Excerpt: Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves

1.
Eddie, my five-year-old nephew, stares at me with a sucker in his mouth. And I’m drunk. So I say:

“Okay, first there were vampires. Vampires were the first of the three. Got it? And the first vampire was ... any guesses?” No answer. “Cain. Cain was the first vampire. You know Cain and Abel?”

Eddie pops the sucker out of his mouth. A long string of sticky drool follows. I look away.

“Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve. Okay? They were brothers. And one day Cain killed Abel.”

“Why?” says Eddie.

“I don’t know why. But he did. And God was angry at Cain for doing that, and so God gave Cain the mark of the beast. For a long time nobody knew what the mark of the beast was. But now we know. It was vampirism. God made Cain immortal – to think about what he had done, I guess – but also gave his immortality a catch; a constant thirst for blood. So Cain went out and drank some poor sap’s blood and that poor sap became a vampire. And then that guy drank some other blood, and that guy became a vampire, and so on, and so on.”

Eddie spoke with the sucker in his mouth. “Scho are you a vampire?”

“No, I’m a werewolf. We’re enemies.”

“Why?” More drool. I wish that kid would acknowledge the drool.

“Because. It’s a long story. But we are. That’s not what I was going to talk about next, though. I’m going to talk about zombies.”

“My Mom said--!” Eddie starts, and then he stops in that cute-but-annoying way five year olds talk, all stops and starts as their brains learn how to negotiate synapses. “My mom said that, that you weren’t a werewolf, that you were, um, just a guy.”

“I am just a guy,” I say. “Except for two times a month, I’m just a guy.”

“And then...?” Eddie says, sounding more ominous than he had intended.

“And then I’m a werewolf.”

“Is Mommy scared of you?”

“No, of course not. Your mother is scared of no one. No werewolf, no vampire, no zombie. Are you scared of me, Eddie?”

Eddie looks me over like he’s about to whore me out on the street. He pops the sucker out of his mouth. “I’m not scared of you.”

“Good,” I say, smiling. “You shouldn’t be.”

The car takes a wide right onto a street I’ve never seen before. The sides of the road are lined with trees, and the fog, which wasn’t so thick just a few streets before, is now almost unbearable. Patrick, the driver, grumbles some obscenity, and I feel the chill down my spine. We’re in vampire country. I glance at Eddie. He seems unfazed by the change in scenery. God, I wish I was a kid again.

I take another swig from the flask in my coat. “Zombies. Did I tell you about zombies yet?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“Well, this one’s kind of a long story. About, I dunno, thirty, forty years ago, a kid named Jason Phillips went up into the hills of Montana and found some kind of artifact. No one’s sure what the artifact was, though most people think it was an altar to some god, because, well, gods always play into this sort of thing. Jason went to the altar expecting immortality, and he was given it, when the altar turned him into a zombie. He raced down the hillside as the affliction...” Eddie gives me a confused look. “The, uh, disease – the bad stuff spread over his body. At the bottom of the hill is this town, Lyduck or something like that. He gets to the bottom of the hill and collapses. Everyone comes over to find out what’s wrong. Jason looks dead. One of the doctors gets in real close, and then, BAM!”

I say this a bit too explosively and Eddie – and Patrick a little bit – startle. “Sorry,” I say. “Jason wakes up and bites the doctor. And the rest is history.”

“Uh, Sam?” Patrick says. “Why are you telling a kid all this stuff?”

“They’ve got to learn it sometime. Keep driving.”

Patrick continues down the fog-steeped, tree-lined street. The good thing about vampires is that you always know where they live.

I hear a crack to my left. I look down. Eddie has bitten into his sucker. Apparently there is gum inside, and Eddie finds that a bit confusing. He pulls it out of his mouth, glances at it, appraises it, if you will. Then plops it back into his mouth and chews happily.

“You want to learn any more, Eddie?” I say.

“No,” he says, shaking his head and munching on his gum.

“You don’t even want to hear about werewolves?”

“Oh yeah! Werewolls!”

“Yeah, come on, you must know what you’re growing up into—“

No time to finish that sentence, as the car’s engine suddenly rattles and dies. Kaput. A cloud of black smoke rises from the front of the car. Patrick shouts a very loud expletive and twists his head around to me. “Smells fishy,” he says.

“Be careful, then,” I reply.

He grumbles again and reaches down, pops the hood with a switch by his feet, then gets out. Eddie and I watch him walk to the front of the car, grab the hood and lift it up. Then I see a shimmer in the fog, and right then I know we’re fucked.

The shimmer flicks swiftly in the direction of Patrick. I hear him exhale harshly and his body flies away and to the right. It hits the ground and the vamp is not shimmering anymore – it’s real and it’s sucking on Patrick’s neck. Patrick squeals as the vamp nearly rips his head off trying to get at his blood.

Vampires swear that werewolf blood tastes a thousand times better than human blood. I wouldn’t know whether to agree or disagree, but at least I know Patrick won’t be turned into one of those bloodthirsty freaks. Werewolves don’t turn into vamps. Ever.

