Suckers (23 page)

“Take better care of yourself, Ray-Ray. You’re supposed to be on break.” Jamie slouched lower on the couch, yawning. “Got any idea when we’re getting back to work?”

“It’ll be a little while yet.”

Jamie hung his head back and let out a sigh.

He dreamed the sky was black and undulating. Buzzing came from loudspeakers, black boxes mounted high on thick black poles. Everyone was running.

It colored his mood when he got into Ray’s car, that and the steel-gray clouds crowding the sky. One of the Bostons canceled at the last minute, rescheduling for tonight, leaving Ray more time to practice on the oranges, on Dan. On himself, with Dan pacing restlessly, eyeing the measuring cup he was bleeding into, saying, “That’s enough. You just need to get the hang of it, not feed me.” Saying, “I’m good, you know. I’m fine for now. Eat a steak or something. Please.”

They didn’t talk much on the trip down—what was there to say that hadn’t been said already, outside of
I hope you can do this
? On a real person. On a stranger.

As they drove through Medford, Dan did think of one thing to say. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am you’ve stuck with me through this.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Lose the band?”

Dan laughed. “Shit. You’re officially the only member of the band without serious substance abuse problems.”

Ray smiled. “I guess I am.”

They headed to Cambridge, where deathly_black’s street was crowded with huge Georgian and Federal multi-family buildings and suffered from a distinct lack of on-street parking.

“Is that a cemetery?” Dan said as Ray slowed, looking for a side street with parking.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if that had been a selling point for our guy. He’s a little morbid.”

They got out of the car. Ray said, “Up here,” as he grabbed a railing. Dan looked across to the cemetery while Ray rapped on the door.

When it opened, Dan turned to see a guy in a red polo shirt with a Staples logo on it. He was probably twenty four and already starting to lose his sandy-brown hair.

“Dude. Hey. I
just
got off work.” He held the door wide. “Just ignore the mess.”

The place was a single room, the décor schizophrenic: a quilt that looked like a hand-me-down from Mom covered the bed, a chunky computer desk took up most of one end of the room. An iron pentagram thumped lightly on the back of the door as deathly shut it behind them. Satanic posters—goat-headed men, naked women on stone slabs—papered the walls. Black candles beside Mountain Dew bottles and a Kleenex box had been burned down to mounds of wax.

“So you’re the vampires,” deathly said.

“He’s the vampire,” Ray said. “I’m the nurse.” He brandished the orange bag.

Dan wondered if he could get in trouble for claiming to be a nurse.

“How’d you get to be a vampire?”

“Bad luck,” Dan said.

“I’ve drunk blood before. Mostly goat, but I was involved in a ritual using human blood once.”

“How was that?” Dan asked. Because…what else did you say to that?

“Powerful as fuck.”

“Why didn’t you think of goat blood?” Ray asked Dan as he set the bag on the bed and unzipped it.

“Missed opportunity there.” Dan stepped away from the poster of the woman being sacrificed, where the huge shadow of the knife on the chamber wall was more ominous than the knife itself.

“So how this works is just like the Red Cross.” Ray worked his hand into a latex glove.

“So you said.”

“All right, so have a seat, roll up your sleeve. Let’s get started.”

“I’m gonna get some air,” Dan said.

The guy looked at Ray and said, “You have a squeamish vampire?”

“It takes all kinds,” Ray was saying as Dan let himself out. He stuffed his fists in his pockets and stared at the dark cemetery again, waiting. Twenty minutes later, the door opened. Ray came out with Moss’s bag and a bottle of Mountain Dew.

“Want some?” He held it out.

“I’ll take the blood instead.”

“We’re good on that.” He passed Dan the bag, and Dan waited till their car was headed up 16E before getting the bottle out and uncapping it.

“So that was an experience.” He screwed the cap back on.

“It takes all kinds,” Ray said.

“Where are we meeting this one?” Dan asked. After a week, donors were getting hard to come by. The news reports weren’t helping—the random attacks by others infected the same way he was. He nudged an empty Filet O’Fish container and some Coke bottles out of the way with his toe so he could slouch down.

“We’re gonna do the actual draw at her place, but she wants to meet us at a bus stop first, make sure we’re okay.”

“Fair enough.”

“She has roommates, but she’s not telling them what’s going on. We’re just going to head straight to her room.”

“I don’t think I’d tell my friends if I was giving blood to a vampire either,” Dan said. “You’d think I’d lost my fucking mind.”

Ray laughed.

Tonight’s stop was Danbury, Connecticut. Ray was hoping to get another donor lined up for tomorrow, thinking New York City should have at least one—at
least
.

“You know, if this band thing doesn’t work out,” Ray said, “I might go for a phlebotomy certification.” He flashed his teeth.

“Right.”

When they got to the bus stop, Dan was glad for the chance to stretch his legs. The weather had warmed up—still chilly, but more seasonably chilly than “Holy shit it’s fucking cold out for November.” Ray leaned against the stop’s three-sided shelter, watching traffic.

A bus came by, unloaded people, moved on.

“It’s easier without Moss, isn’t it?” Ray said.

“How so?”

“I don’t know. It’s like we’ve lost our babysitter, no one standing behind us worrying about everything.”

“
I’m
worrying about everything,” Dan said.

“Me too, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t know. It’s just easier, you and me. More maneuverable. If an opportunity comes up, we just go, you know?”

Dan nodded at the sidewalk.

Ray checked his phone for the third time, put it back in his pocket.

They gave it a half-hour before they started talking about what they should do.

“Fuck it,” Ray said, stubbing out his latest cigarette. “We’re here, let’s find someone else.” When they were back in the car, he dug out his laptop. “Take this. Give me a shout when an unlocked Wi-Fi connection pops up.”

