Staker
by Walt Hicks

Thirty-two hours. Thirty-two hours without sleep, from Maine to Florida, every dreary, nerve-wracking mile behind the tractor-trailer rig with "Caskey’s Coffins" emblazoned in three feet high letters across the shiny aluminum rear doors. For the uncounted time, I was beginning to nod off at the wheel of my black ‘68 Mustang fastback, so I popped another handful of antihistamines and chased them with a dollop of DayQuil. I felt the rushing buzz from the daytime cold medicine jolt my overdosed system almost immediately. I washed the bitter taste away with a lukewarm swallow of Budweiser. On the crackling radio, Steve Earle was singing a song about poor white trash dreaming about a better life. A better lie.

The weather seemed to change radically as soon as we crossed the Florida state line, blanketing my car in a thick, humid envelop of stifling air. I shrugged out of my black leather sports jacket, tossed it into the littered back seat, burying the illegally shortened Mossberg 12 gauge pump-action shotgun. The sky was a cloudless azure blue, except for the southern horizon we were speeding toward where the leading edge of a cold front bludgeoned its way toward the tropics creating an angry, snarling line of thunderstorms. With the sleep deprivation clock at thirty-two hours, coupled with a nearly lethal dose of over-the-counter antihistamines, hallucinations would’ve been a given. Water seemed to be sheeting off the trailer portion of the rig in torrents. Considering the cargo, such an anomaly was probably to be expected. I rubbed my sandpapery eyes behind photo grey lenses and switched on the windshield wipers.

My name’s John Staker. Formerly an ordinary, run-of-the mill, Milquetoast accountant, now fugitive from both the law and several shady, clandestine factions. It wasn’t really my intention to elude capture for all these months; it just worked out that way. You see, I don’t care if I live or die. And I suppose that makes me dangerous.

The cargo of the first Caskey’s Coffin semi would possibly agree -- if they hadn’t been drowned alive in a radioactive sludge pond near Savannah, Georgia. One down, one to go.

Impossible to believe that a mere six months ago, I toiled in happy, quiet anonymity in the accounting department of a huge Fortune 500 manufacturing corporate giant based in Chicago. Married to the same wonderful, beautiful woman for the past ten years, hopelessly, endlessly in love with her. Hannah and I couldn’t have children, but we were contented and happy nonetheless. At least I was and I thought she was.

A creature of dreary routine, I returned home at precisely the same time one snowy January afternoon to find my wife -- not as accustomed, waiting for me at near the bar with a Stoli’s and grapefruit juice -- but in our bedroom, splayed naked across our unmade bed, dead eyes staring dreamily at the ceiling. She was ghastly pale, but there were no apparent marks on her body except for a small puncture mark near the jugular vein in her neck. A single drop of blood coagulated over the tiny wound. I recognized her frozen expression as one she makes -- made -- during orgasm. I couldn’t make it to the bathroom; I fell to my knees and vomited, so powerfully it popped a vessel in my throat and the vomit ran blood red and I tasted coppery bile.

The Chicago Police were at turns sympathetic, then taciturn. I would prove to be the prime suspect until time of death could be determined and I would be cleared by proof that I was ensconced safely in my cubicle at work while someone -- something -- drained nearly every last drop of blood from Hannah’s body, even as it appeared that she didn’t even bother struggling. By all outward appearances (to my absolute horror and disgust), she evidently had an orgasm at some point in the proceedings.

Ultimately, I was exonerated by the Forensics Department of the Chicago Coroner’s Office. Point of fact, I had been at lunch with colleagues while Hannah was being murdered. Her mother and father quickly stepped in and made the funeral arrangements (I believe they suspect I was somehow involved in Hannah’s death to this day), and in a morbid state of shock, I numbly went along with the proceedings. At that point, I quit my job, sold our house in the suburbs and rented a small room downtown. I had planned to drink myself to death in the shabbily comforting surroundings of my new apartment, ala a despondent Nick Cage character. Everything was sold except my prized 1968 Mustang (which, at another point, I intended to drive at high speed into a bridge abutment on the Adelei Stevenson Parkway, but couldn’t muster the courage to go through with it). 401K and retirement cashed in. Threw my cell phone into the icy embrace of Lake Michigan. Paid for a prearranged funeral plan. I was ready.

