In the Footsteps of Dracula

by Stephen Jones

  Twenty years and out. Like the army. They gave you these crescent moon earrings to wear, so they’d know you were on their side when they ran into you at night, and they let you do pretty much what you wanted during the days.

  But the nights were theirs.

  Being a cowboy wasn’t so bad, really. You had to keep an eye on their nests, make sure no save-the-world types—Stan liked to call them rustlers—got in there and started splashing holy water around and driving stakes into their cold little hearts. And if you wanted brownie points, you went out each day and hunted up a victim or two to have ready for them after sundown.

  Those brownie points were nothing to sneer at either. Earn enough of them and you got to spend some stud time on one of their cattle ranches—where all the cows were human. And young.

  Neither Al nor Stan nor any of their pack had been to one of the farms yet, but they’d all heard it was incredible. You came back sore.

  Al didn’t particularly like working for the vampires. But he couldn’t remember ever liking anybody he’d worked for. The bloodsuckers gave him the creeps, but what was he supposed to do? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Plenty of guys felt the same way.

  But not all. Some folks took it real personal, called Al and Stan and the boys traitors and collaborators and worse. And lately it looked like some of them had gone beyond the name-calling stage and were into throat-slitting.

  Benny Gonzales was the fifth one in the last four weeks.

  Apparently the guys who were behind this wanted to make it look like the vampires themselves were doing the killings, but it didn’t wash. Too messy. These bodies had blood all over them, and a puddle beneath them. When the bloodsuckers slit somebody’s throat, they didn’t let a drop of it go to waste. They licked the platter clean, so to speak.

  “We gotta start being real careful,” Stan was saying. “Gotta keep our eyes open.”

  “And look for what?” Kenny said.

  “For a bunch of guys who hang out together—a bunch of guys who ain’t cowboys.”

  Artie started singing that Willie Nelson song, “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys” and it set Stan off.

  “Knock it off, god damn it! This ain’t funny! One of us could be next! Now keep your fucking eyes open!”

  Al studied the houses drifting by as they cruised into Point Pleasant Beach. Cars sat quietly along the curbs of the empty streets and the houses appeared deserted, their empty blind windows staring back at him. But every so often they’d pass a yard that looked cared for, and those houses would be defiantly studded with crosses and festooned with garlands of garlic. And every so often you could swear you saw somebody peeking out from behind a window or through a screen door.

  “You know, Stan,” Al said. “I’ll bet those cowboy killers are hiding in one of them houses with all the garlic and crosses.”

  “Maybe,” Stan said. “But I kinda doubt it. Those folks tend to stay in after sundown. Whoever’s behind this is working at night.” That made sense to Al. The folks in those houses hardly ever came out. They were loners. Dangerous loners. Armed loners. The vampires couldn’t get in because of all the garlic and crosses, and the cowboys who’d tried to get in—or even take off some of the crosses—usually got shot up. The vampires had said to leave them be for now. Sooner or later they’d run out of food and have to come out. Then they’d get them.

  Smart, those bloodsuckers. Al guessed they figured they had plenty of time to outwait the loners. All the time in the world.

  They were cruising Ocean Avenue by the boardwalk area now, barely a block from the Atlantic. What a difference a year made. Last year at this time the place was packed with the summer crowds, the day-trippers and the weekly renters. Now it was deserted. The sun was high and hot but it was like winter had never ended. They were gliding past the empty, frozen rides when Al caught a flash of color moving between a couple of the boardwalk stands.

  “Pullover,” he said, putting a hand on Stan’s arm. “I think I saw something.”

  The tires screeched as Stan made a sharp turn into Jenkinson’s parking lot.

  “What kind of something?”

  “Something blonde.”

  Kenny and Artie let out cowboy whoops and jumped out of the back seat. They tossed their Heineken empties high and let them smash in glittery green explosions.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Stan said. “You tryin’ to queer this little round-up or what? Now you two head down to the street back there and work your way back up on the boards. Me and Al’ll go up here and work our way down. Get going.”

