Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  Deirdre looked back at the smoking vamp on the concrete and then turned and studied the windshield wipers. “Holy water in the fluid reservoir?”

  I nodded. “Keep it in mind the next time we fill up at a full-service station. And by all that’s holy, don’t get any on you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’ve been waiting for you to invoke Lupé,” she said after we had driven some distance in silence.

  “Are we still having this conversation?”

  “Where is she? Is she even coming back?” Deirdre stared ahead as though she were searching the darkness. “I think not. Maybe it’s your inability to surrender to your own passions that drove her away.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said quietly.

  “Then please explain it to me! You can’t use Lupé as an excuse—she understands the Rules of the Pack and the Coven. She would understand that you are my Sire and that you have obligations—”

  “It would still hurt her.”

  “But she would accept it.”

  I silently counted off thirty-seven white divider stripes before she spoke again.

  “And that’s if she comes back.” Deirdre cleared her throat. “And if she doesn’t—”

  “You’re right, I’m using Lupé as an excuse. It would hurt me.”

  “I guess that really isn’t a surprise.” She tapped her fingers against the window glass. “Though I expected you to draw out some argument based on the power differential in our relationship—that, as my Master, such a coupling would exploit me. Or corrupt your sense of honor.”

  I didn’t answer; I was too busy checking the rearview mirror.

  “But I think it’s more fundamental than that for you.”

  “We’re being followed,” I said, pressing down on the accelerator. “Unzip the pouch. Use the second magazine, it’s loaded with ball ammo.”

  “Ball ammo?”

  “Jacketed. I don’t want to waste silver on a vehicle.”

  She picked up the pouch and opened it. “So is it simply a religious hang-up for you? Do you still fantasize that there is a God? That He would disapprove?”

  She removed the Glock and checked the magazine while I strangled a bitter laugh. “Things have been done to me,” I said, “that are changing me into an inhuman killing machine. Do you think I wring my hands and worry that God is concerned with my bedroom conduct when I’m starting to see human beings as slabs of meat? A smorgasbord of tasty treats who merely exist to give me momentary pleasure?”

  The headlights in the rearview mirror drew quickly closer: our tail was accelerating.

  “Then it’s not a religious thing?”

  “Depends on your definition of religion. Are you buckled up?”

  She nodded but then loosened her belt strap, presumably to allow her to move and aim, if necessary. The human Deirdre I had met in Seattle would have been clueless if handed a firearm a year ago. Damien’s murder had motivated her with a vengeance: she’d told me that she practically lived on Pagelovitch’s shooting range after her “rebirth.”

  “Can you tell if it’s a black Suburban?”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “And what do you mean by ‘definition of religion’?”

  I hunched over the wheel, trying to ease the tension in my back while gauging possible exit points—paved or otherwise. “Seems like everywhere you turn, there are laws. The laws of the Coven. The laws of the Demesne. The laws of the state of Louisiana. Me? I believe in the laws of physics.”

  She snorted. “Physics is your religion?”

  “Why not?” I gestured toward the distant glow of the BioWeb complex. “Up there is one of its temples, where the pure laws of science are worshipped by acolytes in lab coats, meditating before the CRTs, invoking the rituals of mathematics and measurements. There are commandments and codicils from the subatomic level all the way up to the macrobiotic sphere. Laws of the seen and the unseen. Laws of the quantifiable and the unknown—sometimes silent and secret, but no less real while they await discovery.”

  “ ‘All kingdoms have a law given: and there are many kingdoms’,” Deirdre murmured, “ ‘for there is no space in which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space . . ’.”

  I nodded, easing back into my seat and stretching my arms against the steering wheel. “Poetic, but as apt a description of quantum mechanics as one is likely to squeeze into a single sentence.”

  “The Doctrine and Covenants by Joe Smith, 1832.” She smiled at my expression. “What? You’d forgotten that I read, too? That Damien and I met in a library? Do you think you’re the only one who has searched the various theologies for a loophole? An escape clause? A chance to recover our souls, our humanity, before the long darkness closes over us?” Her smile faded. “Well, let me save you a little homework: we inhabit a different kingdom, now. A very different kingdom and we are ruled by a very different law.”

  “You use the words ‘laws’ and ‘rules’ interchangeably—like they’re the same thing,” I said. “I think of rules as something people think up to keep other people in line: the rules of the Pack, of the Coven, of the Demesne. If I’m rebellious and clever enough, I can break those rules and get away with it.” I shook my head. “Laws, on the other hand, are immutable facts of existence. Doesn’t matter whether you agree with the law of gravity or not: one way or another, it will be obeyed.”

  “Chevy Nova,” Deirdre interjected. “Green.”

  “Not a black Suburban,” I mused. “Still could be Pagelovitch’s crew.”

  “So. You’re differentiating between the ‘rules’ of behavior and the ‘laws’ of existence?”

  “Or the ‘rules’ of religion as opposed to the laws of God.”

  “So you do believe in God?”

  I hesitated. “I believe in the universe. And I believe its nature is evidenced by how it is governed by law.”

  “Can you be any more obscure?”

