The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (7 page)

Me? I think he looks like an idiot driving it, like some clueless pimp. But I’m not stupid enough to tell Barry that. Nope, not stupid enough at all. And it’s not as if I’m paid for my opinion. In fact, I’m not paid. Just here to shut up and earn my keep, as Barry says. Just like my Mum did before me and her mum before that, all serving Barry for as long as we can remember.

Two hundred years give or take. It’s a long time to be a slave.

Outside it’s cooling down, which is a blessing because the air-con died a few hours back. The sky is splashed garish pink by the setting sun and now it’s low enough to not hurt my eyes. I push the cheap sunnies to the top of my head, hook the earpieces into my hair so they stay put. I enjoy the rush of the breeze moving in and out of the car. In those brief moments when the engine doesn’t howl, I can hear the sounds of the night: cicadas, possums, snakes, lizards, hares, wallabies. All manner of nasties that don’t come out in the sunlight.

Kinda like Barry.

I can’t hear the words he’s shouting, but he knows the dark’s come and he wants out. I’ve got a fair idea what he’s saying.
Terry, open the fucking box.
There’ll be that for a few more k, then
Teresa, love, sweetie, please open the box. Please let me get some fresh air. It’s cold in here.

I leave it just until I sense he’s about to move to threats, then I reach behind, keeping my eyes on the road, feel around on the back seat, find the cooler and flip the lid off. It lands on the floor with the sort of noise only falling polystyrene can make, both offended and humble, a sort of squeal like it’s not happy but doesn’t want to bother you.

“Thank fuck for that!” Barry’s got quite a voice on him for someone currently without lungs. “Are you deaf?”

“Couldn’t hear you, Barry. Engine’s too noisy.” And the machine doesn’t make a liar of me—it rumbles and protests like an old man with emphysema. It’s been a long trip.

“Well, this thing better keep going, I can’t afford to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere in this state.”

Barry’s “state” has been a cause of concern for a couple of days now. There have been gang fights on the streets of Sydney—not the usual sorts, not the drug peddlers or the slave traders, not the gunrunners or the money launderers. Not this time anyway. Rival gangs of bloodsuckers, all trying to survive, to reach the top of the tree. All trying to be the big dog and negotiate with the breeders, those few Warm who are in the know (even with the current state of societal decay, there are some things you don’t want the general populace to find out). But there are those who understand the night isn’t a safe place, never has been, not since the First Fleet came and nicked the nation from under the nose of the indigenous population. That even on those ships, the greatest enemy wasn’t scurvy or the lash, it was the things, just one or two, that roamed the lonely hours picking off the weak so as not to draw attention to themselves. Those who slept nestled in hidden compartments until the daylight passed.

Barry was one of them. Nasty bastard by all accounts (I’ve read the diaries my grandmothers kept). Didn’t make too many of his own kind initially, just found a thin girl, none too bright, pregnant and fearful, someone he could bully and boss, someone who could do what was needed when the sun ruled the sky and who thought his protection worth the price of her liberty. Minnie: my ever-so-great-grandmother, a silly little pickpocket too slow to not get caught, who sold all our freedoms with her one stupid decision.

She couldn’t read or write, but her daughter could, so Minnie told the story and her girl wrote it down. And so on and so on—we’ve all kept notes of some kind, some more literary than others. The Singleton women have quite a collected work now.

After Minnie’s dimness, Barry decided we’d be more useful if educated, so fancy schools for his girls, university if you wanted it (I have a science degree for all the good it did me). He never turned any of us, just keeps us, generation after generation, like family retainers . . . or pets. We don’t run. I asked my Mum why, but she just gave me that sleepy junkie smile. In her own way she did run—she just found her escape at the pointy end of a needle.

I’ve thought about it a lot in the years since and I reckon we stay put because we’re told from the cradle there’s nowhere else to go. How do you outrun the night? How do you go on living when closing your eyes means you might wake with a weight on your chest that doesn’t go away? It’s easier to live in the eye of the storm than to try and outrun it. And, ashamed as I am to say it, the protection of the devil you know is preferable to being meat to something else. There are worse things in the dark than Barry.