  As Artie and Kenny trotted back to the Risden’s Beach bath houses, Stan squared his ten-gallon hat on his head and pointed toward the miniature golf course at the other end of the parking lot. Al took the lead and Stan followed. Arnold Avenue ended here in a turret-like police station, still boarded up for the winter, but its big warning sign was still up, informing anyone who passed that alcoholic beverages and dogs and motorbikes and various other goodies were prohibited in the beach and boardwalk area by order of the mayor and city council of Point Pleasant Beach. Al smiled. The beach and the boardwalk and the sign were still here, but the mayor and the city council were long gone.

  Pretty damn depressing up on the boards. The big glass windows in Jenkinson’s arcade were smashed and it was dark inside. The lifeless video games stared back with dead eyes. All the concession stands were boarded up, the paralyzed rides were rusting and peeling, and it was quiet. No barkers shouting, no kids laughing, no squealing babes in bikinis running in and out of the surf. Just the monotonous pounding of the waves against the deserted beach.

  And the birds. The seagulls were doing what they’d always done. Probably the only thing they missed was the garbage the crowds used to leave behind.

  Al and Stan headed south, scouring the boardwalk as they moved. The only other humans they saw were Kenny and Artie coming up the other way from the South Beach Arcade.

  “Any luck?” Stan called.

  “Nada,” Kenny said.

  “Yo, Alphonse!” Artie said. “How many Heinies you have anyway? You seein’ things now? What was it—a blonde bird?”

  But Al knew he’d seen something moving up here, and it hadn’t been no goddam seagull. But where . . .?

  “Let’s get back to the car and keep moving,” Stan said. “Don’t look like we’re gonna make us no brownie points up here.”

  They’d all turned and were heading back up the boards when Al took one last look back . . . and saw something moving. Something small and red, rolling across the boards toward the beach from between one of the concession stands.

  A ball.

  He tapped Stan on the shoulder, put a finger to his lips, and pointed. Stan’s eyes widened and together they alerted Artie and Kenny. Together the four of them crept toward the spot where the ball had rolled from.

  As they got closer, Al realized why they’d missed this spot on the first pass. It was really two concession stands—a frozen yogurt place and a salt-water taffy shop—with boards nailed up over the space between to make them look like a single building.

  Stan tapped Al on the shoulder and pointed to the roof of the nearer concession stand. Al nodded. He knew what he wanted: the second-storey man had to do his thing again.

  Al got to the top of the chain-link fence running behind the concession stands and from there it was easy to lever himself up to the roof. His sneakers made barely a sound as he crept across the tar of the canted roof to the far side.

  The girl must have heard him coming, because she was already looking up when he peeked over the edge. Al felt a surge of satisfaction when he saw her blonde ponytail and long thick bangs.

  He felt something else when he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks from her pleading eyes, and her hands raised, palms together, as if praying to him. She wanted him to see nothing—she was begging Al to see nothing.

  For an instant he was tempted. The pleas in those frightened blue eyes reache
d deep inside and touched something there, disturbed a part of him so long unused he’d forgotten it belonged to him.

  And then he saw she had a little boy with her, maybe seven years old, dark-haired but with eyes as blue as hers. She was pleading for him as much as herself. Maybe more than herself. And with good reason. The vampires loved little kids. Al didn’t understand it. Kids were smaller, had less blood than adults. Maybe their blood was purer, sweeter. Someday, when he was undead himself, he’d know.

  But even with the kid there, Al might have done something stupid, might have called down to Stan and the boys that there was nothing here but some old tom cat who’d probably taken a swat at that ball and rolled it out. But when he saw that she was pregnant—very pregnant—he knew he had to turn her in.

  As much as the bloodsuckers loved kids, they went crazy for babies. Infants were the primo delicacy among the vampires. Al once had seen a couple up then fighting over a newborn.

  That had been a sight.

  He sighed and said, “Too bad, honey, but you’re packing too many points.” He turned and called down toward the boardwalk. “Bingo, guys. We struck it rich.”

  She screamed out a bunch of hysterical “No’s” and the little boy began to cry.

