Vampires of the Plains (Book 1): Burden Kansas Page 4

  As Dennis scrambled to his feet, he saw Brandon grab two handfuls of the thing's hair and yank it over his shoulder. It landed on its back on the ground and shrieked and writhed, but Brandon was on it, smashing it with his fists. Dennis finally got his feet beneath him and ran.

  He made it to the van. Brandon had left the back doors open when he got the nurse tank, and Dennis crawled in and pulled them shut behind him. He scrambled to the front and hit the button to lock all the doors. Then he crawled into the windowless back. His head pulsed, swelling out until he thought it would burst, then contracting until the world was only a pinpoint. Something wrenched at the sliding-door handle, then started pounding at the door.

  "Dennis! Let me in!"

  The keys hung from the ignition.

  The pounding and the shouting continued for some time. Dennis couldn't say when it stopped, but at some point it did.

  The world continued to get stranger. It faded in and out. It expanded and contracted. He crawled up to the front of the van and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His skin had lost every bit of color. His hair and skin were slicked with sweat. But it was his eyes that scared him. The pupils dilated until his irises disappeared, then kept dilating, until his eyes were nearly solid black. That seemed impossible. Then, the world contracted, and he felt himself slipping away. It finally pulsed back, but he could tell that he was losing himself. His mind trudged along slowly. He wasn't sure why, but he thought of the plastic baggie of meth he kept in the toolbox. He crawled back and fumbled with the latch. The world closed in again. He felt himself slipping into the darkness and he didn't know if he'd come out. If it was like anything, it was like ODing on heroin.

  Meth would help.

  With his vision going, he pulled out the baggie and ripped it open onto the corrugated metal floor of the van. He took a hammer from the toolbox and crushed a rock of meth into something like a powder. As the world shrank to a pinpoint, Dennis knelt all the way down to the floor of the van as if in prayer or supplication and snorted the coarsely crushed speed.

  His head snapped back and he shot upright. Every muscle in his body contracted as if he were being electrocuted. He felt each muscle shift beneath his skin. But his sight returned. He returned. And he knew what he had to do.

  His head still pulsed, but he forced it to expand. Every time it tried to contract, he took another bump. He laughed at the idea of a 'bump.' He was inhaling piles the size and consistency of a packet of raw sugar, taking hit after hit until the blood pouring from his nose made it hard to find a place on the van floor dry enough that the crystals didn't stick.

  Finally he sat back against the van wall. The world calmed. It no longer rushed at him. It no longer flew away. It no longer tried to swallow him.

  He listened to his heartbeat. It had been racing so that he thought it would explode, but then it slowed. The roar of blood in his ears grew less and less. His breath no longer came in choking gasps, but sips.

  His muscles stopped vibrating. His lungs stopped pumping. His heart stopped beating. Dennis was completely still. A corpse.

  Until a beam of light slid over him and he flipped into a crouch in one fluid movement and hissed.

  "Sheriff, there's something moving in there."

  "Brandon?"

  "You in the van, come out slowly!"

  Dennis ran at the rear doors, and he didn't stop. Somehow he knew that he didn't have to. He exploded through them and landed on the ground in a crouch. One of the doors landed beside him. He sucked in the night air, found what he was looking for, and ran.

  Chapter 7

  Keith sat on his porch, drinking a beer and flicking a large pocket knife open and shut with his free hand.

  It was late afternoon. Keith had done what had to be done for the day and didn't feel like doing more. When he was younger he couldn't put a chore off. It had annoyed Irene to no end. Now he'd gotten lazy and she wasn't even there to enjoy it. Anyway, he'd been up late the previous night. He'd just started to doze off as he heard a car approaching, one with a big engine going way too fast. He whipped his folding knife into a porch post, stood and smiled.

  An old Pontiac Firebird swung into the driveway and slid to a stop in front of the porch. Jessica climbed out.

  "Who taught you to drive these dirt roads like that," Keith asked.

