The Last Days of October (17 page)

Floorboards
creaked.
 
When he spoke again, his voice
came from farther away.

“Good night,
Heather.
 
Think about my offer.
 
I’ll see you tomorrow.”

20.

Late the next
morning, Amber found her mother sleeping on the couch.
 
Justin was nowhere to be seen.
 
Alone, she stepped onto the porch and sat
down on the top step, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jacket.
 
The air was crisp and sharp despite the sun
stretching its legs above the houses across the street.
 
Stubby shadows stalked the bare trees and the
homes where her neighbors—people she’d never bothered getting to know—had once
lived.

And maybe still
did.

She felt safe on
the porch, out in the sun.
 
The memories
of the past two days remained firmly planted in her mind but they stayed quiet
for now.
 
She felt calm again for the
first time in what felt like ages.
 
She
enjoyed this moment of peace.
 
A moment
to rest.

The front door
opened and the porch creaked beneath the feet of someone stepping onto it.
 
Justin stood behind her for a long time
before sitting down beside her.
 
In his
hands, he held a red plastic disc.

“Where’d you get
the Frisbee?” she asked.

“Your garage.
 
Found it when I was in there sharpening
sticks.
 
Here’s one for you.”

He set down a
pointy wooden stake.
 
The blunt end
wrapped in duct tape, it looked like a child’s play sword.
 
“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Stab a
vampire.
 
I hope your mom wasn’t
particularly attached to her mops or brooms.
 
They’re all gone now.”

“I see,” Amber
said with a sigh.
 
“Thanks.”

“You’re
welcome.
 
I thought about making spears,
but we have to consider if there’s a difference between a wooden stake through
the heart and a wooden spear through the heart.
 
I’m still learning how all this works.”

“I think a spear
would work.
 
It’s still wood.”

“You would think
so.”

She picked up the
stake by its taped handle and turned it over in her hand.
 
She recognized the blue shaft as something
that had once been the kitchen broom.
 
It
seemed incredibly short; if she ever got close enough to one of those things to
use it, she’d probably already be dead.
 
She set it back down on the boards between them.

“This is a surreal
conversation,” she observed.
 
“We’re
debating the merits of stakes versus spears in connection with killing
vampires.
 
That is
per se
fucked up.”

“If you’re going
to start using fancy words, I’m going inside.”

She laughed.
 
Justin smiled.

Minutes passed in
silence.
 
The sun warmed the October air,
but only slightly.
 
Tomorrow, she realized,
was Halloween.
 
She had planned on
driving back up to Norfolk to party with Tara and their few friends that hadn’t
yet graduated, and she would have been leaving this evening after class.
 
Mom was going to let her take the
Durango.
 
She felt a pain in her belly as
she wondered what Tara was doing right now.
 
If the same thing had happened in Norfolk that had happened here.

“What do you think
happened to all the dogs?”
 
Justin asked.

“Pardon?”

He gestured with
his head towards the house across the street.
 
The owner had driven an eyebolt into a tree in the front yard.
 
A rusting chain led from the eyebolt to the
ground, where it disappeared beside a food bowl and water dish barely visible
above a flood of leaves.
 
The dog’s name
was Harley, she remembered.
 
He was—had
been—a friendly dog, big but good-natured.
 
He would lay in the shade of the big tree and wag his tail when Amber
walked by.

“Guess they got
bitten,” she said.

They sat with their
hands holstered in their pockets, saying nothing for a long time.
 
At one point, Amber thought she heard her
mother’s footsteps in the foyer and expected her to come outside.
 
When she didn’t, Amber simply drew another
breath of cold autumn air and stared across the street at Harley’s chain and
the great mass of nothing at the end of it and tried to wrap her mind around
everything the world had lost.

“Let’s play
Frisbee,” Justin said, standing up.

“Play Frisbee?”

“Yeah.
 
You look depressed.”

“I am depressed.”

“Then you need to
move around.
 
Come on.
 
I like to sulk as much as the next guy, but
me finding this thing was no coincidence.
 
I think God wants us to get up off our asses and play.
 
Get up and go long.”

She stared at him,
wondering if he’d lost his mind.
 
He
smiled back at her and gestured for her to go out in the yard.

“I’m a klutz,” she
said, standing.
 
“And I’ve never been
athletically inclined.
 
You can’t laugh
at me.”

“It’s Frisbee, not
Olympic tennis.
 
Go long.”

She descended the
steps and walked to the middle of the lawn.
 
Justin waved her on until she had reached the middle of the street,
whereupon he motioned for her to stop.
 
He stood at the bottom of the steps and drew back the hand holding the
Frisbee.
 
With an almost ethereal grace, he
unwound his arm and released the disc.

“Catch,” he said.

It spun in the air
between them, seeming to float on nothing as it glided across the lawn and
sidewalk.
 
It flew directly at Amber’s
face and seemed to hover in the space before her.
 
She reached forward and grabbed it.
 
The spinning stopped abruptly.

“Nice,” she said.

“I played Ultimate
Frisbee in high school.
 
Ever seen it?”

“No.”
 
She tried to twist the way Justin had, but
when she released the disc it wobbled, veered off course and clattered against
the side of her father’s truck.
 
She
winced as Justin trotted after it.

“It’s like a cross
between football and soccer.
 
You get the
disc in the end zone to score.
 
If we
find more people up at the school today, I’m going to organize an Ultimate game.
 