How long I had been in this death watch fugue state when the knock on my door that staved off my self-destruction -- for the time being at least -- I am not sure. The figure at the door seemed almost ghostly through the alcohol haze and due to the fact that my vision was further obscured by my last pair of prescription glasses having been broken in a drunken rage.

"Mr. Staker? John Staker?" the timid voice inquired. He was an old man and ‘veddy’ British. The accent was at once comforting and somehow mocking. He held out a trembling, liver spotted hand. I disregarded his gesture.

"What’s left of him, yeah. What do you want?" I slurred. He was slowly beginning to come into focus. The man was well-dressed in an expensive suit, perhaps mid-seventies, wiry, haggard and pale. His eyes looked like mine -- sunken, hooded, haunted.. Like me, he seemed a tormented man. Unlike me, he appeared to give a fuck.

"I am Doctor P. Vincent Frye, Mr. Staker. May I please come in?"

"Sorry," I mimicked. "I am not receiving visitors at this time."

I started to slam the door in his face, but he caught the jamb with a surprisingly quick, firm grip. "Please, Mr. Staker. This is important. It concerns your wife."

A nearly electric jolt surged through me. The shock cleared my addled brain somewhat and I waved him inside. I slid pizza boxes and empty liquor bottles off the worn sofa onto the floor. Dr. Frye sat primly, gingerly.

"What’s this about?" I growled. Frye stared at me, mouth working like a fish’s out of water. In my deteriorated state, I suppose I did appear rather menacing.

"By way of introduction, I am formerly a Professor of Medicine at Oxford. My field of expertise is hematology." He stared at me pointedly.

"You’re boring me, Doc. Even worse, you’re starting to annoy me."

Dr. Frye took a deep breath. "The police surmised that your wife was drained of blood by either a psychotic or a so-called extremist Satanic cult. However, they never found the perpetrators, nor do they even have a viable suspect."

My shaking hand knocked over a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels. I retrieved it before the whiskey soaked into the carpet and drank the bitter remnants. "No evidence left at the crime scene. I know all that. So what?"

"Mr. Staker, it is my belief that your wife was killed quite by accident."

"WHAT?" I shrieked and someone down the hall rejoined, "Shut the fuck up!"

Dr. Frye held up his hands, palms out, as if warding me off. "Please, Mr. Staker. If you are willing to be patient, perhaps I can put your mind at rest -- somewhat -- by offering an explanation as to why this has happened."

I spat on the floor and smiled. "There’s just one problem, Doc. I don’t fucking care. It won’t bring Hannah back."

"No," Frye replied quietly. "Nothing will do that. But I thought it might help you if you knew . . . if you understood."

Something unexpected happened to me at that point. I made Frye promise grudgingly that if I did in fact listen to him, he would bring me a fresh fifth of Jack Daniels. Truthfully, something inside me wanted -- needed -- to know what the man had to say. I suppose I wanted a reason to live, however twisted and black that reason might prove to be. In hindsight, I imagine there was something much darker at work as well.

Collapsing into a worn, grotesquely mishapened recliner, I motioned for Frye to proceed.

"As I stated previously," he began after licking his thin, liver-colored lips, "my specialty is hematology -- the medical study of blood and the disorders thereof. Over the years, I have discovered many unusual and mostly undisclosed diseases in the blood of humans, many caused by the mutation of animal infections."

I laughed out loud; I knew immediately where he was heading.

"One of these diseases," he continued, disregarding my outburst, "-- rabies -- was a fatal scourge across Europe toward the end of the middle ages. From the nearly animalistic, fearful symptomology of this virus arouse many superstitions and legends, including the legend of --"

"The vampire," I sneered.

"Yes. The vampire. Lycanthropy and many others as well."

Intrigued in spite of myself (maybe it was the liquor?), I asked, "you mean to sit there and tell me that my wife was killed for food by a vampire -- "

"Perhaps her death was but an unfortunate accident . . . "

"-- a mythic creature that has been proven time and again not to exist?"

