Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth (8 page)

Chapter 23

Her

I took Mowgli and Bagheera with me the first time I explored Houston on my own. Baloo was feeling under the weather and sleeping it off in his cage. Weirdly enough, my dogs liked the enclosures Alex found in Tucson to get them here. He had thrown in extra blankets and tied chew toys to the mesh to make them more homey when he was too scared for his life to let them out while I slept.

“It nearly cost me a few fingers,” he’d told me. “But I didn’t know how long I’d have to leave them in there.”

Alex started a new round of tests and had to babysit the initial set ups. I was feeling much stronger and the hospital walls were pushing in on me so he encouraged me to go. We hadn’t spoken much in the past few days. He kept his distance, preferring his work to being around me.

But I could still see him in the little thoughtful gestures that kept popping up. Girl scented soap appeared in the washroom down the hallway. A handful of iPods with depleted charges were left on a table in my room early one morning while I still slept. And slowly, art supplies grew around me. Paintbrushes hooked up with charcoal and made babies. Everyday there’d be a little more to work with. Clearly, Alex had me in the back of his mind when he scavenged on his errands.

“Just stick to the main roads in the daylight and you’ll be okay,” he said, shoving a map of Houston and a bottle of water he raided from a broken vending machine into my sack as I got ready to leave. “There are endless signs pointing you back to M.D. Anderson. Benefit of living in a hospital.”

I let him hoist it onto my back. The need for him to be helpful was also a little stifling but lined with sweetness at the same time. He tossed in a peanut butter granola bar that was sitting on his nightstand as an afterthought. I wasn’t used to someone having so many thoughts about me, after and otherwise. Not since I had my father.

“I’ll need to leave the medical center if I’m going to find any pieces to add to my project,” I said. He dangled car keys in front of me.

“My Camaro. It’s parked in the garage on the first floor. Fully gassed.”

“Thanks,” I told him. I took the keys, whistled at my dogs, gave Alex one last conflicted look, then turned and made my way through the maze of hospital hallways.

I found the stairwell we used to get down the parking garage and a few minutes later I was speeding down Highway 288 with the windows down and my dogs’ tails in my face. Both of them had their heads stuffed together out of the passenger window, basking in the wind.

I headed south on the highway away from the city. I needed air. I wanted to start in a home that sat away from the hustle and bustle. I wanted a slower soul to paint.

I found such a soul in the Stone residence.

The buildings shrank in height as I drove further away from the city until they were replaced all together by trees and then even those were scarce. Large fields encompassed the land around me. I made a left turn onto a wide road through a wooden gate with a large set of horns and the words Stone & Company branded into a thick wooden beam.

Almost immediately, my wheels caught on something slick and the car slid wildly to the left. I turned sharply to the right to avoid hitting a massive oak on my driver’s side and managed to pick up traction in the dirt and straighten us out. I pulled forward and stopped, gripping the steering wheel and breathing deeply to slow my pounding heart.

“We almost put a nick in Alex’s baby,” I told my dogs, pulling a sarcastic face. But absently, my hand petted the steering wheel as we drove on as if to tell the Camaro:
it’s ok, you’re all right
.

The house came into view about ten minutes down the gated road, sitting behind a sea of wheat. It was a sprawled one story ranch house with a wrap around yellow porch and wooden rocking chairs. I knew pulling up to it that this was the home I was looking for. I could almost feel their peaceful life from the driver’s seat of the Camaro.

I let Mowgli and Bagheera out to explore the yard while I pushed into the front door. Not locked. The garage door was wide open and empty of cars. They didn’t die here. They had left before the end.

I walked through the house, breathing in the staleness that empty time lends to the air. Dust coated the surfaces of the home. The kitchen was huge. Details were attended to such as a double oven in the side wall, a pull out facet in an oversized sink, and extra burners in the island. Bar stools circled the part of the island not dedicated to stove burners or butcher blocks and even more lined the counter on the far left side. Cookbooks sat in a row on a wooden shelf by the pantry and upon closer inspection I could see old purple stains, white streaks of flour, even some hardened dough on a spine or two. These were not for show. Someone here loved to cook and the family made the kitchen space their hub.

Further exploration revealed that an older couple lived here with at least three kids who had grown and left. When I discovered their names, it fit their pictures perfectly.

Anthony and Marjorie Stone.

He was tall and rugged and gray haired. She was a few feet shorter, the top of her head just reaching his shoulders in a fishing picture on the mantle where they were both proudly displaying their catches. She had dark hair, soft eyes that crinkled at the corners, and a warm smile. Upstairs in their bedroom, I found a trunk. When I opened it, I discovered Anthony had been in the military.

The familiar sight of fatigues folded at the bottom hit me with emotion and my eyes flooded. Anthony was a sergeant in rank, just like my father had been. I ran my fingers over his medals and read the letters he’d saved from Marjorie while on tour. Underneath his uniform was an army knife. The handle was the size of my palm and it was a dark green color. The side had the initials T.K. scratched into it. I tucked the blades away and stowed it in my knapsack. I rarely took anything from the houses I painted but once in a while I’d come across a piece that was either extremely useful or had an intangible pull on me. This knife had both.

As I settled in to paint, it became clear that Anthony was going to be the focus. Hard, gray strokes softened by lighter greens and yellows took shape on the canvas. He reminded me of my father. Rigid in life and soft in the heart.

By the time I finished the piece and hung it in their kitchen, I was starving. The granola bar was long gone and I didn’t think I’d have traveled so far to work on a project so I didn’t bring anything else. The Stones’ cupboards were bare so there’d be no scavenging for food here.

I called out to my dogs to hop in the car and threw my sack in the backseat.

