by Chuck Wendig
The rat-man—Fingerman—crouched in the corner. Whimpering. Hiding.
Leave him be, Kayla said.
This time, mercy came easy. If only because Coburn wasn’t hungry.
Still. The rat-man could be useful.
The vampire grabbed the ketamine addict by his greasy locks, hoisted him high. “The woman. Tell me where she is, you can keep your face.”
“The Doc.”
“Yes. The Doc.”
“She can hook you up,” Fingerman said, eyeballs roving, corneas shaking. He was high right now, wasn’t he? Jesus. “Whatever you need, man. Vet drugs. Hospital drugs. Whatever. Oxy, vics, morphine, horse tranqs—”
Coburn shook him so hard the man’s teeth clacked together.
“I just want her. Where is she?”
Fingerman pointed toward the ground. “Basement, man. Tunnels.”
Tunnels?
The vampire tightened his grip around the oily horsetail of hair, demanded to know where the basement was. The rat-man pointed the way: “Around the—ow—around the corner.” Coburn grunted, which was the closest thing the freak was going to get in terms of gratitude—that and Coburn didn’t break a bottle of rancid zombie blood over his head, too. That had to count for something.
Coburn found the basement door. Tried the knob—wouldn’t open. Locked, probably. Like that could stop him now. He raised his leg, brought the heel of his boot down on the door-knob, knocking it to the ground.
Then he kicked the door open.
Darkness awaited.
But that was all right. Coburn liked the dark.
Grinning, the vampire descended.
THIS WAS THE wrong damn house to walk into, Gil thought. As the undead pawed at the door and boarded-up windows outside, Gil stared at the inside with disgust.
The style was cold, modernist—everything in whites, blacks, grays, with only the occasional splash of bright red (mantle, painting, broken vase, toaster). All hard angles. Nothing soft. Tile and glass and steel.
It echoed how Gil felt about, well, everything right now. Hell, he wanted to commit suicide just being here and having to look at the place.
Strange thing was, it was clean. Dusty, sure. But most houses they’d seen looked like bombs went off. Overturned furniture and dead cats and busted pipes bringing ceilings down to meet the floor. Not this place.
But one thing was troubling: the smell.
It smelled like a rotter’s armpit. Wet. Fetid. Above all else: dead.
And yet, no signs of—
Creampuff growled at the steps leading to the second floor.
Gil swallowed. Stepped past the terrier, sliding a bolt into the crossbow and cocking it. The stairs up were steel steps like you’d find on a tractor trailer, suspended from the ceiling by thick dark cables.
No way to go up quietly. Every step a metallic gong.
The stairs shook as he ascended.
The smell? Stronger up here.
He steadied himself on the railing—another cable, this one strung horizontally—and saw Creampuff hop up onto a white leather couch and stare up at Gil with trepidation.
Gil turned, headed down the hallway.
All the while, the roadkill stink growing gnarlier until Gil’s eyes were watering and his stomach—which didn’t have much more than a few stale Entemann’s crumb cakes bobbing around the lake of digestive fluids—churned like a bucket of bad milk in a clumsy man’s hand.
At the end of the hall, Gil saw a door cracked open.
He gently tapped it with a foot. It opened with a squeak.
And there he found the source of the stench.
Rotters. Three of them.
Two of them on the bed. Supine. Bound there with an inelegant tangle of nylon rope, extension cords, and twine. One was a man: dark fraying turtleneck, head a mop of Andy Warhol hair, pair of dark frame glasses literally stapled to his mottled face. The other, a woman. Gray blouse with sharp collars. Pair of flowy black pants. No shoes. Toes worn away, leaving only twitching nubs of blackened bone. The two of them hissed and writhed against their bonds.
The third rotter was a child. A young boy of eight or nine with a bowl-cut of black hair and a windbreaker whose fabric went vip vip vip every time he moved. One eye dangled out of his head, resting on his swollen chipmunk cheek. The rest of the boy looked relatively well-preserved, for one of the undead.
He, too, was bound up, to a wire-frame office chair. Wheels locked so that it couldn’t roll around.
