Double Dead (20 page)

The dirt bike idled nearby, the teen that Coburn had christened ‘Ginger’ sitting on top of it, the moonlight above highlighting the confused look on his face.

“They were supposed to be here,” the vampire growled, pacing the side of the highway in his bare feet. They’d driven up the highway by a half-mile, not seen anything, then kept going. Kept going for another two miles, and still, nothing. Coburn could smell the exhaust, though, from the RV. And it didn’t stop here. Didn’t stop anywhere. It just kept on going.

He tried to excuse it.
They must’ve been attacked by zombies
. But that didn’t make a lick of sense. Weren’t any rotters out here. Saw a few on the way here, but those were dragging their putrescent asses toward the Wal-Mart.

Which meant only one thing: the herd had abandoned the shepherd.

“I’ve been through some shit over the last several nights,” he said, lips in a twisted sneer, fangs out. “Woke up. Ate a deer. Found myself in the zombie apocalypse. Fell off a building. Got chewed up by some zombie bitch in an ugly bathrobe. Got shot by an old man and then taken in by his sickly daughter. Got chewed up
again
by the same bitch-in-a-bathrobe except
now
said bitch is some kind of undead demon, then got shot by a totally
different
old man—those old men sure love their rifles—before I got burned up by the sun and had to eat my way out of a morbidly obese cannibal queen. But you know what, Ginger? This hurts worst of all.”

Coburn didn’t—or wouldn’t, or maybe even
couldn’t
—articulate the truth behind this sentiment. It wasn’t just that his pre-apocalyptic existence had been full of endless pleasurable meals where he felt like the King of New York and now he was just another hungry wastrel in the ruined vista of God-fucked America. It wasn’t just that he’d been through the grinder.

It was that moment back on the roof of the Wal-Mart.

Gun in his hand. Mouth full of blood.

He’d picked up a gun. He could’ve turned that weapon on his captors. But he didn’t. His first thought—his only thought—was to shoot the fuel tanks and send up a bloom of mighty fire to serve as a signal to his herd. To his
people
.

That was a choice he made. It was a choice based on—well, he told himself it was based on a sense of pragmatism, but that wasn’t it at all. He’d made a choice because he wanted those people to be safe. He wanted
Kayla
above all others to be safe, to get the signal, to get through the cannibal’s roadblock.

It was the first time he’d ever cared about someone more than he cared about himself. Coburn hadn’t even realized this was something he was capable of feeling, much less
willing
to feel. And that was the key word, wasn’t it?
Willing
. Up until now, he’d enjoyed pretty much ultimate control over his feelings. He jerked the strings, and his emotions (or what remained of them) did a dance.

But this thing he felt for the others, for the girl, wasn’t under his control.

He put himself out there.

And now they left his ass hanging out in the wind. Pants down, waiting for the zombies to come eat his bowels for brunch.

He wasn’t supposed to feel this way. He didn’t even want to feel the way he did for the dog, for Creampuff—

Goddamnit.

Goddamnit
.

“Goddamnit!” he snarled. Ginger blinked. Incredulous, he explained: “They took my dog, Ginger. They stole my terrier.” He popped each of his knuckles. “They didn’t just abandon me after
I
got them through, after
I
kept them alive. They rubbed salt on the wound while they pissed in my eyes. I can’t believe they stole my dog.”

Coburn grabbed the kid by his too-clean shirt and shook him like a baby. “Listen. You’re going to drive me to go get Creampuff, my terrier. And then you’re going to watch as I break bad on the people who abandoned me. I’m going to hurt them. I’m going to hurt them
so good
. And then I’m going to eat one of them, for good measure.” Ginger’s eyes went wide. “I’m a vampire, kid. Can’t you see the fangs? Weren’t you weirded out that I had no legs and now, ta-da, legs?”

The boy just shrugged.
He must be retarded
, Coburn thought. Whatever. Kid could drive a dirt-bike and right now, that was all that mattered.

