Vampires of the Plains (Book 2): Blood Tells True Page 3

  Bill hung his head like one of Jessica’s hounds, and she felt twinges of both righteous anger and of regret for punishing Wheeler. She knew he’d already punished himself, and was trying to make his penance.

  “Besides, they don’t know it, but they need me here,” she said, letting Wheeler off the hook. That was the closest she’d come to admitting that she was the reason their county was vampire-free. Wheeler obviously knew it.

  “No offense, but we need your dogs. It’s a catch-22. We can’t train any dogs to track those creatures because they’re too scared of them, but we can’t break them of that fear without one of the creatures they refuse to track down.”

  “Regardless of the technicalities, without me this whole section of Kansas would be overrun.”

  Wheeler nodded and stood up. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I just wanted to remind you that you’ve got options. Despite everything that’s happened, there’s no reason you can’t live a happy, normal life. But you’re such a goddamn Harris. You know, I knew your Grandpa Harris when I was a boy. He scared the holy hell out of me. His eyes would pass over me and I always felt like I was doing something wrong and was about to be struck down by lightning for it.”

  Jessica didn’t say anything, just watched Wheeler get up.

  “There’s one other thing,” Wheeler said. “It goes hand-in-hand with I’ve been trying to tell you. Did you know that Dennis’s cousin Randall moved down from Wichita and into Dennis’s old trailer?”

  “Yeah.” She'd seen him once at the gas station.

  “I don’t like this guy. Dennis was just a drug dealer. At least before… You know. Randall, though, is dangerous. He’s done time for some bad stuff, and gotten off on some worse stuff. And I’ve heard that he’s been asking about you. I’m keeping an eye on him, but is there someplace you can go for awhile?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Sheriff.”

  Wheeler slapped the porch rail and headed for his truck. “I figured not. Please just be careful. And think about what I said.”

  The next evening, Jessica put on her mesh gloves just in case the vampire got feisty. Their joints were loose, and their range of motion had surprised her more than once.

  Bugs of all sorts chirped. A cloud of them circled the big post lamp. Jessica had already closed the dogs into the utility room. It was past their bedtime, but she heard them whine and bark as she rode her 4-wheeler by the side door on her way to the storm shelter. They knew that she was getting up to mischief, and they wanted to be part of it.

  But it wasn’t mischief to Jessica. It was two other things: research and revenge. Vampires were dumb creatures, so it wasn’t entirely satisfying taking out her anger and guilt on them, but it helped. Besides that, she was learning about them. She figured that she knew more about vampires than practically anyone else still alive.

  She undid the chains wrapped around the storm shelter's steel door, then aimed her pistol with one hand while she opened the door with the other. When nothing came leaping out at her, she aimed her flashlight down the stairs and spotted the creature.

  The vampire still lay with its hands and feet tied behind its back. She’d roped enough calves in her life. She’d even competed in junior rodeos back before she got too cool.

  The vampire hissed at her. It looked a mess. It had drained the pan of blood she’d set out for it and licked it clean, all without the use of its hands. It had been filthy before, but now blood coated its entire face in a black crust from its hairline all the way down its neck. But it looked to be in much better shape than when she’d dragged it down there.

  Jessica walked down the metal stairs and flipped on the battery-powered lantern. The vamp’s leg looked good, though she wouldn’t know for sure until she saw it in action. Its bullet wounds had disappeared entirely, and its chest had regained the shape it had before she’d pulverized it with her baseball bat. It seemed lively enough, the way it rocked around and snapped. It reminded her of the meaner fish she and her dad used to pull out of the lake, flopping around in the bottom of the boat.

  Jessica had a strong urge to stomp its snapping jaws shut. Instead she stepped in the middle of its back and pinned it down long enough to get a good grip on the loop of rope she’d left in her knots. Then she leaned back and began dragging the creature up the metal stairs. Between the exertion and the thick, humid air she was drenched with sweat by the time she’d gotten it onto the grass.

