The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (25 page)

“Day after tomorrow. We’ll do it when everybody’s here, before the boys head off to Princeton.”

“You gonna do it in the daytime?” Sally asked. Shoot. She needed Draven awake and as strong as he could be. Last time she’d thought he was ready, his spine had been in about ten pieces. He seemed to have healed from that, but she couldn’t tell real well. She hadn’t seen him walking and didn’t know if he could yet. And during the day, he couldn’t hardly see nothing. It was gonna be hard. She’d have to do it tomorrow night. That was real soon. When she thought about leaving, her heart started racing like a dog on the scent.

If she had to free him tomorrow night, and she had to have evolved by then, that meant he had to change her tonight. Her heart raced even harder now. She swallowed and looked at her mama and brother. She’d never thought she could miss Larry, but she knew she would. He was a pain in the rear end, but she still loved him as much as any of them.

“I love y’all both,” she blurted out. She thought she might cry.

“What’s wrong with you?” Larry asked, looking at her like she’d gone crazy. “Mama, I think Sally’s preggers. She’s all weird lately.”

“I ain’t preggers, you moron. I just got scared out there, and I wanted to let you know I’m glad I have such a great family and all. Next time I’ll remember how you hid behind me when the bloodsucker started throwing stakes. I still love Mama, though.”

“Oh, honey I love you, too,” Mama said.

Tom came in late, an hour or so after dark and sat down at the table. He looked real tired and old just then. Larry never did notice people’s moods and started right in. “Tom, the bloodsucker woke up, and he was real scary. Got Sally all emotional. He read her mind. It was wild.”

“Everybody okay?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, but I can’t wait to put the sucker in the ground. One year, right? Then we can dig it up and see if it can live a whole year without eating nothing. Then we can burn it, right?”

“Yeah, Larry, that’s the plan,” Tom said. “Mama, get me some water, will you?”

Mama got a jar of water and sat down at the table with him. “Everything okay? How was your trip to the ghost town? Why y’all so late?”

Tom sighed and pushed his shoes off under the table. “Well, Herman went ahead like we talked about, and he said it was okay and went on to Princeton to scout out the roads like he always does.” Tom took a long drink of water. Sally sat down, too. Something bad was coming, she could just feel it in her bones.

“The rest of us went in one of them buildings to find a good one to put up anyone who comes back with us if there’s any new ones, or to stay if we get caught out after dark. We found one all right, and once we were ready, we packed up and got the hell out of there.”

Sally noticed some blood on the sleeve of Tom’s shirt and looked at him closer. He looked so dang tired. And mighty sad, too.

“We’s on the road coming back when we seen some headlights from a car. We was all gonna hide in the woods, but one of them damn Henson boys wanted to get a bloodsucker. He says, ‘We got eight of us and only four at most fit in that car. We all gots stakes, what’s to worry about.’ Then he gets right up in the road, and of course that bloodsucker stops the car and…we all gets to staking him, and we got him alright.” Tom sighed and rubbed his face. “Only he got a couple of us, too.”

“Oh no,” Mama said. “Where the rest of them at?”

“They all went home. We was all plain wore out. I’m sorry, Mama.”

“What? What are you sorry for Tom? It weren’t your fault.”

“No. I’m sorry about… He ain’t coming home is all.”

“No, that can’t be,” Mama said, her voice just above a whisper. “He’ll be right along. He’s with somebody’s family, right? He’s bringing in the ones we lost to be buried proper.”

Sally and Larry and Tom all stood and surrounded Mama, who had lost three babies and her angel Angela and now her husband, and they all cried for her and because they lost their Daddy and brother, too.

“I ain’t believing til I see him. I ain’t believing til you tell me.”

“Mama, I’m telling you. Daddy’s dead.”

Then Mama cried, too.

