Less Than Human (27 page)

He flashed the light in that direction, saw movement His eyes were drawn to the graveyard, to the blue-green iridescent blanket covering the stones beneath the white cross. Part of it reached up the cross itself.

Elliot's mouth fell open.

The blanket was moving by itself. Rippling in the breeze, ebbing, flowing.

The gawky teenager stared without comprehension . until he realized he was looking at blowflies. The entire graveyard was crawling with blowflies. The reason he hadn't heard them before was because his ears had been ringing from the bike. His light was disturbing their feeding. The flies rose in a wave, descended.

There must be thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands.

What were they feeding on? He suddenly decided he didn't want to know.

He bolted to his bike, straddled it. This was getting past weird, way past, this was getting into scary. He kicked the starter. The engine coughed once, went silent. He went to give the starter another kick.

"Hey, Elliot, Timmy, what's your hurry?"

Elliot looked around for the voice, didn't see anyone. "Who's there?"

"It's me, Bobby Roberts."

"Bobby, where are you?" Timmy asked. "I don't see you." He smirked. "Elliot was in your car."

"I'm right here."

They heard a clatter from inside the graveyard fence, which sounded as though something were moving the rocks around. Elliot flashed his bike light in that direction, and still all he saw were the flies. They covered everything.

A huge glob of the flies moved away from the rest and began heading toward Elliot. Their buzzing became a tangible thing. A few of them flew away from the rest, landed on his face. He felt them crawling on his skin but he was too numb to brush them away. Something, maybe it was an arm, reached upward from the roiling mass, holding an object, slapped it against the cross. It turned into a hat.

"Be with you in a second," the voice said. The hat began beating against the bigger glob of flies, causing them to lift, revealing a man beneath. Bobby Roberts.

"Hey, Elliot, Timmy, how you boys doing?"

Elliot redoubled his efforts to start his bike, but in his haste, he flooded it. The sharp tang of gasoline overrode the riper odor of Bobby as he walked closer.

"You ever have one of those nights where everything goes wrong?" Bobby asked with a laugh. He kept beating off the flies with his hat. "So much to do, so little time. There just aren't enough hours in the night." The flies wouldn't seem to leave Bobby alone. Sometimes, parts of him would completely disappear beneath their squirming bodies. "I guess you're wondering what I'm doing out here."

Elliot tried to nod. Timmy whimpered.

"Carelessness, pure and simple," Bobby said, as if he were talking about the price of beef. "Got caught by the rising sun and I had to burrow in under those rocks back there. It's cool under the trees." His smile was a trifle embarrassed. "But I damn sure didn't count on all these flies. It must have been the dead dogs that brought them."

Elliot was unable to look away. Timmy had his face buried in his brother's back again. Elliot had to admit it was a little disconcerting talking to someone whose head kept disappearing beneath a mass of blowflies. "Bobby, don't get mad, but could I ask you something?"

"Sure, little buddy, ask away."

"How come you're all covered with flies?"

"I expect it's because my clothes are all soaked with blood." Bobby walked toward his Caddy, opened up the trunk and pulled out some clean jeans and a shirt.

"Bobby?"

"What, little buddy?"

"Did you kill somebody?"

"I killed a lot of people."

"Are you going to kill us?"

"I expect so." Bobby began changing into his clean clothes.

He wadded up his old ones and tossed them over the fence.

Timmy whispered in his brother's ear, "See, I told you he'd cut your balls off."

The flies swarmed over Bobby's blood-crusted shirt and jeans. "I guess you'll want to know why."

Elliot nodded.

"Well, I've got a little surprise for Crowder Flats, and I can't have you two spoiling it."

"You mean like a surprise birthday party?" Timmy asked.

"Yeah, something like that."

"Are you a monster?"

"Fraid so." Bobby was completely changed now. "I guess I'm what you'd call a vampire. It's the only term you'd understand."

"No shit?"

''No shit."

Elliot couldn't decide if he was excited or scared. This was definitely the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. "You like it okay, I mean, being a vampire and everything?"

"No, not really. The thing inside me makes me do things I don't really want to do."

"Like killing us."

