The Vampire Next Door (4 page)

Enough parroting. “No,” I snapped.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you stupid?”

How was I supposed to answer that? “Um…maybe,” I admitted, thinking that it would be truly pathetic if I died here and now, in a dollar store just one day after Eddie’s departure.

Anger flared up inside me at that realization, that I’d only been on my own for a matter of hours and that I was already in grave danger. Had Eddie been the only reason I’d stayed alive all these months? I frowned, and lifted my bow a bit higher, sighting the man’s chest. “What do you want?” I asked. “I’m not in the mood for games.”

He blinked, obviously not expecting that question. Perhaps I was the only female survivor he’d encountered who didn’t simper at the first threat to her life. But he recovered quickly. “Your bike,” he said, “and the bow.”

“No.” Although I had to give him kudos for being secure enough in his masculinity to want to ride a pink scooter, I wasn’t about to give up my only mode of transportation.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to bargain,” he replied.

I spun sideways, disappearing down the electronics aisle before he had time to react. I didn’t respond, simply took off running, hitching my shopping bag further up on my shoulder and pulling the 9mil from my waistband. It was awkward, carrying both the crossbow and the gun in my hands and trying to balance the bag as well, but I didn’t have time to stop and strap the crossbow onto my back.

I stopped at the end of the aisle, debating where to go. He would probably come down the aisle where I’d just entered, so I looked around an end-cap full of bottles of bleach, searching the long wall aisle that ran the length of the store. I saw no one, and slipped around in front of the bleach, waiting.

Sure enough, the guy came down the electronics aisle, strolling right down the center, as if there was no possibility whatsoever that I might be able to fight back. His arrogance grated on my nerves. I sank to one knee, putting the crossbow on the floor, and raised the gun. “Freeze, or I’ll shoot,” I said.

He stopped, and I saw a flash of irritation in his expression as he looked around for me. I squeezed myself a little closer to the shelf, trying to stay inconspicuous. My hands were steady as I gripped my 9mil.

Before the outbreak, I’d fired a gun maybe twice in my whole life. Cole had a few of his own, but I’d had no interest in them. Eddie had set up a range at the park for me and had taught me to shoot. I was good, but maybe not as confident when facing off against survivors as I would have liked. It still felt wrong to me that I couldn’t trust humans anymore. We were survivors- we ought to be banding together, not hurting each other.

The man’s eyes locked onto me suddenly, and he growled, turning his rifle towards me. I jumped backwards just as a bottle of bleach exploded beside me, soaking my arm. The shelf against the wall rattled, and I realized with a sinking feeling that the bullet had gone right through the bottle and embedded itself in the wall.
That could have been me. This guy’s not messing around.

I snatched up the crossbow, turned and ran towards the wall. I needed to get out of here, extra food be damned.

My ears were ringing from the rifle discharge, and I scrambled to think of an escape route. There was no way I’d be able to get out of the store and start the scooter without him getting off at least a shot or two.

I turned right and yelped as I found myself face to face with a new man- a man with wild eyes that flashed crimson, even in the faint illumination coming from outside.

A vampire.

He’d been hiding in the back corner of the store, just waiting for someone stupid enough to walk into his trap, like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.

I lunged backwards, trying to escape his grasping hands, but he followed, and I crashed against an assortment of hanging gift bags. I brought up the crossbow and squeezed the trigger, and the bolt embedded itself in his shoulder with a dry
thump
.

“Missed my heart,” he rasped, his voice cracking. I could almost hear the inflection of thirst in his tone, the insatiable lust for blood. His skin was tightly drawn over the bones of his face, his complexion sallow. There was no surety in his shambling gate. He lacked all of the commanding strength that was customary with vampires, the confident sense of power that came with being undead.

He was starving, and because he was starving, he was weak.

One small stroke of good luck.

