldn’t have asked a better question himself.

  They stood in a long hallway narrow enough for them to touch both border walls at once. There were two doorways cut into the left wall and the same number on the right. The first to the left was a large open area still in darkness. Directly across from it, Paul could see the standing shadows of stove, fridge and countertops. As they crept past, Paul’s nostrils were assailed by the strong odor of a backed-up sewer or unflushed toiled. He moved quickly out of scent range.

  Todd sneezed loudly and was hushed by the others. Even by Mona, who’d earlier announced their presence by turning on a fucking light. Paul felt a comparable tickle working its way up his dust-clogged sinuses.

  “Two in here,” Mona said. She’d entered the second room on the left and Paul could hear her patting down the wall for a light switch.

  No, Paul wanted to warn her, but as he came up behind she found what she was looking for and flicked to life a single naked bulb on the ceiling. It did little more than toss shadows around, but that was enough to reveal the two squirming pink figures on the bed.

  He was out of there. Paul backed up without looking and crashed into Jamey, who said in a strangled voice, “Hey, what the hell?”

  “Paul, it’s alright,” Mona said, sounding nearly as agitated as he felt, but holding it together better. “They’re asleep. It’s just an involuntary response to the light.”

  “I’m experiencing a similar response to them,” he muttered.

  Heart thudding and black spots mushrooming in the corners of his vision, he chanced another peek at the nude couple, limbs intertwined on the bed. Not a bed, but a mattress set on the floor. The bedsheet had been pulled up on one corner to partially cover them, but they’d tossed it off.

  Mona bent over the two. “Warren Lattimer, the bartender at the Dog,” she said, straightening. “The girl with the cracked red toenail polish, I’m pretty sure it’s Perry and Dot Farr’s younger daughter. I had no idea. There hadn’t been any rumors about her. She’s all of sixteen,” Mona said, shaking her head sadly.

  The beer poster in the bedroom caught Paul’s eye. Not the poster itself, but more the way it was taped high on the wall over the bed. The way it clung to the wall with multiple layers of masking tape when four small strips should have done the job.

  Someone wanted to make damn sure it wouldn’t come down. It firmly blocked out the room’s only window.

  Following his gaze, Mon said, “You need any more proof of what we’re dealing with, you just tear that thing down.”

  Not likely. Paul couldn’t stop wondering how he was going to do what had to be done. He followed the others down the long corridor and through the open doorway near the front of the apartment. Find it fast, he urged himself as the others ahead of him fumbled for a light source. He saw too much in the dark, too many still black lumps on the floor.

  Body bags was his first impression when someone finally found a workable lamp on the floor by tripping over it. The naked bulb cast a Rorschach pattern of light and shadows that made it difficult to see where one vague shape left off and another began.

  “Three, four of them,” Mona said softly.

  The room was still as death but for the harsh panting of four frightened daylighters. It was hotter than hell and twice as humid.

  “Christ,” Dunbar said, perching on the arm of a garage sale couch, about the only piece of furniture in the room. Paul stared at the oddly lumped shape of the cushions until it dawned on him that a figure lay beneath them.

  Most of the yellow lamplight extended waist high and no higher. The papered walls, once a flocked pattern on white, were smudged colorless by fingerprints and darker matter. Paul felt heavy, damp air tickle his sweaty face, stirred by a slow-moving ceiling fan.

  “They wouldn’t risk opening a window,” Mona said. “If a breeze fluffed up that shade, they’d be in trouble.”

  A bookcase in one corner held a CD player and a short stack of thrash metal CDs next to a tattered pile of men’s magazines full of harsh pink shots. Should have the Internet, Paul couldn’t help thinking. An empty six-pack of beer perched high atop the pile. Still attached to the plastic ring, it looked like the cans had been downed without being twisted free. Paul heard flies buzzing unseen at the front window, the faint tapping of their small bodies hitting the glass behind the one long shade.

  “Looky here,” Jamey said excitedly. He lifted a shotgun from the floor behind a stack of men’s magazines. The stock had been crudely sawn. “Twelve gauge,” he said, his foot accidentally kicking a pile of shells across the floor.

  He broke the thing open and peeked into the twin barrels. “Gimme them,” he said, taking the handful of shells Paul and Mona had collected from the floor. Jamey dropped a couple into the barrels and made a series of loud clacking sounds with the weapon before proclaiming himself, “Armed and dangerous.”

  “Easy,” Mona murmured.

  His sensitive stomach not appreciating the fact that it was Jamey Weeks covering him with a loaded sawed-off, Paul returned his attention to the shapes on the floor.

  Despite the room’s intense heat, one was burrowed under an open sleeping bag. Another had taken what he assumed to be the top sheet from the mattress in the bedroom while a third had slit open and taped together green plastic trash bags to wear as a shroud.

  “Four for sure,” Mona said after fearlessly peering into sleeping bag, garbage bag, sheet and under the couch cushions. And then: “Oh shit.”

  “What?” Paul’s throat very nearly locked under his panic, his breath wheezing from him.

  He could see Jamey Weeks inching toward the open doorway, captured shotgun sweeping the room. He seemed ready to bolt for daylight, and Paul was looking to be two steps behind him.

