Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (56 page)

When he awoke, daylight had begun to stream through the empty halls. Panicked, Carter crawled into an alcove behind the stairwell and huddled in the darkness, shivering with agony and shock. He’d remained there until nightfall, when at last, feverish and half-delirious with pain, he crawled out again and managed to find a hotel room with a door ajar. He’d dragged himself inside and shut the door. With great difficulty, he’d draped a moldy bedspread over the room’s lone window before collapsing with exhaustion. Then he’d slept.

On his second night in the Edgefield, he’d heard a faint skittering from out in the hall. Alert, he’d sat up in bed, sniffing the air. Slowly, he crawled to the door and opened it. Then he lay there, still as death. He waited a full hour before the rat investigated, and it took another twenty minutes of motionlessness before the animal was brave enough to come close to him and take an experimental nibble, at which point Carter reached out and grabbed it, seizing the creature with both hands. After he’d eaten, he rested again, allowing his leg to heal.

And now, here he was, intent upon exploring Troutdale before sunrise. If his efforts were unsuccessful, he’d move on to Portland tomorrow night. He doubted that Portland would offer anything more
than Seattle had, but it was something to do. And, in truth, it wasn’t just food he was looking for. It was companionship.

Carter was lonely.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. He was, as far as he knew, the last living human on the planet, except that he wasn’t alive and he wasn’t human. He hadn’t been either for a long time.

The breeze shifted and Carter caught a whiff of the grapes. It had been decades since he’d tasted grapes—or jelly or wine or anything else made from them. Decades since he’d tasted food of any sort—pasta, beef, ice cream, vegetables. Chocolate.

Carter sighed. He’d loved chocolate as a boy. Sometimes, he tried to remember what it had really tasted like, but the memory was fleeting. A ghost—a gossamer phantasm as insubstantial and romanticized as the memory of a first kiss. Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to being a vampire, but Carter had never quite gotten used to not being able to have chocolate. He’d tried several times—once right after his transformation, and a few times since. On each occasion, the chocolate had acted as a toxin in his system. All foods had the same effect. He wasn’t lactose or gluten intolerant. He suffered from a food allergy, and it encompassed all foods. All except blood.

Carter died on June 17, 1967, at the Monterey International Pop Festival, during the beginning of the Summer of Love. A still mostly unknown Jimi Hendrix had just begun the opening chords of “Wild Thing” when Carter, high as a kite and feeling happy, had gone outside the fairgrounds hand in hand with a beautiful brunette who had never given him her name but had looked a little bit like Grace Slick. They’d begun to make love in a dark area behind a porta-potty, except that the love turned to terror very quickly, as the girl’s soft, eager kisses on his throat had turned frenzied and then sharp. And then . . .

. . . nothing.

He’d been lost in a dream haze, not unlike an acid trip. To this day his memories were sketchy at best. Someone, perhaps a fellow concertgoer or one of the outnumbered security guards, had interrupted them. They must have, because she’d never had the opportunity to drink him dry. If she had, he wouldn’t be here today. Carter had a vague memory of being loaded into an ambulance, and another of a paramedic leaning over him, aghast, and muttering, “Jesus, look at his fucking throat! It’s like a wild animal got at him or something.” Then, much later, he’d regained consciousness inside a morgue. His first thought, upon waking, was that he’d missed the rest of Hendrix’s set but had certainly experienced his very own wild thing.

Carter had figured out fairly quickly what he was. That was the easy part. Discovering which portions of the vampire legends were true, and which were bullshit, had taken a little longer. He was vulnerable to sunlight and garlic, but things like crosses and other religious trappings had no effect on him. He saw himself in the mirror just fine, albeit his reflection didn’t age the way others did. He was perpetually twenty-two. He didn’t know if a stake through the heart could kill him or not, but gunshots, a stabbing, and being hit by a tractor-trailer one time in the eighties hadn’t. He’d recovered from those injuries as easily as he’d reknit his broken leg. He’d also recovered from a spinal fracture suffered shortly after his transformation, when he’d jumped off a building in an attempt to turn into a bat. That last part of the vampire legend, as it turned out, was also just myth, as were the supposed abilities to control animals such as rats or influence and hypnotize people.