I lifted my foot and kicked him in the midsection as hard as I could. His fingernails scrabbled at the leather of my boots as I pushed him away, but he couldn’t get a good grip and stumbled backwards, snarling as he lost his balance and went crashing into an end-cap full of boxed puzzles. From the corner of my eye I saw my human attacker emerge from the electronics aisle. I shoved off from the wall and darted past the vampire.

The rifle went off again, echoing through the store and ringing in my ears, and I ran for the door. I dropped my gun into my shopping bag, too desperate to bother trying to put it in my waistband, and dug my key from my pocket.

The clouds had advanced much faster than I’d anticipated, and it was cloudy when I emerged from under the store’s covered walkway. I cursed and threw everything I was holding into the Rubbermaid container, then climbed on the scooter, fumbling to get the key in the ignition as I swept the kickstand up with my left foot.

I squeezed the brake, turned the key, and the engine purred to life.

A scream rang out behind me, and for one awful moment, I thought that the vampire was eating the man inside the store- but then I saw the man come rushing out of the same doorway I’d only just exited. He no longer held the rifle. Blood streamed down his arm. Somehow the starving vamp had got hold of this guy.

I twisted the throttle and pressed forward, trying to escape.

“Stop!” the man screamed behind me. “Stop!”

He lunged at me and managed to somehow catch the rack on the rear of the scooter with his torso. The force of the impact sent my back tire skidding sideways, and because I wasn’t quite going fast enough to have gained any sort of momentum, I lost my balance almost immediately. The scooter went down, and I went down with it, hitting the asphalt hard even as I threw up my hands to shield my head from the collision. The pavement scraped my forearms from wrist to elbow, sending searing pain through my torso.

It was over before I even had time to comprehend that I’d crashed, and I felt wetness on my leg. I looked down to see my left leg pinned beneath the scooter, which was still running. Gas was leaking from the gas cap, staining my sweat pants. As I tried to move, I realized with horror that my left leg was pinned beneath the scooter, and every time I tried to move it, pain shot through my knee.

Was it broken?

Terror struck my heart with unbridled ferocity. I couldn’t have a broken leg. I would have no way of fixing it, no way of getting home. The clouds were coming, and a hungry vampire was less than a hundred yards away from me, just waiting for the sun to disappear. I had to get out of here.

Despite its lightweight appearance, the scooter was too heavy for me to lift from the ground. I grunted, pushing against it, trying to dislodge it enough to slide my leg out from under it. But then I saw the man, my human attacker, climb to his feet about ten feet away. He swayed as he stood up, and I saw a trickle of blood run down his forehead.

“Give me that bike,” he slurred, stumbling forward.

I saw the 9mil spilling out of the bag, still inside the Rubbermaid container. I shifted, wincing in pain as I reached for it. My fingers closed around the barrel, and I pulled it free with shaking hands.

There was no hesitation. I raised the gun and fired off two shots. Both struck his chest, and he went down.

Fighting back tears, I shoved the gun in the waistband of my pants, grabbed the handlebars of the bike, and lifted. With my renewed determination, the pressure on my leg relieved just the slightest bit, and I moved my battered limb out from underneath it. As I shifted my leg, blood rushed back into it, intensifying the pain, and I nearly cried out with relief when I realized it wasn’t broken. It still hurt like hell, but at least everything was where it was supposed to be.

Using the scooter for leverage, I managed to pull myself into a standing position. I tried to put weight on my injured leg, and the pain made me gasp, but I knew I didn’t have time to sit around whining about it.

I gritted my teeth and leaned to pick up the scooter, grunting as I put more weight on my leg than I’d intended. I couldn’t move my left leg enough to put the kickstand down, and I couldn’t support my weight on that leg so that I could use my other foot to engage the kickstand, either, so I just held the bike and tried to look it over for damage. There were some scrapes on the side, but nothing serious. The Rubbermaid container was collapsed on one side and cracked in several places, but miraculously my shopping bag and the crossbow were still inside and unharmed.

