too loud, just so they can hear, “they robbed me, they took everything but my clothes, all my ID, my credit cards, my cash—”
They stop and look at me running across the street at them and the first thing they see is the blood, of course. This would scare anybody but them (or me, naturally). I trip myself on the curb and collapse practically at their feet. “Can I use your phone? Please? I’m scared to stay out here, my car won’t start, they might be still around—”
The man leans down and pulls me up under my arm. “Of course. Come in, we’ll call the police. I’m a doctor.”
I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing at that one. He’s an operator maybe but no fucking doctor. Then I taste blood, so I let it run out of my mouth and the two of them, the man and the kid get so hot they can’t get me in the house fast enough.
Nice house. All the Victorian shit restored, even the fuzzy stuff on the wallpaper, watchamacallit, flocked wallpaper. I get a glimpse of the living room before the guy’s rushing me upstairs, saying he’s got his medical bag up there. I just bet he does, and I got mine right in my hand, which they do not bother wondering about what with all this blood and this guy with no ID and out at four in the morning, must be a criminal anyway. I used to ask Villanueva, don’t they ever get full, like they can’t drink another drop, but Villanueva told me no, they always had room for one more, it was time they were pressed for. Dawn. I’d be through long before then, but even if I wasn’t, dawn would take care of the rest of it for me.
They’re getting so excited it’s getting me even more excited. I look at the kid and man, if I’d been anyone else, I woulda started screaming and trying to get away, because he’s all gone. I mean, the kid part is all gone and just this fucking hungry thing from hell. So I stop feeling funny about there being a kid, because like I said, there ain’t no kid, just a short one along with the tall one.
And shit if he don’t twig, right there on the stairs. I musta looked like I recognized him.
“We’re burned! We’re burned!” he yells and tries to elbow me in the face. I dip and he goes right the fuck over my head and down, ka-boom, ka-boom. Guess what, they can’t fly. It don’t do him, but they can feel pain, and if you break their legs, they can’t walk for a while until they can get extra blood to heal them up. The kid’s fucking neck is broke, you can see it plain as anything.
But I don’t get no chance to study on it because the big one growls like a fucking attack dog and grabs me up from behind around the waist. They really are stronger than normal and you better believe it hurt like a motherfucker. He squeezes and there go two ribs and the soft drinks I had on the plane, like a fucking fountain.
“You’ll go slow for that,” he says, “you’ll go for days, and you’ll beg to die.”
Obviously, he don’t know me. I’m hurting all right, but it takes a lot more than a couple of ribs to put me down and I never had to beg for nothing, but these guys get all their dialog off the late show anyway and they ain’t thinking of nothing except sticking it to you and drinking you dry. Fucking undead got a, a watchamacallit, a narrow perspective and they think everyone’s scared of them.
That’s why they send me, because I don’t see no undead and I don’t see no human being, I just see something to play with. I gotta narrow perspective, too, I guess.
But then everything is not so good because he tears the bag outa my hand and flings it away up in the hallway. Then he carries me the rest of the way upstairs and down the opposite end and tosses me into a dark room and slams the door and locks it.
I hold still until I can figure out how to move and cause myself the least pain, and I start taking off my shirts. I’m wearing a corduroy shirt with a pure linen lining sewn into the front and two heavy one-hundred-percent cotton