Frye looked thoughtfully at me. "Most legends and lore have a modicum of fact that they are based upon. Recently, I discovered a genetic predisposition to the development of a rare blood disorder related to rabies -- a mutation of the rabies virus, if you will. Vampirism has been evolving since before the middle ages and is not merely a mental disorder, Mr. Staker, it has become the basis for a quite viable, vibrant subspecies of the human being."

"Old man, I thought I was around the fucking bend."

"Mr. Staker, don’t let yourself be dissuaded by the supernatural, pop cultural trappings of the mythos vampire. The legends were spawned of fearful superstitions, not scientific fact. A true vampire would not require blood to live. However, he or she would be required to consume blood in order to thrive and reach full potential. An individual with such a disorder would suffer from a form of pernicious anemia and remain ill until they discovered their true nature and began feeding on animal or human blood products. They would not be superhuman, however; by and large they would be ‘ordinary’ people who are merely ‘different’ than most."

"Well, tell that to my wife, who was drained until dead. If this is what you are saying happened to her."

Frye cleared his throat nervously. "As with any cross-section of humanity, Mr. Staker, there are the good and there are the evil ones. It is true that many serial killers are afflicted with vampirism."

I began pacing the abbreviated living room. "Wait a minute. So, are you implying that these . . . these people have become an organized group – the lone serial killer aside?"

"Yes, and quite an ancient one. There were many rumors, some with basis in fact, that a loosely organized group of vampires from central Europe attempted to secretly infiltrate the government of England in the late 1800's. Jack the Ripper appeared abruptly and fueled a great fear and hatred for any outsiders, especially those considered ‘blood letters’. It has been further theorized that the Ripper was in truth a government agent assigned to just that purpose . . . "

"That’s it! What’s your agenda, Doctor? What’s this all about? Give me one reason I shouldn’t throw you off the fucking fire escape." I had him by the carefully knotted necktie before I realized it.

I saw the fear flicker briefly, just behind his old eyes. At the same time, I sensed that he was -- like me -- unafraid to die.

"I have no agenda, Mr. Staker." Unexpectedly, tears welled in his eyes, and he angrily brushed them away. "Twenty-five years ago I lost my wife in much the same manner as you lost yours."

Aged eyes glistening, Doctor Frye stared me down, and briefly ashamed, I released him. "Sorry," I murmured, and almost meant it.

"Mr. Staker -- John -- in this world there are predators; therefore, there must be prey as well. In this instance, however, the prey are often willing participants." He handed me a business card with a phone number and motel room number scrawled on the back. "I am staying at the Biltmore Chicago, John. If you want to talk, I will be there."

Doctor P. Vincent Frye paused at the door. "John, do not let this consume you. If you allow it to, it will kill you. I know. I know all too well." He stared at me as though he would never see me again. " May God keep you." With that, Doctor Frye vanished into the night.

Had I not been shocked senseless by the good Doctor’s revelations, had I not been mindlessly saturated with alcohol, and had I not sat in near catatonic oblivion for the next three days, I might have called or visited Dr. Frye. By the time I sobered up and the cobwebs cleared, I discovered that a man had been discovered horribly murdered in a suite at the Hilton Chicago. He had been mutilated terribly, beyond recognition, but almost no blood was found at the scene or inside the body. According to the authorities, the victim had been Doctor P. Vincent Frye, learned scholar and noted hematologist, dead at the age of 78. No clues, no theories, no suspects -- no shit.

Resignation to the belief that Hannah had been murdered randomly by some faceless, slavering serial killer had been almost a source of solace, somehow. Now the thought that she had been used as food by a perverse subspecies of human -- and even could have been a willing participant in the act -- was more than I could endure. More than that, the black seed of vengeance had been planted within me and had taken malignant root in my soul. I wanted to make someone pay -- in spades.

