Double Dead: Bad Blood Read online

  That thought hit Gil again: the dog liked the vampire more.

  Oh. Holy hell.

  “We need to follow the dog!” Gil hollered, over the din of moaning zombies and .22 pistol-fire and roaring rain.

  Gil clipped a zombie missing half its face with the side of his crossbow and used the gap to hop down off the car.

  But as he did, the half-faced rotter thrust up a searching hand and caught his ankle—Gil’s world yanked sideways as he fell to the asphalt. He let go of the crossbow, thrust out his hands and caught asphalt against his palms—the sting went through his fingers and up his arms as the rest of his body followed, hitting the street. He cried out. Dirty sore-laden feet surrounded him. Rotters reached. He turned over, swatted—one started gnawing, the blackened teeth having no luck getting through his pant-leg.

  Gil pushed one away. Kicked another. Felt his world grow smaller, hedged in by rotters swarming over him like ants upon an overturned beetle.

  It all happened so fast and yet so very, very slowly.

  He pushed one away.

  Another moved in—not fast, not cunning, just clumsily lurching forward in the sudden vacancy. A woman. Nose hanging off her face like gristle from a steak. A brittle mop of hair framing her puffy cheeks.

  Her teeth sank into the meat of his palm.

  And then her head collapsed with the hard whaaang of a shovel.

  Gil pulled all his limbs in, fresh blood running from the bite-mark. It didn’t hurt, not much—his hands were too numb from falling, from the shock of it all. As he turtled in, he saw a shovel-blade sweep in again, taking out legs and smashing heads. As one zombie’s head snapped to the side, exposing a soggy trachea and severing its spine, Gil caught a glimpse of Aiden.

  Aiden, with the shovel.

  The other kids filled the space—wooden chair-legs and stabbing picks and Pete bashing in heads with the butt of his Buck Mark.

  Gil quickly rolled over, got to his feet, tucked his hand away into his sleeve. Felt the blood soak through.

  Don’t think about it. Forget the bite. Forget the ticking clock. Shut up. Eyes forward, old man. Your daughter needs you.

  He snatched up his crossbow.

  Aiden came up alongside him, shovel black with the ichor that passed for undead blood. “Figured you’d need my help.”

  Gil nodded. “We did.” He cleared his throat. “I did. Thanks.”

  Aiden saw Gil hiding his hand. “Your hand.”

  The boy tensed. Gripped the shovel tight.

  “I’m good,” Gil said, mustering a brave face to carry the lie. “I hurt it in the fall. Fell on a piece of glass.” Not a hard lie to swallow—the streets were littered with debris, including the remnants from shattered car and home windows.

  “Good,” Aiden said. “I’d hate to have to fuck you up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry about before.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “We better move. Find your friend. The zombos won’t be long in the coming.” Somewhere down the street, Creampuff barked: an insistent me! me! me! yapping that Gil would know anywhere. He nodded to Aiden, to all the kids, and then took point and hurried forth ahead of his own dread thoughts.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Hills of San Francisco

  THE MANHOLE COVER launched from its mooring, flipping up in the air like an errant pancake. It hit the street, cracking the asphalt and rolling into a mini-van, where it promptly dented the bumper with a bang.

  The vampire Coburn emerged from the hole.

  Stinking. Dripping. Bleeding.

  He dropped to his hands and knees and barfed up sewer water. Gave each nostril one good blow, too—a snot rocket of muck spattered the earth.

  Rain fell on him.

  It felt good. Made him feel like a new man. Blah blah blah, baptism and washing away sins and rebirth and whatever.

  Then he looked up.

  “Oh, goddamnit,” he growled. “Really?”

  The chorus of gathered dead gurgled and drooled in response. Coburn found himself in the middle of an intersection atop one of San Francisco’s trademark hills—tree-lined streets and parked cars and a trolley track running up one hill and down the next. And all around him, crowds of the doomed and demised.

  The dead noticed him, now.

  Began moving toward him through the rain. A shrinking circumference of rotting flesh ready to crush him and tear him asunder.

