C.O.T.V.H. (Book 1): Creation (2 page)

Running on pure adrenaline, John jerked the Roman short sword from the scabbard on his dead friend’s belt and stabbed it through the monster’s chest, punching through its hardened skin and slicing through its heart. Then he yanked up Terry’s battleaxe and with one chop severed its head.

Wes tossed his shotgun aside and with one hand hefted the dead vampire off Terry’s body, throwing it like a ragdoll across the room where it crashed into the wall.

“
My God . . . Terry . . .” Ben whispered, his voice expressing the pain they all felt.

That could have been me!
John cried out in his mind, instantly shamed by how selfish that sounded.
Julia . . . Jake . . . what am I doing here?
That could have been me! Jake’s barely three years old and I could have orphaned him just now!

Ben had to shake Charlie to get him to stop pulling the trigger on his empty gun. Wes angrily punted the dead vampire’s head out the front door where it burst into flames as the sun hit it.

John dropped to his knees next to his friend’s lifeless body, tears stinging his eyes. “Oh Terry . . .”

"Where the hell is his head?" Wes Turner said, looking around the room.

“
What do you mean?” Ben asked, his body shaking with shock. “You just kicked it out the door.”

“
No, not his,” Wes answered solemnly. “Terry’s. It isn’t here.”

John placed his hand on his friend’s bloodied, broken body, tears streaming down his cheeks. In that moment all he could think of was his son’s tiny form bouncing on his knee.
My God . . . That could have been me . . .

Chapter 1

Jake

The "Griffin" home, Midland, TX.

July 30, 1994 5:27pm

“
Take that you alien trash!” Jake yelled out in triumph as his alliance of green army men and plastic red cowboys swarmed over the evil alien invaders. Though his forces had been almost decimated by the alien’s surprise attack, they had somehow managed to regroup and pull off a stunning victory.

The toughest of his men, an especially rugged Marine, named Sergeant Awesome, tossed the broken remains of the aliens' general, a fiend named Lord Destructus, off the summit of Mount Desktopia. “Victory!" Jake yelled out, pumping his fists into the air, a plastic hero clutched tightly in each of his small hands.

“
You have won this day, fools!” The evil Lord Destructus stumbled to his feet, pulling his arm back into its socket. “But we shall return!”

“
And the same thing will happen again, Destructus, you coward!" Sergeant Awesome roared down at him. “Next time bring more than just a . . .”

“
Damn it, John, I’m sick of this crap!” His mom’s voice carried into his room, interrupting Sergeant Awesome's speech.

“
They’re fighting again?!” Jake sighed. He had been listening to his parents argue off and on for the past three days.

The central air conditioner had gone out for the fourth time in two months and his mom was not happy about it. Moreover, the fact that it was a hundred and ten degrees in the shade did not help matters much.

Dropping his toys to the stained beige carpet, Jake walked over to close his bedroom door but stopped just as it was about to click shut, his curiosity getting the better of him. Creeping ever so quietly he pulled the door open a few inches and peeked out just in time to see Julia throw her arms angrily in the air.

"John, do you have any idea how hard I work? Do you? I'm killing myself trying to dig us out of this hole!"

"I know that, Julia," John started to say, but was quickly hushed by a fiery look from his wife.

"I work twelve hours a night and all I want to do is come home and sleep in a cool house. Instead I come home to . . . to this!" She motioned around the room with both hands. "It's a hundred and ten degrees outside, John! And it's at least ninety-five in here! How the hell am I supposed to sleep when it’s this hot
inside
the house?!"

John stared down at her from his six foot six height, his eyes fuming mad. “What do you want me to do, Julia?" He crossed his tree trunk size arms over his chest. "I can't control the goddamn weather!"

"Don't you dare talk to me that way!" She yelled back. "I'm not asking you to control the
goddamn weather
! I just want the
goddamn
air conditioner fixed! This is just ridiculous, I can’t believe . . ."

"I'll tell you what,” John said, interrupting her rant, "since you're such an expert, why don’t you come up with a way to get the two hundred and fifty bucks to get it fixed! You bitch and complain enough, why don't you do something about it!”

Though he loomed over her by more than a foot, Julia was not the least bit intimidated. She had a fire in her eyes that John fueled into a raging inferno. “Oh that's funny! Like I don't do enough around here?" She turned her back on him, clenching her fist in anger. "Here’s an idea!” she screamed back, turning and staring right into his hard, brown eyes. “How about
you
do something for a change! How about you get off your ass and find a job!”

Oh man, here we go,
Jake thought to himself. Though he knew he shouldn't be eavesdropping, he couldn't bring himself to look away from the onslaught he knew was coming.

John had been laid off from his job in the oil field for nearly a year. The price of oil had taken a nosedive overnight, instantly cutting the incomes of hundreds of families all over Midland. Even after a year, the price per barrel had yet to come back up, and when you lived in a city that's economy was based almost entirely on the price of oil, that was a very bad thing.

To his credit, he had been looking for work every day since, often taking odd jobs wherever he could. However, mowing yards and patching the neighbors' roofs wasn’t bringing in the kind of income his old job had. Not by a long shot.

Julia, who had been a housewife/stay at home mom, for over seven years, went back to work as a nurse almost immediately. Nevertheless, even with her working sixty hours a week at Midland Memorial, it wasn’t bringing in enough income for them to keep the same standard of living.

The mortgage, credit cards, car payments, all that had been no problem to pay before, became almost impossible to pay. Past due notices started building up until finally the loans were all called in at once. Bankruptcy had been their only option. In the blink of an eye, they had lost almost everything.

