30 Days of Night: Light of Day (20 page)

Partially sated, he went back into the bedroom and turned off the porn. He left the light on and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about daylight and the Immortal Cell, trying to work out some last details while he waited for the guy’s hooker to show up.

In the morning, the police knocked on his door, as they had on every other door in the motel, asking questions about the dead pair upstairs. Larry let them in and answered their questions, showing them notebooks full of complex calculations they couldn’t begin to understand so they would think him an innocent, nerdy scientist. He feigned a cold, which they bought completely, remaining bundled in a blanket and holding a tissue over his nose and mouth, insisting that the curtains stay drawn. They didn’t stay long. When they had left, he got online to see if he had any new correspondence. As usual, there were a few emails from people he could
tell at once were phonies. A couple of them might have been from real vampires; at least, the writers seemed to understand the problems and frustrations of the night dwellers.

But one message, from someone tagged as Walkin_ Dude, struck Larry more than the rest. It was simple, straightforward, to the point. And it indicated that a group of vampires were interested in what he had to offer.

That was better than one vampire at a time. When he rolled this out, he wanted the biggest possible audience. This discovery would revolutionize the vampire world, and as a result the entire world. One vampire protected here or there from the sun was almost meaningless in the greater scheme of things—he needed to get it out to thousands. Millions, if there were that many.

Larry replied at once to Walkin_Dude.
I can help with the daylight situation. My method is new, still somewhat experimental, but will be perfected shortly. It needs to be administered face-to-face though—is that a problem?

Through the walls, he listened to the police for a few minutes, questioning other guests, milling around the parking lot. The prevailing assumption was that the killer had followed the prostitute in, or had known somehow that she was coming. Chances that it was someone staying in the motel were remote, detectives theorized, because who would be stupid enough to do that?

Soon his computer chimed, letting him know that a message had arrived. He rushed to look. It was from Walkin_Dude.
Not a problem. I don’t know where you are, but some neutral ground would be good. How about Chicago?

Chicago would be fine,
Larry wrote back.
I can be there in four nights.

Four nights would be pushing it, but he had made a breakthrough. He thought he could synthesize the new formula over the next day or two, and then spend the next couple nights traveling. He was nearly certain he had eliminated the problem he had come to think of as sun-rage. The vampire species should be able to get the benefit of the increased strength and ferocity that sunlight could give them, but without the accompanying total loss of mental control.

If he still needed to make alterations to the formula, he could do that during the days, when he couldn’t drive.

And when he got to Chicago, he would have test subjects ready and waiting.

All his efforts would soon pay off. And the things that science had not delivered to him as a human—appreciation, recognition, reward—would finally be his at last.

All he’d had to do to earn it was to die.

W
ANDA
C
ASE HAD BEEN
rude to Walker, last time he’d been to Cap’n Bligh’s Fish’n Fries. She had shafted him on onion rings, leaving the bag at least two short, a hollow shell of what it should have been. When Walker complained, she had made a fuss, sighing audibly and rolling her eyes at the people behind him in line, as if he hadn’t been standing right in front of her. The moment he left the counter, he heard her bitching to her co-workers.

Mitch thought he should have said something to the manager the next day. But Walker hadn’t. Instead he had let it simmer and stew, and now, four nights later, he was finally going to do something about it.

Wanda Case was going to get hers.

She worked swing shift, which was perfect. He knew her last name even though her nametag just said “Wanda,” because he had asked her once, hoping it was something he could turn into a suggestive joke. Something that would rhyme with “screw,” maybe. He hadn’t been able to do anything with Case, but he had remembered it. Looking her up on the internet was easy—if you knew the right sites you could find
ridiculous amounts of information about people, and he was able to find her address and phone number in a heartbeat. Then he searched for the restaurant, obtained its number, and called it. He asked for Wanda and was asked to wait a moment. The person answering shouted her name, hand held loosely over the receiver, so he took that as confirmation that she was working tonight and quickly hung up.

