The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,149

Kitty felt lost.

“What do we do?” she asked. “Do we call 911?”

“No, roll her on her…” Maryellen took her hands and tried different approaches, fluttering over Patricia’s twitching body. “Maybe raise her head. She might be in shock? I don’t know.”

Of course it was Mrs. Greene who knew CPR. One moment, Kitty watched Maryellen helplessly running through everything she knew and the next Mrs. Greene gently pushed her aside, placed her hands underneath Patricia’s shoulders and said, “Help me get her on the floor.”

Kitty took her feet and they half-dragged, half-dropped Patricia onto the throw rug next to the bed. Then Mrs. Greene put one hand under the back of Patricia’s neck, the other on her chin, and popped Patricia’s mouth open like the hood of a car.

“Check the blinds,” Mrs. Greene said. “Make sure no one can see.”

Kitty almost wept with gratitude at being told what to do. She looked in the bathroom and saw James Harris still on the floor where they’d left him. At first she thought he was convulsing, then realized he was laughing.

“I’m starting to feel much better,” he said. “Every second I’m feeling better and better.”

She made sure the blinds were closed all over the house. She wanted to switch off the symphony music on the radio downstairs, but finding the on/off switch took too much time and she needed to be back upstairs. There weren’t enough of them to do all this.

In the bedroom, Mrs. Greene applied four perfect chest compressions, then four identical breaths into Patricia’s mouth, as methodically and calmly as if she were blowing up a raft by the pool. Patricia’s mouth hung slack. She had stopped convulsing. Was that a good sign?

Mrs. Greene stopped the CPR and Kitty’s heart stopped, too.

“Is she…” she began, then found her throat was too dry to speak.

Mrs. Greene pulled a Kleenex from her pocket and wiped her mouth, checked the Kleenex, and dabbed at the corners of her lips.

“She’s breathing,” she said.

Kitty could see Patricia’s chest lifting and falling. They both looked at Maryellen.

“I panicked,” Maryellen said. “I’m sorry.”

“I need you to put pressure on that wound,” Mrs. Greene said, pointing to Patricia’s thigh.

The place where James Harris had been torn away from Patricia’s leg looked ragged and ugly. Blood oozed from it like sap.

“You haven’t changed a thing,” James Harris said from the bathroom. “She’ll die later rather than sooner. So what?”

“Don’t speak to him,” Mrs. Greene said. “He’s going to talk, try to convince us of something, but that’s all he can do now. We need to remember our jobs and do them. Get a washcloth and hold it on her leg.”

Kitty went into the bathroom, stepping over James Harris, avoiding his hands, and brought back all the hand towels and washcloths she could find. Maryellen folded one of the washcloths into a square and pressed it to Patricia’s thigh. Mrs. Greene and Kitty went back into the bathroom.

“What’s your big plan?” James Harris asked, as they rolled him over. His arms flopped uselessly. “You’re going to book club me to death? Not invite me to your next meeting?”

They each gripped him beneath an armpit, raised him to a sitting position, and then Mrs. Greene and Kitty exchanged glances and nodded. One…two…

“Lift from your legs,” Mrs. Greene said.

…three. They heaved James Harris up to sit on the edge of his huge whirlpool tub.

“Drowning won’t work,” he said, grinning. “It’s been tried.”

They didn’t care what happened to him now; he was as good as dead, so they let go and he toppled backward and smashed into the bottom of the fiberglass tub in a jumble of limbs.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.

Kitty arranged him so that he lay full length, his back propped up against one end of the tub, while Mrs. Greene moved everything out of the way. Then she left the room and came back in with the cooler and the grocery bag.

They unfolded a blue tarp over the floor