By Blood We Live Part 58

A full-length mirror hung on the closet door. When Pitr stepped in front of it, there was no sign of his bare flesh, only a vague, indefinite mist.

Rewind, play, pause. Again. Martin watched it over and over, frame by frame, but there was never anything there but the mist. Finally he clicked forward.

Pitr stepped away from the mirror. Lucy leaned back, bare-breasted chest heaving like a B-movie diva. Pitr grew to the height of the room, cackling at her, wiping blood from the wound on his chest with clawed fingers and anointing her like a priest at a baptism. She screamed.

Blankets rustled. "What are you doing?" Lucy asked in a weak, sleepy voice.

"Nothing," Martin said. He hit the eject b.u.t.ton. Yanking the tape out of the ca.s.sette, he piled it at his feet until the reels were empty. Then he carried it downstairs and burned it all in the fireplace.

Martin stood at the kitchen counter, making soup for Lucy when he saw the rat outside on the rocks. It crawled all around the pumphouse, trying to scale the sides. Martin went out to the screened-in porch to watch it.

Finally the rat fell exhausted, lethargic.

Martin went out and picked up a large, flat rock from the herb garden beside the foundation. He crept slowly out to the pumphouse, expecting the rat to bolt away at any minute. But it crouched there, on the concrete base, facing the blank wall. Martin slammed down the rock.

There was a wet crunch as it connected with the concrete pad; blood squirted out one side.

A ferocious tapping, faint but unmistakable, came from inside the pumphouse. Martin cupped his hands to the stone.

"Shut up, Pitr!" he shouted.

Then he went back inside.

It was late afternoon before Martin gathered the courage to find a pair of gloves and a shovel. He went back to the pumphouse, and tossed the b.l.o.o.d.y stone among the other boulders piled up where the waves licked the sh.o.r.e. Then he buried the rat. He covered the bloodstain on the concrete with dirt, and scuffed it in as well as he could with his deck shoes.

When he was done, he cupped his hands to the stone. "How do I make her well again, Pitr?" He leaned his ear to the concrete to hear the answer.

"Let me to come out and I will tell you," the voice croaked, so faint Martin could barely make it out. "She is burning, with the fire. Only I can help her."

"f.u.c.k you, Pitr."

"I am come out and you can do that do." Laughter. Or choking. Martin rather hoped it was choking. "You want young again, Martin?" the voice cracked through the stone. "I can give you the young again."

"Yeah, you and v.i.a.g.r.a. Go to h.e.l.l, Pitr."

Something hard pounded on the inside wall. "You cannot keep me here. You cannot run far enough. When I-"

Martin lifted his ear from the concrete and heard nothing except the sound of the waves and the cries of a few gulls.

The sky was the color of faded jeans. Jet contrails seamed the blue, taking other people to some point far away. Martin walked wearily back to the house.

Lucy sat up in bed. The blankets were shoved against the footboard, but she was wrapped in a kimono. The glow inside her lit it up like a j.a.panese lantern.

"You upset him," she said, her voice cold.

He grabbed his wallet from the dresser, and started changing his clothes. "You know, he was already p.i.s.sed. Something about being hit on the head while you were su-"

"No, I mean it." Her cold voice shattered with panic like ice in the sun. "He's going to hurt me, Martin. You promised you wouldn't let him hurt me."

"He's not going to hurt you." He pulled on clean pants.

"Where are you going?"

"Into town for a drink."

She grabbed the lamp on the bedside table and shoved it onto the floor. The base cracked. "Are you going to go see Kate? Are you going to go f.u.c.k Kate? Is that it, Martin?"

"I don't even like Kate," he said softly. He leaned over and kissed her forehead, then pushed her gently onto the bed. "If it makes you any happier, I'll go to the IceHouse. Won't even see her."

"I'm sorry, Martin. I didn't mean that. It's just-"

"I know." Rising, he took their bank deposit bag from its hiding place and emptied the cash into his pocket. Then he took the rest of their bills and did the same.

She clutched at his sleeve. "You're running away! OmiG.o.d, Martin. You're going to catch the ferry and leave me. You can't do that."

"I just need time to think," he said.

He pried her fingers loose and left the house before he lost his nerve.

It was after midnight before he returned, driving down the long dirt driveway through the woods to their house. He was drunk. Two other trucks followed his.

Lucy waited for him on the porch, in the papa-san chair, sitting directly under the one bright light.

The trucks pulled up and parked beside him. Martin lifted the case of beer off the front seat and carried it over to the picnic table. "I'm going to go get some ice to keep this cold, guys," he shouted over his shoulder, staggering to the porch.

Doors slammed in the dark. "Ain't gonna last that long," a harsh voice said. A can popped open. The others laughed.

Lucy rose and pressed herself against the screen. Insects pinged against it, trying to reach her. Bats screeched through the air, feasting.

"Is that really you, Martin? Who are those men?"

"Just some guys who work, from the quarry," he said, his tongue thick in his mouth. "I ran into down at the Ice Cellar. They're good guys. We had a few, a few beers."

"What are they doing, Martin?"

"Shhh." His forefinger smashed his lips. "They're doing us a l'il favor."

Her nostrils flared. Her mouth flattened out in a ruby O against the screen as she strained to see what they were doing. She took a step toward the door and sank to her knees, too weak to go any further.

A stocky, bearded man walked stiffly over to the porch. "Howdy, Missus Van Wyk," he said, sounding a little more sober than Martin. "Your husband told us 'bout the problem with the water stagnating in the pumphouse, making you sick and all'a that. Well, this ought to take care of it."