Before Jake even grasped what was going on, they were moving out of their big two-story house and into a tiny two-bedroom rental on the seedier side of town. After it was all said and done Jake was just happy they were still a family, though admittedly not always a happy one.

John had always been a proud man, so not being able to provide for his family was a huge blow to him. As if it made him less of a man. Therefore, Jake had expected him to fully explode at Julia's harsh words. However, the giant of a man somehow managed to keep his cool. Even from where he stood, Jake could see the pain in his eyes.

John ran both of his calloused hands through his hair and barely above a whisper said, “Julia, you know that I have been looking. Every single day I look and look and look. I've put in applications at damn near every business in town. I’ve mowed yards, painted houses, cleaned out gutters. I don’t know what else I can do!”

“
There’s got to be something else you can do, John?” she pleaded, her voice softening. “I can’t do this alone, John. I just can't.”

“
Then let me call Billy,” he pleaded back, his right hand gently brushing through her dark brown hair. “Just one job would be enough to get us out of this hell hole. We could move out of this dump. Get our old life back.”

“
No, John! No!" she said, knocking his hand away. "You know it wouldn’t be just one. There’d be another and another. I don't want our old lives back. I want my husband! I'm not going to be a widow and Jake is not going to lose his father just so that we can live in a nicer house, or drive nice cars again,” Tears welled up in her soft green eyes. “Damn it, John, you promised me you were done after what happened to Terry!”

“
I know I did, baby, but . . . I don’t know what else I can do! I don't even have a high school diploma. There's only one thing that I'm really good at and you won’t . . .” John lowered his head in defeat. “No, I’m not going to blame you for me quitting. It was my decision,” He sighed deeply. “My only other option is Rough-necking, but no one is hiring.”

"John, listen to me," she whispered, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her gray cotton sweatshirt. "I don't want to do this . . . God knows I don't want to, but I’m going to call my dad and borrow the money. After all, he's got more than he could ever use,” Julia laid her hands gently on her husband’s chest. “We're not worrying about this for another second.” She managed a weak smile.

“
Oh that’s a wonderful idea!” He said, gently grabbing her hands in his own. “Just call the miserable old bastard up and let him know where we are. I’m sure he’d just love to pay someone off at C.P.S. and have us deemed unfit parents. You know what will happen if they start digging into our past. They will ask questions that I won't have answers for.”

Julia jerked her hands away from his grasps. “That’s not fair John. It’s really not. I know he's not perfect but he would never do something like that.”

“
Julia, you know what kind of man he is,” John said, softening his tone. “If he finds us . . . if we show even an inkling of weakness, he will pounce on us and have Jake taken away.”

At this point Julia had tears streaming down her cheeks. Jake couldn’t bear to watch anymore. Gently closing the door, he dropped back to the carpet, and leaned his back against his bed. Picking up one of his toys, he stared at it for several minutes as the argument continued down the hall. Their voices were muffled but he could still make out the words.

"Well, Sergeant Awesome, it looks like we lost the battle after all." Giving up on trying to tune them out, he tossed the action figure across the room where it bounced off the lid and landed in his toy box. One by one he picked up the rest of his toys until the floor was completely clean.

When he was done, he leaned back on his hands and stared up at the broken ceiling fan hanging loosely above. A bead of sweat ran down his back causing him to itch. Stretching his arm, he tried desperately to scratch it but gave up as it progressed down his spine followed by several more.

Even by West Texas standards, it was hotter than normal. Yesterday's high had topped at a hundred and eight degrees, making it the twentieth day in a row of record temperatures. Today made twenty-one. Even when the air conditioner had been working, it had done little to keep that kind of heat at bay. At least the moving air was better than the sweltering inferno Jake found himself now living in.

Behind a set of yellow, smoke stained mini-blinds, his unopened window sat begging to be opened. However, he knew if his dad caught him opening it even a crack he would be in really big trouble.

For some reason that Jake had never been able to ascertain, John had serious problems with unlocked or left open doors and windows. Especially after dark. No matter how hot it was, he would not allow them to open a window. He was even more on edge after the sun went down.

Jake couldn't even begin to count the number of times he had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, only to find his father sitting in the dark, his eyes wide open, always watching, always listening. His body jumping at every creak the old house made. Even stranger was that each time he was sitting in a different spot. One time Jake found the TV blaring loudly in the living room with John sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of the darkened kitchen. The next time he was in a chair leaning against the wall of Jake's room.

Jake knew it wasn't because they lived in a bad neighborhood either. John had had the same strange late night habits at their old house as well. It was as if he was expecting something bad to happen at any moment. It had unnerved Jake to the point that unless it was an absolute emergency, he did his best to hold in his pee. He asked his dad on several different occasions if everything was all right, and John's reply was always the same: "Everything is fine. Go back to bed."

Nevertheless, deep down Jake knew everything was not fine. He may have only been ten, but he could read between the lines. He wasn't afraid of his father, though the sight of a grown man sitting quietly in the dark was a bit unnerving. Far from it, he loved his dad more than anything. It was what his dad seemed to be afraid of that frightened him. If a man the size of John felt the need to keep a watchful eye on his family at all hours of the night. What could a boy of Jake's size ever hope to do against something so terrifying?

Another bead of sweat made its way down his back. Jake thought over the risk of getting in trouble for a good minute, his parent’s voices growing louder with each passing second. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, deciding the risk was well worth the reward. “Sorry, Dad,” he said aloud.

Jumping to his feet, he practically ran to the window. Turning the rusty lock, he grabbed a hold of the bottom and yanked up with all his strength. It squeaked open about half way then stuck. A slight warm breeze eased through, teasing him.