“I’ll hurry,” he told her. They entered the room. He went to the master bath, turned on the light but left the door open.
He took off his clothes. When he lifted the lid of the hamper to drop them in, he saw the wadded, bloody shirt he’d been wearing when he killed Kramer. The sweatsuit covered it. He shut the lid, stepped to the tub and turned on the water.
Under the hot spray he thought of Lane in the other bathroom. Like him, trying to cleanse herself of Kramer.
He was weeping when the shower curtain rattled open. Jean stepped into the tub. She slid the curtain shut and put her arms around him. Her face pressed against the side of his neck.
They didn’t speak. They held onto each other hard.
Lane draped her towel over the bar and slipped into her nightshirt. Where she had missed a patch of water, low on her back, the soft fabric hugged her skin.
She left her clothes hanging in the bathroom and stepped out.
The house looked dark except for light from the open door of her parents’ bedroom.
She went to her own room, flipped on the light and stared at her bed. As weary as she felt, she knew that sleep wouldn’t come easily or soon. She would lie in bed, wide awake, remembering.
No, I won’t, she told herself.
She was in her room just long enough to pick up her pillow and blanket. Holding them to her chest, she turned off the light and walked silently down the hallway.
She glanced into her parents’ room. They weren’t there, but she heard a windy sound of rushing water from their bath.
Moving through darkness, she made her way to the sofa. She dropped her pillow and blanket onto it, stepped to the television and turned it on.
A Christopher Lee movie. She changed the channel, recognized Jimmy Stewart in some kind of Air Force story, and returned to the sofa.
There, she lay down and covered herself with the blanket. Curled up cozy on her side, she watched the show. When Kramer forced his way into her mind, she made herself remember the people zipping the rubber bag shut around him, taking him out to the van along with Bonnie.
They’re both gone now, she thought. Kramer can never touch me again. And I don’t even have to worry about Bonnie. They’re gone. I’m safe. Mom and Dad are safe. Everything’s okay.
She wondered if she should go to school in the morning.
They’ll have a substitute in English.
It would be nice to see Henry and Betty and George.
Not tomorrow, though. It’s so late. I’d be a space case.
The Jimmy Stewart movie ended. Lane wondered what would come on next. Before she could find out, however, a warm fog seemed to fold itself over her mind, and she closed her eyes.
Forty-nine
In the first light of dawn Uriah left his hiding place. The neighborhood was silent. He crossed the empty street and glanced at the red Mustang of the vampires as he walked by.
Getting his hands on its registration had made things so easy. The first time he’d gone after Bonnie, he didn’t have that. All he knew, then, was what kind of car she drove.
One of those Volkswagen bugs had gone by on the road while he was hiking back to Sagebrush Flat after his pickup broke down. It had a pale color in the moonlight, and he’d glimpsed enough of the driver to see she was a girl.
Not much to go on. He couldn’t even be sure the bug was on its way to Mulehead Bend, though that was the first town to the east, the direction the car had been heading. So that’s where he went looking.
It took him a while, but he found the girl vampire who had a yellow VW. He put her to rest. But then another turned up, and then another. They were all girls, all about the right age, and they all had light-colored Volkswagens. They were all vampires, too.
During his search was when he came to learn they didn’t behave like vampires should. They didn’t sleep in coffins. The sunlight didn’t burn them up. They could go around in daytime, just like regular girls. All the sun did was weaken them.
The sun would’ve made them easier to kill, but he’d been so headstrong back then that he’d gone after them at night. When he thought about it afterward, he figured it must’ve been a kind of deathwish on his part. He’d wanted his revenge, all right, but he hadn’t really cared whether he kept on living.
That had been a fool way to go about it. But the Lord stood by him and kept him from harm.
The Lord had a mission all set up for Uriah. He planned to send His warrior all across the nation to hunt out the legion of vampires doing Satan’s work in every corner of the land. So He’d let Uriah slip by, even though he went about killing the first three vampires in such a foolhardy fashion.
Uriah hoped the Lord would allow him to retire after today. If he survived.
Going up against five of Satan’s children would be no easy task. He figured his chances were slim, especially since he didn’t have his bow and arrows.
But if the Lord stuck with him, he planned to stake them all, and cart them back to Sagebrush in the van that belonged to the vampire he’d almost put to rest on Saturday. It was in the driveway of the house on the right. He would go to that house after finishing here.
Uriah tried the front door. He found it locked, so he made his way around to the side. He let himself in through a gate. Up ahead was the garage. It had a yellow plastic ribbon across the front — the kind of thing police put up in places where there’d been a crime.
That’s where the vampires must’ve killed those two people last night. What kind of story had they told, anyway, to make it all right?
The police couldn’t have kept them long, anyway.
Only one thing will do the job on those creatures, and that’s what I’ve got.
At the rear of the house Uriah found a window that was open just a crack at the bottom. He set his satchel down on the concrete, pulled his knife, and cut an opening in the screen. He tried holding the knife in his teeth to keep it handy, but clamping his jaw shut tight just hurt too much, so he sheathed the knife at his side. Then he reached through the split screen and pushed the window up.
He slung a strap of his satchel over his shoulder and climbed in.
A bathroom. It smelled flowery and nice.
The door was open. Beyond was a hallway, dim in the early morning light.
Before leaving the bathroom, Uriah took off the bag. He removed his hammer and one stake, then slipped the strap onto his shoulder again and crept into the hallway.
He stopped at an open door. A bedroom. But he saw nobody in it.
He kept moving, and came to another bedroom. There, he found the vampire who’d shot him. Uriah tongued the hole in his right cheek. It made him wince, and his eyes watered up.
This one’s chest was exposed. He was sprawled on his back, bare to the waist where the covers were rumpled up.
A woman vampire slept next to him. She was covered to the shoulders, lying on her side with her face toward the other. She wasn’t Bonnie.
As much as Uriah wanted to kill the one who’d given him such hurt, he’d already decided to take care of Bonnie first. She’d made these two into vampires after they brought her here. So they were new at it. They wouldn’t be near as dangerous as Bonnie.
Besides, Bonnie was the demon that killed Elizabeth and Martha.
The two girls he’d staked before Bonnie were vampires, but she was the one who killed his family. The Lord had told him that. So she needed to be the first, here, to be struck down.