It was someone’s family.
The man—the father—gurgled. Dead lipless flesh rubbing together. Gil saw a patch of the man’s shoulder that had been worn away: the turtleneck gnawed open and the flesh, too. As if on cue, the woman tilted her head toward the father and craned her neck until she could get her chompers around his exposed flesh. She took a few graceless bites and then pulled away again, seemingly dissatisfied by the taste—or, Gil wondered, the lack of nutrition, given that rotters didn’t seem to eat one another with any regularity.
The whole scene stirred within him a turbid shit-storm of emotions: it was perplexing (who did this), it was grotesque (couldn’t do this to my own family), it was sweet (someone cared enough).
Whatever the case, Gil thought, these people needed to be put to rest. He raised the crossbow. Looked out over the bow sights—a little pink plastic ‘V’ at the tip of the weapon—and let his finger curl around the trigger.
Something jabbed into the small of his back.
His world lit up. Like it was on fire. A loud fly-wing buzz.
His finger squeezed.
The smell of ozone. And burning. And death.
Gil dropped. The crossbow clattered.
Somewhere, Creampuff barked.
And then a plastic bag pulled tight over his head. As Gil sucked in a hard breath he found plastic in his mouth, around his lips, shutting off his air with a vacuum seal made by his own desperate gasps. His tongue played against it as his body twitched and a sad scream rose up within his throat.
Darkness reached up to claim him.
COBURN WALKED DOWN into darkness.
As he approached the basement, he smelled mold, and a breathy sewage gust. Voices rose up from the shadows, a half-conversation interrupted—
Masterson: “—take me with you, I can help—”
Lydia: “Get away from me. Go deal with the vampire.”
Masterson: “Forget him. Forget the others. I’m alive. You’re dead. We need each other. I worship you. I—”
Lydia: “It’s not me you should be wor—” Pause. “Did you hear that?”
A moment later, she whispered: “He’s here.”
Oops. Oh, well.
Coburn whistled low and slow to further announce his presence.
“I’m feeling much better now,” he called into the dark basement. His eyes adjusted as he reached the bottom of the steps. The basement was just a repository for junk: boxes, debris, a gun rack, a cabinet. And, by the look of it, their bathroom: various fly-clouded buckets sat against the far wall. Reeking.
But what was most interesting was the hole dug out of the wall and floor. Drywall gave way to exposed brick and broken piping. Leading down into whatever tunnels the rat-man had been referring to.
And there, at the mouth of the shattered wall, stood Lydia and Masterson.
“Hey, guys,” Coburn said with a low, throaty chuckle. “Geez, I didn’t know you came here. The buckets of shit in the corner are to die for. You crazy kids want to get a booth or a table?”
Lydia looked to Masterson. Her gaze locked with his and Coburn could see that the self-proclaimed Minister could not escape. He tried, but couldn’t. Something transferred between them—which meant the vampire was dropping her hypno-hoodoo on him. Coburn had no interest in seeing that play out. As Lydia handed something to her cohort, Coburn moved fast.
In his head, Kayla called to him in alarm: You’re not thinking straight. Again.
He ignored her. Again.
With a sweep of his arms he tossed the Minister aside; the man clattered into a heap of moldy cardboard boxes. Lydia wrenched a brick from its mooring with a sharp crack and brought it against Coburn’s head.
He didn’t even feel it.
Coburn roared, grabbed her face like it was a bowling ball: thumb in her mouth, two fingers in her eyes, squeezing in order to pop the face off her skull. Her eyes started to give way. Pop like swollen grapes.
Then she bit down.
Her teeth cut clean through Coburn’s thumb. Through skin, through bone. With the drugs storming through his system, it didn’t hurt too much. He even laughed as she spit the thumb out into the tunnel behind her. Her eyes swollen, rimmed with blood, the whites shot through with black.
“Nice job!” he said, giving her a thumbs-up with the hand that had no thumb. Blood wept from the wound.