Chapter 38

Draven sat up in the shed, knowing even before he opened his eyes that he wasn’t alone. And yet, no one was in the shed with him, either. No heartbeat, no rustle of movement, no one standing in a corner attempting to hide. He smelled sap and looked in the direction from which the scent emanated. In the darkness, he picked out a shape and knew it as a body. The body of a sapien male, adult from the smell. And that scent...

A wonderful scent that made his teeth ache with desire. He listened for sounds outside but heard none, none that signaled the approach of a human. He moved across the floor, wincing at the pain that still lingered in his back and hips and knees. How could they do this? Did they mean to test him, or was it some form of entrapment? He could detect no trace of poison or drugs. The body smelled clean and healthy.

Draven listened for voices in the house, but all had fallen silent. He could hear faintly the sound of someone crying, a female, but not Sally. He reached through the bars and strained to reach the boot of the man, the part that lay closest to the cage. The body had a familiar smell, but Draven had been preoccupied with pain the times he had been in the company of the local men.

No matter how he stretched and twisted, Draven could not reach the body. He sat resting against the bars for a time, thinking. He should have kept a wooden stake, but he no longer wished to die. Once, he would have hidden it and ambushed whoever came into the cage first. But if Sally could free him, he’d take that way, the one that didn’t end in his execution. He looked at the other side of the cage to where Sally liked to sit in the rocking chair.

Dragging the steel chain with him across the floor, he crawled to the bars and reached through with his normal hand. The tips of his fingers just found the end of one rocker. After several attempts, the chair turned slightly. He continued to tease it towards him with his fingertips until it moved close enough for him to grasp. Then he pulled it towards him and knelt, reached through the bars with both hands, and pulled the curved rocker from the bottom of the wooden chair. Draven had rarely seen or touched wood before he encountered this community, so he knew little of its unique properties. The ease with which it came apart surprised him.

For a substance of such deadly menace, it seemed fragile and weak. It made sense that steel could bind him, but wood was splintery and malleable. Carrying the piece of wood in his teeth, he lurched across the floor on hands and knees. He yanked at the chain around his ankle to give himself space to maneuver, then reached the wooden piece through the bars. For several minutes, he could not find purchase on the body. But he had all night, and his patience was infinite for a reward so great.

At last he managed to move the body to within reach, and he snatched the boot through the bars and pulled. The body was that of a big man, and when Draven pulled it close and uncovered it, he saw the man they all called Daddy. They had wrapped Daddy in a piece of material that looked like a bed sheet and laid him on a makeshift gurney. Unfortunately death hadn’t found Tom, the man more deserving of this fate.

Draven removed Daddy’s wrapping and looked at the man’s arms. The sap had stopped flowing, and he’d cooled. Soon he would become stiff. Before that, Draven could eat. He would have to suck quite hard draw out still blood, but it would come. By moving the body into a sitting position and holding it against the bars of the cage, he could encourage the blood to pool in one half of the body. He had to remove the boots and trousers before he began his task.

Draven had never drained a human before, nor come close. He’d never even severely overdrawn a human. Daddy’s body seemed to hold an infinite supply of sap. Draven could scarcely believe a human body could contain so much. It seemed he’d consumed hundreds of rations of sap, and not the dry substitute or animal blood. A real human, although not fresh or appetizing or full of any kind of life. Still, he’d procured food, and he didn’t intend to stop until he’d eaten as much as possible. 

It took him quite some time to finish. The sap seeped out more and more slowly as he drank. His jaws began to ache from biting and sucking. But when he finished, he felt better than he had in months. Letting the drained body crumple sideways onto the floor, Draven stood and found that his pains had gone almost entirely. If he’d only had food, he would have healed long ago.

An arrow of pain darted through his back when he moved too fast, and one of his kneecaps hung strangely loose, and the muscles in his back and legs felt like needles pierced them when he tensed each one, but he could move again. He could walk again. He sat and positioned his kneecap correctly, and after it had adhered to its proper spot, which took only a few moments, he removed the filthy rag that had once been his shorts and was now his only remaining possession. His miniature hand suddenly functioned almost as well as the other.