The sun chose that moment to disappear behind the clouds, and I felt a raindrop splatter on my cheek. I needed to get out of here, and fast.

I could hardly bend my left leg, but I managed to get on the scooter from the right side, keeping my right foot on the ground and easing my left foot onto the platform. I twisted the throttle and took off, pulling my right leg up as the scooter moved forward.

Behind me, I heard a snarl, and I glanced over my shoulder, unsurprised to see the starving vampire staggering from inside the store. His skin was smoking, even with the sun covered by the clouds, but he was so hungry that I doubted he felt any pain. When I turned onto the street, I looked back one more time and saw that he was feeding on the man I’d shot.

I felt sick to my stomach at the sight, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

I tried to tell myself that the man I’d killed had tried to kill me first. I’d had good reason to defend myself.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t until I recalled that he’d stopped me from getting Vienna sausages- one of my favorite snacks and almost the only food item that I got excited about these days- that my guilt eased somewhat. What a jerk. There was no telling if I’d ever see another Vienna sausage in my life. This might have been my last chance.

I glowered as the rain picked up, spattering me ungraciously. It just figured. I was already in pain, possibly suffering torn ligaments in my knee, with my forearms scraped all to hell, and now it was raining.

And I had no Vienna sausages.

“The next vamp to attack me had better be prepared to be shot full of bullets and bolts,” I muttered. The wind snatched the words from my lips and carried them away to some far-off place.

CHAPTER 3

The first time I caught Cole with one of his female friends, it had been completely inadvertent, a freak accident on my part. Looking back, I probably should have seen the signs- after almost three years of what I’d thought was a reasonably happy marriage, he’d started experiencing some kind of belated quarter-life crisis. He started going out to bars, leaving me at home to watch his daughters. He bought a motorcycle. And suddenly, despite eschewing anything to do with smartphones for years, he’d decided he needed the latest iPhone.

The iPhone wasn’t that big a deal to me. Even the motorcycle wasn’t a huge point of conflict. But considering we’d fought so hard to get a court-ordered visitation schedule with his kids, it ticked me off that he was thumbing his nose at quality time with the girls in favor of going clubbing with his friends.

I didn’t want to tie him down. I’d been quite the barfly myself before our marriage, but the girls were with us less than half the time. In my opinion at least, Cole had plenty of time to go out with friends when his kids were with their mom.

Still, I kept my mouth shut and let him do what he wanted, telling myself that I was being unreasonable. But one night when he was out at the bar, I put the girls to bed and logged onto our account on our cell phone provider’s website, looking to see if they had retained a copy of a photo I’d accidentally deleted.

They’d retained all our photos, all right. Every one that either of us had sent or received. And it appeared that Cole had, at one point, received a photo of another woman’s butt. She was wearing jeans in the picture, however, which put me in an awkward position. On one hand, I didn’t like that he was receiving pictures of another woman’s rear end. On the other hand, if he’d been sexting, wouldn’t she have been naked?

I told myself I was overreacting.

I’d asked him about it, searching for an explanation to quiet my fears, and he’d promptly turned it around on me, somehow making it
my
fault for invading his privacy and, of course, viewing the photo in the worst possible light.

It was a joke, he’d said, and had rolled his eyes, as though my immense stupidity was making his head hurt. I’d never been any good at arguing with Cole, and that particular instance had been no different. I’d folded, torn between his perceived betrayal and the nagging feeling that I was imagining problems where none existed.

He’d threatened to file for divorce, and that’s what had broken me. I’d immediately apologized and begged him not to leave. I’d begged him! He’d been the one caught doing wrong, and somehow I’d ended up apologizing for it.

Things only got worse after that. I was already suspicious, and when he crashed his motorcycle and ended up in the ER with a fractured arm, things came to a head. I was sitting by his bedside, and a text from a woman named Tara flashed across the screen of his phone.

Three words said everything.