  The vampire shrieked and hissed, and even her normally-obedient dogs began to bark and bay from inside the house. But Jessica barely heard any of it. What she heard was a reverberating, arrhythmic pounding, the sound of battering rams bashing away at a steel gate. It was the vampire in the grain silo a hundred yards away. Then it roared, and the vampire in the grass went wide-eyed, silent and still before its entire body began to strain against its restraints. Its thin muscles pulled against its long bones and stood out from the flesh in grotesque striations. In its solid black eyes, Jessica saw fear. It looked almost as if the thing really would tear itself apart to escape its fate.

  Jessica hurriedly hooked the loop of rope to a hitch on the back platform of the ATV.

  Uncle Keith had left her a beast of a four wheeler. He’d worn out lesser ATVs and finally bought one that could withstand the rigors of ranch work. It was big and powerful and fast. Jessica handled the throttle carefully as she drove to the grain silo, dragging the vampire behind her.

  The steel silo wasn’t very reflective, but it stood out in the moonlight against the black night. The vampire inside pounded harder on its prison as it picked up their combined scents. The entire building reverberated, but the walls remained undented. They were thick—much thicker than the seemingly similar corrugated walls of the garage and tractor shed—having been designed to not crack under the internal pressure of tons of corn or wheat.

  Jessica hopped off the ATV and dragged the frantic vampire to a grain conveyor that she left positioned beside the elevator. It ran at an angle up to the top. She climbed up onto the conveyor and lifted the vampire after her. It was only a few feet, and she lifted weights, but a barbell never tried to bite her as she picked it up.

  She hopped down and watched the vamp for a moment. It tried to roll off the conveyor, but the short walls were too high for it to make it over without the use of its limbs. At least not without a considerable amount of time, which she wouldn’t give it.

  Jessica started the gas motor and then flipped the conveyor into motion. Just as the belt was about to dump the vampire over the edge like so much wheat, she switched it off, though the small engine still chugged noisily. She climbed the ladder on the outside of the silo and opened the top.

  Without the sun shining down through the hole, the vampire below leapt for the opening. The silo stood twenty-five feet high, and from a flat-footed start, it could jump nearly twenty of those feet. So out of necessity, this would definitely be its final bout.

  Jessica took the excess rope and tied it around the heavy hinge. Then she dragged the vampire off the conveyor and over the edge.

  The vampire below hesitated for a moment. It pressed its back against the wall and roared up at the intruder. Vampires were not social creatures. They were extremely territorial.

  Still, Jessica worked quickly, knowing that this vampire’s experience and hunger would soon get the better of it, and might motivate it to leap even higher. The dangling vampire might be within its reach, and she wanted to give it a sporting chance. Not for its sake, but because she had worked so hard to see a fight, not to feed one vampire to another.

  Jessica took her serrated pocketknife and cut the rope that secured the dangling vampire’s ankles, so that it hung by only its hands. Then she sawed through the rope binding its hands, and it dropped to the blood-blackened concrete below.

  It hit the ground in a crouch, and then rocketed backwards to the wall opposite the resident vampire, the current champion, as she sometimes thought of it. Jessica noted that the new vampire’s le
g held, even after the drop onto concrete. That was one of the most serious injuries she’d inflicted upon a vampire she’d left alive, and it had healed from it in two days with only a gallon of cow’s blood for fuel. While she had hoped that it would be healthy enough to fight, she couldn’t say that she was happy about it. These things were incredibly tough. Being already mostly dead, they were very difficult to kill.

  Jessica had a good vantage point. The ladder ran up the coned top of the silo, so that she stood on a rung but basically lay with her head peeping over the hatch. From there, she could see the entire steel and concrete arena. She took the flashlight from her belt and shone it down, creating a spotlight.

  The defending champion looked up into the light, squinted and roared. Over the previous battles, it had lost most of its fear. This would be fight number seven. If it won, it would have consumed seven other vampires. Jessica imagined that this put it somewhere near the same level of strength as Dennis when her uncle had fought and killed him. She marveled at the thought, because Keith had known almost nothing about these creatures and had killed a monster as powerful as or more powerful than the one glaring up at her.