  “Obtuse,” I said. “I think the word you’re looking for is obtuse. And hold on tight!”

  “The word I’m looking for is ‘hold on tight’?”

  I wrenched the wheel while my feet danced over the floor pedals: our car spun one-hundred-eighty degrees and I floored the gas pedal immediately.

  “Take sustenance . . .” I began.

  “This whole conversation started because you wouldn’t take it when it was offered,” she said as the screaming tires found traction and we leapt toward our pursuers.

  “Our choices on the menu may vary, our appetites may wax or wane,” I continued, “but the one immutable law of food is that, without it, we die.”

  The driver of the Chevy Nova decided I was sufficiently serious—or unstable—and steered his vehicle into a ditch, effectively ending our game of chicken with twenty yards to spare.

  “We may vary in caloric intake,” I added as we passed our would-be tailgaters, “volume consumed, tastes preferred, but we will waste away and die without some form of physical fuel for our physical bodies.”

  She nodded. “Okay, bologna or blood—I’ll buy that humans and vampires must obey a fundamental law of biology.” She looked back through the rear window. “I think they’re stuck.”

  I nodded. “Even though they don’t want to be, I’ll bet. That’s the problem of factual conditions versus wishful thinking. Which underscores my point, here. As a theology, the tenets of physics are consistent; the laws of thermodynamics and gravity hold us all accountable before the bar.”

  She laid the Glock on the bench seat between us. “Physics is one thing but behavioral needs are quite another. As individuals, raised in different cultures and environments, we have different needs.” She pulled down the passenger sun visor.

  “Do we?” I turned down a dirt road that would bring us back around to BioWeb by a more circuitous route. “Are your so-called ‘behavioral needs’ really necessities or just issues of preference? Food is food and our inability to live without it is not the s
ame thing as whether you prefer meatloaf to crepes suzette.”

  “Actually, I prefer Meatloaf to Mozart.” She opened her handbag, peered inside, then reached up and switched on the Merc’s dome light.

  “Music or food, you make my point about preference. Desire is not the same thing as true need.”

  She looked up and then out the side window at the darkness that paced us with every passing fence post. “How do you measure either?”

  “Desire?” I considered briefly. “I think we each define our own. But our needs truly define us.”

  “You’re playing at words.”

  “Am I? Desire unfulfilled may make us strong. It may make us weak. But if we perish from its lack then it was not a preference but truly a need.”

  “How can you know the difference before it is too late?”

  I shrugged. “Most people don’t know the difference between love and lust.”

  “Oooo, listen to you! And I thought I was the jaded soul.”

  “Assuming you still have one,” I observed dryly.

  “Testy.” She went back to rummaging through her purse.

  “Yeah? Well, the subject of the soul is . . . subjective. And I think I’ve lost my perspective this past year.”

  “Or maybe gained it for the first time,” she suggested. “Your problem is you’re trying to measure and define the unseeable.”

  “For now we see through a glass darkly . . .” I murmured. “If the invisible actually exists, then it is quantifiable. Physics shows us that anything can be measured if it acts or is acted upon—even the unseeable aspects of existence. Gravity, electricity—”

  “I’ve seen electricity.” She pulled out a lipstick case and opened it. “And gravity isn’t hard to miss.” She flipped down her visor and studied her lack of reflection in Lupé’s clipped-on vanity mirror. “Damn! I keep forgetting!”

  I suppressed a grin. “You don’t see yourself in the mirror—how do you know that you exist?” I elaborated: “You’ve seen the effects of electricity, you haven’t actually seen the flow of electrons being passed from one atomic orbit to the next.”

  She evidently saw something else: She grabbed the Glock and, as she tilted the visor back toward the ceiling, I saw the flash of headlights in the looking glass.

  “Chevy Nova?”

  She nodded. “Looks as if they weren’t that stuck, after all.”

  In retrospect the dirt road was a mistake: the dust trail had led them right to my rear bumper. Which they accelerated and bumped as Deirdre rolled down the passenger window. “I was wrong!” she called over the increasing noise from the wind and the two engines.

  “About what?”

  “About our date turning out to be a boring waste of a good evening!”

  The car behind us dropped back and then accelerated to smack into our rear bumper again.

  “You really know how to show a girl a good time!”

  “Glad you’re enjoying it!” I started to weave back and forth across the road: two tire tracks connected by packed earth and a handful of gravel didn’t give me much leeway for evasive maneuvers. “Maybe you’d like to explain the rear end damage to my insurance agent!”

  “Stop weaving, I can’t get a shot!”

  “It’s a car, for Crissake! It’s only five feet away! How hard can it be?”

  Her head and one shoulder were out the window, now, and her hair streamed backwards, cloaking her face as she aimed the gun at our bumper car assailants. Nothing happened. The Nova banged into us again. Then a fourth time.

  Deirdre pulled her head and arm back into the car.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Gun jammed?”

