The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,47

the door, lips curled back to expose bared teeth, mouth open, tongue cramped in a fold, making a deep, nasty sound. The dirty smell of the rats rolled into the room, paralyzing Mrs. Greene with fear. She still remembered that night when she was a little girl, waking up with something squirming beneath the blankets, something bald and fleshy and cold slithering over her shins, and her sister screaming, high, long, and loud, like she’d never stop, until their mother came in running, pulling the covers back to find a hairy rat fixed to her sister’s belly button, chewing its way in.

That childhood nightmare came screaming at her as the huge black rat on the steps went from stone still to a black blur, leaping off the stairs, racing at Miss Mary across the empty carpet, moving so fast she screamed.

And Ragtag was there, snapping the black rat up in his jaws and savagely shaking his head. She heard something snap, and a keening squeak muffled inside a furry throat, and then the enormous rat was on the ground, body contracting, going limp. But as its corpse twitched, the flood of rats bulged in the doorway, then broke and poured bonelessly down the steps, flowing around the box fan, coming for the three of them.

Mrs. Greene ran to Miss Mary’s armchair but froze as the heavy rats skittered across her bare feet, their sharp nails scratching her skin, their hairless tails cold against her flesh. A few of them stopped and sank their claws into her pants leg and began pulling themselves up. She did a frantic, high-stepping dance to shake them free.

Razor blades shredded her toes. She reached down to pluck a gray rat out of her pants leg and it caught one of her fingers in its mouth. Sharp teeth met bone, and cold prickles of nausea flooded Mrs. Greene’s gut.

Ragtag barked and raged, drowning in a living carpet of rats. One clawed its way onto his back, and another three hung from his ears. Mrs. Greene saw his tan fur go dark with blood. She threw the gray rat against the curtains, losing skin from her fingers as it went. Then she turned to Miss Mary.

“Ohuh, ughuh!” Miss Mary screamed, as a hairy river rose up her legs and pooled in her lap.

Rats came over the back of her chair, flowed down over her shoulders, got tangled in her hair. She raised one arm, holding the photograph she’d been pressing to her leg high up in the air, but the rats hauled themselves up her sleeves, went down the open collar of her nightgown, crawled up her neck, and covered her face.

Rats covered the carpet, the sofa, they crawled up the curtains, they darted across the white sheets of Miss Mary’s hospital bed, they dashed along the windowsill, they filled the room. But the bathroom door was still closed. If she could get them both in there she would be safe.

Mrs. Greene felt hot needles pierce her belly button, and she looked down and saw a rat clinging to her waistband, nose beneath her shirt, and something inside her broke. She saw a squirming pile of rats where Miss Mary and Ragtag had been and she ran for the bathroom, grabbing the rat on her stomach with one hand and hurling it away, even as it sank its teeth into her belly button and she felt it tear with a sound she would never forget.

She hit the bathroom door with her body, turned the knob, and fell inside, then slammed the door on the rats behind her and leaned back, holding it closed as claws scrabbled against it from the other side. Covered in rat hair that made her sneeze and gag, she slid to the floor.

Sloshing came from the toilet and she heard the unmistakable sound of something losing purchase on the porcelain, sliding down, and thrashing in the toilet water. Mrs. Greene grabbed the shower head on its flexible hose and turned the knob to full hot. She stepped up onto the closed toilet lid just as dozens of rats began to push at it from below. She turned the steaming, hissing shower head on the scrabbling claws beneath the crack in the door, on the rats flattening their skulls and trying