She kicked him in the stomach. An ungainly, inept kick—nobody had taught her how to fight. Coburn taught himself long ago by getting in fights with any gang thug, robber, rapist, or killer he could find. Humans fought and got hurt just by fighting—too strong a punch meant a broken hand, too high a kick meant your balance was out of whack, and only idiots and assholes went for the headbutt. Headbutt someone, your eyes watered, your head rang like a bell, and dizziness would be your primary reward.
Coburn didn’t worry about any of that. His tear ducts were dry as peach pits. His head was as hard as a grave slab.
So he smashed his head into Lydia’s face.
Once. Then twice. Then a third time for good measure.
She’s a vampire, Kayla reminded him. Just like you.
Oh, right. Crap.
Just the same—her nose was shattered and she staggered back into the darkness of the tunnel. Coburn clapped his hands. This was fun. She was green, this one. Young and awkward like a newborn foal. She picked up a brick. Hissed for Masterson. Chucked the brick at Coburn’s head—
He leaned left, let the brick sail over.
“Someone really needs to teach you how to fight,” he said.
Lydia, nose smashed, eyes bugging out all bloody, shrugged.
“Somebody needs to teach you to pay attention,” she said.
He heard the scuff of a shoe behind him.
Lydia sprang into the tunnel like a fucking puma, her lithe shadow meeting the deeper shadows within—
Masterson tackled Coburn. Slamming the vampire into the side of the tunnel. As Coburn fell to the ground, Masterson clambered atop his chest. Weeping. Snot-bubbles boiling up out of his nose.
“I used to be somebody,” Masterson said. Voice hoarse.
He was holding a grenade. The pin was not at home.
Coburn winced. Shit.
Boom, Kayla said, a half-second before the grenade went off.
And the world turned to noise and debris and pain.
PART TWO
ORPHANS
The Conversation: #2
Will I live with him now?
Beats me. Like I know how this works. We’re in new territory here, little girl.
Or maybe I’ll just die. Maybe I won’t exist anymore.
Could be, rabbit. Could be. But I hope not. I really hope not.
Maybe I’ll change him like I changed you.
Who said you changed me?
You’re so funny sometimes.
Yeah. A real laugh riot.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I Believe That Children Are Our Future
GASP.
Oxygen.
Breath screaming through his throat and filling his lungs—felt cool and hot and good and painful, all in equal measure.
Gil lurched upright. Bag still on his head. But someone had vented a hole where his mouth was, and with every breath the plastic whispered and crinkled.
He reached up, panicked, pawing at the bag. He ripped it off and threw it to the ground like it was a bundle of cottonmouth snakes.
Gil found his own crossbow pointed at his head.
And a dirt-caked child was the one pointing it.
“Get up, dickweed,” the boy said. Grungy blond hair covering one eye—a jet of air from pursed lips blew the hair to the side. “I said, get the fuck up, bitch.”
Gil scrambled backward like a crab.
Something hit him from behind—something heavy, wooden. Cracked him over the head—not hard enough to make him bleed, but hard enough to sting. He turned, saw another kid standing there holding a busted chair leg. It was a girl—hair an unwashed tangle, face streaked with fingers of what looked like ash.
Other children filtered into the room upon hearing the commotion. Another six of them. No teenagers, though a few that looked eleven or twelve, including the boy holding the crossbow aloft. Youngest seemed to be a boy of four or so—a porky mole-cheeked dumpling with hair stuck up and clumped with red as if it had been shellacked with strawberry jam. Gil realized with horror that it probably wasn’t strawberry.
His horror deepened when he realized all these kids had weapons. The girl with the chair leg. A pre-teen with bones woven into her pigtails held a folded license plate whose edge was plainly sharpened. A third held a .22 pistol. A fourth had a pair of ice picks, one in each hand. Even the fat little four-year-old dragged an oiled bike chain behind him.
Outside, thunder rumbled. Distant. But closing in.
“You tried to kill my father,” Crossbow Kid said.
