“ Does anybody have knife?”
“ Yeah.” A vampire in a white tee shirt pulled a switchblade from a hip pocket, thumbed its trigger, flicking it open. He’d donated his jacket and black dress shirt and he was still giving.
“ So many vampires.” She took the knife.
“ Everybody loves a vampire.” He looked rough, not somebody you’d want to meet on a dark night if you had a fat wallet in your pocket.
“ Okay, Marlan, I hope you’re not too attached to this dress.”
“ Don’t worry. Hurry!”
Izzy cut away the dress at the waist, exposing Marlan to the crowd. She exposed a gaping flesh wound on her left thigh as well, probably where the car had hit her.
“ I need a pressure bandage,” Izzy said.
“ My shirt.” The hard looking vampire, who’d given up his blade, pulled off his white tee.
“ The vampire who keeps on giving,” Izzy said.
“ Yeah, Doc. Save the kid.”
“ I will.” She balled up the tee shirt and without thinking applied it to the wound and too late realized she done a blood to blood mistake.
“ It’s okay,” Marlan said, as if reading her mind. “I don’t have anything that can hurt you and nothing you’re carrying can hurt me or the baby.”
“ I need to sterilize my hands, does anybody have anything that can help?”
“ I have a flask of Johnny Walker Black in my pocket,” the now shirtless vampire said. “Will that do?”
“ Unbelievable.” Izzy held out her hands. “Can you pour it over them?”
“ Sure.” He reached into his other hip pocket, pulled out a sliver flask, poured the whiskey over her hands.
“ Stings,” she said.
“ Looks like it would,” he said.
“ Right.” She turned back to Marlan, still bleeding a little. She’d do her best not to mix any more blood, but she was afraid the damage had already been done.
The area around Marlan’s vagina started to bulge out.
“ Can you push for me?” Izzy said. “Not too hard right now.”
“ Yes.” Marlan pushed.
“ Are you feeling contractions now?”
“ Yes, only seconds apart.”
“ Push between the contractions, not at the start, okay?”
“ Okay.”
Another contraction. Marlan pushed and all of a sudden Izzy could see the baby’s head. She was crowning. Izzy hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. It was unusual for a first child. But then again there seemed to be a lot of unusual going on with this couple; this crowd, too.
“ Okay, Marlan, I need you to blow through your mouth at the peak of your contractions.”
“ You think I’m going to push too hard. I won’t.”
“ Alright.” This was one pretty savvy woman.
“ Okay then, take slow breaths and breathe deeply.”
Marlan obeyed as she gently pushed between the contractions.
“ It’s coming,” someone from the crowd said.
“ Really?” Marlan was smiling.
“ Really!” Izzy guided the head out, saw that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck.
“ Oh my God!” a woman said.
“ It’s not a problem.” Izzy reached her index finger between the cord and the baby’s neck, gently loosened it and the baby’s head slipped through the loop Izzy had made as she started to make her way silently into the world.
Izzy held the baby’s head in her hands, supporting it, guiding the baby as she turned her head to the side.
“ It’s time, Marlan.” Izzy steeled herself. “One more push.”
“ I’m ready.”
And then the baby came, crying into the world.
Lila watched Eisenhower deliver the baby from the safety of the parking garage as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Then she pulled the pistol from her backpack. She never used the same kind of weapon twice. And she never carried it far from the scene of the crime, preferring to drop them in the nearest trash can.
However, this was Reno and there were security cameras everywhere. She was lucky to find a spot not covered to watch Eisenhower birth the baby from, but she didn’t want to trust carrying the weapon to a trash can and be recorded dropping it in. She’d have to leave it here.
It almost seemed a waste to lose such a good weapon on such an old woman, but Lila’s mind was made up. She sighted in on Eisenhower’s chest, aiming for the heart. She watched for a few seconds, thinking this was a fitting ending for a heart surgeon. Then she pulled the trigger.
Chapter Three
Izzy was cold. She curled her knees to her chest, subconsciously seeking warmth and found none. She moaned, dreaming of snow. She was outside in a brisk Reno winter. She was naked, lying in the snow. Her teeth were chattering, she was powerless to stop it.
She had to pee and now she was in one of the campgrounds on Highway 49, between Susanville and Shasta City in Northern California. She was in front of an outhouse, but the door was jammed. She had to get in, couldn’t. She had clothes on now and she wet herself and all of a sudden she knew she was dreaming and that she’d just wet the bed.
“ No,” she muttered, awake or in her dream, she didn’t know. Her throat was dry, like she hadn’t had a drink in forever. “No,” she muttered again. She had a headache, like she’d had too much wine, but the deep pain she’d been living with for the last few months was gone. She had to be dreaming, otherwise it would be front and center, reminding her of the cancer that was going to take her life in a few month’s time.
But it didn’t feel like a dream. The hangover was real, but she couldn’t remember drinking enough last night to cause it. The cold was real, too. She’d never been cold in a dream before, not like this. And the warm wet between her legs, that was real.
She opened her eyes to a hazy, green, cocooned kind of place. She was under the covers and the light was on, filtering through a green sheet.
She didn’t have green sheets.
She wasn’t in her bed.
She pulled the sheet back and gasped.
She knew where she was straightaway. She’d been here before, several times, though it had been years. She recognized the fans whirring above her head, the green room, the sterility of it. She looked right, saw that familiar door. She looked left, saw a body covered in a twin of the sheet which covered her.
She sat up in a panic, threw the sheet aside. She was naked and her right toe had been tagged. She was in the hospital morgue at St. Catherine’s, waiting to be transferred to the county morgue. She didn’t feel dead. On the contrary, she felt more alive than she had in years. Then she saw her legs and gasped.
“ What the-”
These were not old lady legs. She looked down at her breasts. They’d been sagging for the last three decades, but they were jutting out now, like a teenager’s. And her nipples were hard, like she was sexually excited.
She was excited, alright.
