The one thing that Peg did know was that she could no longer deal with this alone. Technically she wasn’t alone as long as Zoey was here, but Zoey was little help. Her speech was still fragmented and barely coherent. Peg needed someone else here, someone that could act as a sounding board for her thoughts and ideas, and most importantly someone who could deal with the fact that Peg still had her dead husband sitting on top of the vegetable crisper. Although she wasn’t too sure about that last part, Peg only knew one person who qualified for the others.
V arrived slightly earlier than she had originally intended since Peg had called her and asked her to hurry over. She hadn’t bothered to elaborate, hadn’t even allowed V to get a word in, and V came up to the front door and banged loudly, a noticeably frantic tone in her voice.
“Peg? Open the door.”
Peg didn’t move from her place on the couch at first. She didn’t have the slightest clue how she was supposed to do this. Somewhere in her mind she almost believed that if she ignored the door and just let V go away then maybe she could go back up to bed, crawl under the covers, and all of this would simply slip away into nothing. This morning would be a void. She wouldn’t have to go back to it, wouldn’t have to remember it, wouldn’t need to deal with the consequences.
More banging. “Peg, I know you’re in there. I don’t know what the hell is going on but I could tell from your voice on the phone that it isn’t good. So if you don’t open the door I will smash it in. You know I can do it.”
To Peg’s surprise Zoey got up first. She’d been sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room—Peg had begun to understand that, wherever she’d been all these years, it hadn’t been someplace with comfortable cushions and Zoey couldn’t sit on the couch or chair for longer than a minute—and she went to the door, hesitating only a moment before opening it. She flinched at the sunlight that came through and promptly backed away back into the living room. V stood there with her fist up and ready to bang on the door again. She blinked at the presence of someone other than Peg but the resemblance was close enough that V must have understood who she was right away.
“Uh, hello,” V said.
Zoey nodded but said nothing.
“You’re Zoey?”
Nothing.
“I’m V.”
A nod. V finally took that as her invitation to come in. Zoey kept her distance from V but followed her back in the living room and then took up her place in the corner again. V watched her for several seconds before she turned to Peg. Peg hadn’t bothered to look at herself in a mirror yet but she knew she had to look hideous. Whatever V saw on Peg’s face made her physically recoil before she joined Peg on the couch and put a protective arm around her shoulders.
“Dear God,” V said. “What’s happened?”
Peg opened her mouth to answer and instead burst out crying. V made soothing sounds and allowed Peg to collapse against her, falling with her head into V’s lap and curling up into a tight ball. She didn’t know how long she sat like this, but V didn’t make any attempt to push Peg away. Instead she just made “shhhh” noises and calmly brushed Peg’s hair away from her sopping wet face.
After a time Peg finally had her tears under enough control that she could sit back up and speak in something other than blubbering sobs. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Just start with whatever’s wrong,” V said. She nodded in Zoey’s direction, who had spent the entire time playing with her hands in her lap again. “Does it have something to do with her?”
Peg wanted to say You have no idea, but wasn’t sure she could speak like that without breaking down again. Instead she spoke carefully, aware that any word might set her off again. “You have to start by swearing you won’t call the police.”
“Fuck. That doesn’t sound good. What did you do?”
“It wasn’t me,” Peg said. She hesitated, making sure she actually believed with her whole heart what she was about to say. “It wasn’t her either.”
“It was my fault,” Zoey said softly.
V looked from one to the other, then squeezed Peg’s hand. “Just tell me.”
“Swear first. Just do it. Swear on your life and Norm’s life and mine and your higher power or whatever the fuck you hold sacred. Please.”
“Shit. Okay. I swear. Just tell me. What happened?”
Peg believed her, but that wasn’t going to make any of this easier. “Tony’s… he’s… in the kitchen.”
“Shouldn’t he be in here too, then? Comforting you about whatever this is?”
“No, I mean he’s… he’s…”
For several moments V still didn’t seem to understand. But Peg could see it as the realization came to her. Slowly, calmly, and with careful steps, V got up from her seat and went down the hall into the kitchen. Peg knew she should probably follow, maybe try to explain as V saw it, but she couldn’t make herself go in there again. She’d already been forced to look at the scene one more time for more clues as to the how or the why, and they had found a big one, but that was all she could take.
She listened carefully to every tiny sound that came from the kitchen. She had expected to hear a gasp, but given some of the stories V had told of her life she supposed V had seen bad things before. None as bad as this, perhaps, but enough that she had known to prepare herself before she walked into the kitchen. V’s footsteps stopped right at the kitchen entrance, then a few more as she walked somewhere else and paused again. After a very long time Peg heard the refrigerator door open, close again abruptly, then, after too many beats, open once more. Peg counted the time and got to twenty-five Mississippi before she heard the door close again. Several more moments of pause, and finally V came back into the living room.
V stopped at the doorway, giving Peg a clear look at her waxen face. She didn’t look ready to scream or breakdown, however. She had that same stony look she always did when she talked about all those moments of crisis in her past. Peg had grown to love and admire that look. She equated it with the idea of survival no matter what the odds. It was a feeling Peg felt she desperately needed right now.