Of course there’s always the theory that girls without fathers will attach themselves quite willingly to father-figures. Barry’s a bad dad if ever there was one, but he’s always looked after us. Can’t argue with that.

So we shut up, do what’s expected or find a way out. I’m never quite sure if Mum intended things to go the way they did. The drugs numbed her, but she could function, and Barry turned a blind eye. I guess I always thought it would go on like that forever until I got the call to say Barry had found her one night, stiff and cold under the pergola, propped against the BBQ with the little silver happy stick still in her arm. So, the big recall for me. Goodbye, uni; goodbye, honors degree; goodbye, normal life.

But I digress.

Barry and his state.

He thought himself safe; thought himself well-protected. He’d built up his empire and believed himself king of the vampires. Didn’t occur to him that his bodyguard—not me, I’m just a kind of housekeeper—might not be content with the status quo. That Jerzy might want a change of pace, of lifestyle, of regime. That Jerzy might take the great big Japanese sword Barry liked to keep hanging on the wall of his study and use it to separate Barry’s head from the rest of his body before the other bodyguards had a chance to tear Jerzy up like a hunk of shredded pork. Then, untethered, they all bolted out of the big house with its Greek columns and stamped concrete driveway, its seldom-used-in-daytime swimming pool, blackout blinds, and luxuriously appointed cellar, leaving the wrought iron gates open and me to wander in from the kitchen to find all the excitement had passed.

What should I see but Barry’s head still intact? His body nothing but a pile of cinders and ash, but the head was all in one piece. And talking. Well, less talking than screaming and yelling obscenities. That’s when I went to find the cooler, as much ice as I could, and Barry’s car keys.

And here we are, heading towards the arse-end of nowhere because Barry says so. Because he says there’s a place he can find help, a place where life begins again.

The road is more dirt than black stuff now and it’s starting to rise, just a little. Around each bend, the incline gets steeper and the car protests more loudly. Soon, I should imagine, it will make its wishes known with the mechanical equivalent of a big
fuck you.

“So, tell me how this is going to go again, Boss.”

Dawn is starting to gray the sky and Barry’s gotten lethargic as you might expect. He’s quietened down and I should probably put the lid back on his box—the last of the ice I’d dumped in the esky turned to warmish water hours ago, but I don’t guess he’ll drown. Looks like he’s immortal, if not invulnerable.

“It’ll all be sweet, Terry. I’ll be good as new,” his voice is low and sleepy.

“Fine and dandy, Barry, but what are the details? What about me?”

“What about you? This isn’t about you, you dopey bitch.” More awake now.

“Never said it was, Barry, but: point of order. We’re walking into this place. What’s out there? More of your brethren? You’re not really in a position to protect me, are you? I’m a canapé on legs. So,
what’s out there
?”

“Nah, Terry,” he says but he doesn’t sound very sure. “It’ll be okay, nothing there, no one. Nothing to worry about.”

And for the first time in my life I don’t believe Barry. I don’t trust him to look after me and it gives me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Of course, that could be hunger—that last apple was three hours ago and I’m down to a packet of muesli bars and a tube of Pringles. “Sure, Barry. Sure.”

No one, my arse. I know enough about bumps in the night and deserted dead hearts to know nothing’s ever really empty. If Barry knows about this place, so does someone else.
You’re not king of the vampires here, Bazza, you’re just a talking head.
I pull over to the shoulder of the road, reach back and put the lid on Barry and his polystyrene swimming pool. I get out of the car and look around, stretching my long body as my back protests and my worn-too-long cargos and tee stick to my skin. I can smell my own sweat and the determined stink of the cigarettes that ran out not far out of Sydney. I stare into the bush. It’s changing as we head up the mountains, getting greener, darker, denser, wetter. More like a rainforest. Not sure what I expect to see . . . nothing there, no movement, not even the twitch of a leaf in the breeze. I feel weird though; I feel watched.
Imagination,
I tell myself.
Bullshit,
I tell myself.

I slide back into the driver’s seat and turn the key in the ignition.

The only answer I get is the exhausted metallic grinding of a thing that’s gone as far as it can go. I lean forward and rest my head against the steering wheel, smelling the stale-sour scent of hands gripped too long about the leather cover. My spidey senses tell me this road trip will not end well.