They didn’t have to go far, and Ray took the laptop back, checking messages, contacting the girl who’d been planning to meet up with them, reaching out to a few others to try to line something up.

The lights went out in the coffee shop they were parked alongside. People walked up the sidewalk, alone and together. He had maybe a third of a cup left in the bottle, and he itched to drink it. He wasn’t even hearing buzzing anymore these days, had no problems with his vision. The headaches came, though—like the one leaning against his skull now—and with them a hunger that felt a lot like he imagined Jamie’s need to use felt. It took you over. It made all other thought impossible. A soft huff of air jumped from his throat at the thought that he finally understood their drummer. Ray, focused on the laptop, didn’t look up. Dan chewed his thumbnail. He couldn’t live like this. How could anyone live like this?

They sat in front of that dark coffee shop for three hours before Ray slapped the laptop shut and started the car. Buildings slid by Dan’s window. He said nothing as they pulled into the parking lot of a Super 8. He stayed in the car while Ray went to get a room key. Closed his eyes. Tried to believe there was an end to this, somewhere down the line.

† † †

“I didn’t want to tell you this,” Ray said when they were sitting on their beds in the motel room, “but there was another attack, this one in Virginia.”

Dan pulled the bag toward him. He needed a drink. Just a sip, even.

“This woman jumped another woman in the middle of a grocery store. She’d stalked her. Followed her around the freezer section, staring at her the whole time, like nothing else existed, and then she just went nuts. They brought her to the hospital, and people online are petitioning to have her—have anyone who’s been bitten—put to sleep.”

He’d lost count of how many reports Ray’d brought to him now. Strangers attacking strangers, roommates attacking roommates, an employee attacking a coworker. The bottle was empty, the taste of blood on his tongue only making him want more. He hated to let on how much his head was pounding again. Quietly, he said, “We need to find someone.”

Just as quietly, Ray said, “I know.” He grabbed the medic kit on his way to the bathroom. He shut the door, and Dan put his head in his hands. The
him
inside of him wanted to go after Ray and talk him out of doing it. The hunger in him kept him right the fuck where he was. He imagined the needle going in, blood rushing down the tube. He curled his fingers in his hair, gripping hard to distract himself from the war inside him.

The latest was a two-day trip—drive all the way out to the Philly suburbs, get the blood (they hoped they got the blood), and drive all the way back. The drive down went fine. They got a room at a dump in Trevose, and Dan took a moment to splash his face and steady himself before they headed out. They hadn’t thought fifteen miles was all that far from the meet point, but they’d forgotten what traffic was like in southeastern Pennsylvania. Dan’s teeth were on edge by the twentieth light.

“The way back,” Ray said, “we should hop over to Route 1 and come back down that way.”

Whatever.

He pressed his head against the glovebox and gripped his shins.

“We’re going to the guy’s house. It’s not like he’s not gonna show,” Ray said.

When they finally got there, Dan sat up, then grabbed for the dashboard again.

Ray rubbed his back. “You gonna make it?”

Dan gritted his teeth. The headache was so bad it made him sick to his stomach. If he could puke one good time, he might be okay.

“Hang here. If the guy needs to see the vampire, he can come to you.” After a few seconds, Ray said, “Okay?”

“Yeah.” His gut hurt, like a cramp, but a cramp that wasn’t letting up. The door opened and shut. Ray’s footsteps faded away. In a moment, the sound of voices carried from the porch, then they stopped.

Dan pushed himself up. They were in the middle of everywhere—a street crowded with generic houses. He fumbled for the seat lever, put the seat back, and tried lying still, his hands resting lightly on his stomach. He was going to need to go to the hospital. They couldn’t keep this up. Whatever he had, it was winning.

And Ray’s latest news played in his mind: a six year old biting another kid in a school restroom—this one in Virginia like the last. Biting until the tile floor was smeared with blood. They had both kids in the hospital.

He should have Ray drive him to that hospital in Virginia—should just walk in and say, “Whatever it is, I have it too.”

He. Needed. Blood. And if he didn’t get it, he was going to be like that.
He
was going to hurt people.

He used the console to haul himself up, just so he could fold himself over, head against the dash, the smell of grit and rubber in the floor mat making him green all over again.

If the headache got any worse, his skull was going to crack open.

Which, at this point, sounded like a good thing.

The
click
of the door handle made him jerk. And wince.

Ray slid in. He hadn’t even put the bottle in the bag. “Here.” He even uncapped it for him. Oh thank fucking god.

He was downing it as they backed out of the driveway.

The bottle was empty by the time they pulled up to the stop sign at the corner. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Better?” Ray asked.

“Yeah.” The headache was, at least. His stomach still cramped. He still felt green. But the headache was gone—so maybe he had food poisoning or something on top of the bullshit he already had. Wouldn’t that be a laugh?

The last place he wanted to have food poisoning was a shitty motel in southeastern Pennsylvania. “Yeah,” he said again. “How about let’s fuck the shitty motel. I can drive back. You sleep. We’ll be home by morning, crash in our own fucking beds.”

“I was hoping to scare up another donor or two before we left, but if you want to stay on the road, I’m okay with that,” Ray said. “I don’t mind driving either. You’re the one who should rest.”

Dan laughed without humor. “All I fucking do is rest.”

“All right. When we get to the interstate, we’ll swap. Are you feeling like you could eat something now?” He hadn’t managed more than a corner of toast since the morning before. At the mention of eating, his stomach knotted. Saliva rushed his mouth. He thought it was going to be another wave of nausea, but his throat muscles clenched. His guts bucked. Instead of answering, he scrabbled for the door handle.