  Mona swore again and repeated the process of examining each of the inert figures. Paul could see limbs switch as she briefly exposed them to what little light found its way into the room.

  “He’s not here.”

  Dunbar sprang off the arm of the couch, then braced his hands on his knees, panting as though rising too suddenly from a dead sleep. “What’re you talking about?” he choked out.

  She went through it all a third time. “He always sleeps here,” she said. “Usually,” she amended softly.

  Dunbar grabbed her, squeezed her upper arms until she hiccuped a sound of pain and surprise. “Purcell’s not here,” he snarled. “You told us—”

  Mona twisted free and stepped back. “Maybe the kitchen,” she said, sounding like she didn’t believe it herself.

  “No one’s there,” said Jamey, who’d apparently looked while considering exiting the premises.

  Obviously frustrated, Mona said, “There’s more of them now than ever. That means more safe houses, more places to spend his days.”

  Dunbar made a peculiar hissing sound. He sat hard on the arm of the couch, as if exhausted by his own rage. “Now what?”

  “We do it anyway,” Mona replied.

  Paul shook his head. “No way. All we’ll do by killing off his friends is antagonize him.”

  “Too late
to worry about that,” Mona said. “Don’t forget the busted locks and the stolen shotgun. Besides, they have…other ways. He’ll know we’ve been here so we might as well accomplish something. At the very least, we cut down his forces.”

  Other ways? That didn’t sound too comforting. Paul sank wearily to the unoccupied couch arm. What a picture he and Dunbar must make, flanking a sleeping vampire like a pair of worried bookends. Every hour, every minute, he was dragging himself deeper into an impossible nightmare. Darby and Tuck wouldn’t leave his mind. The understanding as they’d reluctantly split up that morning was that she shouldn’t expect to hear from him for awhile, but they’d forgotten to define “awhile.” Picturing his wife cruising the streets in search of him, their young son strapped into the car seat behind her, made the adrenalin bite harder at his stomach lining, doubling him over.

  He straightened with all of his remaining might and said, “Purcell. If he comes back and sees what we’ve—”

  “Of course he’ll see,” Mona snapped, pacing the room. “We have to give him something to remember us by. Prove we can give as well as we take. Make for a few sleepless nights.”

  It was obvious she was making this up as she went along. After the initial shock of not finding her husband’s killer, she’d recovered to the point of sounding like things were progressing exactly as planned. Couldn’t be better. But was she letting her fury for Purcell, her need for vengeance, get the best of her? Of them?

  Paul had another thought. “A phone,” he said. “Dammit, they don’t have a phone.”

  “Yes, they do.” Jamey aimed his new shotgun out the door. “On a wall in the kitchen.”

  The plastic handset felt too warm against his chin and ear. It smelled of garlic. Paul kept it as far from his face as he could and still use it. He couldn’t remember the number. When he closed his eyes and forced his mind to paw through familiar combinations, he saw nothing but the twitching figures hidden from the light.

  He muttered a curse and called up directory assistance. The operator asked him what city and he said Detroit and gave her the name of the law firm. After a short, static-filled silence, a nearly genderless voice gave him the number and told him it could be dialed for him for a small additional charge.

  What the hell. The vampires were paying.

  “Freddie Brace, please,” he said when the call went through.

  “Hurry up. We got things to do,” Mona said, stepping into the central hallway. She held a shiny new hatchet against her chest like some murderous mama in a redneck drive-in flick from the Seventies.

  Things to do.

  Hey, Freddie, can we make this quick? I have vampires to behead.

  Diamond and Streisand were dueting on hold as the sweat trickled down Paul’s cheeks. He was picking up the kitchen odors of bacon grease and day-old burgers on top of all that garlic, proof that at least some of the legends got it wrong.

  “Freddie Brace,” came the voice on the line.

  Paul closed his eyes with relief. “Freddie, what kind of car are you driving?”

  White noise. Paul was about to hang up and tell the others to run for it because the town was on to them when Freddie said, “Who is this?”

  “It’s Paul,” he said, exasperated. “Answer my question. What’re you driving?”

  “I’ve got a Prius and a Grand Cherokee. My yin and my yang of green acceptance.”

  “Definitely the Grand Cherokee. We need the passenger room.”

  “We? Passengers?”

  “I need you to come down to Babylon and take some people away. I’ll give you directions.”

  “Hold on, I’m writing.”

  The confusion had left his lawyer’s voice. He now sounded rock-solid, which is the reason Paul had called him in the first place. Paul gave him detailed directions to his home and told him it would take him at least an hour from the moment he got in his car. “Which is very, very soon, I hope.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m heading out the door.”

  “Without telling anybody.” The fewer involved, Paul felt, the better.

  There was a pause before the voice on the line said, “Lawyer-client privilege?”

  “Exactly. Can’t wait to get your bill. One more thing. Can you first do a quick Internet search? I’m looking for a crime story out of Ithaca, New York sometime within the last several weeks. Vicious attack, multiple victims, plenty of blood. Classic tabloid sort of thing.”

  “Don’t you ever pick up a newspaper or go online?”

