Double Dead (17 page)

Incense burned—ghostly serpents of scented smoke coiled around her head. But it did little to mask the smell: Ambrosia’s stink was wretched. Had Coburn tears in his head, his eyes would be leaking. The odor was some mind-boggling combination of rotten onions, rancid lunchmeat and sweat-soaked gym socks.

Basically, she smelled like human garbage.

Wyatt and Stevie dragged the vampire kennel up to the edge of the dais, then lifted it up with a groan and placed it before their fleshy mistress.

Ambrosia struggled, grunting as she leaned over her own prodigious flesh, and stared into the kennel. Coburn bit at the grate like a rabid animal. It didn’t work. His strength was swiftly waning.

Next to him, he heard the squeaks of Grandpaw’s wheelchair.

“Ooooh. He’s feisty,” Ambrosia said, chuckling. Her words and chortles sounded like someone had stuffed her throat with pudding. Gargling, gurgling. And her breath could’ve choked a hyena.

“Shot him plenty of times,” Grandpaw said, sucking air through his teeth. “But there he is, still kicking like that battery bunny what used to be on TV.”

“I want him for breakfast.” She licked her rubbery lips.

“You want him raw?”

“
Sashimi
,” she corrected. “We must strive to be civilized, Grandpaw. We are creatures of the world.”

“’Course, what was I thinking?” In his voice, Coburn could hear the man’s dismissal—he didn’t give one whit about this woman or what she was saying, but put up with it because clearly she was the one with the power. Was it just her size that convinced others? How the hell was she so damn big? Coburn decided to ask.

“How—” he started, his voice croaking. He pushed past vocal cords that felt like broken glass: “How the hell are you… so… fucking…
fat
?”

“My breakfast speaks!” Ambrosia said, her voice a high-pitched twitter. She clapped her hands together, hands that were actually quite small, like doll’s hands. “My dear, I have a most undesirable metabolic disorder.” She studied his face, saw it wrinkle up in disbelief. “I’m just kidding! Human meat is wonderfully complex and fatty.” She leaned in and whispered, as if confiding a secret: “I eat a lot of people. And soon I’m going to eat you, little rabbit.”

She pulled back from the cage.

“I want most of him cooked,” she declared, as if ordering a chef to do her bidding. “Take him to the roof and roast him over the spit. But.
But!
I would like a raw preparation of sashimi to precede my meal. Also, if any of his back-fat remains, I require a lardon of man-bacon.”

Ambrosia flapped her little hand in a wave of dismissal. Her arm-fat shook with the motion, like a sandbag full of gelatin.

As the cage withdrew, Grandpaw wheeled up and presented her with something. Coburn saw that it was one of his feet.

“An appetizer if’n you want it,” the old man said.

She took it like a buttery cob of hot corn, shucked the boot and rolled back the pant leg—

Then took a big wet bite.

As the pet carrier rounded an endcap away from the electronics department, away from Ambrosia’s throne room, he could hear the moans of delight, the smacking of her lips, the pleasurable sighs blown through her nostrils as she chowed down on the vampire’s flesh.

He hoped he tasted good, at least.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Spit

Wyatt and Stevie slammed the pet carrier down onto the roof after using a pulley-and-pallet to haul it up there. They slid the pet carrier in place between two other carriers, both similarly-sized but different in design—both were wire mesh, more ‘cage-like’ than Coburn’s own kennel. Then they went back inside.

Even with the blood having mostly fled his body, the vampire could feel his skin tingle. It wasn’t long until sun-up. The edge of the sky beyond the Wal-Mart’s roof was growing slowly stained with purple, like a cloth mopping up wine.

Once the sun came up, they wouldn’t need to cook him. The rays of dawn would do that for them—the world becoming one big microwave oven.

He looked around, took quick stock of his surroundings.

Sentries manned the roof. Four of them, by the look of it. Each armed. Each squirrely, jacked up on something by the look and the smell of them. Trucker meth, maybe. Or just cranked-up cold meds.

