The Vampire Next Door (3 page)

The stench of death was prevalent as I walked through the park, pushing the wheelbarrow more slowly with each reluctant step. I’m sure The Ex loved that I had to do this- dispose of the bodies she left for me. Until today, I’d had Eddie along and hadn’t minded nearly as much. By myself, the morbid act was infinitely more depressing.

I deliberately kept my eyes focused on the block wall across the ditch as I approached. Other than a cursory glance down to make sure that I wouldn’t be stepping off into thin air, I avoided looking at any of the remains at the bottom, and held my breath as I tipped the wheelbarrow over the edge, keeping a firm grip on the handles and bracing my feet. The body slid gracelessly out and fell twenty feet to the bottom of the ditch, landing on top of another body with a sickening
plop.

I retreated hastily, cursing Kellie the entire time.

CHAPTER 2

I guess, before I started talking about dead bodies and The Ex, I probably should have explained a little bit more about how the pandemic unfolded.

In my defense, there’s not much to tell. Everyone knew about the rash of killings throughout Mexico because the media was all over it. I distinctly remember one reporter explaining that many of the victims had been drained completely of their blood. I had thought to myself, rather jokingly,
It’s vampires. It’s totally vampires.

I never thought for one second that I might actually be right.

In the meantime, politicians were calling for an end to the supposed “gang violence” in Mexico. Yes, gang violence. I laugh every time I think about that. The bigwigs in Washington were the most clueless of all.

In my tiny border town, we all went about our lives as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Then one night I woke up to the blaring of my cell phone. It was the same shrieking alarm that often accompanied flash flood warnings or AMBER alerts, but this time, the text read,
PANDEMIC WARNING: (AZ) All residents are advised to remain indoors indefinitely.

I had thought it was some kind of joke, a couple of hackers messing around, and I’d gone right back to sleep.

Then I opened my garage door the next morning, and saw several bodies littering the sidewalk outside.

That was when I realized the text hadn’t been a joke at all.

Perhaps that day was where I should have started my story, but either way, the next eight months went by in a huge blur, and that’s how I ended up dumping my seventh dead body into the ditch behind the neighborhood park like it was an everyday occurrence, like it was no big deal at all.

My stomach must have a really lousy sense of humor, or possibly just terrible timing, because the minute I was out of smelling range of the ditch, said stomach decided to give a loud and angry rumble, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten breakfast.

Ugh. Food.

I used to enjoy food. I mean, I truly loved it. That was before the world went to hell. Something about being surrounded by undead kind of kills your appetite.

I actually needed to restock my food supply, so Eddie had picked a hell of a time to leave. My diet these days would have been the bane of any doctor’s existence, consisting mostly of anything I could find that hadn’t gone moldy. Instant noodles, rice, peanut butter and canned veggies were my staples. Yes, I know- major preservative overload. My only consolation was that if Kellie did someday succeed in murdering me, my body would probably take eons to decompose.

The convenience store down the street was out of everything edible, and so was the grocery store around the corner, so that meant I had to go a bit further and try to ransack the old dollar store, which was about five miles away.

I didn’t have a car anymore. Survivors had stolen it months ago- yet another reason why I tried to avoid most people. My choices for transportation were limited to a bicycle and a pink 125cc scooter I’d discovered abandoned at a gas station. I didn’t feel too keen on bicycling ten miles round trip, but the danger of the scooter was potentially alerting other survivors to the fact that I had it. People can be pretty damn selfish during an apocalypse, and even a scooter with a top speed of sixty miles per hour was a hot commodity in this day and age. Although I started the engine and let it idle every Monday, like clockwork, to keep the battery from dying, I almost never took my scooter outside.

Still…bicycling ten miles was not my idea of a good time.

When I got back inside the house, I foraged the food supply downstairs and settled on a can of ravioli, taking a moment to look over what I had as I ate the stuff cold from the can. My inventory wasn’t so bad. I could survive a week or more on what I had left, but I didn’t want to take any chances. If I was injured or became trapped in the house for some reason, I wanted to know I had plenty of food to sustain me.

Holloway followed me up the steps as I went to leave the house, and I hesitated at the top of the staircase, wondering what I should do with him. I could keep him locked inside, but he didn’t like being cooped up, and I didn’t want to come back and find every door in my house gouged with claw marks. I’d gone to a lot of effort to keep vampires from trashing my home, and I didn’t particularly want a stray dog undoing all my hard work.

Fortunately, Holloway made up my mind for me. He made his way to the back door and lifted one paw to scratch at the doorknob, then looked at me plaintively. His intentions couldn’t have been clearer if he’d been speaking English. I opened the door and let him into the backyard, watching to see what he would do next. Sure enough, he took a running start, leaped up onto the edge of my fence, and used his paws to haul his long, lanky body over. In a matter of moments, he was gone.

“I would have opened the gate for you, you dumb dug,” I muttered, locking the back door again. It was hard not to feel slighted when all Holloway did was show up for meals and the occasional overnight stay before departing again. But I supposed I should just be happy to have some kind of companionship, even if that companionship was provided by a commitment-phobic mutt.

I always kept the scooter parked in the formal dining room, on an old oriental rug with a smashed aluminum can under the kickstand to keep it from gouging up the hardwood floor. It seems kind of silly, I guess, trying to maintain hardwood floors when vampires are roaming the streets. Old habits die hard, even when you have to make concessions like parking a scooter in your dining room.