Should you ever decide to begin turning over rocks, make sure you are prepared for the writhing, squirming, slimy creatures that will invariably crawl from beneath. For the next several weeks, I spent every waking hour investigating the bizarre ramblings of the enigmatic Dr. P. Vincent Frye. What I found was astonishing: on the Internet, there are many allegedly "authentic" web sites and chat rooms where RHV's -- Real Human Vampires -- may exchange experiences and find counsel in their peers. Some of these persons were obvious role-players and "wannabe’s," and yet, there was a definitive feeling of an underlying tangibility to my specious and bizarre findings.

I discovered that the supernatural trappings, as Dr. Frye had noted, were only in myth and legend. The "reality" was quite mundane. The vampire was merely a more-or-less normal, mortal human being afflicted with a blood disease that had mutated, then evolved from the rabies virus prevalent in the Middle Ages. Symptomology was remarkably similar. Aversion or sensitivity to sunlight, a bloodless pallor as a result, fits of animalistic behavior in varying stages, dislike of seeing one’s reflection in a mirror. The virus evidently might take hold in anyone’s system and rest dormantly; however, only certain genetically predisposed individuals become afflicted with full-blown vampirism.

The most disturbing item I stumbled across was the inference that certain persons willingly offer themselves as human blood banks to these parasites. Only reasonable, since nature always finds a balance, no matter how savage or disgusting. Hannah, my dear, beautiful Hannah, appeared to be one of those willing hosts. I could not – didn’t want to – believe it.

Further, more obscure research indicated that over the past decades, there had been a clandestine, though very informal, organization of these afflicted individuals, who had been gaining numbers -- and power -- within the "normal" communities of civilization. They considered themselves the most "persecuted, misunderstood minority" on earth. Those who were most severely afflicted with vampirism were usually locked away in institutions, died of withdrawal or were executed for their crimes, usually linked to blood fetishism. This covert organization had planned to secretly whisk their suppressed brethren – along with willing blood donors – to a guarded location on the Atlantic Coast of South America. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands – and then what? A city of bloodsucking vampires? A country? A continent? The whole fucking world?

My trembling hands reached for a bottle of whiskey. No. Not yet.

I learned that the most severely afflicted were to be clandestinely transported down the Eastern Seaboard to Key West, where they would be smuggled by freighter to the Argentine coast and freedom – freedom to feed off their fellow human beings. Somehow, I
knew I had to stop them.

That’s when I found – and killed – my first real, live vampire.

Chicago’s seedy South Side, home to a multitude of addicts of various stripes (call me legion for I am many), including one young man named Craft Warner. After another three weeks of Internet surfing, attending Goth, sanguinity and other lifestyle meetings, I finally found the genuine article, The Crafty Mr. Warner.

At first glance, Craft Warner looked like just another South Side junkie. Blanched, pale, narrow, abused face, track marks on both arms. Except, the puncture wounds marked the spots where Craft withdrew blood for his own consumption, during those lean times when there were no donors – willing or otherwise. He looked feral, like a wily predator. When I met him in his rat-infested room off Malloy Avenue with the premise of being a donor for him, he looked scared – probably because that once inside the stench hole he called a dwelling, I shoved the barrel of the Mossberg underneath his scruffy chin and chambered a round of 12 gauge buckshot.

"Wha – what the fuck, man? I got no crack or cash or nothin’." He stammered as he pissed himself. I could feel powerful muscles working under his pale flesh – steel cable wrapped in aged, tattered silk.

"Don’t need what you got, Craft. A couple liters of whole blood in the fridge, maybe?" I screwed the muzzle of the 12 gauge into his neck, excising a semicircle into the soft, tender flesh. A thick, crimson drop oozed down the barrel. With my free hand, I indicated a faded Chicago Bears sports bag near the door. "Going somewhere?"

"Yeah, maybe," he said defiantly, as defiantly as one could with a shotgun under his chin.

"Well, Craft, all you have to do is tell me when and where, and I’ll let you go."

He eyed me suspiciously. "I ain’t tellin’ you shit."

I shrugged. "Suit yourself." Pushing Craft Warner backwards, I lowered the shotgun and blew off his right foot in a spray of blood, tissue, and bone fragments. I stepped on his heaving chest, and stuffed the shotgun barrel into his groin.

"Like to reconsider?"

