Page 78 of The Undead

She seemed very peaceful. He’d arranged her carefully in her terry-cloth robe, the red one—no, no, it wasn’t red, it had once been white, and where it touched the bed, it made red spiderweb stains on the flowered sheets. Her hair was cut close at the nape of her neck. There was one neat incision in her white throat, and another that ran down her chest into the bloodsoaked robe. He’d drained her and gutted her, just like a deer he’d run down in his headlights, a wide-eyed doe who couldn’t run and didn’t know how to fight.

I went to my knees next to the bed and put my cold forehead against the cool sheets. The smell of blood gagged me. I failed to hear Adam’s approach until he was next to me. His shove sent me flying across the room to stop painfully when I slammed against the wall; a mirror broke with a jangle of glass. Adam pulled Sylvia off the bed and into his arms and ripped at his jacket until he managed to bare his forearm. He lifted it to his lips and bit through the veins. He held it to her mouth and forced her lips open; his blood ran thickly down her chin to mingle with the clotting dye of her robe. Adam pumped his hand into a fist—open, closed, open—and the blood kept running, running down her slack chin.

“Adam,” I whispered. He didn’t look at me. His eyes were closed. He counted soundlessly to himself in time with the pumping of his fist. “Adam, stop. Please, God, stop.”

“Drink it!” he screamed, and shook her. Her head flopped limply against his chest, spilling more blood, God, so much blood, so much—the sound that came out of him was nothing like speech, nothing even so human as a moan. “Live, live live live live!”

When I came closer, his face turned toward me, not even recognizing me. His fangs were sharp and fully extended, and his eyes as red as the blood all around him. He didn’t say anything. I sank back against the wall and watched my friend go mad. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I turned my face to the wall and closed my eyes, and there was only the raw scratchy sound of his pleas and creaking of the bed as he rocked her back and forth against his chest.

When that sound stopped, I looked again. He sat very still for a long moment, then bent his head and touched her smooth cropped hair with his lips.

Adam Josephus Radburn Bradley, vampire, cried like a child lost forever in he darkness.

Interlude

Foster

William had told her very plainly,God is not mocked.It was her fault, all her fault. She’d doubted him because he was one of them, a dark angel, but God had His own ways and He’d shown her how wrong she was.

Rebecca Jane Foster, if you doubt the Good Lord, there ain’t no hope for you, no hope at all…

Momma, oh Momma, I never meant what I wished when I got so mad, I never wanted you to go away…

The police were quiet and polite to her, even Bowman’s wife. She gave Rebecca a cup of coffee and touched her fingers very gently. When Rebecca looked up, she saw the police lights catch red in Maggie Bowman’s eyes, and knew.Shewas one of them, too, or serving them. The Red Whore of Babylon, like the Indian woman.

Foster threw the coffee at her. The scalding coffee splashed over part of her face and left a red weal; Bowman cursed and mopped at her cheek with her sleeve.

“I tried to tell you,” Rebecca said quietly. The Styrofoam cup fell to tumble hollowly down the cracked steps and roll back and forth in the breeze on the porch. Maggie Bowman stared at her without expression. “You didn’t want to believe me, but now you do, don’t you? Now you believe.”

“You’re crazy,” the woman whispered. Foster just looked at her. “Rebecca, somebody killed your mother, don’t you understand that? Don’t you?”

Mommamommamommamomma

Something gray and clean like a knife cut across Rebecca’s mind and severed that pain. She was free. She reached down and picked up the Styrofoam cup; it squeaked and squished in her fingers. When she squeezed, it popped like a bone.

“You’re crazy,” Maggie Bowman repeated, and took a step back. Foster watched her.

“God is not mocked.” Rebecca said it, but it was William’s voice, William’s pretty singsong accent. She could feel him like a heavy tumor behind her eyes. He liked looking at Maggie, a distant and pure pleasure. It wasn’t lust. William was the dark angel. William did not lust. “Do you want to fuck your husband?”

Maggie blinked, the briefest flinch of pain. William saw it and made Rebecca’s lips twist up in a smile. Oh, pure, pure joy.

“Oh, yes.” It hissed out of her mouth on dark wings, growing like a fat carrion bird. “He walks, he talks, he lives. But he can’t fuck you, Maggie-Mae. He can’t ever do that again.”

Maggie took one long step back. Her face was rigid and frightened. William sucked her fear in through Rebecca Foster’s pores and breathed it back out in a numbing cloud.

“You come to ol’ William for that,” he whispered. It wasn’t Rebecca’s voice, it was his, grating somehow out of her vocal cords, twisting its way out of her throat. “I’ll just eat you up, Maggie-Mae.”

One sharp, short sound burst out of Maggie as she backed away. There was fear in her face, but even more than that, there was anger. She stumbled over a garden hose, turned, and walked quickly away.

“Bye-bye,” Foster said. Her throat hurt, and there was a warm wet sensation in it. Blood vessels bursting. Her voice sounded scratchy and strained. Maggie threw her a disbelieving look over her shoulder and kept walking all the way to where the two plainclothes detectives stood at the end of the sidewalk. “Sorry to leave you, gotta go, time to make the donuts.”

William faded out of her head like fog, a flash of silver eyes and laughter. Rebecca hugged her knees closer as the screen door banged open and the ambulance gurney slid out. There was something in a black plastic bag strapped on it. She wondered what it was. They rolled it down the sidewalk while she smiled at the younger attendant; he looked away as if she’d scared him.

He probably didn’t know the comfort of Jesus. Not like she did.

“Miss Foster?” That was the older detective, graying and grave. He had a friendly face, but his eyes were cold and quiet. “Do you have anyone you want us to call for you?”

“Call?” she repeated blankly. He glanced at Maggie, who shrugged.

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