  Al shook his head regretfully. It wasn’t always a pleasant job, but a cowboy had to do what a cowboy had to do.

  And besides, all these brownie points were going to bring him that much closer to some stud time at the nearest cattle farm.

  Sister Carole checked the Pyrex bowl on the stove. A chalky layer of potassium chloride had formed in the bottom. She turned off the heat and immediately decanted off the boiling upper fluid, pouring it through a Mr. Coffee filter into a Pyrex brownie pan. She threw out the scum in the filter and put the pan of filtrate on the window sill to cool.

  She heard the sound of a car again and rushed to a window. It was the same car, with the same occupants—

  No, wait. There had been only four before. Two in front and two in back. Now there were three squeezed into the back and they seemed to be fighting. And did that third head in front, sitting with the red-haired cowboy in the passenger seat, belong to a child? Oh, my Lord, yes. A child! And in the back a woman, probably his mother. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the poor thing was pregnant!

  Sister Carole suddenly felt as if something were tearing apart within her chest. Was there no justice, was there no mercy anywhere? She dropped to her knees and began to pray for them, but in the back of her mind she wondered why she bothered. None of her prayers had been answered so far.

  Sacrilege, Carole! That’s SACRILEGE! Now tell me why you’d be thinking the Lord would answer the prayers of such a SINNER? God doesn’t answer the prayers of a SINNER!

  Maybe not, Carole thought. But if He’d answered somebody’s prayers somewhere along the line, maybe she wouldn’t have been forced to turn the Bennetts’s kitchen into an anarchist’s laboratory.

  The Lord helped those who helped themselves, didn’t He? Especially when they were doing the Lord’s work.

  Artie and Kenny had been fighting over the blonde since they’d all left Point. She’d put up a fight at first, but she’d been nothing but a blubbering basket case for the last few miles. By the time the Mercedes hit Lakewood, Artie and Kenny were ready to start swinging at each other.

  The blonde’s little boy—Joey, she called him—looked up with his baby blues from where he was sitting on Al’s lap and said, “Are they gonna hurt my mommy?”

  Stan must have overheard. He said, “They better not if they know what’s good for ’em.” He looked at Al and jerked his head toward the back seat. “Straighten them out, will ya?”

  Al turned in his seat and grabbed Artie since he was closest.

  “You ain’t gonna do shit to her, Artie!”

  Artie slammed his hand away. “Yeah? And what are we gonna do? Save her for you? Bullshit!”

  Artie could be a real asshole at times.

  “We’re not saving her for me,” Al said. “For Gregor. You remember Gregor, don’t you, Artie?”

  Some of Artie’s bluster faded. Gregor was the big-shot bloodsucker in charge of the Jersey Shore. One mean son of an undead bitch. You didn’t mess with Gregor. Al knew Artie was probably thinking of Gregor’s smile, how most times it looked painted on, how with all those sharp teeth of his he managed to look both happy and very, very hungry at the same time. Gregor was a big guy, with broad shoulders, dark hair, and a pale face. All the vampires looked pale. But that wasn’t what made Al’s skin crawl every time he got near one. It was something else, something you couldn’t see or smell, something you felt. But they had to meet with Gregor every night and tell him how things had gone while he was cutting his Z’s or whatever it was the bloodsuckers did when the sun was up. It was part of the job.

  “Course,” Artie said. “Course I know Gregor. But I don’t wanna suck her blood, man,” he said, jamming his hand down between the blonde’s legs. “I got other things in mind. It’s been a long time, man—a long time—and I gotta—”

  “What if you screw up the baby?” Al said. “What if she starts having the baby and it’s born dead? All because of you? What’re you gonna tell Gregor then, Artie? How you gonna explain that to him?”

  “Who says he has to know?”

  “You think he won’t find out?” Al said. “I tell you what, Artie. And you, too, Kenny. You guys want to get your jollies with this broad, fine. Go ahead. But if that’s what you’re gonna do, Stan and me are stopping the car here—right here—and walking away. Am I right, Stan?”

  Stan nodded. “Fuckin’ ay.”

  “And then you two clowns can explain any problems to Gregor yourselves tonight when we meet. Okay?”

