Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth (6 page)

“Wow. Seriously?”

“Seriously. I’m not dialing this number again.”

And I hung up.

Chapter 15

Her

I had the rest of my miserable, lonely life to be mad. The anger was potent and magnified by the fact that I had no one to display it to.

“Of
course
he’s a vamp!” I screamed at an innocent crow. The stupid bird sat perched on the power line and cocked a confused head at me. That only made me madder. “I spent every day alone and when I finally find signs of intelligent life, it’s a VAMP!”

More head cocking.

I couldn’t reach the crow that questioned my right to be angry so I turned my rage onto a car. A full out, Carrie Underwood, baseball bat scene played out on a white Toyota Scion until I was heaving and sweaty, and my dogs had run for the hills to ride out my outbursts in safety.

Once I drained all the fury out of me, the desperate need to be productive came next.

I threw myself into my tasks. Since studying was out (my anger turned my concentration into a frayed, red haze) I focused on my cottage. More and more of the improvements I made to the area made it the picture of The Before. It breathed with life.

I checked my garden and frowned. The tomatoes were fine. I was still losing cabbage. I poked the green tarp that tempered the Arizona heat. So help me, I was going to bend this desert air into something that sprouted my plots into vegetable Chia pets.

After resetting the tent to a new angle and adding fresh soil, I took a can of paint to the side of the cottage. Teal. Made for little girls’ rooms or accent walls in trendy home designs but I was painting the whole cottage teal. There was no one to scrunch their nose up at it or shake their head. I could hot pink and black zebra stripe this thing and no one would care.

I kept a sob from leaving my throat.

No one would care.

No one.

Productiveness over. Now it was time to wallow.

Chapter 16

Her

First I was tired. I couldn’t finish my jog that morning. Bagheera kept whining and circling back to nudge his wet nose in my hand but my feet grew heavier and I quickly realized even walking made me achy.

I made it home and flopped onto my mattress. I guzzled some water, rolled over, and went to sleep.

The cramps woke me a few hours later. I squeezed my abdomen and let out a grunting cry but sitting up made me woozy. I turned on my mattress, scrunching my knees to my chest, splaying them back out, bucking my hips. I tried to find any position that would alleviate the pain but none did and I resorted to curling up on my side and bearing it with labored breathing.

This must be like childbirth
, I kept thinking but what a joke of nature. Nothing this hellish should produce something you want to kiss and cuddle and love forever. This kind of pain should spawn ugly, evil, live-under-the-bed-and-rot kind of monsters.

The cramps made way to pure nausea. I vomited sporadically until it was less vomit and more of a dry heaving. I tried to flick back over what I ate. I was always careful and checking cans for bulging or smells. Perhaps it was as simple as being sick. I hadn’t been sick since The Before. There was no one to play tag with on viruses or bacteria. No sneezes in crowded rooms or coughs in a tight space or food service workers that didn’t wash their hands.

On day three, I stopped moving altogether. My water supply was running low. I threw up most of what I ingested. My lips bled from dry cracks. My throat was raw and scratchy from all the acid coming back up. Even scarier, my left eye was drooping so much it was hard to see out of it.

My dogs paced nervously around me. When the animals were nervous, it was bad. They could sense things beyond what normal people could. They could sense death. In the early days, they were vital in letting me know which houses to explore and which to pass on.

Pacing dogs. Okay. I needed to move. I needed to move or I wasn’t going to live.

The Great Move (I named it such because it was so monumental it needed a name) took all day and into the night. Little by little, I used what strength was left in my arms to scooch myself across the floor. When I got to the front door, I scooted over the pebbles that lined the walk to the cottage. Then I scooted over the concrete parking lot.

During all this, when my arms became rubbery tired, I would like flat on my back and bake in the sun like a chicken leg on the grill. I would think about quitting and just laying here, baking to death, until I was done (
ding!
) and perfectly roasted and tender for whatever animal was coming for dinner.

Then I’d quit wallowing, pick up my arms, and scoot some more. My legs felt like flopping jelly. The couple of times I asked for their help, they scared me with how useless they were. My back was a crosshatch of scratches from the various surfaces I raked my body over.

Night came and the air cooled. Instead of baking, I was shivering. I was thirsty. I was exhausted. I was close to crying for the second time since The Sweep. My muscles cursed me and I gritted my teeth. I was now using my elbows as leverage and they were raw and bloodied.

