“A church?” I asked Lydia as we drove out of Holmes.
“Cars need maintenance, churches need money. Churches also tend to survive for long periods of time. As long as they aren’t dragged into anything illegal or immoral, the right church can be a big player in this business.”
“So, I’m guessing they don’t know anything about vampires?”
“They think the vehicles are being kept for a nonprofit service that helps battered women escape their husbands,” Lydia said.
“How did you convince them of that?”
“We actually have ties to such an organization. Provides great cover for stuff like this and keeps the group funded.”
“Do most vampires give to charity?” I asked.
“You’d be surprised. We tend to try to take care of humans,” she said.
“Tending the flock?”
“Some of that, but also remember, with the exception of your mate, we all used to be human at one time.”
Still heading west, both cars slid through a KFC drive-thru and loaded up on the Colonel’s best recipe for Awasos, Stacia, and myself. The vampires all had bagged blood from a cooler that had come with us from the Denali. I had another forty or fifty minutes to think about the fact that the government was willing to launch cruise missiles at me and sacrifice both local and federal law enforcement personnel in the process. That hadn’t worked so well, and I was very interested to catch some news to see what kind of shit storm had ensued. We cruised into a quaint little Pennsylvania town named Warnesville, passed through it, and headed down various back country roads till we arrived at a small family farm. It looked like it had once been run as a dairy operation but had fallen idle since. The white farmhouse needed several coats of paint, the farm garden outside the back door was overrun with weeds and dead tomato plants, and the barn looked like it was ten years from collapsing into a supply pile of designer barn wood.
A high intensity light on a telephone pole lit the yard and showed a Ford F-150 pickup and a Toyota Corolla sedan parked near the house. Neither car had seen the inside of a dealer’s showroom in years—or the inside of a car wash, for that matter.
Arkady turned in the open area between barn and house, leaving the Accord running and pointed back out toward the road. Trenton followed suit with the Subaru. A light came on in the farmhouse kitchen and a moment later, a stout man with a lever action rifle stepped out the back door. Dressed in gray sweatpants and a stained beige t-shirt with the name of a local auto shop stretched tightly across the beer belly underneath it, he was about five foot eight and maybe two hundred and thirty pounds and likely in his late thirties although his thinning hair made him look a few years older.
“Who the fuck are you?” he greeted us, then took a step back and almost raised his rifle as Arkady stood to his full height.
Tanya rose lithely from the back of the Accord and spoke to him. “When farmers stop complaining and priests stop asking for things…”
“What? Lady, are you mental?” he asked.
“When farmers stop complaining and priests stop asking for things…” Tanya said again, a frown on her face.
The man thumbed back the hammer on his .30-30, swearing and turning back to the house. “Marnie, call the sheriff!” he yelled. A woman peeked out the kitchen window, her face alarmed. From across the yard, I could see her eyes widen as she took us in. She disappeared in a flash of ruffled white curtain. A moment later, she came running out the back door. “Jimmy, wait! Put that gun down.”
“What? Marnie, get back here,” he yelled, but the woman was already between him and us.
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?” she asked Tanya, obviously scared out of her mind, but still functioning as she stood in bare feet and a nightgown.
“When farmers stop complaining and priests stop asking for things...” Tanya said again.
“…the end of days is near,” the woman replied, almost in a whisper, hand going to mouth unconsciously.
“You are the heir to this property?” Tanya asked. The woman, Marnie, nodded, eyes still wide.
“You understand who we are and what we need?” Tanya asked. The woman nodded, then turned to what seemed to be her husband. “Jimmy, this is what I told you might happen. This is what my father talked to you about.”
Jimmy seemed a bit peeved, but he lowered the hammer on the rifle and moved up behind his wife.
“I’m sorry, Miss. We have never been called upon, although my father was once, as a young man,” Marnie said.
“It’s understandable. These old ways aren’t convenient,” Tanya said with a warm smile for the woman.
“Couldn’t ya just call ahead?” Jimmy asked, face scrunched up like he’d just stepped in dog crap.
