Dead Surround - The Julia Poe Vampire Chronicles (8 page)

“You’re willing to give up a life as a master vampire? Cattle of your own?” Trampoline Man asked his hot-tempered friend.

“Yup, easy. Politics is so fucked up on the mainland anyway. Don’t wanna be no part of it.

’Sides, I’m a quarter black, and you know how shitty we get it in the new realm. Janitor, incinerator, ass wiper,” Manitoba said with a wince. He wiped his eyes clear. “Guess you can say I’ve taken a liking to swine blood. There’s nothing like vampires that don’t burn in the sun and the open sea. We’ve got more choices than some.” He shoved the Revenents out of the way.

“Let’s do it then. Heads or tails?”

“Heads.”

Trampoline Man took a shiny half dollar from his pants pockets. Poe didn’t know if there was any fight left in her. She was so tired and bruised that all she could do was watch with detachment as the two vampires flipped for the first suck. She licked ocean, rain, and blood from her lips.

I’ll fight them when they get near me. Maybe by
then I’ll get my grit back to beat the shit out of them.

The tall jumping frog tossed the coin and caught it in his palm. Poe’s full lips trembled as Trampoline Man slapped the coin onto his left hand, palm down.

“Shit. It’s heads,” he announced not so happily.

“Better make sure to leave enough for me.”

“You know me, buddy,” Manitoba laughed. “I’m accommodating and generous to a fault.” He met Poe’s eyes as she crouched tiredly on the floor. “I’m talking about my buddy here, not you, gel. You. I’m 64

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gonna need you to strip to your skivvies now. That G.I. Joe dyke look isn’t to my taste.”

Herbie’s words wound her mettle into gear.

With as much dignity as she could, Poe rose to her feet, her nostrils flaring.

“The only one stripping around here is you, Stay Puft man.”

“Timid words. Too bad I can’t take them seriously, pink pants.”

Poe, shaking from the horrendous evening, made fists. “Get ready to die, worm. And you, too.”

Both men cackled at her threat.

“And how exactly are you going to do that?”

Trampoline Man asked with a snort.

Poe had no idea how to answer, but a solid object thrown between her shoulder blades caused her to curse uninhibitedly.

“She loves me, this gel,” said Manitoba. “Wants me to give her a lap dance or sumfin.”

The two vampires continued to guffaw and titter.

They didn’t see or hear the object that the ocean had spit out.

A smile slowly formed as Poe noticed the object that hit her. Between her legs lay her salvation.

“I’m going to waste precisely two bullets on you both. I’ll shoot you smack in the center of the heart.

Then I’m going to lay to rest the walking jerky chained up on your boats.”

The sniggering duo slapped their knees at the girl’s statement.

“And how are you gonna do that, gel?” asked Herbie.

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“Maybe she’s mentally ill or something,” said Trampoline Man heartily. “Are you going to use your fingers as a pretend gun?”

“Nope,” Poe said with a sunshine smile reaching down. “I’m going to use my very own 9mm Glock.”

With a smug smile Poe reached for the sopping object on deck and tore it out of the Ziploc bag.

Quickly but with precision she pierced the hearts of both Trampoline Man and Manitoba. Bullseye.



She awoke nestled between a piglet and a dog.

Poe would have dismissed her bed partners as figments of her dreams but for the rather low cabin ceiling that looked like it was getting vodka shaken.

She reached for the expired anti-nausea medication conveniently placed on the bolted bed stand.

Swallowing a few tabs with only her spit to help them down, Poe clamped her eyes shut and waited for the uneasiness to dissipate.

“Come here, Chops,” Poe said in a raspy voice.

She hoisted the rosy piglet with a single perfectly round black dot on its rump. She’d named the little critter in her dreams. “You, too, Pen,” she added when her dog complained of favoritism. The dog nearly ate it. If it weren’t for Maclemar, Penny would have been lost at sea.

Both critters stank.

She ached all over and suffered from motion sickness. Two days since she’d had her last mouthful of cotton candy. Her stomach was empty, and last night’s debacle was no dream.