Craft Warner’s pale tongue shot out of his mouth and hungrily slurped spatters of his own blood from his lips. "Fuck you."

I chambered a round. "I know you guys probably don’t use your equipment all that much, but you’re about to become a fucking eunuch."

Craft regarded my hooded, bloodshot eyes carefully. He swallowed hard. "Look, I can’t tell you, man. The Boss will kill me."

"Don’t think I won’t."

"Look, the exact locations, pick-up points aren’t on the street. All I know is that a group of us are supposed to be taken to a central staging location someplace in Maine. I dunno, Bangkok or something. Maybe one of those ‘Lots, Hamlets, Burgs, or what the fuck ever. Then we all get put on ice and taken to meet a ship in Key West bound for the promised land."

"Argentina -- is the promised land?"

"I guess."

"When?"

"Tomorrow, or the next day." They’ll let us know.

I had intended to find out who ‘they’ were, along with answers to numerous other questions, when Craft Warner sealed his own fate. Surprisingly agile and strong, he kicked my feet out from under me with his good leg. The shot gun went off, shattering a small lamp and end table into shards and splinters. Craft snarled at me like a mad dog, ropes of bloody saliva drooling from his twitching lips and bared teeth. He was standing between me and the shot gun.

"I’m gonna drain you, motherfucker," he snapped. "It’s gonna be slow."

I scuttled across the floor crab-like as he leapt into the air, predator pouncing upon prey. My frantically searching right hand instinctively grasped a jagged leg from the ruined table and raised it to protect myself. Craft came down hard, impaling himself through the chest onto the pressed-board spike. His eyes met mine briefly and I saw the hunger, the need. I felt his last breath, hot and fetid like a carnal house in summer. I rolled him off me just before he vomited a font of crimson across the worn, filthy carpet.

Craft Warner, living human vampire, was now just plain dead. Just like any other worthless junkie in any other run-down room. I felt not much more than revulsion for the dead creature, not unlike a rabid dog put down in the throes of a frothing, convulsive fit. There was that – and the curious satisfaction of temporarily sating my ravenous, unquenchable appetite for vengeance.

Days later, I waited patiently in the parking lot of a run-down truck stop just outside Bangor, Maine.

The information was difficult to obtain, but a desperate man is often a resourceful one, and I was able to piece together enough of the puzzle. More than two hundred of their most severely afflicted were to be stacked like cord wood in refrigerated trailers, kept nearly frozen in order to keep their bloodlust in check until journey’s end. I fell in behind the two truck caravan making the lengthy jaunt down I-95 en route to Key West and their nefarious transport to the Argentine coast.

If they noticed the jet black Mustang trailing them, they didn’t give any indication. Perhaps they didn’t care. The two rigs appeared to be driven by teams of two – ‘familiars’ they would’ve been called in the old days. Maybe they were going to be blood donors en route to Argentina as well.

They only stopped briefly for fuel. During one such stop, just outside Savannah, Georgia, I made my first move.

The driving team for the first rig went inside the diner to order food (proving to me uncategorically that they weren’t vampires). I took the other two drivers by surprise, vaporizing one driver’s head with a single shot. The body convulsed and took three steps toward me, ragged neck spurting a gory fountain, before collapsing into the dirt. The other turned to run and I blasted his turned body, leaving him in a shredded heap to die a slow, painful death. I had driven a twin-axle delivery truck in my younger years . . . nothing quite as large as a semi, however. But I have always been a quick study.

Several gear-shrieking miles later, I found the perfect disposal site, quite by accident. I had ducked off I-95 to avoid detection and followed a narrow state road to an even narrower dirt road. Ignoring the official government warning: 'no trespassing, violators will be executed' signs and ramming the barb-wire topped fence, I wheeled the semi around a small, steep-banked pond. The rumors I had heard over the years were evidently true: this was a hush-hush toxic waste dump, probably one of many. Illegal to anyone and everyone except our trusty federal government. I had another use for it. A more legitimate use, if you will.