  Unlike Dennis, though, this thing was dumb. And naked. She hadn’t seen how strange Dennis’s body had gotten. He’d still worn clothes, and maybe he hadn't had the time to evolve. The things below her were animals, and like most of the vampires she’d caught or killed, they were completely naked. Well, the ones that had once been females often still wore their bras, probably because bras were made of tough material and fit so close to the skin that they remained despite vampires’ savage lifestyle.

  The new vampire still had its back pressed against the wall. The more powerful vampire looked away from Jessica to the invader. Jessica saw its shoulder joints begin to loosen up, the first sign that it would attack. This made its upper back actually widen, and its arms lengthen a bit.

  Then it sprang.

  The new vampire jumped to the side and skidded on all fours to face its attacker. It growled. Its lips distended, pulling back far beyond what a human’s could, displaying a mouthful of horrific fangs.

  But the resident vampire was unintimidated. Jessica remembered its first fight, when it had beaten and then drained a vampire that had won twice before. They had stood on opposite sides of the silo for hours, until Jessica wondered if they would fight before the sun came up and she had to shut the upper port. The vampire that had been living in the silo, the one that had fought before, finally built up the nerve to attack. It had been larger, but its opponent had landed a lucky rake of the claws across its forehead, blinding it.

  After living through five more fights, the vampire had lost most of its fear of its own kind. Jessica imagined that it had been around sixty when it had been turned. It was hard to tell, because their faces became so distorted and their skin so strange and waxen. It had been a male. It wasn’t much bigger than the new vampire, the thing that had been a female, but it looked more powerful, now. The six previous vampires it had fed on had changed it. It moved even more strangely. It moved so fast that it resembled an insect; it was in one position one moment and another the next, almost like watching a movie with missing frames.

  Most vampires fed on cattle. They were fast, but not that strong. And while you wouldn’t want to come across one accidentally, they weren’t generally aggressive. They were more like hissing little foxes than wolves. Cow blood sustained them, but it didn’t make them any more powerful.

  Jessica couldn’t be certain, because she’d never found a vampire that she knew of that fed on humans regularly, but she didn’t think that human blood strengthened them, either. The ones that attacked humans did so out of desperation or because they were cornered. A lot of vampires were small, or like the champion below, elderly. A desperate vampire would attack the weak or the sick in order to feed. She imagined that’s why Dennis had gotten attacked: because he’d been small with a bum arm. Like other animals, vampires could sense weakness.

  But when a vampire fed upon another vampire, it got stronger. Whatever made them how they were—whatever virus or curse—it lived in the blood. Jessica thought that must be the reason they avoided each other at all costs.

  But these two vampires couldn’t avoid each other. The vampire she’d dropped in was still crouched, waiting, not knowing what to do. In the wild, it simply ran when it sensed another vampire nearby. Its instincts to fight had left it when it had changed from human to vampire. Humans fought. Vampires hunted or ran.

  Except the reigning champ. She’d never created a vampire as aggressive as this old man. It stood tall and stared up at her through black eyes with a look that Jessica thought might be contempt. Then it charged again.

  The invader again leapt clear, but this time the old man shoved off the wall and attacked again instantly. It grabbed the new vampire by the back of the neck and shoved it to its stomach. The pinned vampire reached back with one hand and dug its claws into the old man’s thigh, and the old man replied by crushing its skull. Then it sunk its fangs into the invader’s throat and drained it dry.

  When it stood again, it reeled a bit. Jessica had once thought that it was simply exhaustion from the battle, but then after the last battle, it occurred to her that the old man had looked a little drunk. She remembered how her uncle had acted after he’d been bitten, when the venom made its way to his brain. His eyes had lost focus and his movements became heavy and clumsy. It had reminded her of a very drunk person, and now she knew for certain that she saw some of this in the vampire below. The fight—if it could even be called that—hadn’t exhausted it. The potent vampire blood it had filled its stomach with was going to its head.