Over toward the AC unit was a big oven and spit made out of cement blocks and wood. The spit was a truck axle. A pot-bellied, sallow-chested cannibal in an apron stained with yellow fat and red blood upended a bag of charcoal briquettes below the rusted axle.

Beyond that? The stockpile Coburn needed: tanks of fuel. Kerosene containers, but gas cans, too.

Coburn was not the only meat on the menu—the two cages he sat sandwiched between were occupied. To his left, some Charlie Manson wannabe picking at his skin like it might be run through with ants and worms. To his right, a clean-cut kid in a too-white t-shirt and jeans—maybe 16 or 17 years old. A ginger. Freckles and everything. Smelled like soap.

He didn’t have long. He felt his body going weak from the blood loss and knew that with the coming of morning everything would begin to stiffen up—so that meant this was a
now-or-never
situation.

Coburn pressed his face against the side of his carrier. Holes peppered the hard plastic, presumably so a dog could stare out, and that was exactly what Coburn did, lined up both eyes with two holes and stared into the cage of the teen boy.

Kids were dumb. He was counting on that.

He pretended to have something in his mouth and spoke accordingly.

“Hey, you,” he said to the kid. “I gah the key. In mah mouf. Can use it to opeh your cage.”

The boy, though, didn’t say a peep and instead shied away.

Fine. Wasn’t taking the bait.

“I want the key,” whispered Charlie Manson. “Gimme the key. Come on. I’ll do it. I’ll let you out, legless dude. I’ll let us all out.”

Good.
Someone
was taking the bait.

“Here,” Coburn said. “I nee you to puh you toh—” He tried again. “You
tongue
fru the hole. Stig it out! Hurry! Fas!”

Charlie scooted over to the edge, and then Coburn saw that he was basically just skin and bones—hollow cheeks, the two bones of his wrists clear beneath the skin like a pair of rotten broomsticks.

Manson-esque stuck his tongue out, pressing his face hard against the side of the cage. His pink tongue thrust through the side of his cage and into Coburn’s, but only by a couple of millimeters. It wasn’t enough for Coburn’s plan—of course, Coburn didn’t have a key. What he
needed
was blood, and this dummy’s tongue was going to be a blood spigot once Coburn had enough on which to clamp down with his fangs.

The tongue kept waggling, like an earthworm just poking out of the hole.

“’Imme uh key! ‘Imme uh key!” Manson-esque chanted.

“Moh closer! Moh closer!” Coburn hissed back.

Manson squashed his face hard as he could so that one of his eyes was bugging out against the metal mesh.

The tongue came all the way through.

And Bingo was his name-oh.

But then Manson-esque muttered, “Shit!” and sucked his tongue back in his mouth, retreating to the back of his cage. Coburn dropped the pretence of having something in his mouth.

“Hey! Get the fuck back here.”

“Shh!” Manson exhorted, but it was too late. Suddenly Coburn’s kennel rattled with the butt of one of the sentries’ rifles.

“Shut the fuck up, you dumb mong—” The sentry stopped and peered into the cage. “Jesus, Cookie, this hunk of meat really doesn’t have legs.”

The ‘chef’ (apparently named Cookie) mumbled in assent while sharpening his knives against a cement block. “I’m told that Grandpaw blew the legs off with that Remington of his. Fuck it. Best meat is on the trunk anyhow. Get him out of the cage and bring him over.”

In the distance, the sky brightened at its margins, from purple to red with the barest fringe of orange.

The sun was almost here.

As two sentries opened the cage and reached in to grab hold of him, the vampire realized that this was well and truly his last shot.

The hands hauled him free—he had no strength, had no legs, didn’t have a snow-cone’s chance in Hell to make any dramatic moves. But one wrist strayed awfully close to his mouth…

He bit down. Fangs crunched through tendon.

His mouth, flush with blood.

The world brightened. Came alive. His flesh tingled, his leg stumps burned. A hot rush of giddiness swept inside him: feeding was, in its own way, like the human orgasm. Longer he waited, the stronger the sensation. Positively Tantric.