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After flushing the two boats filled with chained up Revenents, she and Maclemar had discovered a snorting piglet with a curly tail hiding under a pile of life preservers. The moment Maclemar had transferred gasoline pilfered from the two boats, he fired up his engine and headed for their destination.

Maclemar, immovable, ordered her down to the cabin for some shut-eye. Poe had been too tired to protest.

“Where is that weirdo taking us?” Poe asked the pig who had taken quite a liking to the rip on her mom’s Clash t-shirt. “I gotta get off this boat. I don’t know about you two.”

Within fifteen minutes Poe was up and about, examining the tiny cabin-slash-kitchen. On a redwood shelf were dog-eared books consisting mainly of classic American writers.

“Vonnegut, Thoreau, Conrad, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Twain, Wharton…wow,” read Poe. “My folks have the same stuff on their bookshelves at home. Maybe Caveman’s not such a Neanderthal after all.”

“Much thanks then,” said a dry voice from the entrance. “Suppose I ought to be flattered.”

She colored, and she watched the man warily as he walked down the steps. He carried two freshly gutted sea bass. As coolly as she could, Poe put on her damp sneakers.

“Breakfast will be ready in about twenty minutes,” Maclemar pronounced.

What do I say to someone who chained me up
and molested me? Something neutral, I suppose. He’s
the only one that knows how to drive a boat. And he
did throw me a gun while doing butterfly strokes in
the choppy ocean.

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“Do you want me to go on deck?”

“You can do what you want. If it gets too smoky and fishy down here, I suggest you do,” he said with a shrug. Poe watched his long, well designed fingers dice up a small red onion and five hefty potatoes with their skins intact and throw them in a deep iron pot.

In a large skillet he poured a generous amount of olive oil and arranged the two fish comfortably side by side. He squeezed some lemon on top of the nicely browning fish and covered them with a handful of dill. The fisherman had quite an array of potted herbs scattered about the cabin.

The smell made her eyes water, and her empty belly began speaking in tongues. There was nothing Maclemar could do to force her out of there. To occupy her mind she decided to harass the cook.

“Are you Irish? Or English?” she pursued once more.

“Nope and nope,” he said while moving the potatoes around with a wooden spatula.

“Well?”

“Hmm? Well what?”

“What are you? You’re not American. Your accent’s a little off.”

“That’s nice of you to notice, but I’ve met plenty of Americans with more varied accents.” He turned his head to give her a meaningful look. No matter where she went she seemed to get a civics lecture of some sort. He was correct, though. Her grandfather had a slight accent, and he was an American. “If you must know, I’m Welsh. From Wales.”

“Oh. Where’s that?” Poe asked, self-conscious about her ignorance in geography and her tendency to 68

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generalize when it came to touchy personal questions.

“That’s part of the UK. The 4th slice they hardly talk about. It’s west of England.”

“Would there happen to be mines in Wales?”

“Yes, there are. I’m afraid we’re known for that.

But let me assure you that my country is magnificent with unforgettable landscape and people. ”

“Yeah? Well can you name me some world renowned Welsh people then?”

“Right,” he said. He pulled at the beard that was there no more while pondering the girl’s question. “There’s T.E. Lawrence.”

“Dunno him.”

“He’s Lawrence from
Lawrence of Arabia
.”

She nodded. “I saw the movie. Extremely long but good. Who else?”

“What about Dylan Thomas?”

“What about him?”

The fisherman expelled a heavy breath. “He was just one of the greatest poets that ever lived.”

Poe shrugged her shoulders.

“Bloody Americans,” he mumbled under his breath. “Pissing on heaven under their feet.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, how about Richard Burton?”

“Oh I know him,” Poe said. “I’ve seen sixteen movies with him in it. Go ahead. Ask me about movies and movie stars ’cause chances are I’ve seen most everything they ever made. Including their early smut stuff.”

“I beg your pardon?”

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“Nothing. Never mind.” Poe waved his question away. She wasn’t very discerning with movies. She watched anything she could get ahold of.
Anything
.

“Well I thought you sounded a little like the cast of
Trainspotting
,” she changed the subject as Name-the-Welsh was going nowhere. She perused his jaw which looked almost greenish from emerging stubble.

