Vampire$

“Are you all right?” people kept asking him and he kept saying he was. But he didn’t look it. He looked stunned. Almost dazed.

But no one pursued this, because Jack Crow did not.

And now he sat there in the dusty easy chair in the corner of that musty room cleaning his weapons. He had newspaper spread out on a lumpy ottoman and the parts of his pistols spread out on that and the only sounds were the rustle of the newsprint and the precision snicks and clicks of well-oiled firearms.

At the far corner of the room, Davette stood in the little kitchenette where they’d cooked the Team’s lunch. She had offered to tidy up but that had been awhile back when the room was filled with people and now she didn’t know if she was still there because she wanted td stay or was just frightened to walk past Felix to get out.

So she stayed there in the corner, cleaning and recleaning like some rabid housewife on speed, sneaking constant glances at him and feeling like a complete idiot until she couldn’t stand it anymore and just made herself stop, just stop and stand there with her hands on the edge of the sink and stare out that grimy window and catch her breath.

She said things like: What’s the matter with me? and Get yourself together, and it worked a bit. She was almost calm when she felt the silence and turned around and he was just sitting there staring into space.

Then he looked up, caught her watching him, and smiled.

It made her fumble a bit. But she managed a: “Can I get you something?”

He glanced at his empty glass, reached for it. “Some more ice water?” he asked.

“No!” she almost shrieked. And then, more calmly, “I’ll get it.”

And as she walked toward him she cursed herself for the way she was acting and wondered if anything in the world could make her stop behaving like such a fool and then she reached for his glass and saw his face and it all went away.

My God! she thought, seeing those tired, tired eyes, he looks terrible!

He did. He looked beaten, blasted, worn down, worn out. He looked like a man who had just decided to commit suicide.

It wasn’t until she had taken his glass and walked back to refill it that she realized that that was exactly what had happened when he had decided to join Team Crow and she knew suddenly what he was thinking about and why he looked the way he did and her butterflies went away and something else, warmer, more solid, replaced them.

But she didn’t speak. She just gave him his full glass and sat down at the tiny little built-in breakfast table and sipped her cold coffee and for several moments that’s all that happened in the room — the two of them sitting and sipping in silence.

And there’s nothing I can say to change it, she kept thinking.

Adam, wearing full priestly regalia, appeared at the connecting door to the next room.

He always looks ten years older dressed like that, she thought.

“Felix?” he called quietly. “Would you like to take confession?”

The gunman looked up, a quizzical expression on his face, and replied, to the others’ total surprise, “Yeah. I would.”

Felix put his cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up. “How does it work?”

Adam smiled, held out a beckoning, robed arm. “It’s easy.”

Less than five minutes later, Felix came strolling briskly back into the room alone. He stopped, looked around the room, at Davette, at his chair, at his guns. Then he walked over and picked up his glass of ice water and drained it down.

Adam appeared behind him in the doorway looking mournful.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” said Felix when he saw him.

But Adam just shook his head to say it was all right. And when Felix turned away from him to light a cigarette, the young priest made the sign of the cross to his back. Then, with a sad smile for Davette, Adam left.

Felix surprised her by sitting across from her at the tiny breakfast table. He seemed to feel the need to explain to her and she could see him start to speak several times before he finally shrugged, laughed a rueful silent laugh, and said, “I wasn’t having any fun.”

She smiled at him and blushed to the roots of her light-blond hair. And so they sat there for several more moments, she feeling foolish and excited and infinitely sad and he feeling… what? Numb, she supposed. He certainly looked numb the few times she braved a glance.

After the dozenth dry sip, she realized she must look pretty odd drinking from an empty cup. She got up and went over to the kitchenette for another refill. When she turned back around, he was gone.

Two hours and forty minutes later, they hit the Johnson County Jail.

Jack’s Plan was based on Felix’s flares. Or rather, what they had done to that woman wearing the ZZ Top sweatshirt.

“Of course it didn’t kill her,” he explained patiently to a doubtful Cat. “But it sure as hell got her attention. And remember, while she was frantically brushing those sparks off, she wasn’t attacking anyone.”

Carl had frowned. “So?”

Jack smiled slyly. “So what else — for just a few seconds, mind you — takes their minds off feeding?”

Of course, no one knew. Not for sure. But everyone — even Felix — had an idea or three. But it was Carl Joplin who really brought it home.

“I read somewhere,” he offered calmly, “that a pig’s blood is a lot like a man’s.”

Thirty minutes later, they had a serious list of goodies.

But Jack wanted something else; he wanted some form of official sanction. He was willing to go without it — the job had to be done and done right now — but he wanted the effort made.

He and the deputy went to the telephone and started tracing down the sheriff. It took several minutes, several calls, and some patching through by radio before the deputy put his hand over the mouthpiece to whisper, “I’ve got him.”

Jack reached for the phone. Deputy Thompson pulled it out of his reach.

“Mr. Crow, I don’t wanna insult you. But I think you’d better let me handle this.”

Jack thought a moment, nodded. “I’ll be right outside when he wants to talk to me.”

The deputy barely smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Fifteen anxious minutes later the deputy came out of the room smiling. He’d gotten everything the Team needed for the job — except the sheriff.

“Sorry, Mr. Crow,” offered Deputy Thompson. “But there’s just no way he can get there before four P.M.”

Crow lit a cigarette. “It’ll have to do.” He turned to the rest of the Team, gathered in chairs around the crowded sitting room. “Okay, sports fans, we’re on. Rock and roll.”

“Rock and roll!” echoed back at him.

And then everybody went shopping.

Cat, ever bold, directed the driver of the limo to downtown Cleburne, only four blocks off the main square, to Prather’s Feed & Seed. He escorted Annabelle and Davette inside and commenced to buy poison for rats, mice, fleas, ticks, fire ants, and coyotes — all together some five pounds of the stuff. Then he chose, from an impressive display of pet supplies, a thirty-gallon aquarium. He declined the offers of gravel, plants, starter guppies, and angelfish. He did buy, for reasons only another Cat would understand, an aerator in the form of a happy-faced salvage diver with bright red boots.

“I always wanted one,” was his only response to the women’s puzzled looks.

Kirk drove Jack and Felix to Wal-mart. There they bought two five-gallon gasoline cans and two funnels, three of the largest fire extinguishers available, and two packets of balloons in various colors.

They filled up both gas cans at the next-door Exxon station.

Carl and Adam drove the Blazer to a local slaughterhouse that specialized in preparing game meats but agreed to the killing and draining of the six pigs in the back pen. When the owner found out they weren’t