The Shed: Tales from the world of Adrian's Undead Diary Volume Four
Author: Philbrook, Chris
Date: 2017-08-11
Keywords: Horror

The Shed: Tales from the World of Adrian’s Undead Diary, Volume Four

Copyright © 2017 Chris Philbrook

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

Published in the United States of America

First Publishing Date 2017

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover design and interior layout by Alan MacRaffen

Also by Chris Philbrook:

Reemergence

Tesser: A Dragon Among Us

Ambryn: The Cheaters of Death

Fyelrath & the Coven’s Curse

Colony Lost

Elmoryn - The Kinless Trilogy

Book One: Wrath of the Orphans

Book Two: The Motive for Massacre

Book Three: The Echoes of Sin

Adrian’s Undead Diary

Book One: Dark Recollections

Book Two: Alone No More — Book Three: Midnight

Book Four: The Failed Coward — Book Five: Wrath

Book Six: In the Arms of Family

Book Seven: The Trinity — Book Eight: Cassie

Coming Soon:

The Last Resort

Tales from the World of Adrian’s Undead Diary

Unhappy Endings

London Burns

Only the Light We Make

The Shed

Short Fiction:

Resurrections: A Short Story Collection

Don’t miss Chris Philbrook’s free e-Book:

At Least He’s Not On Fire:

A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword

— THE SHED —

Part One: Over the River and Through the Woods

Part Two: Cracks in the Plaster

Part Three: Going Shopping

Part Four: Things are a Little Weird in the Dark

Part Five: Visiting the Neighbors

Part Six: The Apocalypse is at the Door

Part Seven: …And Then it came in the Front Door

Part Eight: PONG. PONG. PONG.

Part Nine: The Emperor's New Clothes

Part Ten: Grandpa Might not be Proud

— THE VAMPIRE OF MENLO PARK —

About the Author

This one goes out to all the fantastic nanas, grandmas, and bubbies out there. You’re not creepy at all, and your grandchildren love you with all the love we possibly can.

Also, this one goes out to false teeth. For reasons.

Foreword:

Once upon a time Adrian Ring decided that he’d rather do something than die alone, safe and sound in his fortified little school.

He opted to head down Auburn Lake Road to Route 18 and clear out the houses he found there. First he’d look for survivors to help while killing the undead that he came across, and second he’d search the abandoned homes for whatever supplies he might need. He wanted the goodies to help build a stash to survive longer, but also because he was preparing to bring in other survivors. Need grub to feed strangers, ya know?

Well, as luck would have it, one day Adrian came across a house that had some leftover food in it. Lots of juice, lots of cereal, and for the first time, he found dry milk, which was a lucky find that made his life a lot easier for a good while.

Of course, when he checked the shed out back, things got a little weird, and he saw something that unnerved him.

This book is about what happened inside that shed, after June 23rd, 2010.

It’s a little dark, but I think you’ll find it a good addition to the world of Adrian’s Undead Diary.

At the end of The Shed here I’ve included another short story that I wrote a fair time ago. It first appeared publicly in At Least He’s Not on Fire, but that book has been out for a few years now, and I don’t think most of the AUD readers have picked it up. On Fire is a sampler, and if you’ve already read my stuff, there’s little reason for you to do so now.

The Vampire of Menlo Park is a fun reimagining of an influential person in world history, and was a blast to write. I hope you enjoy it now.

Chris Philbrook

Marlow NH, June 2017

- Part One -

Over the River and Through the Woods

Grandpa wouldn’t be coming to Tony’s graduation.

The first volley of rifle fire made Tony flinch. When the 7 shooters fired their 2nd round he flinched less, and when the 3rd volley spat out of the rifles, his eyelids fluttered. He hated guns with a passion. They scared him.

He wiped away the tears, lifted his chin off his black tie, and looked around.

With the 21 gun salute for his grandfather complete and the retired soldiers who performed it picking up the brass, grimacing with each bend, every black-clad family friend, and family member moved with somber respect towards his tiny, frail nana. She sat on the corner of the very front row of folding chairs, right beside him. She had cried–only a little–and now she took each and every person who came to her in with a smile. She thanked them for their generosity if they gave flowers–and Tony knew she knew who gave every rosebud and carnation–and she stood to hug the people who her husband had loved in life. He couldn’t be there to hug them, so she did it for him. That’s how good marriages worked.