  Worse, as if to rub not merely salt in the wound but battery acid and fire ants and a whole fucking salt lick, Coburn heard the shriek of the child hunter rise from the manhole cover. He’d crawled his way out of the transport channel and back into the brick tunnels and up through the hole in the street, and now his foe was about to do the same.

  But that shriek bought him a moment. As it rose up out of the hole, the encroaching tide of starving dead stopped, cocking their heads like confused beasts.

  Speaking of a confused beast—

  Coburn saw a darting streak of white shoot out from between rotters.

  Creampuff bowled into him, then regained his footing, claiming a spot between Coburn’s boots and settling into a low growl.

  “Well, looky here,” Coburn said. “What’s up, you little rat turd?”

  The dog gave him a wide-eyed look, then resumed growl.

  “Uh-huh. Nice to see you too, pooch. Not a real great time to show up, though, since I think we’re both about to become dinner.”

  The dog seemed unfazed. Curiously, Coburn took strength from this.

  Then: Another howl rose from the open manhole.

  Child’s hands—corrupted, tipped with sharp bone—emerged from the hole like a fly wriggling free of a wound. The little girl’s face surfaced, crooked needle teeth exposed in a lip-curling snarl.

  The hunter had arrived.

  That’s when everything went batshit.

  THE VAMPIRE BARELY had time to parse what was happening.

  The hunter leapt from the hole like a hungry flea, bowling into Coburn’s back and knocking him flat.

  Ahead, the zombies surged forward, toward him—

  But then rotters started falling.

  They tilted hard, legs taken out from under them. As they fell forward, backward, to the side, they were kindly absolved of their heads and brains.

  The givers of said absolution?

  Children.

  One with a shovel. One with—knives? Little girls. Little boys. Pre-teens.

  Human. Definitely human. He could smell their blood.

  Don’t get any ideas, Kayla said. They’re not your own personal protein bars.

  Coburn didn’t get too long of a look. The hunter dug its claws into his back and pushed him to the ground. His nose ground against the city street. His teeth biting blacktop. He pawed behind him, tried to stand, but again his head smashed into the asphalt—claws gripped the back of his head, dug in beneath the scalp...

  Another flash of white. Creampuff got in on the action, making guerilla strikes from the margins. The dog darted in and out with that trademark terrier speed, nipping at the hunter—taking chunks of ear and flesh from jaw—before leaping just out of reach from the monster’s swiping talon.

  It gave Coburn the opening he needed. The vampire twisted his body, dumping the hunter to the ground.

  He was able to again behold the scene—

  This time, with a new—well, old—player.

  Gil shouldered his way through a pair of rotters. Crossbow bolt through one’s eye. Swing of the bow to collapse the second’s head.

  Their eyes met, vampire and man. They shared a friendly nod amidst chaos.

  Coburn felt Kayla in his mind. Excited. Jubilant, even.

  The moment did not last.

  The girl with the chair leg—her face marred with streaks of ash, ash that looked purposeful, like a kind of war-paint—spun into the questing hands of a jawless rotter. The creature’s hands found her throat. Pulled her close.

  Gil saw. Screamed.<
br />
  The fiend drew her upward to its seeking mouth—

  For Coburn, that looked all too familiar.

  He did not know this girl. Did not care anything for her outside a small ember of gratitude for coming in here and saving his pale ass.

  But he knew his daughter. He knew Kayla. Knew he had failed them both.

  Coburn moved. Point A to Point B in a half a blink of a reptile’s eye—and when he came upon the monster holding the little girl, its mouth so close to her throat its fattened raw beef of a tongue was pressed against her skin, Coburn let the momentum of his preternatural speed carry through to the back of his hand.

  The rotter’s head cracked, spun off the shoulders the way one might spin the cap off a cheap whiskey bottle. Black blood aerosolized.

  The girl fell.

  Coburn caught her.

  Her throat was torn out.

  No! came Kayla’s voice. Just the rotter’s blood.

  The girl blinked.

  The gore slid from her neck, plopping to the ground in the middle of the fracas. Washed away by the rain. The girl stared up at Coburn with eyes moist with wonder and terror.