I’ve got Barry’s box in one hand and in the other is the long Japanese sword that parted him from his body. It seemed like a good idea to bring it along—just made sure Barry didn’t see it, sore point and all that. The water bottle hanging at my waist is making sad little wishy-washy sounds. Not much more than a mouthful left and I’m thirsty. The need for nicotine is dancing under my skin.

The air is cool and damp, the clouds are sitting on the road and it’s hard to see too much in front of me. The condensation is plastering the fringe to my forehead. It’s mid-afternoon and I don’t know where I’m going, I’m just following the road. Can’t open the box to ask Barry; he’s been in deep sleep for hours now. I just keep walking, although my boots have rubbed blisters onto my soles and the outer edges of my little toes.

Up ahead I can hear a sound, sweet and clear. Running water.

I pick up my pace and stumble off the road, down a slight slope to find a clearing, a little creek running through it. There’s a fire pit that looks like it hasn’t been used in a long, long time. I refill the water bottle, drink deeply, then peel off my boots and socks and plunge my feet in. It’s icy and hurts only for a little while before the numbing cold makes everything seem okay. I lean back, raise my face to where the sun should be and imagine it on my skin. Problem with being in service with a night crawler is that you don’t tend to see too much daylight. Oh, you have to run errands and some of those are unavoidably day-oriented. But mostly, you become as nocturnal as your master. Feels like shift-work. Do it long enough you either get used to it or go nuts. Or a bit of both.

Behind me there’s a sound; behind me, where I dropped Barry’s box (the katana I kept close). There’s that distinct polystyrene noise and I turn to see the biggest freaking possum I’ve ever seen in my life. It looks like a large dog, a Labrador maybe, on its hind legs and it’s got the lid off the cooler and one paw buried deep inside. It pulls Barry’s head out by the messy black hair.

There it dangles at the end of possum claws, eyes closed, lips slack and a little open, the neck so cleanly severed you could almost admire it as a nice tidy job. I stand slowly. The possum sniffs at Barry’s nose, licks it, then opens its mouth and sinks sharp white teeth into the substance of Barry’s pert little snoz.

I take a good few fast steps and bring the katana sweeping upward and the possum paw drops to the ground, which leaves Barry hanging briefly by his nose in the grip of the teeth of a very unhappy marsupial. Possum spits out its meal and gives me a look that makes me think twice about getting any closer. Then I remember that I’ve got the sword and about four feet in height on the thing. But it’s fast and the remaining claws sharp; my cargos and the leg underneath get a nasty gash before I manage to take the stinking thing’s head off.

I have a rest, bent over, hands on knees, breathing hard while I watch blood dribble out of my injured flesh. There’s a yell and I fear a possum support column may have arrived. But it’s only Barry, waking up.

“What the fuck happened to my nose? Do you have any idea how much this hurts? What the hell did you do to me?”

“Oh, Barry, you don’t want to know. Now, which way? There are no signs for Sun Falls.”

“Just keep following the road.” The he pitches his eyes downwards, trying to get a good look at the state of his nose. I manage not to laugh as he goes a little cross-eyed. “Fuck this hurts.”

A bonfire and five figures gathered around it: a woman, an old man, two young men, and a teenage girl. Raggedy stragglers, left out here with orders to guard the place, I guess. They’re vampires, though, so it doesn’t matter if there are five or a hundred. The rush and roar of water is clear from somewhere in the darkness. I can feel a damp spray I think might come from the falls.

I washed the wound and wrapped my leg up tight, but I know they can smell it before I step into the circle of light. There’s a collective growl that must be something like a gazelle hears before a pride of lions brings it down. I might be able to take out a couple before they get to me. The fire catches the edge of the katana and pinwheels in Barry-unboxed’s wide open eyes. The pack stays back, however. I must look as though I know what I’m doing—well, you can fool some of the vampires some of the time, I guess.

The woman stands and takes a few steps towards me.

“Hello, dinner,” she says. “How obliging of you to turn up.”

“You might want to re-think that,” I say, and raise my boss’s head.

Barry pipes up, “Lynda, keep your hands off her. She’s no one’s meal.”