V came up to Peg and took a knee in front of her, grasping both of Peg’s hands tightly in her own. “Okay Peg. Listen to me. Are you listening?”
Peg nodded.
“I’m here to help you,” V said. “I’ll support you in any and every way you need. But you have to tell me the truth. About everything, understand?”
Peg nodded again.
“Okay then. So you have to tell me. Did you do this?”
Peg shook her head. The tears wanted to come again but she held them back.
V looked briefly over at Zoey, who still hadn’t moved. “Did she do this?”
“My fault,” Zoey muttered. This got a glare from V, but Peg turned her head back so they were looking each other in the eye.
“No. She did not do this.”
“Do you know who did?”
“Minions and servants. A combination of things,” Zoey said. V gave her a confused look. Zoey kept her head down, not letting V see her mouth.
“I don’t,” Peg said. “I think… it was whatever took Zoey all those years ago. It’s back for her. There was a note.”
“A note?”
“It’s on the dining room table. I didn’t want to touch it any more than I had to. It has… there’s Tony’s blood all over it.”
V stood up and went to the dining room. When she came back she had the note, although she was using one of the cloth placemats from the dining room table to hold it. She was probably thinking that she didn’t want to mess up any fingerprints that might be on it, but that would require them to tell the police at some point. Peg was certain by now that such a thing would be an enormous mistake, both for her and the police.
Zoey had found the note in the fridge with Tony, written on a piece of the stationary that hung on the outside of the refrigerator for them to write notes about what to get from the store. It had been folded neatly twice
and then tucked into Tony’s hand. The scrawl on it, however, seemed to have been written by someone with a near-total lack of motor control. V turned it this way and that as she read it in order to make sense of the illegible loops and scratches.
“‘We I have boy Give us fruit or hurt he,’” V said. “What the fuck does that even…” She looked up from the note as she finally realized its implication. “Oh my God. Brendan. Where’s Brendan?”
“Gone,” Zoey said. “Gone away. All things go away, even if you don’t die.”
“He’s been taken,” Peg said. “That much I’m able to figure out.”
“Jesus H. Fucking Christ on shit-covered toast!” V said. “Peg, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to call the cops!”
“You promised,” Peg said.
“Yeah, I promised, but that was when I thought, I don’t know, that Tony was beating you and you’d taken a meat clever to his Johnsonville bratwurst!”
“Wait, what?” Peg asked.
“Your husband has been murdered and your son has been kidnapped. Now I don’t care how much I hate the pigs, in this situation I think, oh, maybe we should fucking call them!”
“We can’t,” Peg said.
“Why the flying fuck not?”
Peg hesitated, staring down at the floor.
“What?” V asked. “What is it? There’s still something you’re not telling me?”
Peg sighed. “Zoey? Show her.”
“I don’t want to,” Zoey said.
“You have to. Just like we talked about. It’s the only way she’ll believe.”
“Believe what?” V asked.
“She might try to kill me,” Zoey said softly.
“No she won’t,” Peg said, silently adding in her head, Only I’m the one who would apparently try that. “I trust her.”
“Peg, why do I have the feeling that I’m really not going to like this?” V asked.
“What’s to like?” Peg asked, then looked at Zoey. “Do it.”
Peg didn’t see Zoey move. One moment she was huddled in her corner, the next she was standing in front of V, only inches from her voice, and flashing her sharp pearly whites at the older woman. Then Zoey was back in her spot, but not before V did something Peg had never heard her do in the entire time they had known each other. V screamed.
“Fuck!” She nearly tripped over her own feet as she belatedly tried to back away from the girl that wasn’t even in front of her anymore. “Shit fuck! Holy… fuck fuck!”
“That was kind of my reaction too,” Peg said wearily. “Except with fewer fucks.”
“What is… I don’t… Holy shit,” V said. She stopped stumbling and took up a position on the far end of the room from Zoey. Surprisingly it didn’t take too long before V caught her breath. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all. If she could walk into a kitchen and not freak out over a head on the floor then maybe it would only take slightly longer to regain her composure in the face of a vampire. “Peg, tell me what the shit is going on here.”
“I still don’t really know,” Peg said. “All I’m sure of is that Zoey’s a vampire.”
“Horse shit,” V said. “There’s no such thing.”
“Apparently there is,” Peg said. She was amazed at just how easily it was for her to say that now. Just over half a day ago she still hadn’t been able to make herself even say the v word, yet now she was talking about it as though she were an expert. “You’re going to have to trust me on this one. You know I’m not the gullible type. I wouldn’t be saying this unless I had seen more than enough proof.”
V stepped away from her place and cautiously came closer to Zoey. Zoey didn’t look too comfortable with the attention. She shifted in her spot, turning away from V and scrunching up into an even tighter ball. V must have taken this as a hint and took a few steps back again.
“Okay, so maybe I’ll say I believe you for now,” V said. “Although I think I’ll probably have to have a little proof later, like I’ll need to see her turn into a bat or, I don’t know, sparkle or some shit.”
