by Roger Keller
I dumped a whole can of gas on the pile, hoping to kill the maggots. Some of the body parts twitched and spasmed. A gnawed-on hand, that was mostly bone, closed. The maggots kept eating and squirming in the fuel, oblivious to what was coming.
“You guys got a room like this, you know, back at Lee’s place?” I said.
Heather cut her glowing eyes at me and curled her upper lip. Her canine teeth extended.
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that.” She switched gears and something clicked in her head. “There were three at the party. Three we saw anyway. And you got two of them, right? How well did you search this place?”
“Pretty well.” It hit me a second later. The room with the drawings. It was after dark now.
“Pretty well, huh.” She crossed her arms. “Lee told me one time that most vampire hunters die within the first year of being active. I’m not sure what he meant by active, but I think this qualifies.”
“I got two,” I said. “And searched most of this, place and there’s one room that doesn’t have lights. Since I don’t have a flashlight I uh-”
“Which way?” she said. “You know, we might luck out. They’re no good at planing or subtlety. If there were any of them left here, they’d be all over us by now. Still, you kind of fucked up.”
“It’s this way,” I said.
We walked into the refrigerator room. Heather tore open a few boxes and looked in each fridge.
“What were they doing here?” I said.
“They were trying to store blood.” She threw an empty bottle across the room. “They really had it together to set this all up. Then, everything fell apart.”
“They weren’t always freaks?” I said.
“One time, they were pry like me and the others,” she said.
I showed Heather the rat hole into the unexplored room.
“Nasty.” She looked at me. “Can’t you smell it?”
“I’m trying to ignore smells right now,” I said.
Heather jumped through the hole and disappeared into the darkness. I heard wood splintering, then a heavy thud. I angled my phone light into the rat hole and saw Heather throw a rectangular shape across the room.
“Empty,” she said.
Heather peeked out of the hole. “Fuck this.” She kicked the drywall, sending chunks of the moldy, rotted material across the room. Heather kept kicking, until she made a big enough entrance. Then she walked back out.
“Where did you leave the ones you killed?” she said.
I showed her the salon. Heather looked over the headless revenants. She pulled a multi-tool out of her jacket and hunkered down by the female. Heather wrenched the fangs from the shattered pieces of skull.
“For Lee.” She held up her bloody prize.
I kicked the male’s head. It bounced and rolled, coming to rest by Heather’s boot.
“Check this one out,” I said.
“Real classy.” She examined the metal teeth. “Vampires do this, you know, make replacement teeth. Except they make ‘em out of expensive ceramics and stuff. I’ve seen hollow fangs too. You can suck blood through them, like hypodermic needles. This looser let his rust.”
Heather handed me the fangs, two real and two metal. I slipped them in my jacket pocket. Heather poured some of the gas on her hands and cleaned the multi-tool.
“You probably don’t even have to worry,” she said. “I mean nobody’s sure how they get like this.”
“Great,” I said. “Just how scared should I be?”
I watched Heather’s claws extend and retract as she slipped into the pet store. She turned back. All I could see was a wicked, dark shape looming in the jagged hole. She smiled, her teeth caught the sickly yellow glow of the work-lights above, just like the Cheshire Cat.
“You’re doing fine,” she said. “Most humans would be dead by now.”
I stepped in after her. Heather walked past the impaled metal scavenger and casually pulled the bolt cutters loose. The body fell like a scarecrow and landed with a sickening dry sound.
“What do we have here?” she said.
We stood in front of the cages. Heather crossed her arms over her chest, her hands hung loose, unable to close on her razor sharp claws.
“Looks like they forgot about ‘em,” I said.
Heather reached through the bars and grabbed the woman’s head. She pulled back the cracked, dessicated lips. Dried flesh creaked. She turned the head toward me. The mouth bristled with crudely sharpened teeth.
“Enemies?” I said.
“Maybe,” she said. “They might have been part of the group. Like, maybe they put ‘em in here to help them, when it first happened, when they first started to change.”
The spider skittered out of it’s nest and jumped onto Heather’s arm. It was colored like the maggots in the other room, a sickly mottled red. Heather’s lips curled back. She impaled the spider on her index claw. I half expected the little monster to hiss or shriek.
“Fucker.” Heather flicked the dying spider back into the cage.
Heather’s eyes lit up when she saw the bookstore. She sat down in the dust and compulsively searched each wallet and purse.
“Shit,” I said, “really?”
“No point letting it burn with everything else.” Heather seemed sort the money according to date.
“Don’t you have money, or some gold stashed like Lee?” I said.
“I probably have millions in different places.” She tossed an empty wallet into the corner. “I never bothered to total it all up.”
“Aw, what the fuck, Heather?” I said.
She took three tattered singles from a child’s canvas wallet and put them on the pile. I picked up a purse and fished out a driver’s license. Heather slapped it out of my hand.
“That shit’s not helping,” she said. “We don’t need to know their names. You avenged them, that’s all that matters.”
“We’re wasting time,” I said.
“This is all ours now, ‘cause we won. Its like, a tradition or something.” She shook the dollar bills under my nose.
