The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (34 page)

The men from the community didn’t seem to feel as safe as they wanted the newcomers to feel. They paced with their weapons, and when twilight fell, they brought the whole group into a dusty room in one of the better buildings to sleep and eat. They stood guard while everyone had a turn to relieve themselves outside. Back in the big room, everyone started nodding off immediately. The journey had tired them all, and no one had much to say.

Cali
ate her dry soybean cake, drank her water, and looked around for a spot to sleep. The room was empty except for a worn red cloth covering the entire slanted floor.
Cali
looked for Herman, but he stood guard at the door to the room while an elder guarded the front door of the building.
Cali
lay down next to Larry’s mama, thinking she’d never sleep with all the thoughts rolling around in her head, the excitement and the vague fear of getting caught that still lingered. She’d made it further than she’d ever gotten in her attempts at escape, but with all the security, it seemed far from a safe zone. She felt safer at home in her bedroll next to Shelly. For a minute she lay thinking about him, but soon she slept.

Chapter 47

Sally was sweating already and she’d just started digging. Hard work nearly always made her sweat like a sow, and tonight weren’t no different. The air cooled off fast, though, now that the sun was going down. She reckoned the light would linger for at least an hour so she could see to work. Too bad she was sore already from digging a grave earlier.

Now she’d started up thinking about Angela again. It’d been a bunch of years, but she still thought about her sister near every day. Sometimes, when she weren’t quite sure what to do, Sally would ask herself what Angela would’ve done.

She thought about the poor bloodsucker they’d buried alive, too. She knew she ought to have stopped them—Angela would’ve—but she weren’t the most quick-thinking person she knew. Besides, from what Draven had told her, it wouldn’t be so bad for him. Least nobody would bother him, and he couldn’t smother or nothing, since he could stop breathing any old time he got the notion to. Maybe getting buried was peaceful-like for them. Sally had read somewhere that they slept in coffins, though she didn’t put much stock in that notion. Seemed Draven slept just fine in the shed.

Draven had said Angela would’ve been for sure dead when they found her, that her boy hadn’t made her into a bloodsucker or one of them other things. Sally couldn’t remember what he’d called it, but it hadn’t sounded pretty. But now she got to thinking about it. What did he know, anyway? He weren’t even sure how to make her into a bloodsucker. How would he know if someone had made her sister into one? He hadn’t been there. Maybe Angela had only looked dead. Whenever Sally had seen Draven sleeping, he looked pretty dang dead. No breathing, no heartbeat.

Had they checked anything else on Angela?

They’d checked her for bite marks and found none. They hadn’t checked her teeth or nothing. And if she lived out there somewhere as a bloodsucker but was afeared to come around because she might get staked…well, Sally aimed to find out. She could even get Draven to make her into a bloodsucker and go live with her sister. But she couldn’t do that just yet, without knowing if her sister had lived or died.

She had a lot on her mind tonight. The whole lot who’d gone to the abandoned town would come back in the morning, and Larry had said they were bringing back some new folks to join the community. Three new folks. New folks always brought interesting stories about lives that Sally couldn’t even imagine. Sometimes they sounded real awful, but sometimes they didn’t sound so bad at all. One man had told her brother that he liked getting bit by his master.

Sally could just about see how that could happen. She didn’t like the thought of a bloodsucker biting on her any old time he got hungry, but it hadn’t felt too bad with Draven. Not that she liked it, but she liked feeling like she done somebody good, even if it were just a bloodsucker. The scary thing about it was not knowing if he’d stop when she asked, knowing he could kill her like one of them bears the Henson’s fed before it up and attacked them, after all they done for it.

Sally stopped and wiped her forehead on her arm. She weren’t wearing long sleeves, but the mosquitoes stayed away on account of a nice cool breeze that had sprung up. It was getting on that time of year when she’d start noticing the days getting shorter pretty soon. Even in the hot part of summer, she could always tell when it started going down towards fall, and right on the heels of that the dang snow would come again.