Autumn is the best time to play it.
 
Get ready, now; I’m going to make you jump
for this one.”

He hucked the disc
again, higher this time, and it arced above her head.
 
She jumped, but her hands snapped shut on
empty air.
 
The Frisbee sailed unimpeded
into the yard behind her, wobbled and struck the ground at an angle.
 
It rolled on its side into the leaves between
the houses.

Her mother stepped
out onto the porch just in time to see her miss.
 
She looked surprised, as if she’d caught them
boarding an alien spaceship instead of playing a game of Frisbee.

“You missed!”
 
Justin yelled.
 
“Had this been a real game, that could have
been a turnover!”

“Only because you
can’t throw!”
 
Amber called back.
 
She turned and jogged across her neighbor’s
yard to where the Frisbee lay in the leaves.
 
Not until she passed into the shadows between the houses did she realize
she was smiling.
 
She hadn’t smiled in
days.

She bent over and
picked up the disc.
 
No sooner had her
fingers closed around the plastic rim than her mother and Justin both began
screaming, and a single word flashed unbidden in her consciousness:

Harley.

The dog hit her
full-on.
 
She fell sideways, and hard; a
few more steps and she would have cracked her skull on a concrete dwarf
standing in a flower bed.
 
Instead, her
head bounced off the leaves and the soft soil beneath, momentarily stunning her
but leaving her conscious enough to see her assailant turning in the air and
hitting the ground on its back.
 
Her eyes
momentarily lost focus.
 
She blinked to realign
her vision.

Crawlspace dust matted its
fur.
 
Clumps had fallen out to reveal
clearings of white leather upon which flies lit and buzzed like tiny courtiers
tending to their dark king.
 
Skin stretched
over xylophone ribs of starvation.
 
The
thing stared at her with black eyes like a shark's, open doors to a mausoleum
where dry leaves scraped across stone floors and eternity was a word that had a
terrible meaning.

Why is he out how can
he be out it's daytime it's sunny so how's he standing out here like its
nothing?

A chill in her bones answered for her.
 
Here, where she lay, the houses blocked the sun.

The creature drew back its
lips to reveal sharp white fangs that seemed impossibly long for such a narrow
mouth.
 
A low growl rolled from the barrel
of his body.
 
The snout seemed to have
vanished, replaced now by dozens and dozens of teeth.
 
It lowered its head.

Mom and Justin were both
screaming.
 
Amber opened her mouth to
scream, too, but nothing came out.
 
Every
part of her body, down her vocal chords, was paralyzed.

The animal pounced.

Heather drew the Ruger
from her waistband and extended it at the ready.
 
But she couldn’t fire.
 
Amber blocked her shot.

“AMBER!” she
screamed.
 
“MOVE IT!”

The girl acted like she
couldn’t hear.
 
Heather saw the dog
smoking even in the shadows between the houses, but not enough yet to take it
out of the game, not enough yet to save her child, who sat in between the front
sight and the hungry creature that was so obviously going to kill her.

Oh God, please protect my baby please don’t let anything happen to

The thing leapt, and Amber
jerked back on her hands and buttocks.
 
It hit her in the chest, knocking her flat on her back and in the split
second after this happened, Heather had a clear shot.
 

She squeezed the
trigger.
 
The pistol barked once and the
dog flew backwards off of her daughter with an otherworldly screech.
 
This shattered Amber’s paralysis.
 
She scrambled to her feet and began
running.
 
Again, blocking the dog.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
 
Heather screamed.

Amber veered to the
right.
 
Heather fired, hitting the dog
again, knocking it down.
 
It leapt up and
continued the chase.
 
Every bone appeared
beneath its smoking and stretching skin, and as it hit the direct sunlight in
front of her neighbor’s house Heather saw flames.

“RUN!”
 
Justin shouted.

Amber
was
running, with a grace and precision that would have been
appropriate on an Olympic track team.
 
Heather fired again and missed, missed, hit.
 
But the dog got up again and raced after her
daughter.
 

Amber tripped and
face-planted in the middle of the street.

Heather squeezed off two
more rounds in quick succession, both hitting home.
 
Moving more slowly now in the full sun, the
thing that had been Harley presented nothing but a flaming mess on four legs.
 
Still, he struggled to his feet and staggered
towards Amber, who was getting up but not quickly enough.
 
Not nearly.

Heather witnessed her
difficulty rising.
 
A thought pierced her
heart like a knife blade:

She’s turning.
 
It bit her and
she’s turning right before my eyes.

No time for that.
 
She aimed at the burning animal and pulled
the trigger again.
 
Harley went down, got
up.
 
Heather’s trigger finger twitched
once more.

Click
.

The slide locked back.

Empty.

And the thing was still
alive.
 
Burning, screeching but still
moving, still thirsting, and her daughter wasn’t moving at all.

You will not.

Heather dropped the empty
handgun and charged.
 
But before she
could make it halfway, Justin beat her there.
 
He drew back his right leg and drove his boot-clad foot straight into
the creature’s chest.
 
It flew in the
air, flaming and smoking, turning like a rotisserie chicken.
 
It hit the ground several feet away.
 
This time, it didn’t get up.

Heather slowed, dropping
to her knees at Amber’s side.
 
Dazed,
Amber pushed herself up on both hands, rolled over and fell.
 
She winced.

“Are you okay?”
 
Heather gasped.
 
“Did it bite you?”