He’d never again seen the vampire who’d turned him. Indeed, in the years that followed, Carter had known only two others like him. One had been a girl he himself had turned in the early seventies—a redheaded flower child named Lindsey. They’d met at a Grateful Dead concert, and Carter had fallen in love almost immediately. For months,
he kept his secret from her, until one night, when Lindsey was high and fantasizing out loud about what a cool trip it would be to live forever, and Carter had told her that he could make that possible.

And then he had.

Lindsey hadn’t accepted it well, and a few days later, when the hunger for blood had become overwhelming, she’d opted to commit suicide by watching the sunrise, rather than feeding on another human. Sometimes, when he slept, Carter still smelled her burning and heard her accusatory screams.

The other one like him had been Nick, a witty, fast-talking Greek who claimed to be over two hundred years old. Nick also claimed that he had helped to invent socialism. They’d met in Berkeley in 1986. Carter had been feeding in an alley behind a bookstore, after attending a poetry reading. When he’d finished, he’d become aware of the other vampire’s presence. Nick had stood watching, a bemused expression on his face. Carter had been astonished to meet another like himself, and Nick became a mentor of sorts. He’d told Carter their kind were few and far between. Pop-culture depictions of vampire hierarchies and councils were bullshit. The only community Nick had known about was in the backwoods of West Virginia, and they were foul, savage creatures, more akin to a feral dog pack than civilized beings such as Carter and himself.

Nick had gone to North Korea shortly after Bush succeeded Reagan. Carter hadn’t heard from him since. He often wondered what had happened to his friend, especially since the plague.

He was so lonely.

Nick had sometimes teased Carter about his friendships with humans, asking him if the butcher made friends with the cows before he slaughtered them.

Carter thought of that now, as Troutdale grew closer. And yes, he thought, yes, the butcher would befriend the cows, because he’d be so happy just to have someone to talk to again.

He walked into town, passing under a wrought-iron arch with a fish statue on either side. A sign proclaimed
WELCOME TO TROUTDALE—THE WESTERN GATEWAY.
A gateway to what? Carter wondered. Another world? How wonderful would that be, to slip from one dimension to the next, and travel to a reality where the plague had never happened and he wasn’t starving and there were people to talk to and laugh with. If only it were that easy.

Carter passed an outlet mall. Most of the storefront windows were broken, and a tree had fallen through the roof of the bookstore, allowing the elements to get inside. He paused for a moment, listening and sniffing the air, but as far as he could tell, the mall was deserted. If he got closer, it might be possible to discern a rat or squirrel living among the ruins, but that would have involved an arduous climb down a steep embankment. Carter instead decided to try his luck deeper into town.

The main drag was lined with small shops—a tattoo parlor, several attorneys’ offices, a chiropractor, a dentist, a hair salon, and a spa were mixed in among numerous bars and restaurants. All of them were deserted, their occupants long gone. He paused in front of an antiques store. A faded, yellowed newspaper cartoon had been taped inside the window. Its edges were brown and curling. In it, a young boy and his pet tiger were snuggled together in bed. The caption read,
Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend
. Carter supposed this was true, because he was fucking terrified. His nights were spent in constant fear. Mostly, he was scared of being alone.

The other side of Troutdale butted up against the Sandy River. There, in a wooded area behind the Depot Rail Museum, he found the remains of a homeless encampment. A blue plastic tarp had been stretched out between four tree trunks and tied fast, forming a makeshift roof. Beneath it was a stone fire pit, filled with charred sticks. Judging by the mud inside the circle of rocks, it had been quite some time since a fire had burned there.

“Hello,” he called. Rather than echoing, his voice seemed to fall flat, as if the forest itself had swallowed it. It faded all too quickly, replaced again by silence. Carter longed for the drone of an airplane overhead, or the rumbling of a train or a bus passing by, but there was nothing. Even the birds and animals had gone silent, no doubt as a result of his presence.

Sighing, Carter turned back to town, intent on finding something to eat. Out of the corner of his eye, the trees seemed to turn with him. He wheeled to face them.