He wanted a bath, and badly, but for now he had a clean pair of trousers. After so long in nothing but his undershorts, the jeans felt strange and binding on his legs, even though they had fit a much larger man. He tightened the belt to hold the trousers up. They hung a few inches past his feet, but he bunched them around his ankles and continued dressing. The boots fit well over his filthy feet, and Daddy’s sweaty socks, although one of them refused to close over the ankle cuff he still wore. He took the man’s shirt, careful not to pull off a button. When he had dressed completely, he looked down at himself, absurd in the too-large clothes, and smiled. Freedom would soon belong to him and Sally, and he could buy clothes that fit. He sat and waited for her return.

The sound of the shed door opening awakened him. He covered his eyes against the blinding light and tried to rouse himself before the proper time. A woman screamed. He focused his attention on the humans and detected four heartbeats. He scented for Sally among them and found her, and her brother, and two more, male and female, both aging. Squinting through his fingers he found, as he’d suspected, the two remaining residents of the house. Mama had hidden her face in Tom’s chest, and the male sapien’s arm rested around her shoulder. He glared at Draven with frightening malice.

Draven had not planned for this, but for Sally alone.

Larry began cursing at Draven and trying to reach him through the bars, yelling about touching their Daddy’s clothes. They hadn’t noticed he’d touched quite a bit more than the man’s clothes. At least Draven had regained much of his strength. Four saps, a few hundred wooden stakes. His odds were not insurmountable.

Larry and Sally moved around the cage and unwrapped their Daddy. Mama began screaming and sobbing hysterically, and Larry attacked the bars anew while Sally stood staring at the body and then at Draven as if she could not comprehend what had happened. Tom unlocked the gate. Draven could not see well, and none of his senses remained sharp during daylight hours, but he could sense everything well enough. He remained as they’d found him, lying prone with his hand over his eyes.

Tom came through the gate with a stake raised next to his head and the keys in his other hand. He came at Draven like a madman, which he must have been to forget that Draven only wore a simple ankle chain now. Draven rose straight up at the man, and in one movement, he had Tom in front of him with his throat bared towards the three spectators. Larry came through the gate next.

“Take another step and I’ll rip his head off with my bare hands,” Draven said, pulling Tom’s head back while he restrained his body with the other arm. Tom started yelling and Mama screaming and Larry cursing. Sally just stared.

“Larry, you will step out of the cage now,” Draven said. “And close the gate.”

“Don’t do it,” Tom screamed and threw the keys. Larry caught them, although he looked as if he caught them as an automatic response rather than by intent. “Kill it!” Tom yelled. “I don’t care if it kills me, too.”

“I do not think being in here with me is a sharp idea,” Draven said. “Now, here is what you will do. You’re either going to give me the keys and let me loose, which I think unlikely, or you’re going to try to kill me. If you try, I will kill you first. I don’t want to do that. I’d rather you let me go.”

Larry backed out, closed the door and locked it. “You ain’t never gonna walk away from here alive,” Larry said. “’Specially not after what you done to our Daddy.”

“He was already dead,” Draven said. “I harmed him in no way. I only prevented something going to waste that you would have put in the ground.”

“I’m gonna put you in the ground, you creature of Satan,” Larry said, his face twisting into an angry mask. “You’re gonna wish you died a hundred times over by the time we’re done with you.”

“I see that you mean that.”

“Get out of my head, you freak of nature,” Larry said. “You can’t even read my mind, anyway. You’re bullshitting.”

“Perhaps.”

“Fine, what am I thinking, if you’re so smart?”

“You’re thinking that they may have voted to bury me at your little meeting, but you’ll never let me live another year.”

“Holy shit, Mama, I told you,” Larry said. Mama covered her mouth and stared at Draven. She must have forgotten his supposed powers of hypnosis. Though it amused Draven to toy with someone as simple as Larry, especially after the particular pleasure the man had taken in torturing him, Draven had other things on his mind.