In the Footsteps of Dracula

by Stephen Jones

  The man shrugged and looked across at the old man and the woman with the straggled two-colored hair. Something passed between them, then; Billy Kendow saw it. But it was gone as fast as it had appeared. He looked around to see if any of the other townsfolk had seen it, but they all seemed to be wrapped up in what the man was saying.

  “Some food, little purified water, some gasoline maybe . . .” He let his voice trail off and then added, loudly, “and all in exchange for a glimpse of the outside world post-apocalyptic.”

  “We ain’t got no food or water,” Solly Sapperstein said in a husky voice. “Leastwise none we can spare. And we don’t have no need for gasoline.”

  Blaumlein stepped up to the deputy mayor and looked down at him. As he moved, the old woman and the man with the pipe sauntered over to the cabs of the two trucks.

  “I can’t believe that,” he said. “I can’t believe you couldn’t spare just one meal for me and my people . . . in exchange for—” He spun around and pointed to the trucks again. “In exchange for the show of your lives. Now, how’s that sound for a deal?”

  Jack McKendrick stepped forward. “All our provisions is kept in the old repair shop, down in town, and the mayor looks after it. We can’t make no promises about whether he’ll let you—”

  Tom Duffy shook his head and took hold of Jack’s arm. “Be okay,” he said, tiredly, glancing at the trucks. “Mayor Ladd will see the sensible solution.”

  “There, now, that’s mighty sensible of you all,” said Blaumlein cheerfully. “And, as a mark of good faith, I’ll let you see just one of our special attractions.” He smiled across the sea of blank faces. Maybe this was going to be harder than usual. “Which one’ll it be?”

  Nobody said anything.

  Billy Kendow looked across the people from the town and waited for someone to say something, but still nobody did.

  “The vampire,” he said, blurting it out. “Show us the last vampire.”

  Blaumlein laughed and ruffled Billy’s hair again. “Right you are, boy.” He turned to the boy with the gap-toothed smile. “Bring him out, Eddie.”

  The boy disappeared around the other side of the second truck and Billy could hear him puffing as he unfastened the tarpaulin flap. Less than a minute later, the boy reappeared around the cab pulling on a piece of rope. At the end of the rope was The Last Vampire!

  “My, but he’s the sorriest looking fella I ever did see,” said Mildred Duffy.

  And that was the truest thing the deputy mayor’s wife had ever said.

  The man looked even older than his picture—maybe around sixty, maybe even seventy, Billy had no way of telling. His hair was thick and matted, his face covered in sores and dirt. Around his middle, he wore a crude loincloth fashioned out of pieces of fabric all stitched together and, around his neck, someone had attached a piece of rope fastened to some kind of blanket. Also around his neck was a collection of crucifixes and a string of garlic bulbs. There were more bulbs and crucifixes hanging from the “belt,” Billy saw. In fact, the only thing that was impressive about this “vampire” was his eyes. They were intelligent eyes, glancing nervously around the gathered throng of people.

  Billy walked up to the man and stared up into his face. As he stared, the man flinched. “Let me see his teeth,” Billy said in a soft voice.

  “Hey, now,” said the old man with the pipe. “We don’t want to be giving away the whole show . . . leastwise not till we get our ‘payment.’” There was something about the word “payment,” Billy thought. Some deep and hidden significance. He looked across at the old man and, just for a second, he saw a conspiratorial flash of something in the man’s face. He looked around quickly and saw that the glance had been exchanged with Blaumlein, who was now averting his own face from Billy’s stare.

  “I wanna see the teeth,” Billy said. “I wanna see the teeth now.”

  Tom Duffy placed a gentle hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Now hold on there Bil—” he began, but Blaumlein interrupted.

  “Let him see. Eddie?”

  The boy with the gap-toothed smile stepped forward as though in a trance and took hold of the vampire’s face in both hands. Pulling at the man’s lips, he quickly exposed the two incisors pictured on the side of the truck.

  Tom Duffy tried hard to suppress a snigger.

  Billy leaned toward the vampire and the vampire tried to pull away.

  “They ain’t real,” said Billy.