“I told you to stop following me! Leave me alone.”

And that was when he heard the sound. It started as a distant whoosh of air, with a low, mechanical hum beneath it. He recognized the noise right away. It was the faraway sound of a car on the highway, coming closer. Carter glanced around frantically, trying to determine its origin. Then, as it drew nearer, he ran back down the street. While flying or transforming into a bat might have been the stuff of fanciful legend, Carter was indeed equipped with unnatural speed and strength, both of which he relied upon now, dashing the entire length of Troutdale in just under thirty seconds. But the exertion left him winded, and he was still weak from hunger, and he had to stop again beneath the fish archway, panting.

He had to be imagining it. Deep down inside, he knew this to be true. There couldn’t be a car. It was a mirage. A hallucination. Just like the trees.

But what if it wasn’t?

The hum of the engine and tires grew ever closer. He limped quickly to the overpass and gazed out at the highway below. There, on the horizon, he saw headlights. It was real! Carter had no idea how the driver had managed to navigate around the assorted wreckage choking the highways, but at that moment, he didn’t care. His pulse hammered in his throat as the car drew nearer. Human beings! One, at the very least. His excitement gave way to panic. What if
they were . . . bad? Carter had seen enough postapocalyptic movies and read enough dystopian fiction that visions of leather-clad punk-rock marauders filled his head. But, no. Given just how much of humanity had died off, the driver and any possible occupants couldn’t be bad. He couldn’t justify this assurance with any sound logic, but that didn’t stop him from clinging to the emotion. They had to be decent, and surely they’d be grateful to see him, as well.

“Hello,” Carter shouted from the overpass. “Up here!”

He realized they’d never see him from atop the overpass. While the car wasn’t speeding, it was nighttime, and the driver was probably focused on the road ahead, alert for any wreckage or obstructions in the dark. He hurried down the embankment, heading toward the road. The occupant of the car must be driving with the window down, he decided, because now he could smell them. The scent was faint but undeniable. A woman, unless he was mistaken. Although he couldn’t be sure, he suspected she was alone.

He slid down the hillside and dashed out into the roadway. Headlights speared him. Carter raised his arms over his head and waved them enthusiastically.

“Hello,” he called. “Stop the car! Please stop.”

Tires squealed as the driver locked the brakes. He smelled rubber burning and caught a glimpse of the frightened woman’s face through the windshield as the car swerved to one side and spun out of control. Then, as if in slow motion, the car flipped over and slid on its roof. Metal shrieked, and so did the driver. Sparks danced in the darkness like fireflies. There was a deafening crash as the upside-down vehicle slammed into the concrete support beneath the overpass and then folded in on itself like aluminum foil.

Carter’s heart beat once. Twice.

The driver had stopped screaming.

“No!” He ran toward the car, broken glass crunching beneath his feet. The stench of burned rubber and scorched metal was thick in
the air, but even thicker was the smell of blood. The odor simultaneously filled him with excitement and dread, and Carter hated himself for feeling both.

He reached the wreck, got down on his hands and knees, and peered inside. Remarkably, the driver was conscious. She was pretty, African-American, and in her mid-to-late twenties. Carter couldn’t determine much else about her because she was covered in blood. The smell of it seemed to assail him, and he reeled back, weeping.

“Didn’t . . .” Blood trickled from her mouth as she spoke. “You . . . surprised me.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

It was a stupid question, he knew. Judging by the lacerations on her body and the position of several limbs, the young woman was anything but okay. But after all that time spent talking to inanimate objects and himself, Carter was having trouble focusing on how to talk to another person. He took a deep breath, smelled the blood, and tried again, shivering as he did.

“My name is Carter. What’s yours?”

“A . . . Ashley. Are you . . . really alive?”

He nodded, unable to form enough words to lie.

“It’s . . . nice to . . . meet you, Carter. I . . . thought I was . . .”

“Alone,” Carter finished for her, and smiled.

She returned the gesture and tried to nod. When she did, her expression changed to one of anguish.

Carter’s choked laughter changed to a sob. “Don’t try to move. Just stay still. You’re going to be okay.”