It was that moment that represented a somewhat critical divide for Coburn—a branching of paths, a choice made unexpectedly. A small voice, a
loud whisper
, rang out inside his head.

Everything came to this point.

At the horizon’s edge, the sun slid upwards, rising, rising.

The sky, brightening.

Coburn wrenched himself free from the man’s wrist.

The man’s rifle clattered to the ground. The world moved in slow-motion. Cookie came at him with a meat cleaver. The other sentry scrambled for his own rifle, bringing it clumsily up against his shoulder.

Coburn, a legless, pale freak, grabbed the rifle.

And he made his choice.

He jacked the bolt back, threw a round into the chamber and fired—it flew true and found its intended home.

The kerosene tank went
ping!
as the bullet struck it, and then a half-second later, exploded. A mushroom cloud of black smoke and demonic flame belched up into the morning sky just as the sun crested the horizon—

Cookie was thrown to the ground, the meat cleaver clattering away—

The sentry fired his own rifle, striking Coburn in the chest.

The sun’s kiss began to smolder the vampire’s skin—it blistered fast, pig-tail curls of smoke rising from his suppurating flesh.

He caught flame.

He screamed.

And that was when he knew it was all over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

This Way to the Great Egress

“There.” Gil pointed out the window. Sure enough, above the Wal-Mart fire blossomed—a mushrooming cloud brighter than the coming sunrise. From the fire came a belch of black smoke. “That’s our window. Ebbie, drive.”

By now, even Cecelia came out to see. She’d been in hiding ever since Coburn kicked her out of the bedroom. Not that a Winnebago like this offered any actual hiding space—mostly she’d just curled up away from everyone, moping and refusing to rise. Gil had tried to comfort her, but it was never his strong suit, and so she retreated, chastened and unsure.

Now, though, she stood shoulder to shoulder with Kayla. “Looks like your boyfriend did good.”

“He’s not my—” Kayla shook her head, gave up. “Whatever, Cecelia.”

Ebbie gunned the RV. The mobile home rocked on its axis any time they careened around highway debris or forgotten cars. He drove up over a median. He took a short-cut through a parking lot. Kayla braced herself against what passed for the kitchen cabinets; she almost fell into Cecelia, who gave her an
eat shit
look.

And then, there it stood—up on their right, the Wal-Mart. Zombies already starting to gather at its periphery. Dozens here already, and more on the way. Shambling toward the store. Tumbling into the moat.

Gil slapped Ebbie on the shoulder. “There! There. The spike strips. Stop here, stop here!” The RV lurched forward as Ebbie hit the brakes. The cabinet doors opened—plastic cups and plates tumbled out over Kayla.

Gil flagged Leelee and together they hurried outside. It had been agreed earlier that they were the two who could move the fastest. Gil was the oldest, but in good shape. Leelee, too, was lean, muscled—she used to run marathons.

Kayla crawled up into the passenger seat and watched as the two of them raced out and began dragging the first strip back. Must’ve been heavier than it looked, because they were struggling to pull it in. It folded up like an accordion but it was slow going.

And the zombies were starting to take notice.

Most of them were focused on the Wal-Mart. The boom, the fire, the smoke—and now, the screaming—drew them to it the way a porch light drew moths, but a handful of them had peeled away and were staggering not toward the RV but rather toward the two specimens of fresh meat that stood out in the open, dicking around with a recalcitrant spike-strip.

Kayla rolled down the window and screamed for her father. He looked up and she pointed toward the approaching rotters.

He felt at his hip. No gun waited there.

Kayla grabbed Cecelia and tapped Ebbie on the shoulder. “Get the guns! We need to start shooting.”

“No!” Cecelia protested. “That’ll draw them toward us.”

“We need to save Dad and Leelee,” Kayla said, opening up an overhead bin and pulling out guns—she thrust a shotgun into Ebbie’s hands and
tried
to give Cecelia a pistol, but she waved it away.