Bloodthirst in Babylon

by Searls, David

  He shifted slightly and she murmured and he froze. He stared up at the ceiling and let his mind replay, as a distraction, the scene laid out to him in his trance state of moments before.

  They were gathering in the woods, snapping beer can tabs and hiding the glow of cigarette embers behind hands anxious for battle.

  They’re out there, he thought, his own excitement building, his own hands and teeth and strong legs as ready as theirs. But still he heard the steady, rhythmic twitch at the throat of the woman—his wife—still asleep next to him.

  He watched her, practically hypnotized, his nostrils flaring in an effort to take in more of that coppery highway. He slid closer to see more, smell more.

  She moved in her sleep, uttered a sound, maybe his name, and he recoiled as if struck.

  Joy. He had to remember that. It wasn’t a woman next to him, it was Joy. It was his wife’s blood pounding so loudly in his ears. He moved quickly, quietly, slipping out of bed and pulling on a pair of jeans he hadn’t even remembered removing before drifting off earlier that day.

  In the daylight.

  Joy must have undressed him in that unfamiliar room.

  Joy, his wife. He had to remember that.

  He moved to the door with the quick efficiency of a wolf. He hesitated long enough to give his brain a chance to catch up, to tell him where he was. Then it came to him. He faintly remembered bits and pieces of being half-dragged to the second-floor room.

  He took tight hold of the doorknob and turned it slowly. Joy stirred as it creaked open on dry hinges, but she didn’t awaken. Todd knew who’d be out there on the balcony, and then he remembered how he knew. He’d left his body again, and had seen like before. Which is how he knew about the vampires gathering in the woods.

  He poked his head out. Saw no one. Allowing the door to open just enough for him to squeeze through, he shut it softly after him. He crouched, waiting, listening, sniffing the humid night air.

  Every sense felt sharply attuned, an orgy of sensation hitting him. It smelled like rain and cigarettes, and now he could see and smell the faint glow of lit tobacco in the front yard just beyond the balcony rail. He listened for movement and heard only crickets and the occasional drone of faraway traffic from somewhere safely far from Babylon.

  God, to be back out there, eating up the miles on the highway. Even in his for-shit Olds. To have Joy in the seat next to him and Melanie, Crissie and Little Todd whining in back.

  His eyes burned, causing him to wonder if vampires cried. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

  He took two cautious steps, making the floor of the metal balcony groan. Two more steps to the exterior stairwell, and that’s when the voice got him.

  “Hold it!” it said in a harsh whisper.

  He straightened. Said “Jermaine, it’s me.”

  Taken by surprise by the first daylighter to stumble his way. So much for his ferociously attuned senses and invincibility.

  “Yeah, it’s you,” Jermaine said.

  But he didn’t lower his Smith & Wesson. He aimed a flashlight beam in Todd’s face.

  “Turn that thing off. They’ll see it from the woods.”

  Jermaine’s eyes did a quick dance to what he could see of the motel’s perimeters. He killed the light, but still held the handgun at chest level. Still kept his distance. There was a beer bottle tucked in his waistband with a cloth stopper and a scent that was nothing like beer.

  Todd said, “I gotta go, man. Just for awhile. I’ll be back.”

  Jermaine’s eye flicked to the door of the room Todd had exited. He was surprised at how clearly he could read the gunman’s face despite the near absence of light.

  “Is Joy…?”

  “She’s still in there. Sleeping.”

  “I don’t know,” Jermaine said.

  “Keep it down. You’ll bring Denver on the run.”

  As the words left his mouth, it occurred to Todd that he knew exactly where Denver Dugan was posted. While his mind had literally wandered the premises in his sleep, he’d “seen” the older man sprawled on a cheap vinyl chair with his deer rifle in his lap, guarding a back window three or four rooms down from where the Dunbars had slept.

  In a more placating tone, Jermaine said, “Todd, I don’t know if you should—”

  He put a finger to his lips and gestured for Jermaine to follow him to the nearest empty room. All of the unoccupied doors upstairs and down had been left unlocked for quick access.