I checked the Rubbermaid container bolted on the back of the scooter before I went outside, making sure the screws I’d used to attach it were still good. Everything looked fine. I pushed the scooter outside and threw my leg over it, situating myself on the wide seat. It was a shame that I’d never ridden a scooter before the outbreak. It was probably a fun thing to use to commute to and from work when you weren’t constantly looking around for signs of danger, in fear for your life. At almost ninety miles to the gallon, it was economical, too.

The scooter started right up, and I cruised out into the street, not bothering to pause at the stop sign on the corner. I hadn’t seen a car in months. I used to be such a careful driver, but on the scooter I took stupid risks that Cole would have totally reamed me for- like driving the wrong way on a one-way street, jumping curbs, cutting across medians and speeding through intersections. With my lack of experience, all those risks were pretty dangerous.

It’s not like I had a death wish. But I’d figured out there were worse things to fear than dying.

Apparently road rash was not one of those things.

There were a few ominous-looking clouds lingering over the mountains, and I grimaced. If the sky was overcast later today, Kellie might surface a little sooner than expected. I’d better make this trip quick.

I ignored the occasional dead body littering the sidewalk as I steered my scooter towards the dollar store, sticking to residential neighborhoods and avoiding the main streets. Evidence of vampires was everywhere- blood-streaked driveways, boarded-up windows, and even one garage door that was spray-painted with the words, “THEIR COMING.”

Okay, seriously, people. The least you can do is spell your graffiti correctly.

If I were a vampire, I think I would probably run around eating all the survivors who couldn’t keep their homonyms straight. That, at least, seemed like a worthwhile cause. It’d be almost like I was doing the world a favor.

I glimpsed the roof of the city library in the distance as I turned down the street that would lead me directly to my destination. I hadn’t been to the library since before the outbreak. Hmm. With huge glass windows making up most of the walls within the building, it was unlikely that any vamps would seek it out for shelter. Maybe I could stop by for some new reading material. I’d re-read my collection of Barbara Cartland romance novels so many times that I could practically quote them all from memory.

Eddie had been an avid reader, too, and he’d tolerated my romance novel obsession with only the occasional snarky comment. We’d spent many a night sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the basement, each engrossed in a book. I’d read the Wheel of Time series because of him, had loved the story in spite of Robert Jordan’s excessive wordiness, and Eddie had grudgingly labored through a few of Ms. Cartland’s books as well. He hadn’t liked them much, but at least he’d made the effort.

The pang of loneliness at the memory of my former companion cut deep, and I chewed on my lower lip, suddenly wishing he were with me. Why had I let him leave so easily? Maybe I should have just had sex with him and been done with it. Dealing with the guilt of infidelity could be preferable to being completely alone. And it might not have been infidelity, anyway. Honestly, I felt immensely stupid for even hoping that Cole was alive at this point.

I shook my head and turned my attention back to the road. Ahead was the old Walmart parking lot, with a few smaller stores in the surrounding plaza. I turned into the lot and stopped the scooter in front of the store, taking a moment to look around and search for movement. There didn’t appear to be any response whatsoever to the rumblings of my scooter’s engine.

I waited for a few moments longer
.

Still nothing.

I turned the key in the ignition, killing the engine, and pushed the kickstand down with my left boot. I slid the key into my pocket. Though I’d gathered supplies at this store half a dozen times before, this was the first time I’d done it alone- without Eddie.

It was somehow more daunting than I’d expected.

Irritated with my own cowardice, I grabbed my cloth shopping bag, swung my leg over the scooter and unstrapped the crossbow. I could do this. The entire front of the store was glass- no vampire in its right mind would be hiding inside. And humans…well, I could handle them.

I stepped through the space where the front door should have been. It had been torn off long ago by foragers. The inside of the store looked surprisingly normal. Unlike the grocery store by my house, none of the shelves were pushed over, and only a handful of plastic leis scattered on the floor in front of me signaled that there had been any kind of ransacking.

I made a beeline for the food aisle, but paused next to a kiosk that was filled with scented candles. I didn’t know how many candles I had left at home, but with electricity being so unreliable these days, it would probably be smart to stock up. I shoved an entire shelf’s worth of long, thin candles into my bag, figuring they were a better bet than the tea candles, and easier to carry than the large jars.

The next aisle over had a bunch of Chef Boyardee cans jumbled right on the end, the small size with the plastic lids, and I hastily shoved those into my bag as well. I was about to reach towards a shelf filled with Vienna sausages when a voice rang out behind me.

“Stop right there.”

I spun around, bringing the crossbow up in one smooth motion. As I stared down the sights, I realized two things: one, I was an idiot for not checking the entire store before I started my shopping, and two, the guy in front of me had some kind of rifle. My crossbow was hopelessly outmatched here.

“Drop your weapon,” he ordered, but I didn’t comply. I’d had my fair share of encounters with male survivors over the months, and although Eddie had shielded me from the worst of them, I was well aware of the danger that came with being female during an apocalypse.

“Drop your weapon!” he repeated, shouting now.

I looked him over, trying to think of what I should do. He was dressed in jeans and a torn, bloody flannel shirt. His beard was a little unkempt, but his eyes were alert and cold, piercing through me. He didn’t look very friendly, I decided. I had no intention of letting go of my crossbow.

“Drop yours,” I countered, calling his bluff.

He at least gave me the courtesy of looking surprised. No doubt he thought it was a stupid move on my part- refusing to give up my weapon when he could easily blow my brains out with his rifle at any moment.

“No, you drop yours.”

“No,” I said firmly. “You drop yours.”

“No, you drop yours!” He advanced two steps, and I took a small step sideways, closer to the relative safety of the electronics aisle.