Despite being a teenager, narrow of shoulder and smooth of chin, Tony knew his nana through and through, and had awe for her as she withstood the loss of his grandpa with charm and grace. She had to pause several times to force out a wet cough, but she never stopped for long. If there was a rock star at any funeral, his nana was it.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” his mom asked him in between storms of crying. She wiped away some tears and makeup with a white handkerchief and made a fist around it. Sitting on the other side of her was his nine year old brother Frank. Frank had his face jammed into their mom’s armpit and cried in a low, sad way.

Tony’s heart went to his brother and he nodded at his mom.

“That’s why your grandpa loved her,” his mom whispered. “Because she’s sharp, and smart, and loving. If he wasn’t dead already it’d kill him to think she was going to be alone.”

“Mom, I was thinking about that,” Tony said to her.

“It’s okay Frank. It’s okay to cry. It’s just another way for you to tell your grandpa you love him. And what were you thinking Tony?”

“I was thinking I could stay with her for the summer. School is almost out, Dad will be deployed until Thanksgiving and I dunno… she’ll be alone and that really bothers me. Just a few months. I’ll help with laundry, dishes. I can mow the lawn, and do her grocery shopping in that ancient station wagon of theirs. You know she’ll love it,” Tony asked his mom, each word becoming more excited than the last.

“Tony, you are an amazing son, but I need you at home. Who will help me with Frank?”

“Mom,” Frank interjected, his tears paused, “I’m almost 10, and Tony’s right. I can stay at some friend’s houses overnight, and I’m going to summer camp. You know some mom in Dad’s unit will help. You’re always helping other wives out.”

“Frank’s right. Someone will help. When I was 10 and he was 4 you let me babysit him. I think he can manage himself at the same age,” Tony added to nail the point home.

“Oh, you know everything about parenting now?” his mom asked, and Tony wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. “You haven’t even taken care of a pet in your life, and your nana has how many dogs and cats?”

“Eight, I think,” Tony replied.

“Try 13. Four cats, 3 dogs, 3 birds, and 3 guinea pigs and don’t think for a minute she won’t add to that over the summer. She can’t bear to not help a bird with a broken wing.”

“Mom. We can’t let Nana be alone, and we can’t put her in a home. Let me stay with her for like, three months. If it gets tough at home for whatever reason, I’ll come back. If she is kicking butt, I’ll come back. If I get homesick, I’ll come back, but you gotta let me go. Let me do this for Grandpa. You know Dad would want me to, if he was here to say so.”

His mom burst into a fit of crying and nodded over and over. Frank leaned into her, and Tony did the same. The two boys hugged their mother until the line in front of their grandmother disappeared, and only the four of them remained under the blue skies of May. The men who would lower the casket into the ground waited nearby.

“What a nice service,” Nana said.

“Beautiful, Mom, Dad would’ve loved it.”

“Mmhm,” she agreed. “Not too long, even though it was a good Catholic service. The priest was wonderful. George would’ve liked it. All of his friends came too.”

“He had a lot of friends, Nana. Grandpa was a popular guy,” Tony said, putting his hand on hers.

She looked at him and Tony could feel the love in her eyes. She nodded, and a single tear escaped her right eye. She coughed and wiped the tear away with a tissue she produced out of the thin air with raw magic.

“Well are you going to ask her, or not? You were hot under the collar a minute ago, and now nothing,” Tony’s mom teased.

“Ha ha. Yeah. Nana, I was thinking… can I come stay with you for the summer? I was thinking you might want some company. That you might not want to be alone. I’ll help around the house, and I can read some books. Stay off the internet for a little bit and see how Mom grew up.”

“Who will help your mother with Franco? No, no. You stay with her. I will be fine. Take care of your mom,” she said, shaking her head adamant in her decision.

“Mom, Tony wants to do this.”

“No. I have my animals,” she shook her head again.

“You’re going to need help with your animals. He wants to do it for his grandpa,” his mom said.

Her face softened and she looked again at Tony.

“Besides, who will you cook for if you don’t have a man in the house?”

“I will make meatballs and spaghetti. When are you coming?”

Tony’s heart soared, and he hugged his little nana, even as she coughed again.

*****

Several warm days later Tony’s mother pulled their aging minivan into the driveway of her mother’s rural home, several hours from the base they lived near. Tony hopped out of the front seat and his little brother Frank hopped out of the slider in the back. The teenager squeezed his little brother as they passed and kissed him on the crown of his almost-black hair.

“I love you. Take care of Mom for me,” Tony said before letting go.

“I will. Take care of Nana for us. For Grandpa,” Frank said back.