  With Jermaine reluctantly following, Todd entered the dark room and drew the drapes closed for an even darker shade of void. The other man angled his flashlight on a dresser with the beam pointed Todd’s way. Like he needed to be kept in sight.

  Todd sat on the bed and motioned for Jermaine to take the desk chair.

  Jermaine came closer, but remained on his feet. He’d turned the barrel of his gun away from Todd’s chest—but not by much. Todd now knew that the gunman’s purpose for being stationed on the balcony was as much to keep an eye on him as it was to guard against outside attack.

  “I’m sorry about Tonya,” Todd said, and found it to be true.

  Jermaine looked away, stared at a wall lost to the darkness. “When y’all sent the women and children off, you didn’t even offer to take her.”

  “I know,” Todd said.

  Not much else to say. He wondered if Jermaine’s mind was playing with reasons she’d been left behind, but he’d be wrong. Todd moved his face slightly from the center of the flashlight beam. He thought, Do vampires feel guilt? He said, “I’m going to get them, Jermaine. For Tonya. For all of us.”

  The man’s face went hard. He gestured out the window with his gun. “Them?” And let a breath out.

  “I’m not one of them, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Jermaine’s face remained unconvinced in the splotchy light. He said, “We gotta tell D.B.”

  “Okay. But do it five minutes after I’m gone.”

  Jermaine’s glare didn’t fade. Todd waited. He edged closer to the foot of the bed, farther into the shadows and closer to Jermaine’s gun if he had to make that move.

  Jermaine seemed to read him. He backed off, found the doorknob behind him by sense of feel.

  Then: “Five minutes. Hope I’m not doing the wrong thing.”

  No guarantees there, Todd thought. Even he didn’t know.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Carl Haggerty patrolled the back of the motel in just enough of a soft, steady mist to cool the night air. Todd hugged the side of the building, waiting, studying the scene. Maybe two minutes of Jermaine’s five-minute guarantee remained.

  He could almost hear the clock ticking.

  Carl finally moved far enough away for Todd to take that long, low-to-the-ground walk and finally slide down the slippery ravine. When he’d “seen” them in the woods earlier, the vampires had been far enough from the motel to whisper and light cigarettes under pine trees without threat of discovery. They hadn’t seemed in a hurry, and it wasn’t even midnight yet. They wouldn’t attack until they figured most of the Sundowners were drunk or fast asleep, probably in the wee hours.

  At least Todd could hope it shaped up that way.

  He broke into a run on level ground, snapped a branch underfoot and heard someone topside crying out. Sounded like Paul Highsmith, then Carl taking up the call. The alarm had been sounded.

  A beam of light hit a tree to Todd’s left, moving him quicker through the brush. More Sundowners took up the call.

  He wove expertly around sycamores and pines and splashed lightly across the shallow creek bed and kicked up pebbles glistening in the mist that tried to upend him with their slippery smoothness, but his senses were too sharp, too alert. Further out, the dark land rose again, steeply, before flattening and heading toward town. His feet bogged down in soft mud and almost caught on exposed roots, but he could see well enough to skirt most peril. Even the tree toads and the bright-eyed rats that marked his path.

  The ste
ep hill didn’t slow him down or bother his nicotine-clogged lungs as it should have. Teased by the frenzying scent of warm blood seemingly everywhere, his steps became easier, swifter, drawing him closer to town. He bent and let his powerful legs negotiate the quietest routes around fallen limbs and last year’s slick brown leaf rot.

  In a clearing two hundred yards from the motel, a shadowy figure sat alone on a tree stump. Todd spotted him immediately.

  He came to a standstill, then calmly moved in. From twenty feet away, the mingled scents of tobacco, cheap cologne and sweaty fear grew overpowering.

  “Marty, I can’t find no one and it’s not my fault. Over.”

  Todd relaxed his stiffening muscles as he watched and waited behind a lightning-scarred elm. From the radio held close to the seated man’s mouth came the response.