“Jimmy, the whole reason for this… for us to own this and get the payments is so
they
can appear in the night and not use phones and things,” Marnie said. Her tone of voice when she said
they
suggested she might have a pretty good idea of what she was dealing with.
“You won’t harm me or mine?” she asked Tanya.
“As guests, we hold our hosts inviolate,” my vampire replied, one hand over her heart. It was an oddly old-fashioned gesture for a twenty five year old.
The woman nodded, arms wrapped around herself although I didn’t think it was strictly because of the slightly chilly air. Mid-thirties, curly light brown hair, with plain features and light brown eyes, she seemed tired. Maybe
weary
is a better word. It being the middle of the night and all, a certain sleepiness was expected. But this was the tiredness of someone who has worried for long time. Looking over the ill-kept farm and her ill-kept husband, I thought maybe her exhaustion lay in that direction.
She led us to the barn, struggling with the big sagging door until Trenton stepped up and helped. The fact that he effortlessly lifted the whole door by its handle enough to stop its drag on the dirt did not go unnoticed, at least by Marnie. Jimmy was too busy studying Tanya, Stacia, and Lydia. In fact, he was so deep in his leer that he failed to notice the huge four-footed form that came up behind him until it brushed against the rifle he held pointed at the ground. He glanced down and jumped a foot to his left, his arm starting to bring the rifle up. But now
I
was next to him. I blocked the rise of the rifle with my left index finger. “Jimmy, is it?”
He jumped again, just a little bit, but he nodded, frowning.
“Did your wife and your father-in-law explain just what kind of people might be stopping by to use these facilities?” I asked, snagging the rifle from his grip. Holding in the Winchester’s loading gate with one finger, I blocked the feed of shells from the magazine as I levered the chambered round out into the air with my other hand. The ejected shell jumped in an arc past my right shoulder, but my hand snatched it from the air even as my eyes stayed focused on Jimmy. Closing the lever action, I handed him the rifle back and proceeded to cut the .30-30 round in half with a mono-edged finger. Pouring the powder out on the ground before handing it back to him, I smiled. “Good stuff to keep in mind for the next couple of days, doncha think?”
He was frozen looking between the smoothly cut cartridge and myself. I nodded at ‘Sos, who was looking back at us patiently. “That one dislikes getting shot, and I don’t much like it when people shoot him, either. So let’s practice good firearm safety, shall we?”
The others had entered the big barn and I headed after them, Awasos slipping through the doorway just ahead of me. Behind me, I could hear Jimmy’s heart beating furiously, but I didn’t hear the rifle’s action. As I went through the doorway, I finally heard him start to walk after me.
Inside, a layer of dirt and dust coated everything, including the old Camaro that took up most of the open floor space at the front of the barn. Marnie was leading our group past the car, which, like the farm and its owners, had seen better days. About halfway through the barn, she turned right and entered a small room that was mostly packed with furniture, old tools, and dairy equipment. At the other end of the space was a door and when she opened it… a closet. But she bent down and lifted a metal ring on the floor and a long rectangle came up so smoothly that it had to be counterbalanced. The opening in the floor revealed stairs going down and after flicking a switch, she stepped down the suddenly well-lit stairway.
Below ground, we found a hallway with rooms to either side. First on the left was a bathroom with a shower. Across the hall was a kitchenette space that had an electric burner plate and a cheap microwave, as well as a dorm-style fridge. A table and four chairs occupied the center of the room.
The next two rooms were each packed with six twin beds and bare mattresses, and each had a large square footlocker in the center, big enough to act as a table but likely to contain bedding.
The last room at the end was a mini living room. It held a couch and two old armchairs with an oval coffee table, which was covered with magazines, most of them porn. Two empty beer cans were lined up on the table as well, along with an ashtray that held several mostly burnt joints. A wooden box had been set on end and a cheap little television was set on top, a white coaxial cable dangling down from above to reach the back of the TV.
Everything was neat but old, with the exception of the porn mags and the TV. Marnie stood looking at the magazines, her face red, before scooping them up and thrusting them into her husband’s free arm. She picked up the beer cans and the ashtray.