She picked up her favorite shovel and resumed her digging. She’d left this very shovel out last winter after digging out some snow by the woodshed. That bloodsucker got this very shovel, the one she’d been looking for when she found his tracks in the woods. This got her thinking about all the little things that’d brung about changes in their lives. If she hadn’t left this-here shovel out, she’d never have gone looking for it, never have found tracks in the woods, never have followed them and found Draven. They never would have had him in the shed for near six months and never would have buried him in the ground, and she’d never have known the thing that got Angela weren’t a bloodsucker, or that maybe Angela weren’t dead at all but just lying in her grave waiting to be freed.

All that from one little shovel, one little careless mistake of leaving it out. And now everything in her life felt different, exciting even. She didn’t care no more about killing bloodsuckers. In fact, the one she met might just be her best friend nowadays.

Since she’d met Draven, she’d thought of things she hadn’t done much thinking on before. Deep-like thoughts about stuff like life and living forever and weighing that against having her family and their love, and about things like freedom and what it really meant. And things she’d never wanted to think, things she still weren’t certain she wanted to think on, like if her family was good people. Or if a bloodsucker could be a good person and a human be a bad one. If a bloodsucker could be called a person at all—she could surely call Draven that—and if they were all like Draven, or if he was the only goodish one there were. Didn’t seem like real good odds of that. But were it possible to be a soulless bloodsucker and still have a better heart than a living, breathing human being?

When she saw a little scrap of fabric, Sally stopped her digging and fell down on her knees. She started digging with her hands just like one of the dogs when it unearthed a bone. She didn’t rightly care what she looked like nohow. She was sure glad her folks favored the shallow grave. As she dug, she noticed she’d started up crying again, and she scolded herself for being such a woman. She didn’t know what’d come over her—she seemed to cry all the time here lately.

She knew what she planned was just about as crazy as a chicken with its head cut off, but she didn’t rightly care. She’d done made up her mind about this, and she were in it come snow or high water. She might surely loose a monster on herself and her whole family, but she reckoned she could judge a person’s heart, even an inhuman person. And she just couldn’t believe bloodsuckers, least not this one, were so evil as her family judged.

She wondered what Angela would do if she dug her out and found she’d turned into a bloodsucker, too. One way or the other, she was gonna find out about her sister, even if she had to sneak on back here as a bloodsucker and dig up her sister’s grave. She’d do it, too. Dig up Angela. Just as soon as she finished digging up Draven.

“Yoo-hoo! Sally!” her uncle hollered from back at the house.

Sally jumped about a mile and stood up. “Be in shortly,” she called back.

“It’s getting dark. What you doing out there?”

“Just watching the sunset, Tom. I’ll be in afore dark.”

She squatted down again and swept her hand over Draven’s face. She couldn’t never get used to how cold he was. He had dirt all over him, and he looked a sight worse than her. After she brushed dirt out his eyes as best she could, she started digging around his body a little. He sat straight up from the waist all at once, popping up stiff like a dead person. She never could get used to how he stood up like that, neither, like the time she stepped on the head of a rake and the handle came flying up at her. That’s how Draven shot up sometimes, just like his whole body rose up stiff as a board.

He sat real still while she uncovered his legs, but he started gurgling and such, so she stopped and looked at him. He’d opened up his eyes, ringed in black, and his whole face was so dark it done looked like he’d turned to dirt in the ground.

Sally could tell he was having some trouble trying to speak. “You wanting me to pull that stake out your neck? ‘Cause I will, but I reckon it’ll hurt something fierce.”

Draven’s head nodded the slightest bit, or she reckoned it did, though she weren’t too sure. She’d have to pull the stake out eventually, and hurting a thing so it’d feel better later seemed like an okay thing to do, so she grabbed the stake and yanked it right out. Bloodsuckers didn’t have the kind of blood humans had as far as she’d seen. A human would have let out torrent of blood, but Draven only had a sluggish trickle that started flowing down his chest, soaking into the collar of her daddy’s shirt.