I angled the truck on a slight grade, released the brakes and kicked it out of gear. Watched for a while as it slowly sank into the sludgy green-brown waters and finally disappeared into the toxic muck. I wondered dispassionately if they were conscious enough to realize that they were drowning. Drink that, suckers.

A few hours later, after I made my way back through the pine forest, I returned to the underpass where I had left the ‘Stang. After an anxious pursuit in excess of one hundred miles per hour, I finally caught up with the other Caskey’s Coffin semi, just north of Brunswick.

It was difficult for me to believe the nonchalance of the drivers. They had to know that something was very wrong. The leadership of this blood-letting cult was either overconfident, stupid or just plain arrogant.

The radio crackled a near lost signal; John Fogerty wailed about the signs of the end of the world, a thirty-plus-year old rumbling ghost voice. Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die.

I passed a black-primer-colored school bus and the young students gathered to stare at me with dark, hollow eyes, their bloodless lips working sensuously, soundlessly. One of them drooled thick, viscous blood, spat it at me, and laughed through sharp, bared teeth. Fucking antihistamines.

Abruptly, the tractor trailer veered off an interstate exit without signaling. I jammed the brakes, sluiced the ‘Stang sideways and followed. We exited onto a deserted state road, heading to somewhere called Lake Obsidian.

This was it, I reckoned. The trap. I didn’t care. Bring it on, fuckers. Take your best shot.

The truck finally stopped on the outskirts of something that vaguely resembled a town. An Amoco tanker was refueling an ancient service station next to a long deserted tavern. ‘Dew Drop Inn’, the rusted sign waving in the breeze cheerfully invited. Incongruently, a shiny new Mercedes 500SL was parked in front of the dilapitated structure. I slowed the ‘Stang to a stop several hundred yards away and waited a moment, pondering my next move.

I stepped out onto the shimmering blacktop, chambering a round into the Mossberg -- shoot out at the OK Corral of some backwater shithole.

As I approached, the driver started running toward the abandoned tavern; I dropped him before he cleared the nose of the rig. The other committed suicide by running toward me, waving his arms madly and shrieking like a banshee. Big mistake. Final mistake.

The Amoco truck driver and the service station attendant were running for their lives down the road into town. I didn’t have much time.

Something told me that the tavern might not have been truly deserted. The driver’s haste to get there as well as the Mercedes parked in front seemed to bear that out. I reloaded the Mossberg and strolled inside.

The stench was palpable. Something was undoubtedly dead and rotting inside. I took off my new photo-grays and tried to adjust to the darkness. The place had been stripped of all furnishings except for an obviously homemade bar running the length of the opposite wall. Otherwise, there was only trash and broken bottles strewn across the floor, and oddly, a push-broom leaning against the bar. There were doors on either side of the bar, one locked, the other slightly ajar.

A figure stepped slowly through the opened door. I felt the bile rise into my throat.

"Freeze, goddammit," I croaked. "Let me see your hands." The shrouded figure complied.

I swallowed hard, wishing I had a shot of Jack to steady my trembling hands. "Step forward – slowly."

Once again, the mystery guest obeyed. "Nice to see you again, John."

I lowered the shotgun in my astonishment. "Doctor Frye! But you were killed –"

He smiled mockingly. "Rumors of my demise . . . "

My addled brain was having difficulty tracking, assimilating these bizarrely unfolding events. "Then, you are . . . "

". . . have been greatly exaggerated."

I raised the Mossberg, aiming for his head. "Christ, you are one of them!"

"But of course, dear boy. What did you expect?"

"Why would you come to me about Hannah if you were . . . were . . . " I couldn’t bring myself to speak the word.

"Quite simple. I fully expected to break you, push you over the edge. Your psychological profile indicated that you would most likely commit suicide if given just the right tweak." He grinned like a death mask. "It appears I have underestimated you."

I unsuccessfully fought back tears (of anger, remorse, what?) as Frye stood smiling at me. "Why? Why Hannah?"

"She came to us, actually. She had a need, John. One you could neither understand, nor fulfill. As I postulated to you in Chicago, she was killed quite by accident. Not too dissimilar to an autoerotic asphyxiation accident, I should say. The group – myself and three others – was quite saddened, John."