My target came into view. The house was the two story brick home that sat at the front of the street on Windsong. I’d been there many times before and had already dug through her story. An older woman lived there, an empty nester if the pictures of the developing humans that spanned the wall down the stairwell was any indication. A boy and a girl and they both proudly displayed diplomas at the end of the progression with their salt-and-fire haired mom standing next to them, beaming. Upstairs there was a room in an awkward mix of blue plaid, a batman poster, and a sewing machine. The other room was untouched. The daughter’s bulletin board of friends’ pictures and a prom corsage were still hanging up.

Why did you sacrifice his room for your crafting hobby and not hers?
I had wondered. I loved wondering about people’s stories.

Downstairs was a spacious kitchen, a den, a living room anchored by a couch that provided cushy seating for my butt when I found a book I couldn’t put down, and a study of furnished with unending oak that held a number of outdated items: a calculator, a typewriter, and a corded phone.

After several minutes and frustrated guttural cries, I lifted myself high enough and long enough off the ground to turn the knob and fall heavily into the foyer. Baloo nosed me in the neck when I didn’t move. I still didn’t move. I kept my forehead pressed to the cold marble and bit a trembling lip. I wanted my pills. I wanted to numb everything. My body was so weak. The cramps were a fresh kind, the kind that asked for water and that punished my body for its denial. My headache was just there to join the party. No purpose. Just pounding away, refusing to be left out of the fun.

I dragged myself the last several feet into the study, grateful that this endeavor didn’t include the stairs. I picked up the receiver. I didn’t even know what time it was.

Nine?

Midnight?

Four in the morning?

When the minutes felt like eras, keeping track no longer seemed important.

I dialed the number knowing full well this may have all been for nothing. I hadn’t called him in over a week. It was the middle of the night. He may not even be in the hospital anymore.

Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-ni-ye-ine
.

For a second I thought I was singing the jingle as the phone rang but then I realized my lips were just moving and no sound was coming out. I rubbed them together. They scratched each other.

Still ringing.

The crying was close. So close.

I clutched the receiver. No, not close. Here. I was crying. I could feel the wet. A drop of it dangled on my nose, taking its time to fall. I lay on my side. When it fell, I’d hang up.

It fell.

I waited.

Still ringing.

I scrunched my eyes closed.

Still ringing.

I felt the loneliness well up inside me and swallow me like a Venus fly trap. It engulfed me fully. It stole all the air and suffocated me.

“Hello!”

His voice filled my head.

“Oh, my God, hey! Talk to me. Please.”

He sounded out of breath. Like the first time I ever called him.

My lips moved. Still no sound, just scratching.

“I know you’re there. I know you’re mad.”

“I need you.” I tried to make my voice strong, but all my effort could only produce a wispy sound.

Even so, he heard it like I shouted it in his face. I heard his franticness go still and his voice became grave. “Where are you?”

“Tucson, Arizona. House. Corner of Park and Windsong.” I coughed and drew the strength for a few more words. “My name is Tasha.”

“Tasha, I’m Alex. And I’m coming to get you. Don’t die.”

Chapter 17

Him

Shit.

I tore through the office door and down the hall to where I’d set up my living space. A set of three hospital rooms, one as my bedroom, one as an office, and one as a place to put my feet up, listen to music, and not think for a while. I made for my makeshift bedroom. I was in nothing but boxers and pajama pants.

I didn’t expect a call from her at two-thirty in the morning.

I didn’t expect a call from her ever again.

The ringing almost didn’t wake me. It was a foreign sound to hear in my sleep and just like the first time I heard the trill through the hallway I responded to it this time just as bewildered and confused. Only this time it was because it was wrapped in foggy sleep. Once I realized what it was, I leapt from my bed and nearly fell trying to get to it. I loved that sound. It squeezed my chest and thumped on my heart whenever I heard it.

I could tell she was in serious trouble as soon as she spoke. She sounded sick. But not regular sick. I’ve worked with patients on the brink of passing. There’s a giveaway in their voice, a resigned knowing that even they’re sometimes not aware of that carries in their tone.

She didn’t have long.

I hastily threw a bag together, stuffing in an array of antibiotics and antivirals.

