The Last Days of October (21 page)

26.

Nothing works out,
Heather thought with
spiraling despair.
 
She wondered if she
should use the Ruger now, while she still had time.
 
She transferred it from the hand at the end
of her pinned right arm to her left.
 
She
thumbed off the safety.
 
Her insides
writhed like living things with their own independent existence.
 
Rebelling, she felt, against the wicked
thoughts taking command of her head.

The engines slowed
as they approached the forest, then settled to an idle as the vehicles
stopped.
 
Mild relief surged when she
realized they weren’t going to drive straight into the forest.
 
But it disappeared quickly.

Doors opened.

We should have kept going,
she
thought.
 
We should have gone deeper, made it harder for them.
 
They’re right on top of us.

A moment passed,
and then another.
 
And then Mike spoke.

“We know where you
are.”

Behind her, Amber
breathed in audibly and Heather cursed the noise.
 
But she said nothing.
 
She couldn’t.

“You left
footprints in the ground.
 
Led us right
here.
 
You’re behind that fallen tree in
there.”

Put their heads together,
she thought
wildly.
 
Face to face, cheek to cheek, stick the gun up to Amber’s head and pull
the trigger.
 
Kill them both with one
bullet.

But the bullet
could deflect, killing Amber and either missing Justin completely or lodging
itself somewhere crazy that didn’t kill him but left him flopping around on the
forest floor in seizures while those things took him.
 
His last moments would be agony.

There was no way
out of this.

Tears of despair
and frustration began streaming down her face.
 
All her shortcomings made their way to her eyes and expressed themselves
on her cheeks.

“Mom,” Amber
whispered.
 
Her voice was wet, like the
ground that had betrayed them.
 
“I want
you to shoot me now.”

“And if you’ve got
any extras,” Justin said, “I’ll take one, too.”

The wind picked up
then, rustling the leaves and blowing strands of hair across her face.
 
It chilled her skin and penetrated her
inadequate jacket.
 
Why don’t they just charge in here and end the whole thing?
She
wondered.
 
Why prolong this moment?
 
They had nothing with which to fight.
 
A few sticks.
 
And a pistol with only one bullet.

He doesn’t know that.

Her breath caught.

He knows you have a gun.
 
And he’s afraid you’ll use it on yourself.

She sat up.
 
A platoon of a dozen or more of the creatures
had fanned out across the landscape before her, Mike standing slightly forward
at their center.

“Give yourself to
me,” Mike said, “and we’ll let the others go.”

“And I should
believe you because…”

“Because you’ve
got no choice,” he said.
 
His voice was
dead and papery but stronger now, fuller.

“Oh, but I do,”
she said.
 
“I have this gun.
 
I can shoot Justin, I can shoot Amber and I
can shoot myself and you won’t get shit.
 
How does that sound?
 
So don’t you
stand there and tell me I have no choice, you prick.
 
This
is
a negotiation.
 
I have something you
want.”

He remained silent
for a moment before saying, “What do you propose?”

“You can have me
if you let the kids go.”

“Okay.”

“If you let them
go
first.”

It hesitated
again.
 

“Of course.”

He had no
intentions of keeping any promises.
 
Heather
had to play this just right.
 
Because if
she didn’t…

“Heather?”
 
Justin asked.
 
“What are you doing?”

“Go far away,” she
whispered.
 
“Find a place to pull off,
then hunker down and spend the night.”

“But…”
 
Amber protested.

“When I get up,
stand behind me.
 
Do as I say.
 
Both of you.”

Slowly, she
rose.
 
Her legs wobbled, wasted by the
hard sprint across the field and weakened by fear.
 
But they held her up.
 
The vampires made a tittering noise as the
children rose, too.

She raised the
pistol to her head.

“Here’s how this
works,” she called out.
 
“The kids get to
go.
 
When they’re good and gone, you can
have me.
 
That’s what you want, right?”

None of the
vampires moved.

“Yes,” Mike said
at last.

If it calls your bluff, your child is
finished.

Eternity is a long time.

“Throw us the keys
to those cars,” she said.

A set of keys flew
out of the darkness and struck her on the shins.

“All of them,” she
said.

Tittering from
Mike’s little tribe.
 
Two more sets
landed at her feet.

“Amber,” she said,
“pick up all the keys.
 
Pick a car, take
it and go.”

“Mom…”

“Do it!”
 
She kissed Amber on the head as she passed,
then did the same to Justin.
 
This had to
look like a final goodbye.
 
“I love you
more than you’ll ever understand,” she said softly.
 
To Justin, she said, “I haven’t known you
long, but I can tell who you are.
 
You’re
a good man.
 
You’re going to take good
care of her.
 
I know it.”

Amber began to cry.
 
Justin, face taut and shocked, just blinked.

“Now go!”

Justin grabbed her
jacket and pulled her onward.
 
The
vampires watched them move along the tree line and circle back to the nearest
car.
 
The lights came on, and it backed
up.

Mike stepped
forward.

She raised the
pistol to her head again.
 
“Stop.”

“We kept our
word,” he said.
 
