Dagger laughed, kicked dirt into the zombie’s face, and aimed the nozzle. Gasoline splattered on the zombie’s head and soaked his clothes. He waved his arms to block the spray.
Dagger took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and set the butt between his lips. He dug a plastic lighter from his pocket and held it to the cigarette.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I warned.
Dagger dismissed me with a fanged sneer. “Hey, I got it, Pops. Anything happens, I got my vampire reflexes.” He bobbed side to side.
I wanted to find the vampire who had turned Dagger and slap her. She hadn’t done our bloodsucking tribe any favors by converting this arrogant dumb ass.
Dagger thumbed the lighter. It sparked and the gas fumes went whoosh. His clothes on fire, Dagger screamed and tripped over the sprayer, tumbling him and the sprayer on top of the zombie. They tangled together, their flailing bodies sandwiching the sprayer. Flames jetted from the pile, followed by a roaring fireball that mushroomed into a column of black smoke.
The heat slapped Mel and me and we were surrounded by the stink of burning compost. We stepped back. Mel covered his sideburns and said, “Awesome. I would’ve paid good money to see this.”
The charred bodies settled in a burning heap.
We experienced vampires have a mandate to protect the newly turned, to protect them against everything except their own stupidity.
“That Dagger,” Mel said, “what a dumbass.”
“At least he took one with him.”
Mel ambled toward the excavator and climbed over the treads to get into the cab. “Gotta make sure the zombie is history.” He fumbled in the cab and tossed a padlock to the ground. A minute later the diesel engine grunted to life. The excavator boom lurched up and jerked left and right.
I hobbled out of the way.
The bucket on the end of the boom swiveled outward until its claws pointed down. The boom dropped and the bucket cleaved the bodies. Mel raised the boom and the bodies fell apart in halves. Smoking embers of flesh and clothes fluttered to the ground. He lifted and dropped the boom again and again, hacking the bodies into smoldering pieces. He yelled out the cab: “Hey, I oughta get a job at Benihana.”
After Mel had chopped Dagger and the zombie into hash, he pulled the boom up and away. He climbed down from the excavator and stood beside me.
The pile of dirt looked like a lumpy mass of rancid bread dough. “Good job, Mel, but we can’t leave evidence.”
“No problem. I’ll make some calls.”
This wasn’t all we had to worry about. “There’s a more pressing issue, I’m afraid.”
“What’s that?” Mel asked.
“Where did this zombie come from?”
I recognized the smells. Ditch water. Smoke. The stink from under my uniform and body armor.
I was back where my private hell had begun.
Iraq.
Four shadows moved cautiously through the evening gloom. They lurked toward me along the bank of the canal. Only I knew they approached annihilation.
I was certain they were insurgents sneaking to attack my soldiers and me. Only later would I discover the gruesome truth. They weren’t insurgents: they were civilians.
A man, two women, and a little girl.
The family I helped slaughter years ago.
I didn’t want to see this again. Once in a lifetime, even an immortal lifetime, was more than enough.
My kundalini noir — that black serpent of energy that animates my form instead of a beating heart-wrestled and beat against my ribs like it wanted to escape.
The Iraqis took timid steps, moving like hunted deer.
I tried to shout a warning but my mouth was dry and breathless.
I tried to jerk my hands up but my arms were cinched down as if in a straitjacket.
I tried to close my eyes and turn away but could not. My eyes were pinned open and my head locked in place, forcing me to watch the despicable horror.
Automatic gunfire burst loud as thunder. Red tracer bullets crisscrossed the air in a red net of death. The Iraqis started to fall even as grenades exploding at their feet made them dance like grotesque marionettes.
Gun sights materialized before me and centered on the smallest of the figures, the little girl.
Bang.
The recoil of an invisible carbine pushed against my shoulder.
Silence.
The huge eyes of the little girl bloomed with pain, the irises forever ringed with terror, dark as the night I last saw her alive.
The little girl fell onto her back.
In that moment, the joy and hope was sucked out of my life. Shame bore upon me like the weight of a mountain.
My legs weakened and I collapsed to my knees into a pool of blood spreading from the little girl.
A woman whispered my name and it echoed in the darkness.
Felix…ix…ix.
Then became louder.
Felix…ix…ix.
A plume of vapor wafted from the little girl. The plume rose and twisted, creating her ghostly twin. A filmy gown clung to her youthful form. When I first saw her years ago on that terrible night in Iraq, she might have been twelve at most. Now as she hovered in the air, she grew through adolescence, becoming taller, her face longer, her figure ripening from little girl to young woman.
My name echoed even louder. It echoed again and again until the sound reverberated in my skull like the deafening crash of a drum.
My kundalini noir convulsed and dissolved into a thousand spiders that crawled inside my skin as I screamed.
My hands suddenly wrenched free. I clutched my face and balled up into a fetal position.
I sat upright in my coffin. My nerves were raw and electric and my throat hurt. The echo in my head faded as the nightmare receded from my consciousness. I blinked. I was alone in my apartment, surrounded by a smothering quiet.
My kundalini noir grew tight as it sought to keep me centered. I rubbed my face and kneaded my hands. I welcomed back my strength and the mass of my physical body.
Homey smells comforted me, a lingering aroma of incense, a trace of yesterday’s dinner-rib eye with lots of onions and type A-negative-and the dregs of bourbon and vermouth in the glass on the table beside my coffin.
I swung my legs out of the coffin. I slid off the table and lowered myself to the floor. Once upright, I paused for a moment to get my bearings, then proceeded in a bleary shuffle to the bathroom.
I thought that as a supernatural I’d be immune to nightmares, but apparently not.
I’m the legendary undead monster in human form, yet the ghost of this child tormented me like a fever.
Why the girl? What did it mean that she rose as a young woman like a phoenix from her fallen body?
I thought I had paid my cosmic penance. The girl and her family had forgiven me during a hallucination when I was close to a second death. After their blessing, I was complete as a vampire and felt free to drink human blood.
Maybe this was a new bout of post-traumatic stress. A lot of war veterans never get out from under it.
A headache throbbed behind my forehead. I ran the tap, leaned over the sink, and rinsed my face.
Out of habit, I stared into the mirror, and in my place saw what I always did…
Nothing.
I am a soulless immortal with the potential to accumulate wisdom over the centuries. I’m privy to the great mysteries of the universe. So far I’d learned that vampires can be as naïve or as treacherous as humans, and that the corporate vermin who run this planet would sell out their entire race for an extra bump on the bottom line. I’ve barely held my own in those fights and I’ve lost one big one. I failed my friend and fellow vampire, Carmen Arellano, and now she’s a hostage of alien gangsters somewhere deep in outer space.