He took off at a run into the door on the side of the house. That door led to the kitchen. The front door led to the living room, but no self respecting Italian family with guests lived anywhere but the kitchen. As his brother went in several of his nana’s dogs slipped out and they came running, tails wagging, tongues hanging out. As Tony knelt to pat them he smelled the incredible aromas of his nana’s cooking and he couldn’t help but smile. Food was home in this family. He watched as his mom followed Frank inside, a similar smile on her face and another dog underfoot.

Tony went to the back door of the van and pulled out his suitcase, and his backpack. It took him several minutes to untie the ropes that fastened his used ten-speed to the roof rack, but when he got the bike down he wheeled it into the backyard and leaned it against the pale yellow siding of the house.

He dragged his bags into the side door and immersed himself into the world of cooking garlic, simmering tomatoes, fresh-cut basil, cats purring, birds chirping, dogs panting, guinea pigs… guinea-ing and everything else that was right in the world.

His nana stood almost at the level of the huge pot on her stove, reaching up to stir the contents with her wooden spoon. Behind her on the tablecloth covering her small oval table that bore the weight countless meals was a feast to end all feasts. Two loaves of fresh bread flanked a platter covered in six inches of homemade spaghetti and meatballs big enough to choke a buffalo. A salad of fresh greens, tomatoes and cucumbers filled a bowl big enough to swim in and off to the side of that was a plate of Italian sausages that had cooked all day in his nana’s homemade red sauce.

He almost died on the spot from sheer joy.

“Sit, eat,” Nana guided without turning around. “I’ll hug you when you’ve had a plate.”

“Nana,” Tony started, grinning ear to ear. “There’s enough food here for 10 people. How long have you been cooking?”

“Since I was a little girl. My mama taught me how to cook like they cooked back in Sicily, and she always said if you’re going to cook, cook enough for everyone.”

“You cooked enough for everyone in this entire town,” Tony said as he took a seat in the uncomfortable chair beside his mom. She laughed at the exchange and all Frank did was serve himself a solid third of the available food. The 9 year old could eat.

“I mean, I’m happy. It just seems like a lot of hard work,” Tony said as his mom piled a heap of pasta on his plate.

“Not for family,” Nana said as she finally turned to face them. “Nothing is too hard for family.”

They looked at her, and for the first time since grandpa died, everything felt better for Tony.

*****

“I’m only a few hours away, so call me on the landline if you have to. Your phone doesn’t have many minutes on it,” Tony’s mom said to him after nearly squeezing him to death in the driveway.

“I will.”

“And if you get time, ride your bike up the hill to that private school. I bet there are bunch of very smart, very nice girls that go to school up there who would love to meet a nice boy like you,” his mom said. It was less a bet on a possibility, and more a certain conclusion.

“Not a ‘very nice boy?’ Besides, Mom, school is almost out,” Tony said. “No very smart, very nice girls during the summer.”

“Nonsense. Auburn Lake up there runs a special summer program. For the extra-smarties. Been doing it since I grew up in this town. When I was growing up, we’d ride our bikes up to the lake to go swimming with the kids up there. Did I ever tell you I once swam with Senator Adams? He went to school there.”

“Fascinating, Mom. No really. I’m in rapture. He must’ve been very nice.”

“Don’t be a wiseass. Take care of Nana, I love you.” She kissed him on the forehead. “Call me once a week at least and if I hear your nana did any laundry while you’re here, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Love you too.”

- Part Two -

Cracks in the Plaster

The television didn’t have an off-switch at Nana’s house. Tony was pretty sure of it.

For as long as Tony had been alive, and for the 3 weeks he’d been at his nana’s house, he had never seen the screen of his grandparent’s television without some kind of show going. When his grandpa was alive it was a rotation of old 80s television shows like Matlock, Benson, or Dallas, or old war movies and westerns. Sometimes grandpa would go on a Charles Bronson movie tear. For Christmas one year Tony’s mother and father tracked his grandpa down a VHS collection of Bronson movies and the old man had never seemed happier. He had watched the entire set back to back with all the birds chirping in their cages, and cats and dogs running underfoot

In the summer afternoons his grandpa would put on the baseball games and read the paper as he sat in Lay-Z-Boy recliner, feet up, slippers on, dogs everywhere. Grandpa always read the paper. He had once told Tony getting the paper was the main reason he left the house every day. Grandpa would walk down to the small mom and pop gas station just down the street, take a paper off the stand and leave his two quarters on the counter. The dogs would wait at the edge of the property, lined up until he came back.