  "You did, when Dad wasn't looking."

  Keith laughed, and Jessica gave him a quick hug before they both settled into chairs.

  "It's been awhile," Keith said. "You can't come visit your uncle when you live right next door?"

  "Far as I know, that dirt road's a two-way. I hear you turned down our dinner invitation the other night."

  Keith leaned back and took a long drink of beer. "I like to stay close to home anymore. But you should come by."

  "Why?" she asked, gesturing to his beer. "So I can sit around watching you pickle yourself?"

  Keith raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected that. Apparently his brother had been talking.

  She winked. "Toss me one."

  Keith did. She cracked it away from herself, then took a sip.

  "But seriously," she said. "I only came around 'cause I heard you've got something for me."

  "Ouch."

  "Nothing in this world is free, my dear uncle."

  "When did you get so cold and calculating?" he asked.

  Her expression didn't change. She took another loud sip.

  "Makes me proud," Keith said. "Just a second."

  Keith went into the house and grabbed her present. When he returned to the door, Jessica stood at the edge of the porch, looking out over the pastures. Keith watched her for a moment. She'd gotten too grown up. He hated to think of her out in the world, away from her parents' protection, from his. But he felt so relieved that she still seemed to like him the way she always had. Like any teen, she'd grown away from her mother and father, but she treated him just the same. It really was a dangerous world when you felt that your life depended on the affection of a fickle teenage girl.

  He stepped out onto the porch, keeping both his hands behind his back. She turned around and saw this and raised an eyebrow.

  "What're you up to?"

  He smiled. "Close your eyes."

  "No. You're smiling too much."

  Keith shrugged. "Then no present."

  "Come on."

  "Nothing in this world is free, my dear niece."

  "When did you get so cold and calculating? Fine." She huffed and closed her eyes.

  "Okay, look."

  He held the rattlesnake skull right in front of her face. She screamed and stepped back, but had been standing right at the top of the steps. Her arms pinwheeled for a moment before she fell down the few stairs and landed on her butt in the dirt.

  Keith laughed and laughed. Through the tears in his eyes, he could only just make out her face quickly changing from shock to bright red anger. She leapt to her feet and back up the steps and began to beat Keith around his head. Stooped in laughter he was completely unable to defend himself. He could only turn his back and continue laughing.

  "You asshole! I could've broke my neck!"

  "Sorry," he said. "Sorry!"

  Eventually she stopped hitting him.

  "What the Hell do I want with a snake skull anyway?" she asked.

  Keith finally managed to catch his breath. "The skull's not yours. It was just sitting beside your present and when I saw it I couldn't pass up the opportunity."

  Jessica hit him again.

  "Okay, okay, stop!"

  She put her hands on her hips and scowled at him.

  Keith said, "It's amazing to me that you aren't a blood relation of Irene. You remind me so much of her sometimes. She punched like a little girl, too."

  She drew back her fist and he said, "Kidding. Don't you want your present?"

  "What is it? A live spider? Maybe a booger? Which of us is the adult again?"

  Keith held out his hand. He had a bit of fine chain wrapped aro
und one finger. He opened the hand and let the necklace drop. At the end was the snake's rattle.

  He said, "The skull and this were sort of a matching set. I figured we could each keep part."

  Jessica took the necklace and looked at it closely. She shook her head. Keith worried for a moment that she didn't like it.

  "This is so damn cool." She tossed her long hair aside and put it on. "You know, you're the only person who ever gets me anything cool. Thank you."

  She hugged him.

  "You're welcome."

  "So what's its story?"

  "Nothing exciting. Came out the other day and saw the dogs bouncing around, barking at this rattler. So I got my shotgun and blasted it in half." He smiled. "I ate the rest in a stew."

  "Liar."

  "I was gonna save you some but it was really good."

  Keith sat down again and she leaned against the porch rail. Keith said, "Supposedly, when you wear that you're protected from venomous creatures."