“Time for you to keep
yours.”

“They’re not gone
yet.”

The car rumbled
across the field to the highway, where it turned north and sped off into the
night.

“They’re gone now,”
Mike growled.

“And you have two
cars left,” Heather retorted.
 
“How do I
know you don’t have any extra keys?”

“We don’t!”

“Then why don’t we
just wait for a while to make sure?
 
Give
them a good head start.
 
Just in
case.
 
No rush, right?
 
It’s a long night.”

They remained that
way for a long time, a collection of statues at the forest’s edge.
 
Beholden to their master, Mike’s followers
fidgeted but didn’t move.
 
Another
October breeze rustled through the forest behind Heather and blew across the
open field, carrying that earthy smell.
 
She felt it against her back like a set of gentle hands holding her
up.
 
Helping her stand up straight.

“How long are we
going to do this?”
 
Mike asked.

“As long as it
takes,” she replied.

“I can come for
you right now,” it said.

“I know.”

“I can make you
shoot yourself.”

“You sure
can.
 
And then I’ll be gone.”

Mike stood there,
unable to give up his prize, as did the others. They remained in place as the
breeze blew and the leaves rustled and the cold steel of the gun barrel against
her skull warmed to skin temperature and nothing, not even time itself, moved.

But the Earth
turned, and time did move.
 
Dawn came
slowly, but when it did, Mike’s followers began falling back towards the
farmhouse in the distance, the one she’d eschewed in favor of the woods.
 
Mike remained, fists clenched.

“You think you’re
smart,” he said, “but you’re not.
 
I
could take you now and make you shoot yourself, but you won’t get off that
easily.
 
Tomorrow, we’ll come again.
 
We’ll all go home, spend some time
together.
 
You can watch me remove
Amber’s limbs one piece at a time.
 
While
she’s still alive.”

Her back, her
neck, her whole body hurt from standing all night; only her feet, numb blocks
of ice at the end of her legs, didn’t.
 
“But you won’t do that tonight.
 
Or, shall I say, this morning?”

He stared at her
with black menace, but not for long.
 
As
the harvested field lightened in color with the onset of dawn, he fell back to
the farmhouse with the others.
 
They remained
on the porch until dawn broke in full and the sun reached for them across the
yard.
 
Then they retreated inside.
 

Heather staggered
to the road.
 
She climbed into the
disabled truck, the one that had nearly screwed them all into an early
death.
 
She rested for a long time, letting
the sun warm the air inside the cab.
 
And
then she fell asleep.

27.

They drove north
until they hit the outskirts of Yanceyville, where Justin veered off on a side
road.
 
Amber sat beside him with her head
resting against the window glass, staring off into space.
 
He asked her once if she cared where they
went.
 
When she answered with nothing
more than a shrug, he decided that further conversation was futile.
 
He concentrated on driving and staring into
the rearview mirror.
 
Several sets of
keys pressed against his skin from inside his jeans pockets, but he couldn’t be
sure the vampires hadn’t kept spares.
 
When they got done with Heather…

“Think he’ll keep
his word?”
 
Amber asked.

“Pardon?”

“My dad.
 
Do you think that since he has my mom now,
he’ll keep his word and let us go?
 
Do we
have to worry about him chasing us now?”

Justin
frowned.
 
Amber’s face and voice had a
slack, detached quality he didn’t much care for.
 
He’d seen it on his own face, heard it in his
own voice, when his father died.
 
Shock
, he thought.
 
Separation of the self from one’s current
reality.
 
A certain degree of protective
apathy.
 
In his case, it had kept him on
the couch for days, head spinning like a broken compass.
 
If a compass could even break; Justin didn’t
know.
 
A person could break, though.
 
He knew that.

“I can’t say,” he
said cautiously.
 
“You know him better
than I do.”

“I don’t think
that’s true,” she said.
 
“Not
really.
 
I don’t think I ever really knew
him at all.”

Sighing, Justin
looked down at the dashboard.
 
They had
snatched a battered old minivan that reeked of cigarettes, and while it ran and
drove reasonably well the fuel level indicator had begun sinking sharply once
it passed the half-full mark.
 
It now read
one quarter, which he didn’t trust to carry them through the night.
 
His father’s truck had been like that; long
legs on the first half tank, Tyrannosaurus Rex arms on the last.
 
They’d have to find a place to stop for what
remained of the night or risk getting stranded on a well-traveled
thoroughfare.
 
And now that he knew
vampires could drive cars, the main roads had become even more dangerous.

He slowed and took
the next left.
 
The pavement beneath
their tires became rough, the state’s lack of give-a-shit about this particular
area of the county evident in every thumping pothole.
 
Few manmade works spoke to the presence of
humanity out here; other than the road itself and the occasional guardrail,
this could have been virgin forest.
 
He
cut off the headlights and slowed to a crawl.
 
He found a place where the trees receded back from the road enough to
where he could pull the van off without dumping it in the drainage ditch.
 
Then he switched off the motor.
 
He laid a hand on the door handle and was
about to open it when his arm stopped responding on its own.