Can you talk?

It wasn’t until two days later that I worked up the courage to go through his call history, his email and his texts.

I found that he’d been scheduling secret phone calls with other girls. He called them the same pet names I thought he’d reserved for me- “darling” and “honey.” As far as I could tell, there was nothing physical going on, but there was definitely an emotional attachment between him and these various women.

Though Cole denied any kind of infidelity, the term
emotional affair
lingered in my mind now, a bitter reminder of how I’d given him everything, and been betrayed in a way that I couldn’t forgive or even really explain.

Memories of our volatile relationship had plagued me for the last eight months, and to say I felt conflicted towards Cole would have been the biggest understatement of all time. Perhaps that was why I’d held back so much from Eddie. By the time he’d skedaddled off to Florida, Cole had me all tied up in knots. Every day, I had lived with the fear that he might pick up and leave, while a small part of me actually hoped he would.

I loved him, there was no doubt about that, but I didn’t trust him, and somewhere along the way, I’d lost all desire to please him.

At the same time, I didn’t want to be like my mother, who was on her fifth marriage. I didn’t want to end up like my father, a middle-aged bachelor whose seven-year relationship with my mother had been the longest of his life.

So I stayed.

And I hated myself for staying, just as I hated myself now for waiting so pathetically for Cole to return.

It might have been the rain that was dredging up the memories, or perhaps it was my brush with death back in the dollar store that had me reflecting on my past, but either way, I was distracted enough by my own thoughts that I somehow missed the needle on my scooter’s gas gauge dropping below the E. It wasn’t until the scooter actually shut off beneath me that I realized I was out of fuel.

Well, damn. I must have lost more gasoline back in the parking lot than I’d thought.

I sat there for a moment, my right foot braced on the ground, and weighed my options as the rain poured down around me and dripped off my hair.

I was only half a mile from home.

Reluctantly I eased off the scooter. My left knee protested at the weight, but I knew I had no other choice. I did my best to move quickly, settling into a pitiful, hopping shuffle as I moved along. I’d dismounted to the right so I could use the scooter as a crutch for my left leg- otherwise I might not have been able to walk at all.

It was agonizingly slow going, and the rain was falling harder now. The sun was completely hidden by the thick, gray clouds overhead, and I knew the vamps would be out in force soon, if they weren’t already. When I finally reached the entrance to my cul-de-sac, I breathed a sigh of relief.

When I emerged from behind the neighbor’s fence, however, I froze.

Kellie was slumped against the gate of my breezeway, each hand wrapped around a piece of wrought iron as she stared through the bars. Though it was hard to hear in the rain, my ears suddenly picked up the distinctive sounds of her wailing.

She thought I was inside. She was taunting me, like she did every night.

She wasn’t any more attractive now than she’d been as a human. Her long, dishwater blonde hair was plastered to her skull, her too-tight clothes clinging unattractively to her body. Kellie had never dressed to flatter her full figure, electing instead to dress in tight, revealing clothing that would have been far better suited to someone fifteen years her junior.

Apparently vampirism hadn’t improved her fashion sense any.

She’d grown braver, I noted grudgingly. Usually only starving vampires ventured out during the rain. If the clouds parted unexpectedly and the sun streamed down on us, she would fry.

If only fate would be so kind.

I hopped backwards, rolling the scooter with me, and retreated behind the relative safety of my neighbor’s fence. I considered the crossbow, but just the thought of hurting Kellie made me feel ill. Despite everything, she was still the mother of my stepchildren, and that made her a little bit like that annoying relative you see at Thanksgiving, and you only put up with them because they’re family and you’re obligated to tolerate their idiocy for a few hours every fourth Thursday in November.

Considering the somewhat unlikely odds of either the sun showing its face or a vengeful bolt of lightning striking Kellie dead, I was pretty much screwed. Although it would have been possible for me to go in the back door, my backyard fence was padlocked from the inside, and there was no way I’d be able to climb over it with my injured leg.