  "Oh yeah? I could use that." Her smile faded a bit, then returned. "What about the skull?"

  "I'm not sure. Actually, I think it's bad luck to keep the skull."

  "Wonder why."

  "Probably because a dead snake will still bite for a time."

  "Really?"

  "They bite reflexively, even after they're dead."

  "Huh."

  "That rattle still works, if you shake it fast enough."

  Jessica shook the rattle hard, then set her jaw and shook it harder. It made a very slight rattling sound.

  "You'll have to work on that," Keith said.

  "I really like it."

  "I'll remember that you enjoy receiving dead animal parts as gifts."

  Jessica laughed. "We're a couple of sick bastards."

  Keith chuckled, too. They both sipped their beers.

  "Anyway, how's school?"

  "Hasn't started. Got another couple weeks."

  "Been applying to colleges?"

  "Come on. I talk about this bullshit enough with my parents. We can do better."

  Keith nodded. "Okay."

  She raised one eyebrow. "How about we discuss that little altercation you had with Brandon at the QuickStop?"

  "I wouldn't call it an altercation. We had a friendly chat."

  "I heard you almost planted a friendly ax handle upside his skull."

  "That's an exaggeration."

  "Why don't I believe you?" She smiled, but it faded quickly. "Keith, you have to chill out. I get scared for you."

  He scoffed. "You think I can't manage them?"

  "No, I think you can't manage yourself. I think you're gonna put someone in a grave and get hauled off to prison."

  Keith stared out across his pastures and sipped his beer.

  This seemed to aggravate Jessica and her tone got harsher. "Do you want to leave me here alone? You're the only person I can talk to in this shithole."

  Keith looked at her. "I'm sorry." He stared at his beer for a moment. "But I'm not the only one. You can talk to your mom and dad."

  He winced at the bark of laughter she let out. It was too sharp for her years.

  "Brandon mentioned me," she said.

  "Yeah."

  "Just tell me you didn't have anything to do with him going missing, because that's what everybody is saying."

  He looked into her eyes. "I swear I didn't."

  She studied him, but finally nodded. "Okay. But what about Dennis?"

  "What about him?"

  "He's gone, too. They say he went out with Brandon, but neither of them came back."

  "Good."

  "That's a terrible thing to say."

  "Sometimes the truth is terrible. But tell me: you keep saying 'they say.' Who are you hearing all this from? You'd better not be hanging around those junky losers again."

  "No, God! Don't you get it? This is what everyone is saying. Everyone is talking about this, Keith."

  Jessica crushed her beer can and stood. "Please promise me that you'll keep away from them."

  "I promise."

  "You don't have anything to prove. Hell, everybody knows what you did to Dennis."

  "People don't know shit and talk too much."

  "Sure. Whatever." She started for her car. "Mom wanted me to ask you to come to supper, so I have to get back and eat your share."

  He followed her to her Firebird. Keith had convinced Roy to let him buy her that car. Jessica had the t-top off, so he didn't have to lean down to talk to her.

  "Hey, you make me a promise too," he said.

  "What?"

  "Promise me you'll learn how to throw a punch. You're defenseless as a newborn."

  Jessica shook her fist at him as she started her car, then spun it in his gravel turnaround.

  When she was even with him again he shouted, "Seriously! Like butterfly kisses!"

  She flipped him off as she tore down his driveway. He watched her dust cloud move along the gravel road. It drifted up and out and eventually disappeared.

  The next morning Keith pulled his tractor from the garage and gave the engine a going-over. When he'd last used it he'd noticed it ran a bit rough. Before doing anything expensive he decided to change the spark plugs to see if that'd solve the problem. Standing on the front tire, Keith leaned down into the open hood, ratchet in hand, twisting out the spark plugs and dropping in new ones one at a time to be sure he didn't get any wires crossed.

  After fifteen minutes of this his spine was at the point of revolt. He stood up and arched his back, then wiped away the sweat running into his eyes. Out of habit, he scanned the yard.