  “Dammit, Ernie, why can’t you keep up? Where you at now? Fucking over.”

  Marty McConlon’s crackling voice was devoid of any pretense of joviality.

  “I’m no boy scout, Marty. How the hell do I know where I am?” Ernie whined. It was the cop with the prematurely gray hair and bushy mustache. The one who’d slammed D.B. and him against the post office wall the night they got Judd Maxwell. “Shit, I’m in the woods,” the mustached cop continued. “Just…woods. Not far from where we split up, I guess. Over.”

  “So you haven’t made the ravine yet, have you?” McConlon erupted. “You’ll never catch up in time. Penney and Zeebe and the others are almost ready to climb it.”

  Todd reeled as though he’d been hit. He’d missed them, the vampires having apparently advanced from farther east or west of where he’d dropped into the ravine, so their paths had never crossed. There was no time now to double back and confront them before they mounted the attack.

  He’d never expected it to happen this early, this fast. Sick with dread, he kept listening. The gist of the mostly one-sided conversation was that Ernie might as well come back and join Marty on Buck Avenue. They’d come in together from the front, in the second wave.

  Todd pulled himself into a tight ball of despondency. The Sundowners were too few and stretched too thin to repulse what sounded like a well planned attack from multiple positions.

  Ernie the cop made glum plans to meet his boss, then signed off.

  “Asshole,” he mumbled when it was safe to do so. Then: “Hey, man. Who’s that? Who’s there?”

  It went unanswered. Todd Dunbar leaped and sank his teeth into the tender jugular flesh and sprayed the cop’s tree stump red.

  Panting heavily, his stomach and mind engorged with blood, Todd slumped to the ground. His senses buzzed. Pink rainwater dripped from his face and fell onto his lap. Thrill of the kill. It took all of his willpower to ignore the torn cop at his feet and focus on his next step.

  He grabbed the corpse’s holstered nine millimeter, at first to fire warning shots, but thought better of it. It might make D.B. and the others concentrate too much on the rear of the motel, leaving them exposed to attack coming right up the front driveway.

  Even in the act of reaching for dead Ernie’s portable radio, he reconsidered. Purcell would be monitoring his frequency and he didn’t know how to switch frequencies to one the Sundowners could pick up. He’d be likelier to give himself away to the vampires.

  He ditched the radio, kept the gun.

  Now what? His original goal had been to do what he’d already done. To make bloody contact with the enemy and thin their ranks. He could retrace his steps back down and up the ravine and maybe run into several more of them.

  Or end up getting shot by Carl and the others, mistaken for Purcell’s people. Even if that didn’t prove fatal, he bet that bullets hurt.

  Buck Avenue.

  He remembered an early evening stroll through Babylon with Joy during their very brief period of optimism. Their luck had finally turned. With him about to start work at the box factory and her with good prospects for employment, it was looking like they might finally have a little money for the first time in their lives. They could actually fantasize about being able to rent a modest home on this tidy street of old bungalows with well-kept lawns and fenced-in backyards.

  He grinned a wet, ghastly grin. That’s what he’d do. He’d pay a surprise visit to old Marty McConlon on Buck Avenue. He knew he could find the friendly cop even in the dark.

  Especially in the dark.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Freddie sat in the white glow of a toppled flashlight, fiddling with a long knife from Paul’s butcher block they’d brought with them earlier in the day.

  Was that right? Paul thought. Was it still Monday, less than a full day since they’d slipped from the house to audaciously record the sleeping vampires?

  The mist held his attention at the window, but the stench of gasoline kept intruding. He glanced at his cell phone time readout even before Freddie said, “What time is it now?”

  “Fifth time you’ve asked in the last hour.”

  “Fifth time you’ve looked. It’s your looking that leads to my asking. So what time is it?”

  Paul sighed. You couldn’t argue with a lawyer. “Eleven twenty-eight.”

  “You could have said eleven-thirty and it would have been close enough.”

  Freddie was talking too much because he was scared. Paul understood that, but it didn’t make it any easier to listen to. He yawned.