Gil stammered, cleared his throat. Saw a pair of feet hanging over the edge of the bed—Mother and Father, respectively, both pairs of feet gently twitching and wiggling with the crude facsimile of life. Nearby, the third rotter—the kid with the bowl-cut and cherub-cheeks—spun idly in the office chair.
He stood, saw the crossbow bolt he’d loosed earlier sticking out of the flesh around the father-zombie’s collarbone.
“That’s your father,” Gil said, horrified.
“What of it, dick?”
“Watch your language, kid.”
“My name’s not kid, dick. It’s Aiden.”
Gil’s forehead furrowed. “My name’s not Dick, Aiden. It’s Gil.”
“Whatever. You tried to kill my father.”
“Yeah,” Gil said. “Except I think he’s already dead.”
That made Aiden angry. He surged forward with the crossbow, which was a mistake—Gil snatched it out of the kid’s hand as a bolt flew free and popped into the wall behind him with a thunk.
Gil quickly backed against the wall, struggling to find another bolt—but Aiden kicked forward a leather belt covered in loops once meant for bullets but now used to house crossbow arrows.
“You looking for these?” Aiden asked.
The scrawny tween boy pointed the .22 pistol—a long-barrel Browning target weapon—at Gil’s chest in an unswerving grip. All he said was: “Dude.” Then shook his head disapprovingly, like a parent disappointed in his child.
Gil held up the crossbow, gently set it down on the floor.
“Let’s try this again,” he said, “my name is Gil. I’m a survivor. Just like you. Now if we can all just put down our weapons and—”
The .22 went off. A sharp snap—the wall coughed up bits of drywall into Gil’s cheek and he danced away from it.
Another disapproving shake of the head from Scrawny. “Dude.”
Aiden clarified: “He means, I talk. You shut the fuck up. Say one more word, he’ll have a bullet rattling around in your head like a marble in a fishbowl. Nod if you understand the words coming out of my mouth.”
Every inch of Gil wanted to reach out and snatch up the weapons from these kids and scold the king hell out of ’em. He remembered one time Kayla, thinking someone was breaking in, took a .22 rifle off the gun rack in his bedroom and accidentally shot a hole in the ceiling. Went up through the attic, punched a hole in a junction box, almost started a fire in the insulation. That was when he taught her about gun safety—she never much liked it, but she needed it. The chief lesson he drummed into her head, time and time again: you never
point a gun at another human being unless you mean to kill him.
Still. This was not the time. So Gil just nodded.
“Like I said: my name’s Aiden. The skinny sum-bitch with the Browning Buck Mark Plus aimed at your ball-sack is Pete. Girl who hit you with the chair-leg, that’s Ashleigh. Pigtails over there, that’s the Princess.” The girl waved, smiling big, her bone-woven pigtails bouncing. Aiden gave her a mean look and she stopped waving. Aiden pointed to the boy with the ice-picks. “That’s Booboo.” Then to a girl with a cleft lip and a sling-shot. “That’s Little Mary. Big Mary’s not here. That’s right. There’s more of us. A lot more.”
Gil almost spoke, then bit his tongue. He gestured toward the little plump four-year-old.
Aiden narrowed his gaze. “Don’t you worry about who he is, old man.”
All the children stood around, staring burning holes through Gil. Everyone except the one called the Princess, who stood there smacking her lips and looking blissfully ignorant of the horror in the room before her. Reminded Gil a little of Kayla that way. His heart went sour just thinking about it.
“Your dog’s dead,” Aiden said.
Gil felt like the oxygen had once more been removed from the room. Like a bag was again over his head and he was struggling to breathe. Once upon a time he hated that vampire’s little hellhound, but things had changed. Creampuff was like a board floating in the ocean, to which Gil clinged. And now? Gone?
Aiden continued: “He bit me, so we had to break his neck. Same goes for you if you try anything—”
From downstairs, a bark. A very familiar bark.
Gil felt like he could breathe again.
Aiden’s face grew red and he screamed downstairs: “Goddamnit, Charlie! I told you to keep that fucking mutt quiet!” He turned back to Gil. “Fine. I was lying. Whatever. Screw you. Not my fault you—“