  “Now hold on there, boy,” Blaumlein said.

  “They’re stuck on with something.” He reached out a hand and the vampire pulled back out of the gap-toothed boy’s grip. He threw back his head and let out a guttural howl.

  “Sounds more like one of them werewolf fellas,” Eleanor Revine said to Solly Sapperstein.

  The vampire shook his head, eyes wide enough they looked set to pop out and hang on his cheeks, and cowered away from Billy.

  “Why’s he howling that way?” Tom Duffy asked.

  “Kind of like he’s trying to tell us something,” said Solly Sapperstein.

  “How d’you know he’s Dracula?” asked Mildred Duffy. “Don’t look like no Count I ever saw.”

  Joseph Blaumlein stepped to one side and reached a hand behind his back. When the hand reappeared, it was holding a gun. He gave a big beaming smile and shook the gun at the townsfolk. “Time to wake up and smell the fuckin’ coffee, you hayseed dickheads,” he said in a low voice. Without turning, he said to gap-tooth, “Put him away, Eddie. Show’s over.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” asked Charlie McKendrick.

  “Shut the hell up, you old fart,” said Blaumlein.

  Gap-toothed Eddie yanked on the vampire’s rope and pulled him back around the wagon.

  Eleanor Revine let out a chuckle. “Now this is what I call a show!”

  “You seen all the show you’re gonna see,” Blaumlein said. He backed off a way and motioned with the gun. “Let’s see you all gather up now in a nice group. You too, kid.”

  Glancing in the direction of the vampire, Billy shuffled across and stood between Eleanor Revine and Tom Duffy.

  “Right, now, that’s real good.” Blaumlein looked across at his wife. “Deedee, get th’other gun.”

  “Can you tell—”

  “Not now, gramps,” Blaumlein snapped at Tom Duffy. “Okay, who’s in charge here?”

  Tom looked around and put up his hand. “I guess that’s me.”

  “You guess, gramps?”

  “He’s the deputy mayor,” said Mildred. “And he’s my husband.”

  Blaumlein’s wife appeared with a rifle which she trained on the group.

  Solly Sapperstein stepped forward. As Solly started to speak, Blaumlein turned to his wife. “Deedee?”

  The shot rang out and echoed in the stillness of the night. Solly Sapperstein rocked on his feet and then, frowning, looked down at his stomach. When he realized what had happened, Solly grabbed hold of his gut and fell to his knees. Once on the floor, he looked around at the others, all of who were watching him with what appeared to be a casual interest, and then toppled over onto his side.

  Blaumlein watched the man for further signs of movement, but Solly was still. He looked up and gave another smile. “Any more questions?”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Okay, now we need to get us some food and some water. And your Mayor is going to be real generous about that, I can just feel it.” He laughed. “You, deputy mayor . . .”

  Tom Duffy nodded.

  “Step on up here toward me. You’re gonna lead us to this barn with all the provisions.”

  Duffy nodded. “Okay.”

  Blaumlein frowned and then smiled. He turned to look at his wife, who was also frowning, and then at the old man with the pipe.

  “I don’t like it,” the old man said.

  Blaumlein turned back to face Tom Duffy. “You just gonna take us up there? Just like that?”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Y
es, that’s what I want . . . just that—”

  “And if I don’t, you’ll shoot me . . . just like you did Solly, right?”

  Blaumlein nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.” He laughed now, and Deedee and the old man started laughing along with him. “That’s right, gramps, we’ll shoot you. Hell, we’ll shoot all of yous if’n we have to.”

  Tom shrugged and turned away. “Let’s get going then,” he said over his shoulder. As he started walking, the other townsfolk fell into step behind.

  Billy stepped into the single file behind his mother and in front of Eleanor Revine. Blaumlein waited a step or two and then followed on. Billy heard him issuing instructions to the others and he saw the old man appear on the right, holding some kind of wide-barreled pistol, while on the left Blaumlein’s wife rode point with the rifle, accompanied by the boy, who seemed to have no other weapon but a long-shafted axe.

  Nobody spoke. The only sound was the gentle swish swish, as they moved through the longer grasses up the hill, and an occasional hoot and a flurry of wings from the distant trees.