"Can' tell you how much I 'preciate this," Martin said.

He grinned and patted a wad of bills in his shirt pocket. "You already did. Just remember, it wasn't us who did it."

As he turned and walked away, Lucy whispered, "What are-"

"It's self the fence," Martin slurred.

The bats veered suddenly from their random feeding and began to swoop and shriek at the quarry men. Martin stepped over, blocked Lucy's view. The bats flew with less purpose. The men finished their work and ran back towards their trucks a hundred and fifty feet away. One of them grabbed the beer.

Lucy sc.r.a.ped at the screen, making it sing, her face a mixture of anguish and hope. "He said we couldn't kill him. He said he could turn into-"

One man shouted something as she spoke, then a second, then the explosion, a sharp blast that was mostly dark, not at all like the movies, followed by the pebbled drum of debris pattering on the lake.

Someone whistled, a note of appreciation.

"That ought about do it," someone said, and the others laughed. They climbed back into their trucks and drove off into the night with their headlights off.

Martin and Lucy leaned against each other, not touching, the screen between them.

Nursing a hangover, having hardly slept at all, Martin walked up and down the sh.o.r.e at the first hint of dawn, searching for bones or other pieces of Pitr. He thought the gulls might come for them, the way they sometimes came for dead fish. But the gulls stayed way offsh.o.r.e and he found nothing.

Bill came over at sunrise. The island's sheriff and his only deputy arrived shortly after. Martin, prepared to confess everything, instead heard himself repeating the story about some guest injuring himself, with Bill corroborating. Telling them how they bricked in the pumphouse to be safe. Speculating that maybe there was some kind of gas build-up or something.

The sheriff and his deputy seemed pretty skeptical about that last part. They climbed all over the rocks, examining the pieces. The deputy waded down into the water's edge. The flat rock from the garden stood out among all the water-smoothed boulders. The deputy grabbed it, flipped it over. The rat's blood made a dark stain on the bottom.

Martin's heart stuck in his throat.

"Say, is Lucy feeling any better yet?" Bill asked.

"Her fever broke last night, after almost a week," Martin answered, his voice squeaking.

The deputy let go of the rock. It splashed into the water. "What's that? Mrs. Van Wyk's been sick?"

Martin explained how sick she'd been, what a strain it had been on him, with no guests, not able to get out of the house. The sheriff and the deputy both liked Mrs. Van Wyk, appreciated the volunteer work she did for the island's Chamber of Commerce.

The sheriff's radio squawked. Some tourist had woken up on his yacht this morning missing his wallet and wanted to report it stolen. The two men left their regards for Lucy and headed back into town.

The deputy's eyes stared at Martin from the rearview mirror as the car pulled away.

Lucy stood by the window, wearing a long dress, a sweater on top of that, with a blanket around her shoulders. A slight breeze ruffled the lace curtains, slowly twisting them. Martin pressed his hand to her forehead. Her temperature felt normal; the glow had dissipated.

"I destroyed the camera," he told her. "And all the other tapes. I patched up the hole beneath the stairs."

"I'll never be warm again, Martin."

"I'll keep you warm." He wrapped his arms around her.

She turned her back against his touch. "I'll never be beautiful again," she whispered.

"You're lovely." He fastened his lips on the rim of her ear. "You're perfect."

She jerked her head away from his mouth. Outside, a remnant of oily mist layered the surface of the lake, tiny wisps that coalesced, refusing to burn away in the morning sun.

The Wide, Carnivorous.

Sky by John Langan.

John Langan is the author of the novel House of Windows and several stories, including "Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers," which appeared in my anthology Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, and "How the Day Runs Down," which appeared in The Living Dead. Both of those stories also appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as has most of his other fiction. A collection of most of Langan's work to date, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, appeared in late 2008 and was named a finalist for this year's Stoker Award.

This story, which is original to this anthology, is the tale of a quartet of Iraq war veterans who were the only survivors of an encounter with a monstrous, blood-drinking creature during the 2004 Battle of Fallujah. "The story began with its t.i.tle," Langan said. "A couple of months later, I was watching an interview with an Iraq war veteran who was discussing having been in a Hummer that had been struck by an IED. He described being pinned by the Hummer's flipping over so that he was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. That told me what the story was going to be."

I.

9:13pm.

From the other side of the campfire, Lee said, "So it's a vampire."

"I did not say vampire," Davis said. "Did you hear me say vampire?"

It was exactly the kind of thing Lee would say, the gross generalization that obscured more than it clarified. Not for the first time since they'd set out up the mountain, Davis wondered at their decision to include Lee in their plans.

Lee held up his right hand, index finger extended. "It has the fangs."

"A mouthful of them."

Lee raised his middle finger. "It turns into a bat."

"No-its wings are like a bat's."

"Does it walk around with them?"

"They-it extrudes them from its arms and sides."

"'Extrudes'?" Lee said.

Han chimed in: "College."

Not this s.h.i.t again, Davis thought. He rolled his eyes to the sky, dark blue studded by early stars. Although the sun's last light had drained from the air, his stomach clenched. He dropped his gaze to the fire.

The lieutenant spoke. "He means the thing extends them out of its body."

"Oh," Lee said. "Sounds like it turns into a bat to me."

"Uh-huh," Han said.

"Whatever," Davis said. "It doesn't-"

Lee extended his ring finger and spoke over him. "It sleeps in a coffin."

"Not a coffin-"