"That's right." Bobby closed the trunk. The sound had a note of finality in it.

"Vampires get all the babes," Timmy said. "Could you make us vampires?"

Bobby laughed, sailed his bloodstained hat over the fence, where it landed next to his old clothes. The flies descended. "You've been watching way too many bad movies, boys." Bobby's face turned serious in the bike's light, his good humor falling away. All that was left was pain and it twisted his mouth into a crooked line. "You don't want to be a vampire, Timmy. It ain't nothing like what you think. You're better off being dead, believe me."

"We can work a deal," Elliot said. "How about we promise not to say anything about what we saw here, and you don't kill us?"

The smile was back, only now it looked painted on. "You always were a funny kid, Elliot. All that crazy shit you do, spearing jackrabbits, lighting the barbecue grill with a flamethrower. I'm going to miss you." Bobby moved around the car, started toward him.

Cocking his head, Elliot sniffed the air. There was no gasoline smell now. He stepped down, kicked the bike to life, revved the engine.

Bobby stopped. He looked pissed. "You were just stalling me, weren't you?"

"Yeah, my bike was flooded."

"All right, maybe I was a little hasty." Bobby backed up a step. "Maybe we can work out a deal on this vampire thing."

"Fuck you, Bobby; you must think I'm a retard. Get out of the way." Elliot revved the engine again, dropped the pole he still held in his hand to jousting position. "I mean it, get out of the way." The sharp end was pointed at Bobby's chest.

"Vampires get all the babes." Bobby raised his head to the night air, sniffed, and Elliot had the feeling Bobby was sniffing him. "You'd like to get Louise Warrick, wouldn't you, especially after what she did to you today?"

The pole in Elliot's hand wavered. "How did you know that?"

"Vampires know lots of things." Bobby leaned against the Caddy, seemingly at ease. "You want her; I can smell it on you."

The bike idled while Elliot digested that. "You're full of shit."

"Am I?"

"Okay, so maybe I like her a little."

"If you were a vampire, you could have her."

The possibilities played across Elliot's face. "I could really have her?"

"Absolutely. You'd be able to get any woman you want."

"Even Amy?"

The skin at the corner of Bobby's eyes tightened. "Even Amy."

"I don't know, Bobby. I think I gotta go home and sleep on it."

Bobby shrugged, raised his hands. "All right. See you boys around."

While they were talking, smoke from the idling bike had drifted toward the graveyard, sending the flies into a hovering cloud.

What they had covered was becoming visible, and Timmy was quietly tugging on Elliot's shirt.

Elliot risked a quick look, turned back to Bobby. He was still holding up the Caddy.

What Elliot had seen began to register.

Five dead bodies lying in various positions of repose.

Four of them were people Elliot had known all his life. They were pale, waxy mannequins. For the first time in his life Elliot had an inkling of what death really looked like. He tried not to look again, but he couldn't stop himself.

Elliot looked back at Bobby.

Bobby wasn't by the car anymore. He had moved.

He was much closer.

And he had both hands on the pole.

The suddenness of the move startled the teenager and his hand twitched on the accelerator. The bike lurched forward.

Not much, maybe a foot.

Like magic, the pole was sticking out of Bobby's back. He looked at it with faint surprise and the embarrassed smile suddenly appeared. "That's what I get… letting my lips flap… guess becoming a vampire hasn't changed that none."

Elliot tried to turn the bike, but the cars and the fence had him hemmed in.

Blood, or whatever passed for blood, leaked from Bobby's stomach and ran down the pole. It was dark red, almost black in the light and slightly luminous, filled with specks of light that glittered like broken glass.

It stunk, too, worse than Bobby.

Timmy wrinkled his nose at the awful smell.

The black substance was a trickle at first, though as it got nearer Elliot's hand; it sped up, moving with startling speed. The teenager turned loose of the pole as though he had been burned, and scrambled back on his bike.

The blood came to the end of the pole, paused, rose up, and split into dozens of tendrils. They wriggled with agitation, as though trying to decide whether or not to go any farther. They made up their mind, shooting toward Elliot like a nest of striking rattlesnakes.