“You wouldn’t be wrong there, either. My parents immigrated to Glasgow when I was twelve.

They were both professors at the University. Then for a time I lived with my grandparents in London so the accent’s a tad screwed.”

“Um, yeah. So what were you doing in America when the world got poisoned?”

“I was getting my Doctorate in American Literature.”

“So that’s why all the books,” she said, waving her hand at the shelves. “I hardly see any Shakespeare or Dickens in your collection.”

“The British could be a bit snobbish about literature,” Maclemar said, wiping his hand with a rag. “But I’ll tell you something. The most sincere, most poignant novels I have ever read are those penned by American writers. Less bullshit and fluff.

Give me Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Vonnegut anytime.” His eyes shone with the joy of defending his course of study.

“Well I read a couple of English stories that made me cry. They were so good.”

“Oh? What were they?”

“
Silas Marner
and
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
,” Poe offered with a lump in her throat. She had read them because they were two of the thinnest books in her parents’ collection.

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“Aye. Those are good books,” he concurred.

“They squeezed a good amount of liquid from my eyes as well.”

“I agree with you, though. Steinbeck and Hemingway rule,” said Poe who shook her head at the surprise in Maclemar’s eyes. “Yes, Mr. Caveman.

I read, too. Whatever I get my hands on.”

“Good for you then.”

“So where are you taking me, Maclemar?” Poe asked. She cleared her throat.

Maclemar scraped the steaming potatoes onto four plates and likewise divided the fish. With care he plunked down a plate where Penny sat, still distrustful of him. The piglet rested her little bottom in a corner and waited for her own plate. The third plate he handed to Poe.

“Tabasco?” he asked Poe, who shook her head in the negative.

She watched him douse his plate with over a dozen hits of soylent green hot sauce. He paused before taking a bite of the somewhat raw potatoes and answered, “Right. We’re going to New Brighton State Beach south of Santa Cruz. Sainvire’s people are hiding out there for now. And oh, your backpack and guns are under the bed.”

“Thanks,” she said.

After the first bite of the plain but delicious meal, Poe couldn’t help slide the last of the food on the plate into her mouth. She didn’t mind that some of the bits were still underdone.

Like nothing had ever happened between them, Poe and Maclemar acted like old mates on a ship. It was easier to shut out the unpleasant past rather than bring it up to mutual disadvantage. As a peace 71

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offering Poe pulled out a bag of colorless cotton candy from her pack to share for dessert. She snuck looks while he ate fluffy sugar.
Maclemar’s pretty
good looking. If Sainvire has a girlfriend, I wouldn’t
mind sailing with Maclemar for a time
. The thought wrenched her heart.

“What were those things last night?” Poe asked, surreptitiously rubbing off grease from her fingers on a beaded Indian pillow.

“They’re called Revenents,” answered Maclemar, who was in the grips of an unofficial staring contest with the piglet. “They were once blood cattle, dying from iron and vitamin deficiencies from excess blood tapping. Eventually they stopped eating. Because they were no longer useful, newly turned vampires that had never had a go at a live human were allowed to finish them off by ingesting whatever was left of their blood as rewards. Keep in mind that some of these younger undead had never bit through anything but straws to suck on refrigerated bottled blood. It was a rather big production. Then some of these bodies started coming back to life, brain dead and completely untrainable. They died hungry, and they came back ravenous. They’ll eat any living flesh before them.”

He tossed the cotton candy stick to the wriggling pig. “As you saw last night, they’re only good for sweeping and flushing out. The whole thing’s quite blood curdling, but there we are.”

“They were effective enough,” Poe shivered, remembering how close she came to being consumed. “If they had two or three more on deck, Penny and I would’ve been chopped liver.”

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Maclemar’s brow furrowed, his gaze lost in the small porthole with a view of the aquamarine ocean.

Poe took the opportunity to study his profile. His prominent cheekbones gave his face character while his eyes, jewel green and intelligent, disqualified him from being a Cro-Magnon throwback like she’d once accused him of being. If ever the bottom half of his face followed the same brown hue as the rest of his body, Maclemar would have been considered good looking.

His lips, though wide, weren’t as full as Sainvire’s.