On the way down the staircase, I hesitated in front of the floor that housed my lab. If I adjusted a few settings, the work I’ve put in over the past two weeks would be saved. The adjustments would take about an hour.

She needed me. I didn’t have an hour.

I was in the parking garage in record time. I snatched my helmet from where I kept it on a hook right inside the door and raced to where I parked my preferred mode of transportation. I put on my helmet and revved up the motorcycle before peeling out into the purple dark that comes from the still hour of the night and lack of the Houston skyline that once upon a time would have chased it away. I’d been to Tucson once before if you count stopping at a Waffle House on the way to Phoenix as “been to.”

I got on the exit for Interstate 10 and kicked the bike into the next gear. The freeways were mostly clear of cars so it would be a straight shot. All she needed to do was hold on a little longer.

Chapter 18

Him

I’d heard about the dogs but they were something else up close and personal. Three German shepherds circled around her. The tufts on the back of their necks ruffled and low growls were emitting from their throats.

The lowest kind of growling. The kind that meant business. Not the loud, distractive barking of a bluffer. It was a warning that the next step I took meant sacrificing my jugular. I backed away slowly, frustrated. I could see her lying inside the doorway to the room on her side. Her face was halfway smushed on the floor, bending her nose. That’s how I knew she was
out
out and not just sleeping off some painful headache.

I growled my frustration back at the dogs, then turned on my heel and stalked out of the house. I remembered seeing a sign for the zoo at the South Kino Parkway exit and I hopped back on my bike and backtracked to that street.

The Reid Park Zoo wasn’t terribly big and it wasn’t long before I found what I needed. Tranquilizer gun.

I filled my pack with some darts, slung the gun across my back and drove back to the house.

Once inside, I was able to take the first two dogs down easily but while reloading for the third, he leapt at me and his razor teeth sunk into my arm. My cry of pain was inhuman. It was even invamp. The beast literally ripped a chunk of my flesh out with his mouth. I used the force of my leg to land a foot in his neck, aimed, and shot a dart into his shoulder. He still wasn’t down, so I scrambled backwards. There was no reloading. I couldn’t feel my left arm.

Luckily, he staggered before he could reach me a second time and then slumped to the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I untied a bandana from my pack and tied it off on the wound to staunch the bleeding.

Making my way to her quickly, I knelt beside her and repositioned her head so she could breathe easier. It didn’t help. Her breath still sounded labored. The left side of her face was drooping significantly. I felt her forehead and skin. No fever. There were vomit stains down the front of her shirt. Her elbows and arms were crusted with blood. So was her back, I could see, when I lifted her shirt.

I glanced down and saw thin lines of blood trailing from the door to where she lay.

She dragged herself here. To call me.

I tried to breathe through the grip that tightened my chest.

Focus, Alex
, I thought. It had to be something she ate. All the symptoms pointed to botulism. Which meant her muscles were slowly paralyzing. I needed to get her on oxygen and back to Houston as soon as possible. My antibiotics and antiviral meds were useless. I knew the hospital I was in had some antitoxins.

The next hour was painfully excruciating. I found a truck to hotwire with enough gas to make it at almost halfway back to Houston. I siphoned the rest of what I would need into several large gas cans. I raided a clinic and got a breathing machine on a battery pack that still had some juice. I found three dog cages big enough to house the loves of her life, a fact which kept me from unloading the rest of the tranquilizer darts into their snarling hides. The whole time, I kept her next to me, constantly checking to make sure her vitals were still up. Every errand made me nervous. I itched to get back on the road and get her to the hospital where I knew I could help her.

When we were finally departing, once everything was loaded onto the truck, I stole a few moments to look at her. Yeah, her droopy eye gave her a Quasimodo vibe but I could still see the girl underneath the temporary deformity and it fit. It fit her voice. It fit her fire. Her hair was as described, cut in a short crop. I could see streaks of red in the top from the dyes she told me she’d been playing with. It looked good against the caramel of her skin. She was tall, almost as tall as me. I wanted to see her eyes. It would finish the picture, make her real. But they were closed and if I lifted her lids, they’d be lifeless to me anyway. I could wait for that last piece.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and, with a fleeting moment of sadness for the motorcycle I had to give up and leave in Tucson, I sped onto the highway and headed back. I glanced in the rearview mirror at her asleep in the back and the wistful sadness dissipated. She was more than a fair trade for that motorcycle.