What are you doing?
 
It asked.

Getting out
, he replied.
 
We’re
going to go hide in the woods.
 
Open the
goddamn door.

You ever thought about what happened to the
animals?

His breath caught
in his throat.
 
True; very true.
 
He’d seen a vampire dog today.
 
What if there were other things?
 
Something as small as a field mouse could
turn him into a Mike or a Kayleigh.
 
He
had no way of knowing anything about the current condition of the local
wildlife.
 
Some animals had always hunted
at night; maybe they all did now.

He shot a look out
the window at the deserted road.
 
The
dark
road.
 
It’s
not safe out here
, he thought, his insides shuddering in a way that
bordered on panic.

It’s not safe anywhere
, his recalcitrant
arm shot back.
 
Keep your ass in the van.

“I want to leave
them alone,” Amber said.

He turned his head
to look at her.
 
She stared out the
windshield at something only she could see—a thought or a memory dancing there
to the rustling of dead leaves and the soft ticking of metal as the engine
cooled.
 
“You mean…”

“My mom and
dad.
 
In the morning, I want us to just
leave.
 
I thought I would want to burn
the house down so they wouldn’t have to live like that anymore, but I don’t
think I can do it.
 
Pretty soon, they’re
going to starve anyway.
 
I want to just
let nature take its course and let them die off with all the rest.”

She didn’t look
back at him.
 
Whatever she was seeing
held her attention so deeply that she spoke without turning her head, Justin a
being that existed only on her periphery.
 
He was an afterthought in this moment, a side dish that could interact
but whose thoughts and words mattered little in the presence of something far
more important.
 
Still, he had to admit
that there were worse places to be right now than with her.
 
Her gentle features cut away just enough of
the darkness to reveal echoes of Heather in the rise and fall of her cheekbones
and the way her mouth tied it all together.
 
She was a beautiful girl.
 
Kayleigh had been pretty, but Amber was incredible—it was almost
impossible to compare them in the same language.
 
He became suddenly conscious of a powerful
desire to keep her safe and wondered then if it was some sort of biological
reaction to one of the world’s last females or if there was something special
about her that could make him feel this way.
 
Maybe another angle of the same something that had motivated Heather to
sacrifice herself to Mike and his Band of Merry Vampire Fucknuts to save her.
 
Heather had marched straight into Hell
without looking back, all for this girl right here.

He thought about
the kind of love that would lead someone to do that, and he tried to picture
what it must have felt like to lose it.
 
He couldn’t.

“I am so selfish,”
she said with a bitter little laugh.
 
“I
mean, she cared enough about me to do that.
 
And you know what?
 
In a sense,
she’s been doing it my whole life.
 
Sacrificing herself to him, I mean.
 
She could have left him a long time ago, but she didn’t because she had
me.
 
She could have shot herself just
now, but she didn’t.
 
Because I had to
escape.
 
And I can’t even bring myself to
strike a match for her.
 
Isn’t that
messed up?”

Justin
shrugged.
 
He wondered if he would ever
have a normal conversation with another person ever again.
 
If he never got to talk about basketball, or
trucks, or music.
 
If everything was
always going to be so heavy all the frigging time.
 
“You don’t want to torch your parents,” he
said.
 
“I think that’s a healthy
feeling.”

“It’s cowardly.
 
I don’t want her to be in pain.
  
But if I don’t…then she’ll be like
that.
 
And before too long, she’ll get skinny.
 
They’ll run out of food and die of starvation.”

“Your dad wasn’t
skinny.
 
Neither were his buddies.”

“Because they’re
at the top of the chain.
 
Whatever’s
left, they get it.
 
When that’s
gone…”
 
She trailed off.

Right.
 
When that was gone, they would degenerate
into bags of bones that charged out into the open sunlight in hopes of a
meal.
 
Like running into a bonfire to
grab a hamburger—yet another depth of feeling that he couldn’t imagine.
 
But Heather would; Amber was right about
that.
 
When the chow finally ran
out—wherever Mike and Company were getting theirs—all of those creatures would
understand it very, very well.

“I’ll do it,” he
said.
 
“You won’t have to.
 
I’ll do it for you.”

She looked at him.

“If she didn’t use
the gun on herself as soon as we were out of there,” he continued, “she’ll
likely be somewhere nearby.
 
The nearest
house or tobacco shed, they’ll all be in there.
 
I’ll burn everything around there.
 
Then I’ll burn your house, just in case they made it back there.”

She closed her
eyes and shook her head.
 
“I want to just
go.”

“I’ll drop you off
somewhere so you don’t have to listen to it.”

“I don’t want you to
leave me.
 
Can we just go?
 
In the morning, can we just…go down to Fayetteville and look for
the army?”

He sighed and
shrugged again.

“Sure.”

She nodded slowly
and looked out the window again.
 
“I
can’t believe I’m like this,” she said.
 
“I should be a complete wreck.
 
I
can’t believe I’m not.”

“You’re in shock,”
he replied.
 
“Try to enjoy it.
 
It doesn’t last forever.”