  “What are you?” she asked. A small voice, but Coburn could hear.

  He answered the only way he could: “I don’t know.”

  Then he set her down. Picked up her gore-clumped chair leg, handed it to her. Next thing he knew, Gil’s back was to his own.

  The zombies had again stopped. Formed a circle around them. Staring not at their prey but at the one they believed to be their master:

  The child hunter was up. Claws dripping.

  At the beast’s feet lay Creampuff. White coat gone red. There on the ground like a broken toy before the child who played too rough.

  A surge of anger bubbled up inside Coburn.

  His dog. That was his dog. Nobody—man, woman, child, or reanimated dead thing with vampire’s blood churning through its nightmare veins—messed with his dog. Shit. Shit!

  We’re doomed, came Kayla’s voice. Echoing through his head. Doomed... doomed... doomed.

  It was as if Gil could hear her.

  Because the old man said, “I have an idea.”

  And then he brought up the crossbow, splitting some fool rotter’s head, and hurried over to a minivan parked cock-eyed at the corner.

  The child hunter started toward Coburn.

  But then another child stepped in the way. Blond shaggy hair, hanging over his face. He parted the hair with his fingers, then held out his hands.

  “Ellie,” the kid said. “It’s me. Aiden.”

  The hunter hissed. Offered no recognition. Took a step forward.

  “Kid,” Coburn growled.

  But Aiden took another step forward. “I want to help you. You should come home. With the rest of us. Look. We’re all here.”

  “Kid,” Coburn said again, this time more insistent. The other kids called to him, too—told him not to do that, to stop, to get away.

  “That’s not Ellie,” the tall boy with the bloodied pistol said. Desperate. Voice cracking. Sadness there.

  The hunter moved fast.

  So did Coburn.

  They met Aiden in the middle. Coburn swept the kid up, turned his body. The hunter’s claws again dug into the meat of his back, but with his free hand he grabbed behind the mutant and flipped her forward into a crowd of rotters—undead bowling in the hell-born apocalypse.

  Aiden cried out. In that cry a great abyss where grief suddenly rose up like a terrible wind. As the boy collapsed onto his hands and knees, sobbing, Coburn saw Gil had shattered the driver-side window of the mini-van and was sitting in the front seat—he whooped, yelled for everyone to get in.

  Coburn understood the plan.

  He herded the children toward the minivan as the hunter scrambled to its feet, claws clicking on blacktop and teeth clacking together.

  It stood as the kids entered the minivan through the backdoor.

  Coburn hurried back for the dog.

  “Coburn!” Gil yelled. “No time!”

  But there had to be time. He scooped the pooch up. Smelled the blood. Felt the crass and callous demon of hunger send up a tickling finger to tighten his jaw, make him think about eating the dog here and now, fulfilling the animal’s long-ago purpose of being a road-trip snack in case the vampire needed it. Sick. Shameful. But that was the demon.

  What mattered though was:

  The dog was still breathing.

  Barely. Shallow. A low whine from the back of its throat. The dog’s side perforated with puncture marks from the monster’s claws.

  Coburn heard Gil calling to him again. The vampire turned back toward the van, saw that once more the beast stood between him and his goal.

  Fuck that.

  He couldn’t kill this kid, or rather, this thing-that-was-no-longer-a-kid. He had enough presence of mind to realize that now. It was a cowardice born of guilt, a roadblock in his way because of those he’d hurt and lost. Even though this thing was no longer human. Even though this girl—Ellie—was gone and the body now filled by a devil of desire and thirst and cruelty, Coburn still couldn’t kill her. Or it. Or whatever it was.

  But he was getting to that mini-van, goddamnit.

  Creampuff looked up at Coburn. Blood trickling from his muzzle.

  The hunter’s patience was at an end. The beast bolted toward him. Claws out. Jaw unhinging like a snake’s—mouth wide, too wide, its lashing tongue licking the rain and tasting the air.

  Coburn held his ground.

  And when the beast was close enough—he took one big step back.

  Over the open manhole.