  “I’ve been a little busy and we don’t get the Internet here.”

  “What year is it in your world?”

  “Freddie, I’ve got no ti—”

  “Okay, listen up. Three adults and two kids wiped out in a trailer park or something. Grisly enough for you? The woman was mutilated, they’re saying she was pregnant. No suspects. It’s a pretty big story, man. Hello?”

  Paul stared at the wall. With the police all over it, why hadn’t they traced the McConlons back to Babylon yet? Were the residents of the town so untethered to 21st century American life that they left no trail?

  “Come on, Paul. Let’s go.”

  It was Mona. He gave her a hand wave and paused, thinking. One part of him wanted to tell his lawyer to bring holy water, sharpened stakes and crucifixes (might as well forget the garlic). But he knew that was just popular culture. Or thought so, anyway. Besides, Freddie would also bring along a psychiatrist if he made that kind of request.

  “That’s it for now,” he finally said. “Just get in your SUV and get here. Okay?”

  Mona and Jamey were standing in the living room doorway, facing him. Waiting. Behind them, he could make out Todd’s slumped form on the arm of the lumpy-cushioned couch.

  “You’re leaving?” Mona asked it with no expression on her face or in her voice.

  “Not me. My wife and boy,” he explained.

  “Come on,” she said, beckoning with a hatchet that still carried the bar code sticker from wherever it was purchased.

  The world as he knew it seemed to be slowly flip-flopping, turning itself inside out. He walked, ramrod straight and graceful with terror, toward whatever awaited him in the room across the hall.

  Jamey slapped Dunbar on the knee and said, “Hey!”

  He jerked awake. How he could have nodded off at a time like this…

  “Here,” Mona said as they clustered around the inert vampires on the floor. She handed the hatchet to Paul.

  “What?”

  “You’re stronger than me. You won’t be able to take the head completely off with one whack, but it’s important to at least cut through the vocal cords in the first swing.”

  Like she’d read up on dismantling vampires.

  The hatchet felt cold and heavy in his trembling hands. This is not real, he said.

  And what if it wasn’t? What if he’d allowed himself to fall victim to some mass delusion, one person’s vivid fancy sparking the imaginations of everyone else? He could see himself on death row, trying to explain to the chaplain how beheading five or six sleeping people had seemed to make such perfect sense at the time.

  “I can’t,” he said. He looked at Jamey to his left, but the younger man backed away in speechless refusal.

  “It would have been faster with the chainsaw,” Mona said, “but too loud.”

  “I thought they couldn’t hear anything when they’re like this?” Jamey whispered.

  “Well. Within reason.”

  Dunbar growled. “For being the expert, Mona, you don’t know shit.”

  “Just because my folks are vampires doesn’t mean I’ve got a lot of experience decapitating them,” she replied hotly.

  Paul pointed with the hatchet to the huddled figure in the sleeping bag. The one closest to their feet. “What if you’re wrong?”

  Mona stared at him. “Wrong?” She flipped back a section of sleeping bag with her shoe to reveal a man’s head. He looked to be in his late twenties or so. Weak chin, high forehead
, prematurely thinning brown hair. “Gary Leckner,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  Dunbar, rallying slightly, said, “He was one of them at the Dog on Friday night.” He rubbed his shoulder, wincing.

  “You need proof, do you?” Mona asked.

  She moved to the next prone figure and toed aside the garbage bag shroud to expose a tangle of blond, greasy hair. He lay on his belly, one side of his gaunt, white face exposed. “Jason Penney, Purcell’s best friend.” Her lips curled in a grimace. “Watch this.”

  It was a large window with a single shade tied down to a radiator. She asked Jamey to hold the shade tightly while she untied the cord. “Don’t let it get away from you,” she warned.

  She pulled the shade down slightly, just enough to release the locking mechanism, then took the cord from Jamey and let it slip slowly through her fingers.

  As the shade gradually rose, Paul watched a razor-thin sliver of white light pop into existence on the bare floorboards and work its way toward the sleeping man. Paul’s stomach crawled with fear, dread, revulsion and something even akin to pity as he watched the bar of light pull flush with and slowly overtake the unwashed blond hair. Penney flinched in his sleep as the razor line grew and moved steadily closer. He shuddered. He issued a nearly inaudible mewling sound from deep in the back of his throat. His eyelids twitched as though in deep REM sleep and dreaming whatever horrors a vampire dreams.

  “Now watch this,” Mona whispered.

  Paul did, as repulsively fascinated as when he’d been a kid watching magnifying glass experiments on ants.

  The white light crept steadily over the man’s face, setting off a series of twitches and grimaces. The head flopped violently, Penney’s face thudding against the floor as he tried to shake off the light and the heat in his sleep. Paul watched a thin wisp of smoke curl skyward as the mewling sound gained volume and pitch.

  “Enough,” he said hoarsely.

  His limbs shaking so hard he could barely walk, he picked his way over the unconscious man—vampire—to take the shade cord from the motel owner and tie it down again. The pitiful cries had died down, but the thing twitched for several seconds more before drifting back to sleep. The sunlight had raised a red welt the size of a half dollar on the creature’s cheek.