Tony had the baseball game on as he reclined in his grandpa’s worn leather chair in the small living room. Such a lazy Sunday should be spent that way. Two of the cats were curled up in his lap and the three largest dogs were sleeping on the floor surrounding his chair like a furry fortification.

Nana seemed to love it all as she toiled away in the kitchen, cooking him a small ham for later. He’d told her all he needed for lunch was a ham sandwich, but Italian grandmothers can’t dial it down like that. They just can’t. If you ask for a ham sandwich, they cook you a ham. You want a glass of cold lemonade? They plant an orchard of lemon trees.

Tony had learned to ask for Coke at an early age, and Nana always had a few two liter bottles on hand. No Coca Cola trees had been planted behind the red metal shed in the backyard, though there was a good chance Tony’s nana looked into making homemade soda for him.

That thought made him smile as he watched the next batter step into the batter’s box.

“Here you go,” his nana said at his side. She coughed again, heavy and wet. It didn’t sound good.

Tony didn’t look away from the television and took what she handed him. The unfamiliar feel of the item broke his focus on the screen and he looked at what she handed him. It was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes with a Bic lighter stuck in the plastic outer wrapper. The same type of cigarettes that his grandpa had smoked, right in this chair. His nana had already turned and was shuffling towards the kitchen in her pink slippers. Each step she cleared her throat with a grumble and her breathing became more labored in the heat. The house needed air conditioning and she needed to never light another butt up.

“Nana?” Tony called out to her.

“Yes, George?” she replied after stopping, catching her breath and turning around to look at him.

“Why’d you give me these?” Tony asked her as he held up the pack of cigarettes. “I don’t smoke. Plus I’m under 18.”

Tony watched as she looked him in the face, then as her eyes went fuzzy.

“Antonio? I’m sorry. I thought you were… I thought you were your papa. You look like him, you know? When he was younger. Give those back. Those things will kill you,” she said as she shuffled back to him. “They took your grandfather, and they’ll take me too.”

He handed her the smokes. “Not too late to quit.”

“I’m too old to care, George. I’ve seen my share and it’s almost my time. Our daughter will take over for us, and she’ll raise her boys well, and they’ll get married and raise kids too.”

“Nana, I’m not grandpa.”

“Right. I’m sorry, Antonio,” she said, wavering in and out of a dream. “Let me go fix your supper.”

Tony watched as his nana shuffled back off into the kitchen, getting one of the cigarettes out of the pack as she went. He heard the switching noise as she spun the lighter to life, and heard her take a draw off the cigarette. She exhaled, and coughed hard several times. Tony got up from the recliner–waking all the dogs in the process and setting them off–and went to the phone that sat on a walnut stained end table beside the ugly brown couch that had been there forever. He dialed his mom, and got her voice mail.

“Hey, Mom. Hope you guys are doing good. I uh, just had a weird exchange with Nana. She thought I was grandpa, and even when I talked to her, she still kinda treated me like I was grandpa. She called me George, and tried to give me his old cigarettes. I don’t know quite what to do about that. I mean, I didn’t smoke any of them, so relax. Anyway, call me as soon as you get this message. I’m worried about her. Oh, and she’s coughing a lot, having a hard time breathing. I think we she make her an appointment with her doctor.”

She coughed again out in the living room and Tony smelled the odor of her cigarette.

“I love you guys. Call me a soon as you get this message. Okay, bye.” He hung up, and worried.

- Part Three -

Going Shopping

Tony loved riding his bike on the country back roads in the morning. Unlike riding his bike on any of the concrete mazes of the air bases his dad often had them living on, or in the crowded suburbs where they occasionally got off-base housing, these roads were… perfect.

Lush green trees full of leaves hung their heavy branches over the uneven asphalt, creating a tunnel of life, and protecting him from the growing heat of the summer day. It was always a little chilly when he left his nana’s place, but he put his hoodie on, and always a little warm when he got back, so he took the hoodie off before returning.

The ride up to Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy was one he’d grown fond of, even though it was a pain in the ass when the dogs refused to stay behind. Most days he’d yell at them until he turned red in the face for them to turn around, but the old, idiot collie, and the sheepdog with the matted fur just wouldn’t listen.