  Soon, they had reached the top of the rise.

  The old man, who had moved up to the front, reached across and grabbed hold of Tom Duffy’s sleeve. Everyone stopped. The old man ran crouched over and disappeared down the other side of the hill.

  While they waited, Billy stepped out of line and moved back behind Eleanor Revine to Blaumlein. “That wasn’t no vampire, was he?”

  Blaumlein shook his head. “Nope.” He kept his eyes trained on the brow of the hill, waiting for the old man to return and tell him everything was okay.

  “Who was he?”

  Blaumlein shook his head again. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he said. “We found him up in Carolina, drinking the blood out of a mangy dog, dead by the side of the road. Can’t speak . . . or won’t speak. There’s a lot of folks like that out there.” He shifted the gun to his other hand and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “It was Deedee thought up the vampire shtick. Pat—he’s the fella with the pipe—he fashioned us a couple of teeth and we just fixed them right on him. Worked, too, in most places we been . . .”

  “But not here,” Billy said.

  Blaumlein nodded. “But not here.”

  “So he isn’t really Count Dracula either?”

  “Dracula’s a myth, kid . . . a fairy story. Once we’d hit on the vampire idea, Pat said why don’t we go the whole hog and call him Dracula . . . the last vampire.” He laughed but it was without humor. “Most places, people just want to see something that entertains them. Something a little out of the ordinary.”

  “What about the other things? The triplets . . . and the empty eggs?”

  “Oh, they’re real enough. There’re a lot of things out the—”

  “Joe?”

  Blaumlein looked up toward the front of the line. The old man, Pat, was waving his arms.

  “Yeah?”

  “Looks okay,” Pat said. “Hill runs down to a big old shack—there’s a light on in there, so there must be some kind of generator hooked up. Making a noise, too.”

  Blaumlein started to move up the line. “Get in place, kid,” he snapped. “Deedee, get back here and watch the rear.”

  The woman walked back, keeping her rifle trained on the townsfolk.

  When he got to the front of the line, Blaumlein pulled Tom Duffy toward him by the shirt-front. “What’s down there, gramps?”

  “I told you. Provisions. Our food and our water.”

  “What’s the noise?”

  “He already told you,” Duffy said, nodding at the old man with the pipe. “It’s a generator . . . keeps it all fresh.”

  “The food?”

  Duffy nodded. “The food.”

  “There ain’t nothing you’re holding back here, is there gramps?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some kind of electric fence or some other protective doodad?”

  Duffy sighed. “It’s just for the food.”

  “Right, just the food.” Blaumlein pushed the deputy mayor forward and stepped in line behind him. “Well, you lead the way, then. Pat, move down toward the back . . . and keep an eye on them.”

  “Got it.” Pat ran down the left of the column, his pipe still in his mouth, jiggling up and down.

  “Eddie, you just keep watching, okay?”

  Eddie grunted.

  “And if you see anything even a little bit cute, just call out, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Blaumlein prodded Tom Duffy. “Let’s go, gramps.”

  They moved slowly down the hill, stepping sideways-on until they came to the bottom and the edge of a huge field. Up ahead, in the center, stood a barn, two storeys with a light shining through the dirty windows. Blaumlein knelt down and felt the plant by his feet. “Cabbage? Is this a cabbage?”

  He stood up. “Pat? Get down here.”

  The old man came running down the hill.

  “This look like a cabbage to you?”

  Pat knelt down and pulled a couple of leaves. He ground them in his hand and took a sniff. “Looks like cabbage to me,” he said, breathlessly.

  Blaumlein turned to survey the whole field. Even in the moonlight, he could see there were thousands of them, all laid out in rows. He looked around at Tom Duffy. “Is this it, mister deputy fucking mayor? Is this your food? Cabbages?”

  Tom half-nodded. “It’s what we use to make our food.”

  “Make your food?” Blaumlein looked out at the barn. “What you got in there, a million gallons of cabbage soup?”

  “Something like that,” said Tom Duffy.