Walker and Mitch headed over to her place a little before ten. She lived fifteen minutes from the restaurant, so they had time to scope out the neighborhood. Wanda’s house was small, the yard surrounded by a chain-link fence that a half-decent wind could have blown over. There was a light on over the door, but the windows were dark. Walker cruised past, went around the corner, and parked under a willow that blocked the light from the street lamps.

An unpaved alley bisected the block. The homes had gates onto the alley, and garbage cans lined it for pickup in the morning. Walker and Mitch went up the alley until they reached Wanda’s place. Same pointless fence, three feet high. The backyard was in worse shape than the front; weeds had overpowered the grass and traffic had worn footpaths along the most traveled stretches, from the house to the garbage cans and there to the gate. A rusted swing set with only one swing stood on another bare patch, looking more like a historical relic than anything people still used. The lights on this side were dark, too.

The house didn’t have a garage. Walker and Mitch decided to hang in back until Wanda came home, wait for her to get inside, then knock on the door while she was still getting settled. Chances were that she would open the door immediately and they could go in and take care of business. They huddled in the yard, close to the corner so neighbors wouldn’t be likely to spot them. If there
were
neighbors. Except for the barking of a dog a couple of blocks away and the lingering smell of some late night smoker’s cigarette, the whole area might have been deserted, the site of some sort of holocaust.

Wanda shoved through her front door and dropped her purse on the table. Her uniform was stiff and grease spattered, and she needed a shower. She came home every night smelling like grease, her fingers burned half the time, her feet aching, and she was tired of it. But it was a job, and if it didn’t pay a lot, it was at least something. A lot of folks didn’t even have that.

“Momma?” she called into the quiet.

A door down the hall creaked and her mother emerged, wearing a threadbare robe and old yellow slippers. Her hair had gone gray and thin, her once rich brown skin ashen. She looked old in a way that she hadn’t, even five years before. “How was work?” she asked wearily.

“Fine,” Wanda said. Wanda’s father had been white, and her skin was lighter than her mother’s. Her hair
was straightened, dyed yellow. She was taller than her mother, and heavier, and she couldn’t quite imagine herself ever shrinking down and graying to that extent. But she was only twenty-three. Her mother had put off having children until she was in her midthirties, and Wanda had been the fourth and last. Those four kids, she thought, were the reason for her mother’s dramatic aging. Not a problem she ever wanted to have. “You know, it was work.”

Wanda was about to say something else when there was an insistent knock at the door. This late? Sometimes Suzette from next door came over after work with a bit of neighborhood gossip she couldn’t wait to share.

“I’m going back to bed,” Momma said.

“Goodnight, Momma.” Wanda went to get the door. She glanced through the peephole, sleepy and expecting Suzette, but it was some white man she didn’t know. She tensed and took another look, and then she knew who it was. Onion Ring Boy?! He had come to the restaurant off and on for months, and he always stared at her boobs and tried to act cool. What the fuck was this?

She yanked the door open. “What the hell you doin’ here?” she asked him. “Don’t you—”

And then she saw the razor.

“Shut up, Wanda,” Walker said, already pushing in against her, raising the blade toward her throat.

“Just shut up and get inside. We won’t take long, I promise.”

Wanda took a couple of steps back, a reflex action, but that was enough. Walker and Mitch drove forward, using her own momentum to propel her back. Her mouth was working but no sound came out, which was just fine. Once the door was closed, Walker hooked a leg behind hers and swept it forward, pushing her chest at the same time. Already scared, she went down on the floor. He followed, putting enough weight on her to keep her off balance while he raked the razor across her throat. She managed one strangled cry before he slammed his hand against her chin, pushing her head back.

And for the first time—it had been coming for a while but he hadn’t made the leap, not until he was here with Wanda, Wanda who he was angry with, Wanda who still smelled like the kitchen of Cap’n Bligh’s—he lowered his mouth to the gash he had made, where blood bubbled up like water from a natural spring, and he closed his mouth on it and he drank, right from the source.