  “You can sack out if you want,” said Freddie. “I’ll wake you in an hour.”

  “It’s tempting. But I think whatever happens, it’ll happen soon.”

  Freddie, perched on the shaky desk chair, and Paul, sitting up on the bed he’d dragged over by the back window, guarded front and back views from an upstairs room. Their only firepower came from a half-dozen gasoline-filled beer bottles with torn pillowcase fuses. Their sole flashlight lay on its side and threw a wide, feeble silhouette of light, enough to dispel a little of the darkness without making them much of a target from outside. Paul, also in possession of the unused hatchet, tried picturing himself leading a charge, the blade swinging wildly, a flaming Molotov cocktail also in his grasp, blood in his eye.

  Yeah, right.

  Freddie said, “So what’s with Connie and you?”

  Nowhere Paul wanted to be. He said, “What’s what?”

  Freddie tapped his knife maddeningly on the desk. “She demanded that she come with me because she loves you, make no mistake about that. But the ride up here was a little uncomfortable. A little awkward, maybe, when the subject switched to you.”

  Paul and Meredith had raised the kids to honor a strict but sensible moral code. Trust, honor, loyalty, integrity. These were all hard, black and white concepts without much room for ambiguity. And yet, as he’d found while his marriage foundered and he’d taken to long lunch breaks with the young, attractive and personable Darby Kinston, life consisted of gray area.

  Or maybe he was the one acting like a lawyer, now. Parsing morality itself.

  As divorce became more than a fantasy and he suddenly had custodial support, three daughters to put through college and law school and a fourth child on the way, he’d found that it was not a good time to hear bad news about his financial foundation. Especially not from a final-year law student in the compliance department of Anchor/Tatum who just happened to be related to him and pissed off about the direction her father’s life was taking.

  Connie had tried to warn him that certain transactions looked fishy, the yields too good to be true in a souring economy.

  So what if he couldn’t compute the numbers to justify his returns? It was a feeder fund, so that was the responsibility of its principal. And who’d complain if it looked like they were making too much money?

  “Dad, these returns are so much higher than the market and they have been for years. I’ve also found SEC complaints about slow settlements.”

  “Complaints, honey. That’s not the same as a formal investigation,” he’d told her.

  “Dad, I know the difference,” she�
��d shot back.

  But what did she know? She wasn’t an accountant. She hadn’t even passed her bar at that point, and she already had a chip on her shoulder on her mother’s behalf. So of course she saw nothing good about the way her father conducted business.

  “It’s complicated,” he told Freddie after a long silence.

  Freddie let his blade clunk into the desktop. “It’s all complicated. Your life. Mine. Miles Drake’s. No one’s turns out like you think it’s going to.”

  Drake. Now there was a man who accepted the gray areas in his life. Paul stared out the back window at the red cigarette wink that represented Carl, patrolling the open field. He’d advanced fairly close to the ravine. Paul hoped he didn’t get too close to the drop-off.

  Freddie said, “What do you think’s happened to Dunbar?”

  Paul shook his head. After Jermaine had alerted them to the fact that he’d slipped out—even admitting he’d given Todd a brief headstart—Paul and the others had tried calling him back. Joy was okay, though. Still groggily sleeping. Unscathed by the man who’d slept next to her.

  Paul said, “Maybe it’s just like Jermaine said and he’s going after Purcell and the others.”

  Or to join up and tell the vampires everything he knew about the Sundown defenses.

  With the screen off the window and sashes raised, he could hear crickets shrilly calling out for love even in the rain. He picked up Mona’s crackly voice on someone’s two-way radio, and then Carl’s response.

  But there was something funny about that response. Paul heard it coming as though in stereo, both through the radio and the voice itself. Which shouldn’t have been the case if Carl had wandered as far off as Paul had thought.

  He grabbed the flashlight and arced its beam into the backyard.

  There. Carl.

  Stationed in the center of the yard and wheeling to face the beam pointing him out. Not eighty yards further upfield, near the ravine where Paul had seen the red ember glow.