They’d trot about three bike lengths behind him, panting and laboring like his nana. He’d ride up to the bridge that marked the edge of the private school’s property, and they’d run to the water’s edge where they’d lap at the lake until they could breathe again. Tony would get off his bike, look at all the fancy houses that served as dorms, and the big school building, and the admissions building, and skip a handful of rocks into the lake’s depths and hope against all hope that one of the girls who went to the boarding school would walk out onto the bridge and ask him all about his nana’s dogs.

Once, a thin blonde leaving what he thought was the cafeteria stopped and watched him for a few seconds. She held a plastic food tray in her hand, and examined him. He would’ve described as “aloof.” He puffed his chest out to look manlier, and she saw through him. She walked off out of sight, and Tony never saw her again.

No girls asked him about his nana’s dogs the last ten mornings, and it didn’t happen this morning either.

Tony hopped back on his bike, summoned the two old mutts and headed down the winding country road, past Prospect Circle and Jones Road, back to the little gas station, and then back to his nana’s home. He gave the middle finger to the idiot driving the Camry talking on his phone as he bombed past him. The good catholic kid almost seized up after doing it. Tony slowed his bike and breathed a sigh of relief after the man didn’t turn him around or stop and wait to give him hell for being so rude.

Shitty driving aside, of course.

He put his bike in the back of the house against the pale yellow siding, near the red aluminum shed and headed inside the house through the door that led into the kitchen. He stopped cold when he saw his nana counting piles of cash at the old table with the chintzy tablecloth.

“Nana?”

“Yes, Antonio?” she asked him as she laid a stack of bills down on the table several fingers thick.

“Where’d you get all that money?” Tony asked her as he sat down at the table.

“Oh, your papa kept his money stashed away all over the place. He wouldn’t trust a bank with his pocket change. Coffee cans, mostly. One under the sink, one on top of the furnace in the basement. Another buried in the old garden. He thought I didn’t know about all of his hiding places, but he wasn’t too sneaky.”

She threw a thumb over her shoulder and pointed at the plastic trash bin in the corner of the wallpaper covered kitchen. There were a dozen old cans of coffee, each covered with an armor plating of duct tape and missing lids. They were empty.

“How much money?” Tony asked.

“I counted about $1,200,” she said, nonchalant about it. “Tony I need you take my Costco card, some of this money and go get some stuff for the house.”

“Want me to take your car?”

“Yes. I need you to go right now. Before it gets too late. Here, take this shopping list, and this stack of money.”

She handed him a slip of paper decorated with a print of a cornucopia and a wad of 20 dollar bills. He looked at it and thumbed through the sheaf of bills. It was the most money he’d ever held, ever seen. He then read the list of food she wanted him to get.

“Canned French cut green beans, beets, corn, corned beef hash, dog food, cat food, bird food. Six boxes dry milk, and six cans each of a bunch of juices. Ten boxes of cereal. Six gallons of water. Seriously? Are we having people over?”

“No, I just think we’re getting low on some supplies in the pantry, and I thought with you here, I know you eat and drink more than I’m used to.”

“Okay, I’ll take the wagon? You’re sure about this?”

“I am. On your way back, stop at the gas station and fill the tank. Then ask them if they’ll let you buy me a pack of cigarettes. They’ll know what kind. Oh, and buy yourself a candy bar while you’re out. Keys are hanging on the hook near the toaster oven.” She covered her mouth and coughed hard, hacking up several bits of what might’ve been pink phlegm. She spit it into a napkin already in her hand.

“Okay, Nana. I’ll have my phone with me, call me if you need anything else, or change your mind.

“I will, Antonio. Now go before everyone buys all of what I’ve asked you get for us,” she stood up, and kissed the crown of his head.

Tony loved the warm feel of her touch, and tried to ignore how bad her cough had gotten.

“Have fun, George.”

*****

Tony shaved time off the chore by going to the local supermarket instead of the Costco. He prayed his nana wouldn’t see the bags, and he just wouldn’t bring the receipt home. She’d forgive him for not going to the discount store, but he didn’t want to disappoint her at all right now. The traffic was peculiarly bad that morning, and the closest Costco was in the city, well over a half hour drive away. So hoodie adorned, he headed to the local grocery store.

“Is everyone being a jerk today, or is it just me?” Tony asked the cashier as he made his second run through the check out. “Two old ladies pushed me out of the way in the juice aisle to get the apple juice and a guy in the canned goods aisle gave me a dirty look as I bought creamed corn.”

“It’s getting worse with every new customer in the door,” the young girl said back him as she scanned the boxes of dry milk he got one after another. “Everyone is spooked by the news.”

“What news?”