Zoey looked up with obvious confusion. “Why would I sparkle?”
“Nothing, honey,” Peg said. “You really don’t want to know.”
“So if she didn’t kill Tony, what did?” V asked. “Another vampire?”
“Eyes,” Zoey said.
“I don’t know,” Peg said. “Every time I ask I get the same string of word salad. Whatever it is, it has her scared shitless. Although given… uh, the mark… on Tony’s neck, I guess maybe it’s some kind of super vampire?”
“No,” Zoey said. “No no no. Worse.”
“Worse how?” V asked.
“Eating eating,” Zoey said. “All things eat. Everything is eaten by something. Plants eaten by animals. Animals eaten by people. Humans eaten by vampires. It doesn’t stop.”
V looked to Peg. “Is any of this making sense to you?”
Peg made the motion of her hand whooshing over her head. V shrugged and looked again at the note. “Well, whoever wrote this seems to have taken the same piss-poor teacher in coherent speaking. So I’m guessing that ‘We I have boy’ refers to Brendan. What about all this other gibberish?”
“From some of the other things Zoey has been saying I think she’s supposed to be the fruit.”
“Why is she fruit?”
“Hell if I know. But when you put that all together…” Peg trailed off. She knew V could figure it out for herself and she really couldn’t bring herself to admit the choice in front of Zoey. She just hoped V had the tact to not say it either.
Thankfully V took the hint and just nodded at Peg. “Right,” V said. She flipped the note over to look at the back, but there was nothing there. “Um, I think whoever did this made a serious mistake. If this fucker wants… the fruit in exchange for Brendan, then how would we even do that? There’re no instructions here for the trade off.”
“I don’t know,” Peg said. “I… guess I haven’t been thinking clear enough to wonder that far ahead yet.”
“Dark,” Zoey said. “Eyes are not fruit, but they remember being fruit. Fruit grows best in the darkness.”
“Kid, I don’t think you know very much about gardening,” V said.
Zoey acted like she didn’t hear. “Dark, abandoned. Near the water. Eyes are part of the body. The body is a combination. The combination has a home. Home is wet.”
“I give up,” V said to Peg.
“No, wait,” Peg said. “I think that makes sense.”
“If you think that makes sense then maybe you’re becoming a Fruit Loop, too.”
“But I didn’t tell you about my talk with my mother last night,” Peg said. She gave an abbreviated version, cutting out the worst of the mental abuse and every single thing that had come after. “Based on what she said and what Zoey said, I think the place she was kept was somewhere near Lake Winnebago. There’s old limestone caves around that whole area along the east side.”
“How the hell would you know that?” V asked.
“A field trip in elementary school. We went to some park around there, I don’t remember the name, but I thought it was all cool enough that I actually paid attention. For all the caves that have been found and are public knowledge there’s probably a whole bunch that no one knows about. I think Zoey said something about an old or abandoned building hiding it. Or at least that was the best I could interpret.”
“So you think whoever has Brendan would be hiding in some place similar?”
“I guess. That’s what Zoey seems to be implying, at least, and whether we understand her or not she would be the one to know best.”
“So what fits that profile?”
“I don’t know. Are there any empty houses along any of the lakes?”
“The way the housing market is? A whole bunch, I think,” V said. “There’s that building on Main Street just across and over from Kowabunga Comics, too. It’s been empty for awhile.”
“Hiding on Main Street? That doesn’t seem like
it would work.”
“Except behind it there’s nothing but that tiny parking area and then the lake. They could go in through a back door and not many people would see them, especially if this thing can move as fast as her.” She pointed in the corner, then did a double take. “Oh fuck me running.”
Zoey’s corner was empty. Peg looked to the front door to see it still in the process of swinging open. There might have been a blur just outside, but it was gone before she could be sure.
Chapter Thirteen
Peg knew that she had to be strong. She had to be tough. She had to be the closest she could possibly come to some action movie heroine. She just couldn’t do it, not right now. V thankfully took that role so Peg wouldn’t have to, allowing her the time for a much needed moment of pure breakdown.
It started as they were leaving the house. V had her truck here and said they would need to move quickly if they were going to find Zoey—and hopefully Brendan along with her—before something terrible happened. At those words Peg turned around and walked right back into the house. V called to her from outside, practically screaming in a way they probably shouldn’t if they didn’t want the neighbors any more alerted than they already might be, but Peg ignored her. Before something terrible happened. Of course, V had apparently forgotten in her take-charge mother-hen moment, something terrible had already happened, was still happening, would not stop happening any time soon. Tony was still in the refrigerator and his head was still on the floor. It wouldn’t occur to her until later how irrational it was, but Peg had a sudden and undeniable need. She calmly walked into the kitchen, found a hand towel under the sink, then went to Tony’s head and carefully wrapped it. She didn’t want anything to damage it more than it already was. She then opened the fridge, barely registering the thing inside as something she should have recognized as more than bloody meat, and put the head inside, carefully tucking it under an arm so it wouldn’t fall out again.
Blood Harvest (Book 1): Blood Fruit Page 10