But their strike fell short.

All except for one tendril.

It brushed Elliot's hand, leaving behind a welt. And a trace of itself. Inside his mind, the fifteen-year-old had a flash of something too alien to comprehend, something that was incredibly old.

There were images, murky at first, then clearer, like one of those photographs that developed in your hand.

Elliot sucked in his breath when the images crystallized.

He saw a moon, bright as silver, clear as pain, riding over a stretch of desert that seemed to reach the ends of the world.

Mountains sprawled at the desert's edge, the skeletal backbone of a giant snake pushing its way up from the earth. He took a breath and looked around. The night was humid, filled with the siren call of flutes, the slow thunder of drums, the hot copper smell of blood, the screams of people crying out in pain and ecstasy. All somehow joined together.

Elliot was standing on the summit of some vast triangular stone monument, a pyramid was the word that came to him, and he was looking out over a clearing, while hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned people dressed in bright-hued clothing and exotic feathers bowed down to him. They were chanting his name and Elliot knew he was a god to them. There were steps carved into the lofty stone triangle, leading up to him, and the steps were stained red. Blood red.

Stacked along the walls of his temple were thousands of skulls, some bleached white, some still dripping.

The sea of worshippers held out their arms to him. Beckoning. Imploring.

He moved down the familiar route to the throng waiting below, listening to them call out his name. "Huitzilopochtli, Huitzilopochtli," they screamed, their faces twisted with adoration and fear. Some began tearing at their own flesh with the knives in their hands.

As Elliot reached the base of the pyramid, they fell silent. The wind ruffling their bright feathers, their torches guttering, were the only sounds.

As one, two hundred thousand people held their breath, looking to him. A feeling of expectation hung in the air, a hush so palpable he could reach out and touch it. Time ceased.

Gazing toward the summit of the pyramid, he gave a signal to the people gathered there. They were his priests, sworn to him.

Twenty thousand men, women, and children kneeled before the priests, their faces serene. They gazed down at their god with love.

He basked in their adulation a moment. Gave another signal.

And the stone knives of his priests cut out the hearts of those who knelt. The wet blades traced faint, arcane glimmers in the moonlight as they went about their work.

The chosen were slaughtered in a matter of seconds. Even as they died, they called out their god's name.

The priests held the severed organs high, some still beating

And flung them to the crowd waiting below.

Blood erupted from the butchered bodies in geysers of scarlet, collecting in pools, spilling down the steps, gathering speed as it went.

By the time the blood reached Elliot, it was roaring like a waterfall.

The hot liquid came in waves, striking him in the chest, then his face, covering him, drowning out the screams of his worshippers as they went into a frenzy. He was their god and he had tasted their blood.

He found it good.

Then the pyramid was gone and Elliot was back at the Navajo graveyard. The taste of blood was in his mouth. He leaned over the bike and threw up.

Bobby took a step, went sideways.

Elliot backpedaled some more, trying to get the bike turned around.

The blood stopped, reversed itself, ran back up the pole toward Bobby, and disappeared inside of him. He tried to take a step forward. Couldn't. His legs would no longer support him. He slid down the side of his Caddy, finally coming to a sitting position with his legs straight out in front of him.

The tip of the pole sticking out of Bobby's back left a long scratch in the paint.

"Bobby, I saw something from the past, a pyramid." Elliot struggled for the words. "People dying, blood running down the steps. There must have been—"

"Fifty thousand dead. I had fifty thousand people killed over a five-day period at Teotihuacán." Bobby saw the confusion on the boy's face. "That's outside Mexico City." Bobby's face clouded with thought. "That was a long time ago, over five hundred years."

There was no way for Elliot to measure five hundred years. "But why did you kill them?"

"Sacrifice. At the time, I was the sun god of the Aztecs." Bobby's foot was twitching, beating a tattoo on the stones. "The killing was their idea; they believed blood was the only thing that would bring the sun back each day. So I gave them blood. I didn't want to disappoint them." He looked inward and Elliot knew that the thing inside Bobby was reliving the moment. "I have been many gods in my time, Quetzacoatl, Thaloc, Coatlicue. Many gods."