And then there’s a second one, at Patrick’s feet, licking the pool of blood on the concrete and biting at the back of his knees, looking for a thick artery.

And then a third. And a fourth.

“Eddie,” I say, “we gotta get out of here.”

Wholly unsure of what to do, deep in the middle of vamp territory, I sincerely think about just running for it, but in this fog they could be anywhere, invisible and waiting. But sitting in the car doesn’t seem like a good idea either. I have my stake. I have some holy water. I have ... a sunlight flare gun in the glove compartment!

Eddie looks scared as shit, and fat globs of tears start rolling down his face. He looks up at me imploringly. I put a finger to my lips. “You stay quiet,” I say. “I’ve got to get something from the glove compartment.”

Putting a hand on the neck rest of the passenger seat, I slide my way up, as quiet as I can. The vamps are still preoccupied with Patrick’s blood. I’m starting to believe that our blood tastes better than human blood; I’ve never seen so many vamps around one body before. I can’t tell if they know that we’re in the car or not. Assuming that they do, I reach over and lock the doors from the driver’s seat. That noise is enough to alert the hyper-sensitive vamp ears, but they don’t even turn around.

I pop open the glove compartment. Insurance ... free tire rotation paper ... new fuses ... flare gun! It’s silver (but not really silver) body shines its presence. I pick it up, quickly make sure it’s loaded, grab a couple of extra flares, and slide back into the back seat.
As I slide back I notice something peculiar: the vamps are tearing Patrick apart. Vamps don’t ever do that. But here they are, ripping his torso open, flinging his insides outside for no apparent reason. Only a zombie would do something like that. It’s almost like they’re looking for something.

One of the vampires shouts in excitement. His voice is muffled inside the car but he lifts his arm up in victory. In his hand is something gold. It looks like a necklace or a medallion or something. The other vamps immediately cease with their search. They all stand up. Turn. And look directly into the car, at me and Eddie.

At this point Eddie can’t hold it anymore. He squeals, loud and into my ear, and starts crying with a renewed fervor. I’m regretting telling him about vampires right about now.
“Stay here,” I say. Then I look him directly in the eyes. “Two seconds, I promise.” And then I’m out of the car.

There are four visible vampires and two invisible ones. I can smell their presence. Two of the visible ones immediately charge me, one leaping over the entire car to get at me. He is easily dispatched as I stake him on his way downward. In the same instance I pop one of the water bombs off of my belt and chuck it in the air, towards where I think the invisible vamps are (yes, they stink that bad). The holy water explodes in midair, and then becomes a fire as it consumes one of the vamps.

The second charging vamp circles around the car and raises a small pistol. No fair, I think, and duck just as the first shot is fired. The second water bomb flies right into this guy’s face, and he drops the pistol and claws at his face in agony. I race over and grab the pistol. I can feel the silver bullets inside, and they cause me to shudder a bit.

The other two vamps back up slowly. One of them has whatever they grabbed out of Patrick’s body. The other one, a young neophyte girl, just looks scared. I start to advance on them when I feel two big arms wrap around my body. Shit, I forgot about the other invizavamp!

Before the fucker can bite me I smack him with the back of my head. A lot of my brethren have died doing that, as they struck the vamp’s teeth and basically were bitten right there. But sometimes you’re desperate. This one connects with the bridge of his nose with a satisfying crack. He is instantly visible, and I spin around and sink the stake in his heart. I turn around to face the other two vamps, but they are gone, and so is there scent, which has changed into the scent of a bat. Dirty bastards.

I go to open the back door to the car but it’s locked. So I bend down, face to the window. “Eddie,” I say, “everything is okay. I got rid of the vamps – the, vampires. Unlock the door please.”

Eddie, shaking and hiccupping from crying so much, shakes his head vigorously.

“Come on, buddy. You know I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, okay? I promise that. But we have to get out of here. I need you to come with me.”

Eddie, hands shaking, reaches up and unlocks the door. I open it and take him into my arms, smoothing his hair with my free hand. “It’s alright, little guy. We’ll get back home, I promise.” I wipe away the tornado of tears and snot that has caked poor Eddie’s face. “You don’t know that I’ve fought a lot of vampires before, do you?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“I’m good at it. You don’t need to worry.”

I reach into the holster on my belt and pull out my cell phone. No signal, naturally. Vamps hate cell phones for some reason. I put it back on my belt and survey the scene. The air smells clean, no vamps, no z’s, nothing. Just dense fog and a lot of trees lining the sides of the street. I can’t even tell if this is a neighborhood or what. If there are houses, they are submerged in mist.

“Eddie, do you want me to carry you or do you want to walk?”

“Carry me,” says Eddie.

“Okay, I’ll carry you for a while. But even werewolves arms get tired. And if any vampires come I’m gonna have to put you down really quick. Understand?”

Eddie nods his head.

“Good.”

And with that, we start walking.