“What tradition?” I said. “There’s all kinds of gold in the car. I’m sure you’ll enjoy counting that.”
“I’m checking it all.” She sat back down in the dust.
“Really?” It was useful to know, I guess. The legends about vampires counting seeds and untying knots were true, on some level.
“Really. You know, you’re not helping. We’ll probably get done faster if you help.” She threw an empty purse through the hole in the wall.
I sat down next to her and we went through everything. Heather picked through the jewelry. She tested each piece, saving the ones that sizzled and burned her hands. When we finished, about an hour later, she scooped up all her loot and stuffed it in a comically huge, rainbow colored bag. She stashed the bag in my car while I lugged the rest of the gas cans inside.
“Did you see the shit they drew on the walls?” We pushed two of the diesel barrels through Heather’s new door, into the revenant’s lair.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Are those things real?” I said. “I mean, you’d know, right?”
“I hope that shit’s not real,” she said.
We spread gas on everything, especially the things that used to be alive. I tried to think of a few words to say over Danny’s head. Heather saw what I was doing and put her arm around me.
“Let’s light this fucking place up,” she said.
I poured a trail to my car with the last of the gas and used the barbecue lighter to touch it off. A wave of heat drove me back to the car, where Heather crouched, mesmerized by the flames. Black smoke rose from the roof of the mall. The whole thing burned hotter and faster than I hoped.
“Wow,” Heather said. “They’ll be able to see this for miles.”
We jumped in the car and drove off. Heather arranged the change in my ashtray according to some criteria known only to her. I looked at my phone, over an hour unti
l stores quit selling alcohol.
“I need a fucking drink.” I looked back at the fire as it raged out of control in the distance.
*****
I stopped at a grocery store on the way back to my apartment and left Heather in the car, while I went looking for booze. Ten long, depressing months of sobriety were over. Every morning I’d wake up feeling like shit and fight traffic for a job I hated. I saved money not drinking, but somehow I was still broke and still getting kicked out of my apartment. I’d already fallen off the wagon at the party. It was that time again.
I found myself walking in a circle through the frozen foods aisle, with a can of orange juice concentrate melting in my hand, unsure of what to do next. The can dripped juice on the floor. The stock-boys stared at me as they stacked generic store brand chips. I checked the time on my phone.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I kicked the chip boxes as I passed. Stacks of cheap potato chips collapsed on the stock-boys, an avalanche of bland mediocrity.
I paid for my liquor with money I’d fished out of Heather’s loot bag. I told myself that the extra bottles of rum and beer were to share with Heather. She was still there, lurking in the passenger seat, when I got back to the car.
“I think you might have a problem.” Heather peeked in my grocery bags while I loaded them into the back seat.
“Yeah, I got a lot of problems, don’t I?” I climbed in the car.
“Where we goin’ to now?” She said.
“Home, I guess. You coming with?” It hadn’t occurred to me, to ask where she lived.
“Of course.” She ran her fingers through my hair. “We’ll hang out.”
Chapter 3
Heather played with the radio, changing channels every second or so, the whole way back to my apartment. She would pause on news reports then keep going.
Heather cursed and braced her boots against the dashboard as we bounced over the lunar surface of my parking lot. We parked near the apartment that I would soon by getting kicked out of, now that my roommate had split. I grabbed the the booze and Heather grabbed the rainbow bag.
My neighbor Rick was pretending to work on his jacked-up super diesel truck. As usual he’d parked across two spaces, right by the sidewalk. He had been laid off for months. I knew he couldn’t afford to fill up the monster’s gas tank let alone make the payments. He just needed an excuse to hang out with his redneck buddies and drink.
“You buy us some beer Mikey?” Rick and his friends laughed while I fumbled with my keys. Then they saw Heather walking up.
“Whoa,” Rick said.
Rick and his half drunk pit-crew circled her like a pack of dogs. Heather flirted with them and giggled. They gawked at her, seeing what Danny saw at the party. I felt something like jealousy, just for a second. Heather singled out a creatine bloated redneck.
“It’s two-thirty-two,” I said. “I invite you in, I guess.”
Heather nodded. She was the only one who heard me.
I looked down from my deck and watched Heather run her fingers over the weightlifter’s massive chest. She glanced up at me and smiled. The pit crew didn’t see her eyes glowing orange under the high pressure sodium lights, or her teeth.
I mixed a drink that was about two thirds rum and sunk into my ragged couch. The door creaked open a second later and Heather’s laughter echoed through the apartment. I took a drink. The burning liquid seemed far away. I looked up from my glass to see the weightlifter looming behind Heather.
“This is Ray,” she said.
“Hey.” He held out his hand. “You’re Mike, right?”
I ignored his grease stained hand and didn’t even bother getting up. His smile turned to a sneer.
“Can I have a beer?” he said.
“Make yourself at home,” I said.
The big gorilla fidgeted uncomfortably around Heather. She smiled reassuringly and stroked his arm. I shook my head, feeling appropriately confused. Ray grabbed a beer and plopped down on the couch.
“This shit’s warm.” He looked at the label. “What kind of fucked up, gay-ass beer is this?”