  The hunter did not fall through the manhole, not entirely—but one of its legs did disappear into that space and the beast fell forward, cracking its head on the macadam and yowling in rage and anguish. Needle teeth broke off and scattered like the knucklebones cast by a diviner.

  Coburn used the body as a stepping stone and bolted toward the van.

  The zombies surged again. The mesmerism of the hunter, interrupted. They pushed forth toward the van. Slapping wetly against its side. Rocking it.

  The vampire gave himself one last boost—

  And shouldered hard right into the back of the vehicle.

  The van started to lurch forward.

  There they were, at the top of a hill. On Hyde Street. Down the hill—north, though you couldn’t see it in the dark and through the rain—was the bay. Where they had been hoping to get to all along.

  Coburn clambered atop the van as it started to roll down the hill with Gil at the wheel, steering out of the way of parked and abandoned cars, clipping zombies and letting the wheels pop their limbs and heads like blood-gorged ticks.

  The van picked up speed, bounding away in escape.

  Coburn heard the wretched cry of the hunter.

  Wounded. Stung. Starving.

  Always starving.

  He looked behind him, and in a small blessing could not see the beast.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dead End

  THE VAN BOUNDED down the hill, steering to narrowly dodge debris and skirt other cars. Some of the rotters saw them pass, tried to follow, slapped at the vehicle as it passed—but they were too slow, too stupid, to matter.

  They bounded pasted a gutted Starbucks. An overgrown park. Boutique hotels and shuttered restaurants. And all around them, dead people: some still moving, others just corpses burned or gutted or gone from suicide. In cars. On street corners. Hanging half out of windows.

  All the while, Coburn clung to the roof-rack of the mini-van with one hand, shushing Creampuff and stroking the little dog’s head with the other. The animal panted. Heavy. Too heavy. Blood wetting Coburn’s arms.

  Soon the great Hyde Street hill evened out—please keep your arms and legs inside the ride, Coburn thought, calling to mind a fleeting memory of Coney Island that he did not expect and could not follow—and since Gil had the van in neutral, there wasn’t much he could do but steer it
straight into a parked car to stop it. Not before mowing over a DEAD END sign. Which Coburn hoped was not somehow prescient.

  THE RAIN LIGHTENED, but just the same they all poured out of the van and huddled under the tattered awning of some bullshit maritime souvenir shop with wooden pirates standing vigil out front.

  The kid—Aiden—looked wrecked. Gutted. Hell, they all did. A little girl with pigtails came up to Coburn and gently patted Creampuff’s head.

  “This is your stop,” Aiden said. Staring at a faraway point. “You better go. Zombos won’t be long in coming.”

  Pete pointed past the storefront and toward the maritime tourist complex of Fisherman’s Wharf. “Follow this out, it’ll take you to the end of the Hyde Street pier. You’ll find some old dinghies tied up. We use them to fish sometimes.”

  “Ew,” the little pig-tailed girl said. “Fish, yuck.”

  “What about you?” Gil asked. “You could come with us.”

  “To Alcatraz?” Aiden asked. “No, thanks. We’ve got our place here.”

  Coburn held Creampuff close, furrowed his brow. “Wait. Who said jack and shit about Alcatraz?”

  “Better play catch up, old man,” Aiden said. “You’re looking for a lab, right? Alcatraz is it.”

  “Rude little prick,” Coburn said.

  “Takes one to know one,” the kid answered.

  That was probably true.

  It was then they said their goodbyes. The kids all shook Gil’s hand—though the pig-tailed one who the others called ‘Princess’ leapt up and hugged him like he was her long-lost grandfather. Coburn stood off to the side, gently scratching Creampuff’s ear.

  Fact you can do anything gentle is a surprise, came Kayla’s voice, which had been silent since the fracas on the hill.

  Coburn grunted.

  Then felt someone standing near him. One of the midgets.

  “Thanks for saving my life,” the girl with the dirty face said; chair leg tucked under her arm. “Hope your puppy’s okay.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Later.”

  “Later, kid.”

  The children left. Darting off around the corner, in the rain. Disappearing. A pack of apocalypse orphans—although, the vampire had to admit, they had better control of things than most of the adults they encountered.