Someone screamed.

“She saw you, man!” Mitch said.

Walker looked up from Wanda (blood spilling from his open mouth, coating his chin, spattering his shirt) and saw an old black woman in a tattered robe glaring at him, eyes wide, fists clasped in front of her chest.

“I’m calling the police!” she cried.

“Walker, you gotta do her, too!”

“Shut up, dude! No names!” The name didn’t matter, though; Mitch was right. She had witnessed him slicing Wanda open and feasting on her blood.

He had never killed an old lady, and he hadn’t planned to start. The point of the killing he had done was to become a vampire, and he had mostly killed women he found somewhat attractive, figuring there was something intimate about drinking their blood. With his mouth on Wanda’s neck, one arm pressed against her pillowy breasts, her body still warm and writhing in his grasp, he had been growing aroused.

But the old lady was backing toward an open doorway, and if there was a phone in there, then he and Mitch were only a 911 call away from serious trouble.

“What do we do, Mitch?” he asked/

“You know, Walker.”

“No, what? What? It’s an old lady.”

“So what?”

“I can’t do an old lady, man. I can’t.”

“Walker, she can ID us.”

“I don’t care!”

“You have to!”

“Why me? Why is it always me?” Walker cried.

“You have the razor, your prints are all over it, and you’re soaked in blood. What’s the difference between one and two?”

Walker heaved a sigh, extricated himself from
Wanda, and covered the space between them in three big steps. The lady had turned away, shuffling as fast as she could and spewing an obscenity-laden tirade at them as she did. Walker caught her bony shoulder in one hand and spun her around. He pressed her up against the wall, leaning into her with a forearm. She rained ineffectual blows down on him with her thin fists.

“I’m really sorry,” he mumbled.

She spat in his face.

He shifted his forearm so it was against her larynx, crushing it. He didn’t want to open her, to bleed her. That was special.

He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see the hate in hers, and he held her there until her hands fell to her sides and her feet stopped stamping and kicking, and then he held her a little longer just to be sure. When he looked again, her eyes were wide open, her face purplish, mouth sagging, bloody flecks at its sides. He let her flop to the floor, but he didn’t drink, not this time, not from her.

He did, it seemed, have his limits after all.

W
ALKER COULD BARELY SEE
to drive home, his eyes burning with grief and rage, his grip weak on the wheel. They made it somehow, parked the van inside the garage, and then he sat there for a couple of minutes before he had the strength to open his door and walk into the house.

“What have we done?” he asked Mitch when they were inside. “An old lady! That’s not what we talked about.”

“I know,” Mitch said. “But we didn’t have a choice, did we?”

Walker collapsed onto his old butt-sprung sofa and buried his face in his hands. He hated being like this in front of Mitch, whining like some kind of pussy, but he couldn’t make himself stop. It was as if all the murders had been building up inside him like stomach bile, and now they were spewing uncontrollably out of him.

The whole idea might have been stupid from the start. If vampires were looking for them, they didn’t know it. And they had covered their tracks well enough that he didn’t know how a vampire was actually supposed to find them. The cops were definitely
looking for them, though—the news was eating up their murders with a spoon, a rich, juicy story the likes of which usually involved Chicago politicians.

Mitch put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard. “It’s gonna be okay, man. We’ll meet that guy with the ‘Light of Day’ ad and he’ll turn us, and then we’ll leave this fucked-up life behind for good.”

Walker sniffed and swallowed, rubbed his eyes and looked over at Mitch. “But … what if he’s pissed off when he finds out we’re not really undead? What if he just decides to kill us instead of turning us?”

“One way or another,” Mitch said with a shrug.

“He’ll see we’re sincere, right? That we really want this?”

“Couldn’t say. I hope so. But who knows how a vampire’s mind works?”

“But … if we did all this for nothing … I don’t think I could live with that.”

“All we can do is try, Walker. Like I said, one way or another it’ll be settled when we meet the guy. If he kills us or turns us. Out is out, right? Done is done.”