"Well, it’s all over now, fucker! The police – "

He laughed. "Oh yes, Mr. Staker! The police. I am a respected Doctor, you are a frothing at the mouth madman, driven insane by grief. You are a common murderer now, nothing more."

"How can you do this, Frye?"

"I am going to lower my hands now, John. The blood" – he licked his thin lips – "is rushing from my hands and arms uncomfortably. That’s better. Do we not have the God-given right to live, love, thrive, John? Are we not all God’s creatures, whom he nurtures and loves equally? Did Christ himself not say, ‘taste of my flesh, drink of my blood’?"

"You guys are taking symbolism a little far, don’t you think?"

"You are no better than the lowest of us, John," he shrugged. "You infected with a far worse blood lust. You are not driven by nature, but by the most selfish of emotions – revenge."

"Whatever. Your exercise in mind-fucking won’t work with me."

Doctor Frye abruptly disappeared into the shadows he had been craftily circling. With astonishing speed, he body-slammed me, sending me flying and the Mossberg clattering into the garbage dump that was the tavern floor.

From somewhere in the blackness, he said gutturally, "I neglected to mention that although we are for the most part ‘normal’, we do have surprising control over our adrenal glands..."

The sharp point of a boot gouged harshly into my side as I groped for the shotgun. He grabbed me by the shirt collar and flung me into the bar, which collapsed into a heap of termite-eaten junk wood and sawdust.

"You should ask God to forgive you, John. He loves us all, forgives all of our sins. Even the abhorrent ones you have committed."

I spat a mouthful of coppery-tasting blood onto the littered floor. I reached for the ankle holster housing my .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog Pug pistol.

Doctor P. Vincent Frye stared at me, unafraid. "Tsk, tsk, John. You never cease to amaze and surprise me. I suppose the fact that you were unable to satisfy your beloved wife made me think less of you."

The Bulldog barked -- loudly -- shattering the humid quiet of the afternoon, belching an unsettling bolt of blue hot flame. The .44 slug struck Frye just to the right of his left kneecap, sending the patella skittering across the filthy floor trailed by a thick spray of blood, bone shards and splinters. He collapsed to one knee – where the knee used to be – ran his hand through the wound and slurped
greedily.

"You may kill me, but you cannot frighten me, John. Death is yet another threshold to cross. You think this will make you whole again, but it won’t. You are dead now."

I didn’t give Frye the satisfaction of an answer. Sometimes the old ways are the best. I snapped the broom handle in half and as I looked Frye square in the eyes, plunged the ragged stake between his ribs and into his heart. I left him staring at the ceiling. He seemed to be at peace. Not me.

Knowing I had only moments before the authorities arrived, I fired up the Caskey semi, eased it onto the blacktop a few hundred feet, then slammed the gear into reverse. The back of the rig knocked over the ancient gas pumps then ruptured the Amoco tanker. A random spark ignited the fuel violently into a huge, mushrooming fireball. I narrowly escaped before the hellfire engulfed the cab. I ran to the Mustang, fired her up, smoked the tires in a frantic u-turn, heading back to the interstate.

At speed, the Mustang’s 429 rumbled lowly like an insatiably hungry predator. On the radio, I swore I heard someone sing something about "licking your heart and tasting your health". I wondered idly just how many vampires there really were out there. I slowed the Mustang and parked on the side of the road just before the I-95 on-ramp. Sat on the ‘Stang’s dusty driver’s side fender. Drained a Bud tall-boy. Vomited almost immediately.

Perhaps Doctor Frye was right. I had murdered in cold blood for nothing more than misguided vengeance’s sake. I had become something I do not -- will never -- understand. Anguish consumes conscience. Doesn’t everyone have the right to live, love and be happy?

Maybe.

I hear the trucks rumbling past on the interstate. I think of a ship waiting in Key West. I imagine billowing flames igniting the night, licking the ship’s hull, from which there is no human -- or inhuman -- escape. I hear their agonizing screams punctuate the restless, humid night.

Thankfully, I still have somewhere I need to be.

© Walt Hicks

Visit Walt Hicks at: DeathGrip