Ray trailed off and tapped my shoulder. He motioned to the half-kitchen. Heather stood there, ripping pages from a car magazine and carefully placing each one on the floor. When she finished papering the kitchen floor she carried a chair to the center of the kitchen.
“What the fuck’s goin’ on?” he said.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“So, uh, what are you doin’ babe?” Ray shrugged and stood up.
He downed the rest of my beer and walked into the kitchen. Heather danced around him, careful not to disturb the papers. Ray winced as he felt her claws. He turned around and saw the real Heather.
“Shit.” He pulled a carpet knife out of his front pocket.
Heather held her hand over Ray’s head, fingers spread and claws extended. Ray froze. She guided him like a puppet on invisible strings to the chair. He sat there, rigid, while Heather rummaged through my kitchen. She drug out the whole set of Tupperware that my roommate had left behind.
I poured a glass of straight, black rum and watched Heather’s show play out. She held her puppeteer’s hand up. Black claws cast shadows over Ray’s face. His arm jerked to life. He held up the carpet knife. His left arm extended and he held the blade against the bulging arteries of his forearm. Ray’s brown eyes darted back and forth, then settled on me, pleading. I raised my glass to the dying man. Tears fell down his face. I shut my eyes and swallowed the rum. Heather directed the blade, making it slice his swollen arteries in half. Blood poured down Ray’s arm into a waiting bowl. I finished the rum in one gulp.
“Oh fuck no.” I realized what she was doing.
Heather collected his blood in the containers. I winced as it splashed everywhere. When the containers were all full she started using empty soda bottles from my recycling bin. Then she opened the refrigerator.
“No, hell no,” I said. “Not in my fuckin’ fridge.”
“It’s not your fridge. You rent.” She started stacking the blood filled containers next to my expired mustard, salad dressing and week old pizza boxes. She left bloody fingerprints on the door when she closed it.
“There’s still plenty of room,” she said. “You can put your stuff in there too.”
“No, no I can’t,” I said. “And, what if this fucking guy has some kind of fucking disease?”
Heather picked up one of the smaller containers that my roommate had once used for carrot sticks, and drank. Her eyes fluttered and she purred.
“It’s fine,” she said. “He didn’t have anything.”
I stood and walked to the edge of the half-kitchen. The blood splattered paper stopped me from going any further.
“Didn’t have anything,” I said. “I thought you didn’t kill people.”
“I never said that,” she said. “I said, I might not have killed your friend. Might. I mean he seemed harmless. This fucker however, well the world’s like, a better place with him gone.”
“So, he deserved it, huh?” I said. “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I guess you’ll have to trust me.”
She seized Ray’s head and tapped her index finger on his skull. Ray’s heart started beating again. Rapid, irregular thumping filled my head. It made me think about Danny’s headless corpse. The last of his blood pumped out into my roommate’s Elvis themed coffee cup. Heather seemed giddy and really pleased with herself. She let Ray’s body go limp and slide onto the floor. I stopped myself from pouring another glass of rum and switched to beer. The last thing I needed was to pass out in front of a vampire. Heather pushed the body into a corner and covered it the with magazine pages.
“Yeah, that’ll fool the cops.” I opened the refrigerator door with my boot and stared at the biohazardous mess. Blood dripped from improperly sealed Tupperware onto my unused vegetable crisper.
“I’ll clean it up later,” Heather said.
“I kinda thought you were gonna run, for a second there,” she said.
“I’m sure you or Lee, would have found me,” I said.
She sat down on the couch with a soda bottle full of blood. I joined her and absentmindedly reached for the remote control. Heather’s arm shot out like an animal striking. The plastic shell of the remote cracked in her iron grip. She flashed her gory Cheshire smile and waved the remote at me.
“I win.” She giggled and flipped through the channels until she found a British gangster movie.
I sipped my beer and watched Heather play with her cross. Smoke curled from her fingers. I looked over at the criminal mess in my kitchen.
“You won all right,” I said.
“We won,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We burned two of them at the mall.” She paused for a drink. A few drops of blood fell on her chest.
“Hopefully, all that nasty shit is ash by now,” I said. “Sometimes they just let old buildings burn. The owner gets more from the insurance than the property’s worth.”
“I’m not worried about that,” she said. “There were others at the party. We don’t even know how many, remember.”
“Aw, fuck,” I said. “Something tells me this isn’t going to be over anytime soon.”
“It’s never over,” she said.
“Great.” I tossed an empty beer bottle at the recycling bin. It hit the edge and landed on the floor.
“The others will be looking for us,” she said.
“How are they going to find us?” I said. “We’re at least twenty miles from that mall.”
“It was closer to ten and distance doesn’t mean shit,” she said. “I found them easy enough.”
“Right now, I think we should be more worried about the dead weightlifter in my kitchen,” I said.
“Fine, gawd.” She rolled her eyes and hopped up.
Heather kicked off her boots. Black claws split her red toenails and clicked on the kitchen floor as she walked over to Ray’s body.
“Time to go, asshole,” she said. “Mike doesn’t want you hanging around, stinking up his apartment.”