She got up real close and put her hand over the wound. Draven looked at her with those big sad brown eyes, and she felt real sorry she hadn’t thought of a way to stop that dang Henson boy and her uncle from staking him so many times. Or at least that she’d taken all the stakes out afore they buried him. But she might’ve left him in the ground if she knew he were just hibernating in there. Thinking about him suffering in there all that time had started her thinking on this-here thing she’d decided on. But talking to her uncle had changed her mind for good.

Draven lay over sideways, and his eyes glazed over same way a deer’s got right before it died, when it had it’s throat cut and knowed it was all over, but it hadn’t quite gone yet. Sally weren’t gonna stand for none of that tonight.

“You listen here, mister,” she said. “You sit right back up and let me get you outta here. I ain’t having no laying down and dying tonight. I know you’s in pain and whatnot, but that can’t be helped nohow, so just get back up and let me take the rest of these here stakes out.” She yanked out the other two while she talked. Draven made some right awful sounds, but he didn’t scream none, which was good, ‘cause if Tom found out what she’d done she’d probably get buried alive herself.

“Now we got to hurry,” she said. “I can’t be out here much longer without drawing some suspicion on me, and I know you’s gonna be weak and slow from your wounds, so I wanna give you the best head start I can.”

Draven just looked at her with his warm eyes while she rolled him sideways to unlock the chains and unwind them. Draven didn’t move, but lay there and let her do what she would.

“Now you ain’t gonna get all suicidal-like on me again, is you? I’m letting you go. You got that? I’m risking my neck to get you out of here, so you best make it worth my while by getting.”

Draven sat up then, and when Sally freed his arms, he helped her unwind his chains. But instead of scramming, he sat just breathing real deep in and out. Then he took her hand up and kissed it. Sally didn’t rightly know what to think of all that. But Draven didn’t let go, just sat there with his lips on her hand and then her arm, looking at her until she sighed and nodded. “Ah, heck, go ahead,” she said. “I know you want to. Just make it quick and get it over with.”

“Thank you,” he said, and the cold way his breath blew over her arm felt just like the cool breeze that evening. She sat and let him suck on her arm for a good minute, but when she started to feel a little dizzy, she pulled at her arm.

He pulled real hard once with his lips, licked her arm with his cold tongue, and wiped his dry, dirty thumb over her skin to dry it. It made her feel all shivery-like and sorta nice, too, in a shy kinda way.

Draven looked at her. “You wish to evolve, yes?”

“I don’t rightly know. I can’t tonight. I gotta get back before Uncle Tom starts to worrying. I don’t even know what I want no more, Draven. I sure like you, though, and I know you’re not gonna come back and kill my family or lead any other bloodsuckers out here and kill us. Right?”

“Yes. I swear to you.”

“Good. ‘Cause if you do, I swear I hope you’re cursed to die in the most awful way.” Her dang tears started up again, and Draven put his arms around her. He was real cold, she could feel it even through her shirt. For the first time, he were completely free and unbound, and he could’ve just run off, but he didn’t. And he didn’t kill her, neither, which he could have.

“What’s this, Sally?” he asked, his voice already losing that awful rough sound from the stake and going back to the smooth, warm one.

“Nothing, I’m sorry. I sure am gonna miss you around here, but I know you ain’t gonna last. Tom’s real mad about you biting him, and that dang Henson boy got it in his head to put you in the grinder tomorrow when the new folks get here as a good spectacle for them. They aim to make that an example and let the folks know we can take care of a bloodsucker who crosses our land. I ain’t too smart or nothing, but I reckon you’d die from that.”

“Yes.” Draven looked real sad too, and it made Sally cry all over again.

“I know my family done wrong to you, and I’m right sorry I let them and didn’t do nothing all that time. It ain’t right no matter what you are. I reckon you can’t help it that you gotta eat, and I can’t rightly hate you just ‘cause I’m the thing you eat. You been real nice to me, and I’m sure glad you offered to change me over, but I don’t know if I wanna do it no more.”