She pointed at a tapestry hanging on the wall farthest from the television. “The escape tunnel is behind that and has three branches. The left-hand branch brings you up in the stone fence by the road. Some of the stones are fakes, so you end up
right
in the wall. The middle one brings you out in the little grove of trees across the pasture, and the right one opens inside the tool shed out back.”
Standing against the walls, arms at her side, she waited, face pale and heart hammering.
Tanya smiled warmly. “Everything is as it should be. Your duties are met. We have our own supplies, although we might prevail upon you to buy us some food at your local markets.”
“Of course, although we don’t have much cash until the first of the month,” Marnie said, apologetic, with a quick glance at her husband.
“We do not expect you to provide the funds and will, in fact, pay you to shop. Is that acceptable?”
“How much? How much will you pay?” Jimmy suddenly wanted to know. He had a greedy gleam in his eye. Honestly, the guy was such a cliché. The quintessential lazy, deadbeat husband, living off his wife’s trust income, letting her family farm fall into ruin and turning the one foolproof responsibility he had into a man cave.
“Our business relationship is with your wife,” Tanya said.
“Listen, this is my proper…”Jimmy started to say but suddenly found himself slammed against the hard cement block wall by Arkady’s single right hand, which had wrapped itself around Jimmy’s portly throat. The .30-30 was gone from fat Jimmy’s hand, now in the possession of Trenton.
“You will address her with respect at all times or you will cease to exist. You are not worth the patience she has shown you, as your mate may be. This property is owned by a trust which is also the source of your income.
We
control that trust. Keep your mind on what you have, not what you think you might be able to get.”
Speech done, Arkady simply dropped him. He turned to Marnie. “Keeper, I would not harm yours but I also will not tolerate threats or disrespect to my que… leader.”
Wide-eyed and white faced, Marnie simply nodded.
“Come, we must unload and store our vehicles in the barn,” Tanya said. I was closest to the entrance, so I turned and trotted back up the stairs. As the rest followed us out into the main barn, I moved to the beat-up red and white Camaro and grabbed the back bumper. Picking it up, I walked the car backward about fifteen feet to make room in the front of the barn for our two cars. My crew ignored me, each heading to get supplies or to drive the cars into the barn. Marnie and Jimmy stood looking at me wide-eyed.
“What’s this? A seventies Rally Sport?” I asked.
“Ah…’69… ’69 Super Sport,” Jimmy answered, still distracted by the fact that I was holding the back end of his muscle car off the ground.
“My dad had a ’70 Rally Sport,” I commented before looking up to see Stacia backing the Subaru in, followed by Lydia doing the same with the Accord. Arkady was carrying an oversized cooler of bagged blood and Trenton had the two boxes of groceries we had stopped for before leaving Philly.
“Where’s ‘Sos?” I asked Tanya, who was now approaching Marnie and Jimmy.
“I sent him into the escape tunnels to check them out,” she replied before turning to the still-shell-shocked couple.
Heading into the back room and hidden basement, I checked first on the opened panel behind the tapestry, listening till I could hear the patter of wolven feet. Next, I turned on Jimmy’s television, clicking through the channels until I found the news.
“-
Governor Curry will hold a press conference tomorrow at nine AM. Meanwhile White House Spokesperson Jeff Bleeker continues to deny that anyone in the Garth Administration has any knowledge of the Tomahawk launch. Secretary of Defense Hauser has promised a swift investigation into the events leading up to the firing of a Navy cruise missile into New Jersey. Both the White House and Secretary Hauser maintain that the satellite crash that occurred approximately forty minutes later was merely an inopportune coincidence. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen the Tomahawk leave the water and little more than a half hour later obtained this video of the fiery demise of what NASA is calling an obsolete communications satellite that unexpectedly lost power and crashed to earth, unbelievably striking almost the exact spot that the missile reportedly originated from. I don’t know about you, Melissa, but I seem to recall another falling object striking the Northeast in recent memory, and this reporter wonders if any of it is a coincidence at all. Reporting live from Stafford Township, New Jersey, I’m Chuck Upton. Melissa, back to you.”