Nothing happened when I cranked the key in the ignition. I frowned and tried again but the car shuddered and died.

Great.

I opened the door to let out Mowgli and Bagheera. “Stay close,” I told them sternly. “When I find a car that will get us out of here, I don’t want to waste an hour looking for you.”

I used my hand to shield the sun and looked up and down the dirt road. Anthony and Marjorie Stone may have had a fascinating story but their fascinating story took place miles away from civilization. I didn’t notice how far out of town I was until I glumly realized just then that I may have to walk back in.

I went back into the farmhouse to search for a phone. I remembered seeing one that would work and it’d be faster to call Alex than trek through this sticky heat for hours.

As I suspected, he was none too pleased when I called.

“I’ve had that car for nine years,” he complained into the phone. “I give her to you for
one day
and you manage to put her out of commission.”

“Or perhaps the nine years of service played into it,” I couldn’t help saying. I knew I needed to behave to avoid a walking journey through Houston’s flatlands but I couldn’t keep that retort off my tongue.

He sighed audibly into my ear. “Can you sit tight for an hour? I’m shutting down my labs for the day and then I’m coming to pick you up.”

I gave him the address then took another stroll through the house with a second pair of eyes. Now that I had more time on my hands I turned a keener focus onto the Stones’ life together. They’d seemed happy. Married for almost forty years according to the date on the back of their wedding picture. I pulled out more albums and a couple of yearbooks and kept myself content journeying through their courtship, marriage, first house, kids, this farm (a change in career. It looks like Anthony tried on several hats after the military before settling down here), and the death of a daughter. The mementos told me the death was from The Before, not The Sweep. That’s where some of the sharp grays in my painting came from. He carried that pain. It showed in the photographs after it happened.

The sun started to dip in the sky. It became a brilliant orange disc instead of the unrelenting yellow hot ball it’d been all day. I was losing daylight. And Alex was way later than the hour he told me. With a groan, I strapped on my sack, called out to my dogs, and started walking.

With each step, I visualized how I could make that vamp pay. I could almost picture him engrossed in some laboratory findings while the second hand on the clock whirled away just out of his peripheral.

I’d been trekking for about twenty minutes when I first saw the smoke. Black curls of it snaked up and evaporated into the sky. Smoke probably meant life. Life meant Alex.

My walk became a run.

When I finally rounded the bend drenched in sweat and sucking in big, painful gulps of air, I saw it. A silver car slightly off the road with the front of it horseshoeing around a thick tree trunk. The black smoke rolling out of the hood looked ominous. Without thinking, I dropped my pack, ran to the vehicle, and stuck my head into the passenger window.

“Alex!”

He was slumped over in the driver’s seat. Rivers of blood ran down his face. Some of them were dried brown and crusted with fresh red liquid falling anew over the old ones. How long had he been here?

I yanked on the door but it wouldn’t give. The frame was too badly bent. I didn’t see any flames but the heated air hitting me in the face told me the engine was on fire.

“Alex!” I screamed again.

His head lolled to the side but his eyes found mine. He closed them slowly, painfully.

“We have to get you out of here,” I told him.

Since the door wouldn’t open, I shimmied myself through the broken passenger side window, cursing as the glass scraped against my skin. Alex seemed to grow more alert the closer I came.

“No, what are you doing?” he asked thickly. He struggled to keep his head up.

“How long has the car been on fire?” I asked in a panicky voice. The heat was so much worse inside. My skin could barely take it.

“I don’t know. I just woke up.” He seemed out of it.

I yanked on his seat belt but it wouldn’t budge. I started pulling harder. It was fruitless and I knew it but the heat was cooking me and Alex was stuck and not much help with the way he kept going limp and I was freaking out.

“It won’t unlatch!” I yelled furiously. Alex took a spaghetti arm and tried to push me away.

“You have to get out,” he said weakly.

“Shut up.”

But I did get out. I shimmied back out of the car and ran to my knapsack. Anthony Stone’s army knife. I rifled through the pack until I found it and I nearly kissed it. The fire popped behind me. The tree that the car was wrapped around was catching now. My dogs whined nervously behind me as if they knew I was going to head back into danger and were trying to talk me out of it. I dreaded going back in but Alex still hadn’t moved and while he could probably weather a lot of injuries, I had no idea what full body roasting did to a vamp.

I crawled back into the car. Blood streaked my shirt but I had no time to worry about that. I started sawing away at his seat belt.

I did this for a bit with a smooth-edged knife before my brain clicked with common sense and I tucked it away to pull out a serrated edge in its place. The teeth ate away at the seat belt much more quickly and with one last swipe, Alex came free.

Almost.

His leg didn’t budge. I yanked on it while he pulled, but his ankle seemed to be caught.

“Oh my fucking god, you have got to be kidding me!” I could hardly see now. The air shimmered in front of me with the waves of heat and sweat stinging my eyes. I reached down until my face was practically buried in his crotch and stretched to get my fingers to his shoe laces. I untied them and then told him to pull again.

He lost some skin and maybe some muscle in the process, but his leg finally came free with bloody scraps left covering his ankle. The fresh pain must have brought him around because his curses were louder and more colorful than mine and his death grip on my shoulder left marks.

“We have to go through the window!” I yelled as another loud pop made us both jump. “I can’t lift you, you have to help me!”

Figuring it would be easier to use my legs leveraged against the car seat to help push him out, I positioned him to go first and wedged myself underneath him. Through grunting and groaning and full body touching and none of it in the pleasant sense, he finally tipped out of the car and rolled onto his back, wincing from the impact. I followed as the flames made their appearance through the hood of the car.