  Artie pulled his hand away from the blonde and sat on it.

  “Jesus, Al. I’m hurtin’ bad.”

  “We’re all hurtin’, Artie. But some of us just ain’t ready yet to get killed for a little pregnant poontang, know what I mean?”

  Stan seemed to think that was real funny. He laughed the rest of the way down County Line Road.

  Sister Carole finished her prayers at sundown and went to check on the cooled filtrate. The bottom of the pan was layered with potassium chlorate crystals. Potent stuff. The Germans had used it in their grenades and land mines during the First World War.

  She got a clean Mr. Coffee filter and poured the contents of the pan through it, but this time she saved the residue in the filter and let the liquid go down the drain.

  Lookit after what you’re doing now, Carole! You’re a sick woman! SICK! You’ve got to be stopping this and praying to God for guidance! Pray, Carole! PRAY!

  Sister Carole ignored the voice and spread out the potassium chlorate crystals in the now-empty pan. She set the oven on LOW and placed the pan on the middle rack. She had to get all the moisture out of the potassium chlorate before it would be of any use to her.

  So much trouble, and so dangerous. If only her searches had yielded some dynamite, even a few sticks, everything would have been so much easier. She’d searched everywhere—hunting shops, gun stores, construction sites. She found lots of other useful items, but no dynamite. Only some blasting caps. She’d had no choice but to improvise.

  This was her third batch. She’d been lucky so far. She hoped she survived long enough to get a chance to use it.

  “You’ve outdone yourselves this time, boys.”

  Gregor stared at the four cowboys. Ordinarily he found it doubly difficult to be near them. Not simply because the crimson thirst made a perpetual test of being near a living font of hot, pulsing sustenance when he’d yet to feed, urging him to let loose and tear into their throats; but also because these four were so common, such low-lifes.

  Gregor was royalty. He’d come over from the Old Country with the Master and had helped conquer America’s East Coast. Now he was in charge of this region and was in line to expand his responsibilities. When he was moved up he would no longer be forced to deal directly with flotsa
m such as these. Living collaborators were a necessary evil, but that didn’t mean he had to like them.

  Tonight, however, he could almost say truly that he enjoyed their presence. He was ecstatic with the prizes they had brought with them.

  Gregor had shown up shortly after sundown at the customary meeting place outside St. Anthony’s church. Of course, it didn’t look much like a church now, what with all the crosses broken off. He’d found the scurvy quartet waiting for him as usual, but they had with them a small boy and—dare he believe his eyes—a pregnant woman.

  His knees had gone weak at the double throb of life within her.

  “I’m extremely proud of all of you.”

  “We thought you’d appreciate it,” said the one in the cowboy hat.

  What was his name? Stanley. That was it. Stan.

  Gregor felt his grin grow even wider.

  “Oh, I do. Not just for the succulence of the prizes you’ve delivered, but because you’ve vindicated my faith in you. I knew the minute I saw you that you’d make good cowboys.”

  An outright lie. He’d chosen them because he guessed they were low enough to betray their own kind, and he had been right. But it cost him nothing to heap the praise on them, and perhaps it would spur them to do as well next time. Maybe better. Although what could be better than this?

  “Anything for the cause,” Stan said.

  The redheaded one next to him—Al, Gregor remembered—gave his partner a poisonous look, as if he wanted to kick him for being such a boot-lick.

  “And your timing could not be better,” Gregor told them. “Why? Because the Master himself is coming for a visit.”

  Al’s mouth worked as if it had suddenly gone dry. “Dracula?”

  Gregor nodded. “Himself. And I will present this gravid cow to him as a gift. He will be enormously pleased. This will be good for me. And trust me, what is good for me will eventually prove to be good for you.”

  Partly true. The little boy would go to the local nest leader—he’d been pastor of St. Anthony’s during his life and he had a taste for young boys—and the pregnant female would indeed go to the Master. But the rest was a laugh. As soon as Gregor was moved out of here, he’d never give these four walking heaps of human garbage another thought. But he smiled as he turned away.