Coburn realized his mistake was that he’d started to care about the herd. Shepherd doesn’t have emotions about his cows. They’re just that: cattle. A cow’s just a very advanced
meat-containment unit
, and that was how he had to think of these humans again: as bags of blood that went astray. Fine. It was time, then, to find those dumb animals and lasso their duplicitous disloyal necks until they went where he wanted and did what he said.

“Let’s go rope some calves,” Coburn said.

Cut to:

The RV, overturned.

Couple zombies underneath, still thrashing—well, sluggishly shifting, perhaps. Their soft decayed heads thumping dully against the macadam. Coburn stepped off the bike. Told Ginger to kill the engine.

He and the boy had been riding the highway now for a handful of hours, zipping through defunct towns, passing by zombies that groped at the air ten, twenty feet away, as if that would somehow matter. Coburn scented the Winnebago like a hound and had the boy turn the bike off Lincoln Highway and down to Route 70—in the distance, Coburn could make out the shadowy hills and buildings of Pittsburgh, and no way was he going to brave wading into the middle of a city again. That way, the streets were surely choked with the living dead, like rats and roaches in the walls of a ruined building. Thankfully, the RV didn’t go that way, which meant he didn’t have to, either.

But now, here it was, laying on its side like a dead, beached whale.

Hollow. Gutted. Nobody inside.

Two rotters jogged up—literally a pair of joggers in full jogger regalia, tracksuits with the line running top to bottom, shoulder to ankle—and Coburn grabbed for both and smashed their heads together. They fell, unmoving.

Beyond them, though, lay other zombies. Dead. Extra dead.
For real
dead. Shot in the head so as never to move again.

Two there. Five over there. Another half-dozen in a clumsy circle.

Somebody’d made short work of these undead.

He sniffed the air. Smelled blood. Not sure whose, though—he cursed himself, wished he had taken a moment to become acquainted with the scent of each human’s blood, because right now he couldn’t differentiate Gil from Ebbie, Leelee from Cecelia. But he also smelled their sweat and desperation. And mingled in there, the odor of a rat terrier named Creampuff.

Coburn put together a picture of what happened.

Looked like they were driving along, maybe even at a good clip since the highway here wasn’t gummed up with too many broken cars. Then… something happened. Zombies, probably. Came out of nowhere. Smart money said Ebbie was driving and Ebbie knew the rules that Gil put forth:
thou shalt not make roadkill of the living dead
lest they get all wedged up under the tires
.

And so big boy panicked. Cut the wheel hard.

Overestimated. RV wobbled. Maybe he cut the wheel back the other way. Again, too hard, too far. And with that, the RV tipped, hit, skidded.

Loud sound. Fast movement. The zombies came, then.

Gil or someone shot a handful and they fled, knowing that more would come.

“They got away,” Coburn said to Ginger, who stood there straddling the bike. “But the fools didn’t take the highway. They left it. Went over the guardrail here. Hightailed it into the woods, near as I can tell. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Out there in the dark, they could get lost, ambushed. They might be out there right now, wandering in circles. Or maybe the whole lot of them turned to the stumbling, mumbling dead.”

Other problem was, the sun wasn’t long away. Half-hour, no more. The hairs on his neck stood to attention.

And then a little voice inside him spoke up, a mean little voice, the voice of the bully, the addict, the monster:

Cut bait and run
.

There it was. The solution.

Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em right in the ear. The cattle had wandered too far astray and disappeared into the badlands and best thing a shepherd could do was say
hasta la vista
and move on to greener pastures. Besides, Coburn wasn’t a shepherd. He wasn’t a protector. He was a predator. Deciding to become that other thing was shoving a square peg in a circle hole, like cramming the fat end of a Louisville slugger up some poor fucker’s poop-chute. An uncomfortable fit all around.

“I’m done with this,” he said, smiling, laughing. Snapped his fingers. Did a little Michael Jackson twirl. “No more protecting the food supply.”