How stupid I’d been! I should have turned around the moment I saw the clouds on the horizon. If I survived the day, this wasn’t a mistake I’d be making again.

I looked around, searching for another option, and my eyes settled on the alley behind my neighbor’s house. I narrowed my eyes, racking my brain for the layout of the alleys behind the houses. The developer who had built this neighborhood had made it in a rough circle, with our cul-de-sac filling in the middle part of the circle.

The alley extended in a horseshoe shape around the rear of the cul-de-sac and branched off between my house and another neighbor’s house. If I could make my way around behind the houses, I’d at least be able to get to my back gate. Getting over it would be another story…but maybe I could stand on the scooter and fling myself over.

I looked down at my knee, which was already visibly swollen, straining against the fabric of my sweats.

If I stayed out in the open, I was as good as dead- or undead.

My mind made up, I turned the scooter around and entered the alley. The dead grass was overgrown there, making it difficult to push my scooter. The city used to send inmates out to do weed-whacking in the alley. I found that memory particularly amusing. Who would have ever thought I’d feel nostalgic for chain gangs?

My next-door neighbor’s cedar fence was reduced to a pile of lumber, and as I came upon it, I paused, looking into their backyard to make sure no one was lying in wait for me. I recalled that the older couple who had lived there previously had wanted to put up a block fence, and had been in the process of tearing down their old wooden fence when the pandemic had first started. They’d always been a nice couple, had checked our mail for us when we’d gone out of town. Their granddaughter had attended the same school as my younger step-daughter, Priscilla.

I took a deep breath at the thought of the girls. Were they okay? Was Cole keeping them safe? I often tried to refrain from thinking about them at all. I was proactive, I was a do-er, and to be several thousand miles away from their last known location, much too far to protect them myself, was a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I’d have thought that Kellie would be similarly terrified for them, but apparently becoming a vampire had completely wiped out her maternal instinct, because over the last several months, she’d only mentioned her daughters when she wanted to hurt me.

I closed my eyes briefly, resolving not to think about it.

There was a rustle of dead grass behind me, and I looked over my shoulder, my heart fluttering. Had Kellie found me?

No.

But another vampire had.

This was a young man, a teenager. Little more than a boy, really. Unlike the vampire from the dollar store, this one was not starving. His eyes were bright crimson, his skin porcelain-perfect. I leaned the scooter against the fence beside me, swallowing hard. I was already at my own yard. Could I get up on the scooter and over the fence before he reached me?

It didn’t seem likely.

My hand went to my crossbow, pulling it from the Rubbermaid container. Sensing my intentions, the boy charged, and I frantically cocked the bow before yanking a bolt from the quiver on my back. He was too close. I hobbled around a pile of lumber and moved closer my neighbor’s house, trying to put some distance between us as I struggled to load the bolt into the bow.

He was on me within seconds, grabbing me from behind, but I was prepared. I’d gotten the bolt loaded and used my free hand to yank a knife from its sheath on my thigh. I slashed the knife across the fingers grasping my shoulder, cutting deep. He yowled and yanked his hand away from me, but he used his other fist to punch me in the lower back, sending me stumbling forward. I caught myself on the support beam of the patio, letting my foot slide on the concrete beneath me as I regained my balance.

The pain of his blow almost made me pass out, and I wondered if he’d broken one of my ribs. I turned, hopping backwards on one foot, and brought up the crossbow. He moved too quickly for me, grabbing the crossbow and shoving it aside so that the bolt went wide. I slashed again with my knife, but he dodged it, and that was when I lost my balance and fell against the back door.

I dropped the knife and yanked a stake from my vest. The boy caught my wrist as I drove the stake towards him, and we began to struggle. He was smaller than me, but his vampiric strength gave him an advantage, and as he forced himself closer to me, his lips parted, baring the sharp teeth within.