  Blaumlein gave a small smile but something else was tugging at the ends of it, pulling down the forced mirth and narrowing the man’s eyes with tiny rays of concern. “What the hell does that mean?”

  The deputy mayor returned the smile and looked around at the other townsfolk. Their faces were watching Blaumlein. “Why don’t you take a look?”

  Blaumlein turned around and looked across the field at the barn. “Pat?”

  The old man stepped alongside him.

  “What do you think?”

  Pat shrugged. “Looks okay. Looks like a barn. What are you thinking?”

  “I dunno.” He looked at Tom Duffy and sensed a calm strength in the man. He didn’t like it. Truth was, he suddenly didn’t like any of it. For a second, he was going to say as much let’s give ’em a break and leave ’em to it but he didn’t. He glanced at Pat who was watching the side of his face. He chuckled. “Pat, I’m not thinking any damned thing, not any damned thing at all. Let’s go take a look.”

  Pat fell back to the side of the line and checked that everyone was still in place.

  There were five women and eight men, plus the kid pulling up the rear. A real jumble of walking wounded, drained of stamina and bereft of soul. Pat smiled. For a few seconds there, he’d been worried. There had been something in Joe Blaumlein’s voice, something he couldn’t quite place . . . like a fly whose buzz you could hear but which you couldn’t see no matter how still you stood. He looked back and waved to Deedee. She lifted the rifle with both hands a couple of times and then returned it to point at the ones at the back of the line.

  Across the column, between the deputy mayor’s wife, a sweet-looking woman of around sixty or maybe a little younger, and a young man in his early twenties, Eddie was prowling to and fro, a few steps each time, swinging the long-handled axe like it was a golf club.

  “Let’s go,” Blaumlein shouted from the front. “Slow now,” he added, “and no funny business.”

  Pat watched as Joe pulled the old man forward and then stepped in behind him. He jammed the gun in his back. “Try anything, and you’re the first one that gets it.” The words had been softly spoken but the night was so still, despite a gentle breeze, that they carried back to Pat.

  As they started to move off, Pat turned slightly to check that Deedee was okay. As he moved his head, he caught sight of someone watching him. It was a wo
man—maybe forty years old; Pat couldn’t tell—and he thought it was the kid’s mother. Her face was smiling . . . her whole face, not just her mouth. Pat didn’t like that. It looked eager, like it was getting ready for something.

  “Face the front!” Pat snarled. The woman’s smile fell away and she jerked her head around. Pat felt better. There was nothing on that face—had been nothing on that face. Must just’ve been the moon, playing tricks with her expression.

  They moved forward slowly, picking their way between the cabbages. Pat and Eddie stayed well out to either side while Deedee brought up the rear, stepping out first one way and then the other, just a few steps at a time, to make sure everyone was behaving themselves. They were. Pat could see that. They were behaving themselves too fucking well just absolutely fine.

  The barn grew larger, its shine growing brighter. Staring over the old man’s shoulder, crouched down so’s nobody could blow off the top of his head, Joe Blaumlein scanned the structure for any movements . . . any signs of life at all. There weren’t any. It was just a barn. A big barn, but still a barn.

  When they had got out of sight of the sides of the barn, with only the big doors facing them, Blaumlein pulled out of line and ran toward the entrance. He flattened himself against the side-panels, shuffled along to the corner and peered down the side. Nobody there. Had he expected anybody? He couldn’t say . . . couldn’t decide. Something in his stomach was expecting something, that was for sure.

  He looked back and saw that the column had come to a stop just a few feet in front of the doors. They were all watching him, the townsfolk and Pat, Eddie and Deedee, too. Waiting for an instruction.

  “Okay, open the doors,” Blaumlein shouted. “And remember . . .” He let his voice trail off and simply waved the gun. The old deputy mayor nodded and stepped forward, taking hold of the single wooden beam dropped into the two brackets—one on each door—and lifting it clear. He was strong for a little guy, Blaumlein thought. And a little old guy, at that.

  Setting the beam on the ground, Tom Duffy took hold of the doors, one handle in each hand, and pulled. The doors came toward him effortlessly, creaking like the old iron doors to some hidden castle vault.

  Or crypt!