Ginger looked worried. As he should.

Eat him
, that monster’s voice said, louder now than before. Almost back to the volume it had been before this had all begun.
Grab that mute moron, break his back over the dirt-bike and drain him dry
.

Coburn grinned, sauntered over to the boy.

Ginger’s face wore a mask of concern, but he wasn’t yet frightened—no pheromones of fear, no stink of scaredy-sweat. Kid really was stupid.

With a flick of his tongue, Coburn pushed his fangs to the fore.

Feast
, the voice said.

Instead, Coburn pushed the kid.

“Go,” he said, not believing the words coming out of his mouth. “Go, get the hell out of here, drive that dirt-bike so far I never have to see you again.”

Ginger shook his head.

Coburn slapped him in the face. “I said,
go
.”

Again, Ginger shook his head. The vampire grabbed the kid and kneed him in the gut once, twice, then thrice for good measure. The boy made a sound—no words, but an audible groan. Then came the stink of fear. Sweat, not piss, but whatever: the fright-fueled uncertainty was growing.

“I’ll count to three,” Coburn said. “You’re not gone by the time I finish, I will rip you apart and do a step-dance on your entrails.”

The boy nodded. Slow, hesitant, but a nod just the same.

“One,” Coburn said.

Ginger stepped back, revved the dirt-bike.

“Two.”

But before the vampire could get to
three
, Ginger gave it gas and the dirt-bike launched forward. Coburn watched it disappear, heard the Doppler sound of the engine’s mosquito whine fade until finally, he could hear it no more.

You’re an asshole
, the voice inside him said. The monster, ever-mocking.

“Yeah, I know, sue me.” But the voice was right. He’d let a perfectly good meal go in the same moment he decided to relinquish his attention on his
other
food source. It was like he wanted to give up the ghost or something.

He actually thought about it. Thought about staying out here while the sun came up, see how far it could burn him down. Would it burn him to cinders this time? On the roof of the Wal-Mart, he presumed he lived—or, rather, ‘lived’—because they brought him inside before his crispy ass could turn to ash. Or maybe he just had it wrong. Maybe the sun didn’t kill him. Maybe it just turned him into the vampiric equivalent of a house fire—but he didn’t think so. He figured that the sun would get him eventually. The damn thing was like the eye of God, ever-vigilant and forever punishing.

But for now, Coburn decided that this morning would not be the one where he met his maker. Still, though. As he crawled inside the RV to get his daysleep, he came to realize that seeing the sun those mornings before was something he hadn’t done in a long, long time. The sunrise sure was beautiful. Even if it would turn him into a greasy soot-stain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Perchance to Dream

The vampire felt his heart thudding dully in his chest. A red roar of sound in his ears. A feeling of tightness in his chest and neck:
the pressure of blood, the fullness of an overworked circulatory system
.

You’re human again
, he thought.

Which meant this was a dream. A daydream.

“I’m dreaming too often,” he said to no one, his voice quiet, soft, no echo. He got louder, shouting into the void: “I don’t dream! I die during the day. I want that back. I want to shut it all out.”

Somewhere, everywhere, a girl crying.

“Shut up. Shut up
shut up
shut up.”

Sweat beaded on his brow. It trickled into his mouth. Salty and sweet. His pits, damp. His palms, slick. Human, indeed.

“Hell with this,” he said. “I’m walking out of here. This dream has to have an end. I’ll find it. Every dream ends.”

And with that, a door appeared. A red door. Old. Paint faded. Above it, hanging in the darkness as if by fishing wire, a window. Across the panes of that window? Streaks of blood. Wet. Flies dotting the red, hungry, buzzing.

Seeing that, his heart kicked in his chest like a bucking mule. Adrenalin cut through the fog. Was this what being alive felt like? This constant pressure? The jerking up and down like on a puppet’s strings? Feeling alive felt uncertain. It was not a pleasurable memory.