They went off first in the main building, then around the pool, then in the guest lodges. The recessed bulbs along the pathway faded away into nothing. She was un able to see even the path beneath her feet, and was forced to slow down, staying on track only by the feel of the concrete walk. She wanted to run, but she was afraid she would trip and fall, and she definitely didn't want that to happen.
She swallowed hard, forced herself to walk slowly for ward, one step at a time, though a feeling of panic was growing within her. Something was wrong. The ranch's backup generators weren't kicking in the way they were supposed to. The lights weren't coming back on.
She stepped on something. Something hard and brittle that cracked beneath her boot and felt like neither rock nor branch. She stopped, crouched down, looked.
It was a jackrabbit.
A jackrabbit that had been drained of blood.
Oh, God. She stood, wishing suddenly that she hadn't lost the piece of jade Sue had given her, wishing that she hadn't been too embarrassed to tell Sue she'd lost the jade and wanted another. But the time for wishing was past. The vampire was here.
She heard shouting from somewhere. It sounded as though it was coming from her left, from one of the guest lodges, but she couldn't be sure.
The darkness seemed to do something to the acoustics, to warp the directional capabilities of her hearing. She ran to her right, breaking away from the path and speeding through the sand towed the nearest building, navigating by instinct. The laundry room was in here. Assuming the vampire wasn't in the laundry room--and why would he be with so much fresh meat elsewhere?--she could lock herself inside and wait it out until morning. The laundry room's door and walls were especially thick, to muffle the sounds of the washing machines, and there were no windows. It was probably the safest place in the whole ranch.
Her right sank into the sand, and she slip[ nearly twisting her ankle, before quickly righting her' Her heart was pounding crazily, and she wondered if vampire could hear it. She thought, absurdly, that sound of a beating heart was probably like a dinner to a vampire, calling him, like an amplified tom-ton his head.
She ran faster.
She finally reached the building's double side do yanking open the left door and running inside.
Ramon and Jose were lying in the hall, outside the dry room.
It was dark in the hallway, but there was a flashli lying between the sprawled corpses on the floor, the shining through cracked glass onto a portion of Ram hand and Jose's shoulder.
Flashlight?
Her mouth felt dry. They had to have gotten the light out after the blackout hit. That was three mini ago, four at the most.
Which meant that the vampire was probably still in building.
She ran over, picked up the flashlight. She shone beam down the hallway. To the left, to the right. The way was empty. She saw no other bodies. And no yarn[
She ran. Her boots echoed on the wood floor. ' sound was loud in the stillness, would alert anyone--anything --in the building to the fact that she was here, but there was nothing she could do about it, and she forced legs to pump harder. The door at the other end of hall opened onto the parking lot. If she could make it of here, she could run straight to her car, take off and She reached the door, shoved it open.
And the vampire was right in front of her.
She stopped, nearly fell, but she grabbed onto the side of the closing door and only by luck regained her balance. The vampire was bending over a boy lying dead or unconscious on the sidewalk next to the parking lot.
He did not look like a vampire. He looked like a zombie, movie zombie, one of those poorly made up zombies from Night of the Living Dead. If she had seen this in a fright flick, she would have laughed. But the fact that the vampire in real life was not a sophisticated special effect but a B-movie monster with a bad makeup job was somehow much more frightening than anything else could have been,
The vampire bent over the boy. His head did not touch the child's neck but hovered about an inch above. She saw the boy's bodily fluids sucked up, vacuumed into the monster's mouth, a sickening mixture of red and green and brown and yellow that was simultaneously thick and thin, a torrent of combined liquids that spewed forth from the neck as the body visibly withered.
She'd been standing in the doorway for no more than three seconds, but the intensity of the scene before her was so great that every aspect of it was burned permanently onto her memory. She let go of the door, and the vampire looked up. She saw lust in those black-ringed zombie eyes .... She thought of the fetus inside her.
Her baby.
The monster grinned.
She broke, ran screaming toward the parking lot. There were other people screaming now: women, children, and most frighteningly, men.
There was not just one vampire, she thought. There were many. An army of the undead. They were here, and they were hungry, and they were taking over.
She turned and looked over her shoulder, but the vampire was not following. He had found another victim.
Ahead, she saw Sally Mae crying, leaning despairingly against the hood of a pickup truck, ShOt running out from her nose and over her lips.
Sally Mae did not seem to know where she was or what was happening, and her eyes registered no recognition as they looked into Janine's.
Janine grabbed the other woman by the arm, pulling her through the parking lot. 'Come onI' She had already taken out her keys, and when she reached her car she quickly unlocked the driver's door. 'Get inI' she said.
Sally Mae looked at her uncomprehendingly.
'Get in the carl' Janine screamed. She shoved the other woman onto the seat, pushed her past the steering wheel to the passenger side, and hopped in herself, slam ming the door and locking it. She started the car, floored the gas pedal, and peeled out, speeding toward the highway. '
'What in cow's ass heaven is that?'
RHal, the friendlier guide, stood and walked over to where his partner stood looking toward the ranch. 'What?'
Tracy looked quizzically at her husband over the campfire. Ralph only shrugged.
'Listen. Don't you hear it?'
RHal shook his head. 'No...' His eyes idened. 'Yes!' 'What is it?'
Tracy asked.
Rhal walked over, threw another branch onto the blaze 'You two stay here by the campfire. We'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail.'
Two shakes of a lamb's tail? Did they really talk like that, Tracy wondered, or was this something they just put on for tourists? 'Where are you going?' she asked.
'Back to the ranch to see what's happening.'
' Ralph stood. 'We might as well go, too. It's getting cold out here, and I'm sure we'd be much more comfortable in our rooms than we would out in these sleeping bag'
'We're camping,' Tracy said firmly, fixing him with a determined stare.
Ralph sighed, sat down. ''Whatever you say.'
'What's the point of going to a dude ranch if you're just going to treat it like a hotel? Why did we come all the way out here if we weren't going to take advantage of it?'
'I said okay.'
'We'll be back,' Hal said, nodding at them. The other guide had already mounted, his horse, and Hal followed, slipping his foot easily into the stirrup and swinging his leg over the saddle. With a 'Hey[' and a couple of clicks, the two cowboys were off, riding into the desert night.
Tracy leaned back on her sleeping bag, staring up at the stars. It was cold out here, but it was invigorating, and she felt' Trace
She turned her head toward Ralph. 'Yeah?'
'Lookl'