  If she had wanted an advantage, that moment would have been the time to attack.

  But she didn’t want an advantage. She wanted a test. So, with the creature staring up at her with black eyes set in a blood-smeared face, Jessica closed the top of the silo and secured it. She would let the blood set in, let the vampire grow stronger, and then she would fight it.

  Chapter 2

  Kroger sat on the dirty floor directly in front of the television. His mind didn’t register the bits of dirt sticking to his exposed calves. With the shades down to minimize glare, he didn’t notice the sun streaming in from outside. He was barely even aware of the video game controller in his hand. It had become an extension of himself as he used it to wage a brutal, one-man war on an alien race. And he was hiiiiigh.

  Wake and bake, man. Wake and bake.

  Between the weed and the realistic new 16-bit graphics, he could practically feel the assault rifle thudding away in his hands as he shot down-range at the boss of the level, this weird, armored, half-insect alien, until Randall broke his trance with a slap to the back of the head.

  Randall didn’t say anything, just flopped onto the couch. He hadn’t wanted Kroger’s attention. He was just being a dick. Like usual.

  Kroger heard the flick of a lighter, but the smoke that wafted over him didn’t have the earthy bouquet of pot but the rank stink of tobacco. Kroger hated it when people smoked indoors, but what could he say about it? It was Randall’s place, and he let Kroger stay there.

  Kroger missed Dennis. He'd been an okay guy. It had seemed so, at least, until he went missing and then was supposedly to blame for the slaughter at the Irving’s farm. But Dennis had disappeared again, if he’d ever been back in the first place, and wasn’t around to tell his side.

  Kroger couldn’t believe it. Dennis wasn’t a violent guy. First of all, he had the bum arm. Secondly, even before that he’d avoided confrontation. Yeah, he had his enforcer, Brandon, but Brandon wouldn’t have decapitated or drained all the damn blood out of anybody. He was a big, doofy, generally likeable dude. He would beat on whomever Dennis pointed at, but he wouldn’t do what the sheriff said he’d done.

  It was a cover up. Yeah, weed made Kroger paranoid, but it was a conspiracy, for real.

  “You suck. Give me the controller,” Randall said. Kroger h
anded the video game controller up to Randall, who sat up from his sprawl across the couch.

  “Let’s see you do better,” Kroger said. He didn’t really care. He’d been on autopilot, had barely even noticed he was still playing.

  Kroger wondered what had really happened that night in that big barn. The only survivors had been Sheriff Wheeler, Jessica, and Mrs. Irving, who’d gone nuts. According to her, Dennis had become some sort of monster. Nobody believed her because she had genuinely lost her shit after watching her husband get murdered, but Kroger didn’t buy the official account either, that Dennis and Brandon had abducted people, murdered them—perhaps as part of a satanic ritual brought on by drugs and heavy metal—and had then fled after being confronted by the sheriff and Keith Harris.

  Jessica had testified to the same thing, but there were rumors that she’d had something more to do with it, that she hadn’t been some passive victim. With the way she acted now, Kroger could believe it. She was scary. Still hot, but scary, too. Like the mom in Terminator 2, Sarah Connor. In Terminator, she’d been all soft and pretty and had a perm. By Terminator 2, she’d spent years in a nuthouse and was shredded and—while still hot—completely terrifying. When she jammed that syringe full of cleaning fluid into that guard’s neck, you could see that she’d kill him. She’d push that plunger in sure as shit. You could see it in the way her muscles all popped and twitched, and you could see it in her eyes.

  Jessica had the exact same look. So what had happened to Jessica between movie one and movie two? A year ago, she’d been a cool girl with the best legs in town. Then she went all intense and hard. Kind of turned into her uncle, who’d been a total psycho redneck.

  Who’d been beheaded.

  It was way easier to imagine the two of them doing some crazy shit than Dennis. Compared to them, Dennis had been a mouse.

  Kroger lit his pipe and took a deep hit. Ever since he was like, twelve, he could take these massive hits without coughing.