The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,153

They froze and looked back at the stairs. Their bloody footprints came right down the middle of the carpet. They turned back around and saw Grace stepping back from them, taking in everything.

“You didn’t…” she began, but couldn’t finish.

“Go see for yourself,” Maryellen said.

“I’d prefer not to,” Grace said.

“No,” Mrs. Greene said. “If you have doubts, you need to see. He’s in the upstairs toilet.”

Grace went reluctantly, fastidiously avoiding the bloodstains on the stairs. They heard her footsteps cross the bedroom and stop in the bathroom doorway. There was a long silence. When she came back down, her steps were shaky and she had one hand on the wall. She looked at the three women, covered in blood.

“What’s wrong with Patricia?” she asked.

They filled her in on what had happened. As they talked, her face got firm, her shoulders squared, she stood straighter. When they finished, she said, “I see. And what’s the plan to dispose of him?”

“Stuhr’s has a contract with Roper and East Cooper Hospital,” Maryellen said. “To burn their medical waste in the crematorium early in the morning and late at night. I put a big box of biohazard burn bags in my car, but…they’re moving. We can’t take them in like this.”

They all watched as Grace tapped her fingers against her lips.

“We can still use Stuhr’s,” she said, then checked the inside of her wrist. “There’s less than half an hour left in the game.”

“Grace,” Maryellen said, the dried blood crackling on her face. “We can’t take moving bags of body parts to Stuhr’s. They’ll see them. They’ll open them up and I can’t explain what they are.”

“Bennett and I have two columbarium niches for our ashes,” Grace said. They’re in the back of the cemetery, on the eastern side, facing the sunrise. We’ll simply put his head in one and the rest of his remains in the other.”

“But there’s a record,” Maryellen said. “On the computer. And what happens when the two of you pass?”

“Surely you can alter the records,” Grace said. “As for Bennett and myself, hopefully it will be years before we have to cross that bridge. Now, let’s see if he has some boxes somewhere. Maryellen, you and Mrs. Greene shower in the guest room. Use dark towels and leave them in the tub. Tell me you at least brought changes of clothes?”

“In the car,” Maryellen said.

“Kitty,” Grace said, “bring her car here. I’ll look for boxes. You two clean yourselves up. We can only count on forty or so minutes before that street is full of people, so let’s be purposeful.”

Kitty brought the car around and helped Grace pack the squirming, plastic-wrapped body parts into boxes, and lugged them down to the front door. Mrs. Greene and Maryellen didn’t clean themselves perfectly, but at least they didn’t look like they worked in a slaughterhouse anymore.

“How much longer is left in the game?” Grace asked as they dropped the final cardboard box onto the stack by the front door.

Kitty turned on the TV.

“…and Clemson has called a time-out hoping to run out the clock…” an announcer brayed.

“Less than five minutes,” Kitty said.

“Then let’s load the car while the streets are still clear,” Grace said.

They almost ran, shambling up and down the dark front stairs, tossing the boxes into Maryellen’s minivan. They could feel James Harris moving inside, like they were carrying boxes full of rats.

When they were finished, they stood in the front hall and realized that they had failed. The plan had been to wipe James Harris off the face of the earth, leaving his house pristine, as if he’d simply disappeared into thin air, or packed his things and walked out the door. But blood had pooled by the front door where they’d stacked the boxes, the white carpeted stairs were a mess of streaked gore, there were blood smears up and down the walls, bloody fingerprints were drying on the banister, and even from downstairs they could see that the mess covered the upstairs hall. And then there was the master bath.

A huge roar