  He noticed one of his dogs standing on the porch, pissing against the house.

  Keith squinted to be sure. It took him a moment to believe what he saw. "What in the Hell?"

  He jumped down from the tire and ran for the front porch. He wanted to catch the dog in the act so it knew why it was getting beaten.

  But the dog saw Keith coming. It started to slink off the porch, but then turned around and ran back up. It ran back and forth on the porch. Keith could see that it wanted to escape, but it seemed unwilling to step foot in the yard. This started the other dogs milling about the porch, whining and cowering.

  Keith grabbed the offending hound by its wide orange collar, shook it and smacked it on a rear thigh, bringing a yelp. "What are you doing? You go in the yard."

  He tossed the dog forward, then pushed it off the porch with his boot in its hind-end. But the dog had barely hit the dirt before it turned straight back around and ran past Keith. Keith couldn't believe it. He stood dumbstruck for a moment, then reached for its collar.

  The dog growled.

  Keith snatched his hand back and set his jaw. His dogs didn't growl at him. Ever. In his mind the dog was already dead. He drew a boot back, but then stopped. He only knew of one thing that scared his dogs more than he did.

  Keith stepped into his house and grabbed his shotgun and a leash.

  When he came back out, he moved as nonthreateningly as he could.

  "Okay, Duke. It's okay."

  The dog knew the magnitude of its mistake. It desperately wanted forgiveness. Keith slowly reach out his hand, and Duke slowly wriggled along the porch on his stomach.

  Keith hooked the leash to the dog's collar, then stood and dragged him off the porch.

  The dog tore up the grass as it pulled to get back to the house. Keith walked it all around his big yard. He maintained two full acres as lawn. It was a lot to mow, but he liked the space. As he walked around the yard, he noticed the dog consistently pulling away from a certain direction. So Keith closed his circuit in tighter and tighter until the dog was frantic and there was no question in Keith's mind where the object of the dog's fear was holed up.

  Standing before his storm shelter, Keith dropped the leash and let the dog run back onto the porch.

  The shelter was a pre-fabricated little concrete bunker set almost completely underground. The heavy steel door sat at an angle to the groun
d, neither upright nor horizontal. The doorway was about three foot by three foot. Just big enough that an average sized man didn't need to duck to avoid hitting his head as he walked down the metal steps.

  A dilapidated wooden shed had once stood where the storm shelter now was. Beneath the building had been a stone cellar that neither he nor Irene ever set foot in because it was full of spiders and snakes and enough junk that anything else could have been hiding down there, too.

  Keith remembered the day that they had decided to get the shelter. The building over the unused cellar had been knocked flat. Several other outbuildings had been, too. For some reason, the tornado had lifted just long enough to pass over their house where they crouched in a hallway beneath a mattress. But it destroyed the yard. Several trees were toppled. Branches and whitewashed wood planks covered the ground.

  "Look at this mess," Keith had said.

  "Tornado barely missed us." Irene shook her head. "This is it. This is the last straw."

  Keith looked at the toppled trees. "At least we'll have plenty of firewood come winter."

  "Did you hear me? We can't keep sitting in that hallway hoping the house doesn't get hit. This is Kansas. We need a storm shelter."

  "Well, the cellar's gone."

  "Doesn't matter. The place was disgusting. We'll get a real storm shelter. One of those concrete jobs. We'll drop one right in the hole."

  "We can't afford that."

  "Things'll be a lot cheaper all around if we're dead."

  "Irene, you're exaggerating again." Keith rolled his eyes, but stopped as soon as he realized he'd done it. Too late.

  "What does that fake street sign in the Carlson's yard say?"

  "Listen, I understand that you're—"

  "What does it say?"

  "Tornado Alley."

  "I'm calling about a shelter today."

  "The phone lines are down. We won't have service for a week."

  "Then I'll call in a week!"

  "What will people say?"

  Irene scoffed. "I knew that's what this was about. You think the guys'll make fun of you."