  “What’s the problem?” She rolled the window back up and glared at me. “How about your chopped roofline makes the passenger window too narrow for me to fit through! I’m right-handed! I can’t hit squat shooting left-handed from a moving car weaving all over a dirt road at high speed!” She turned around and knelt on the seat, bracing the gun in her right hand on the cushioned back support.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Aiming for their headlights.”

  “Through my rear window? Forget it!”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I said tightly, “the glass in this car is irreplaceable.”

  “And we’re not?”

  The Nova thudded into the rear bumper with enough force to jolt me against the steering wheel. Deirdre tumbled back against the dashboard.

  “What about your rear end?” she asked, trying to extract her rear end from the foot well. “Isn’t that irreplaceable?”

  “Sheet metal is easier to rework than vintage auto glass,” I sniffed.

  She bared her teeth at me. “You need a moon roof.”

  I nodded. “Thought about it once. Too bad I didn’t—hey!”

  Deirdre fired off four shots into the night sky. Or rather, through the ceiling of my car, into the night sky. While I was still reeling from the noise and the smell of gunpowder she punched her fist through the roof and used her preternatural strength to peel back the metal and fabric like the lid of an old sardine can. “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” she groused. “I’ll pay to have the job finished properly at the body shop of your choice—if we survive.” She stood up and pushed her head and shoulders through the top of the car. The Glock barked twice more and the headlights in my rearview were suddenly dark.

  The sound of our pursuer’s engine receded as Deirdre squirmed back down into the car. She pulled the flap of metal back into a semblance of closure and ripped away the dangling swatch of ceiling fabric before she refastened her seat belt. “Now, where were we?” she asked as she laid the handgun back down and began to paw through her purse, again.

  “Well. Um. You were saying that I needed a moon roof—”

  “No.” She produced a hairbrush and waved it at me. “Before. About seeing the unseen.”

  “Ah.” I considered as she began working the tangles out of her auburn tresses. “I was just pointing out that we measure a myriad of unseen forces—physical, biological, emotional—all by way of their effects.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  I looked in the rearview mirror but could see nothing. Now I needed a process for measuring the unseen. “We can, um, do that because we recognize a pattern of adherence to law. Consistency. Objects fall in obedience to the law of gravity. Not only fall, but must obey the same laws of velocity regardless of weight.”

  “Heavier-than-air craft fly in defiance of that law,” she countered, working on a stubborn snarl behind her head. Her breasts rose in response as though seeking to demonstrate the Bernoulli principle in my defense.

  “Gravity does not cease to exist, it remains immutable,” I argued. The dirt road swung sharply to the right up ahead. “But airplanes and jets and even birds and bats and bugs rise in obedience to other immutable laws, laws of lift and velocity and aerodynamics. The courtroom of the airfoil administers ‘higher’ laws—if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  “I’ll pardon the pun if you’ll make your point.” Her voice shaded toward irritation. “And why is the rear window suddenly red?”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. The glass of the rear windscreen was aglow with blossoms of crimson, each bloom encompassing a bright red dot. The blooms moved like flowers stirred by a gentle breeze. As they migrated over to the passenger side of the window I reached over and shoved Deirdre’s head down. “Designators!” I said.

  “Desi-what?” Her head popped back up.

  “Laser-sights!” I shoved her head back down.

  “Laser—?” There was the sound of a small thunderclap and a round hole suddenly appeared in the windshield on Deirdre’s side, radiating a nimbus of fine cracks.

  “What was that?”

  “Ah shit!” I said, glancing back and noting a matching hole—about the diameter of a pencil, ringed with a spider’s web of cracks—in the rear window. The trade-in value of my
car was definitely plummeting. “Nine millimeter.”

  “What?”

  “A .22 short or a .45 ACP travel just under the speed of sound,” I explained. “We probably wouldn’t have heard it over the noise of the engine. A nine mil approaches mach one-point-five: that sound you just heard was a miniature sonic boom.”

  “They’re shooting at us?” she asked with more than a touch of indignation.

  “Actually,” I said, wrenching the wheel into the turn, “they seem to be shooting at you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Well, you did start it.”

  “You’re the one who gave me the gun. Told me which ammo to use.”

  “Don’t get upset.”

  “Don’t get upset? They’re shooting at me! How come they’re not shooting at you?”

  “Would you rather they shot at me?”

  “No. I just want to know why.”

  “We could stop and ask them,” I said reasonably.

  She unbuckled her shoulder-harness. “Maybe I’ll just shoot you myself,” she said, falling across my lap and slapping the knob on the dash that controlled the headlights. Suddenly we were barreling along at sixty miles an hour in the dark.

  “Hey!” I said, tapping the brakes. “What’s the idea?”

  “They have no headlights,” she said, seemingly addressing my leg, “and we can see better in the dark than they can. As long as our lights are on, we make the better target and give them something to follow.”

  I felt the tires leave the hard-packed dirt ruts and tapped the brakes again as we slipped onto the grass. “Keep your foot off the brake,” she demanded of my inner thigh.

  “I can’t see the bloody road!”

  “Well, they can see our brake lights so just coast until your night vision kicks in!”

  “I’m still half human, Deirdre; my infravision only registers major temperature differentials, not dirt roads after sundown!”