“Look out, man.” Pete shoved him away, sank to his knees, hunched over and heaved bloody vomit. Then he hocked and spit out gobs of red mucus. When he finished, he stayed down, his head hanging. “Fuckin‘ A,” he mumbled.

“Are you all right?”

“Ohhh shit. You gotta be kidding.” With one hand he fingered his face. “What happened?”

“Uriah clobbered you with a rock.”

“I think my fuckin‘ nose is busted.”

“Yeah.”

“Feel like my head’s split open.”

“You hit a rock when you fell, too.”

He moaned again. He touched the back of his head. Larry didn’t see any blood in the hair.

“We’d better get you to a doctor.”

“Fuck that. Take me to an undertaker.” He pushed himself up and leaned against the wall. Holding the sides of his head, he squeezed his swollen eyes shut. “So what happened to Uriah?”

“He’s down in the stream bed.”

“Did one of us get him?”

“Sort of.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a long story. Let’s get to the car. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Yeah, but is he dead, or what?”

“He might be. I don’t know. Think you can get through the window okay?”

“Sure,” he muttered.

Larry climbed into the building. There, he clutched Pete’s arm and held him steady while he clambered over the sill. Keeping his grip, he led Pete through the shadowy room and out to the street.

The car was still resting on its jack.

The feathered shaft of an arrow jutted from the wall of the flat tire.

“Good thing we hadn’t finished changing it,” Larry said.

“Our lucky day,” Pete muttered.

“It hasbeen lucky.”

“Trade heads, you won’t think so.”

“Could’ve been a lot worse.”

“Yeah, sure. Get the trunk open, huh? Get me a beer.”

“I’m not sure you should drink any alcohol. A head injury like that...”

“Who died and made you a neurologist?” Pete slapped the trunk. “Come on!”

Larry opened it, removed the lid from the cooler and took out two cans of beer. He popped their tops and gave one to Pete. Instead of drinking, Pete poured beer onto his handkerchief and started cleaning the blood off his face.

Larry stepped to the front of the car. The can was wet in his hand. He took a drink. The beer was cold and good. Squatting, he yanked the arrow from the tire.

“Let’s see it,” Pete said, tossing the sodden handkerchief to the pavement.

Larry gave the arrow to him.

“Just like I thought, Apache.”

“Right.” “Nice souvenir.”

“Good thing it didn’t end up in one of us.” Larry drank some more beer. “We’re out here playing cowboy and a lunatic starts shooting arrows at us.”

“Why don’t you take off my hat? You look like a dork. If I laugh, it’s gonna hurt.”

He plucked Pete’s hat off the crown of his own and held it out.

“On this head? You’ve gotta be kidding. Just toss it in the car.”

He sailed it through the open window. It landed on the passenger seat. Taking another drink of beer, he squatted down and started pumping the jack handle.

“You sure we don’t have to worry about that bozo jumping us again?”

“I shot him three times,” Larry said.

“Holy shit.”

While he worked on changing the tire, he told Pete about rushing down the embankment after Uriah had thrown the rock, being unable to find him, returning to the top just as the old man was about to hammer a stake into Pete’s chest, and putting a bullet through his face. He told about Uriah yelling “Vampire!” and attacking him with the stake. About the bullet that was stopped by the crucifix, about the accidental shot and throwing Uriah down the slope.

When he finished, he looked around. Pete blew softly through pursed lips and muttered, “Are you shitting me?”

“Nope,” Larry said. “It got pretty wild there for a minute.”

“And I missed it.”

“Sorry about that.”

“The bastard was really gonna do a Van Helsing on me?”

“That’s right.”

“Sure glad you’re good with that shootin‘ iron, old hoss.”

“Me, too.”

Pete tipped his can high and emptied it into his mouth. “I’m having another. How about you?”

Though Larry’s can was still half full, he said, “Yeah.” He used the lug wrench to tighten the nuts while Pete went for the beers.

Pete set the fresh one down beside him.

Larry started lowering the car.

“Sounds to me like the old buzzard might still be alive,” Pete said.

“If he is, he’s not feeling too spry. And his bow’s busted, so he can’t do us any harm.”

“Wish you’d polished him off, though.”

“I thought about it.”

Pulling the jack out from under the car, he waited for Pete to suggest they go back and finish the job.

It didn’t happen.

Instead Pete said, “What’ll we do about him?”

“Leave him.”

“I’ve got half a mind to go back there and put a bullet in his head. But the other half hurts too fucking much.”

“Let’s just get the hell out of here. We can worry about him later.”

“Come back in a few days, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Larry said. He had no intention of returning. But why argue about it now?

He didn’t feel like fighting with the hubcap, either. Instead, he took it and the jack to the trunk. Then he rolled the flat tire to the rear of the car and lifted it in.

Pete showed up beside him with the flashlight and arrow. “We’re gonna keep this quiet, right?” he asked. “You aren’t thinking we should tell the cops?”

“No way,” Larry assured him.

“Or the wives.”

“What’ll we tell them?”

“We went target shooting, right? I tripped and smashed my face on a rock.”

“Sounds good to me.” He shut the trunk. He returned to the front, picked up his two beers, and climbed in behind the steering wheel. He finished the first can as Larry moved his hat out of the way and lowered himself gingerly onto the passenger seat.

He started the car.

“It’s all gotta go in the book, though,” Pete said.

He made a U-turn and sped for the end of town.

Pete grinned at him. “It’s gonna be great in the book, huh, pardner?”

“Yeah. Great.”

“Who would’ve figured it? We come out here looking for the bastard and we wind up in a fuckin‘ battle. Fantastic. Gonna have us a best-seller, for sure.”

“And a lot of explaining to do.”

“Hey, the guy’s a homicidal maniac. What’s to explain?”

“Plenty, I should imagine. The wives’ll find out everything. The cops’ll find out everything. We’ll be up to our ears in crapola.”

“Hey, you’re not gonna pussy out on me, are you?” Larry shook his head. He took a drink of beer as he sped past Babe’s Garage and out of town. “After all this, nothing in the world could stop me from writing that damn book.”

“My man.”

Thirty-six

Uriah got slowly to his feet. He stumbled over to a boulder and sat down on it, wincing as his rump met the hard surface.

He knew he’d lost a lot of skin on his way down the slope. But the abrasions were nothing compared to the bullet wounds.

Leaning forward, he spit out some blood and bits of tooth. With his tongue he gently probed the hole in his left cheek. The pain made him cringe. The hole was pretty small, though. A lot smaller than the wound in his right cheek. Not only had the bullet exited there, but so had one of his molars.

Lucky that bloodsucking son of Satan just had a twenty-two, he thought.

Hurt like crazy, though.

Spitting out some more blood, he fingered the furrow in the scalp above his left ear.

I’ve been hurt worse, he reminded himself.

This was bad, but he figured nothing could ever hurt as much as the time one of the vampires stabbed the stake into his eye. Talk about a world of pain!

Uriah rubbed the bleeding gouge in the middle of his chest.

He saw the crucifix.

The gold-plated body of Jesus was broken in half at the stomach.

He stared at it for a long time.