She looked at him as if he’d just poked his head out from under a rock.

“The news on the television and internet? Violence in Africa and Europe? Terrorist stuff I think. It’s starting here too. Rabies virus or something. People biting people, trying to eat them. It’s almost as bad as when we get a big snowstorm in the forecast, or a hurricane. We’ll be out of water by noon,” she said with a sigh, moving on to the cereal and water gallons he got.

“Like, zombies?” He asked her as he loaded in the stuff he’d bagged himself into the cart. Water gallons went below. None of the checkouts had any baggers.

“I guess,” she said, scanning the last of his water gallons and sliding them to the end of the checkout. “I don’t watch horror movies. Two-eighty, seventy-five.”

Tony pulled out his gangster-thick roll of bills and started peeling off 20s.

“Are you a drug dealer?” she asked him.

“Maybe,” Tony said with a smile, and a little satisfaction. He had no idea how old she was, but she had to still be in high school.

“Cool. Do you know Zach and Ryan?”

“I’m not from around here,” Tony said, and handed her 15 bills.

“Oh well if you’re new to town, you should track them down on Facebook. They’d be good to get to know if you’re holding.” She counted out the $300 and gave him back his change with the receipt.

“Thank you,” Tony said. “Have a good day. I hope the store calms down.”

“Me too. Take care,” she said, and moved onto the next customer in line like he’d never existed.

Tony grunted and pushed to get the heavy shopping cart moving. His reedy legs had to heave and shove against the smooth tile of the grocery store to move the laden cart, and he was almost exhausted by the time he could back off and walk behind the coasting beast. He was halfway to the door when someone called out to him.

“Hey, son. Can I have a word?”

Tony looked over his shoulder and saw a man with a light blue button down shirt that strained to keep a prodigious belly in check. He wore a nametag that said, “Manager.”

“Yes?”

“It looks to me like this is the 2nd trip out of the store you’ve made today,” the large man said, adjusting his belt beneath his belly. “And I saw on the cameras that you paid in cash both times.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a problem? I haven’t stolen anything. I paid for everything,” Tony said as he felt an irrational fear rise inside him. He didn’t know why the adult was questioning him like this, and it scared him.

“Adults find a high school kid wearing a hooded sweatshirt with that much cash suspicious,” the manager said. He wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. “Where’d you get all that cash?”

“You’re wondering where I got all the money I just spent in your grocery store?” He didn’t want to appear suspicious. What would his mother say? What would his father say?

“Mmhm. Do I need to get Chief Moore in here to talk to you about it?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I got the money from my nana. She wanted me to stock up.”

“Who is your nana?”

“Christina Angellini,” Tony said.

“Tina Angellini is your grandmother?”

“You call her Tina? That’s so weird,” Tony said, feeling a weird relief come over him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard her called that.”

“She’s a regular here. Always gets the butchers to cut her meat fresh for her. She’s a character. How is she?”

“Struggling. When Grandpa died she took it hard, plus her health isn’t so good. The heat isn’t helping. I think she’s getting senile too,” Tony said. He was happy an adult was listening, even if the adult was being a jerk.

“Watch out, kid. When the 1st of an old couple goes, the 2nd isn’t too far behind. And if this zombie talk is for real, you might have to do a really hard thing. Take her out,” the manager said.

“Right,” was all Tony could manage. He wasn’t happy anymore.

“What’s your name?”

“Tony.”

“Alright, Tony. She might’ve said your name before. Sounds familiar. Tell Tina I said hi, and we look forward to having her business when she comes in again.”

“I will. Thanks.”

The manager walked away, leaving Tony to the struggle of getting the cart moving yet again. Dutifully the grandson stopped at the corner gas station near his nana’s house, pumped the wagon full of regular and asked them if they’d sell him a pack of cigarettes for his nana. He explained they didn’t have to, as he was underage, and he didn’t want to bring the pack home for her anyway. The fifty-ish year old woman sold him the cigarettes, and told him to keep quiet about it. She could be fined.

When Tony got home, he loaded all of the canned goods into the shed, all of the dried goods into the small pantry closet, and fed and watered all of the animals. By one in the afternoon he was exhausted, stressed, worried, and at his wits end about his mother not answering her phone. He passed out in his grandfather’s recliner, surrounded by the animals he’d taken care of, house phone in his lap, flip phone in his hand.

All that time Nana sat at the kitchen table, smoking her Marlboros one right after another as she looked at a framed picture from her and George’s wedding in 1958.

She cried, but Tony didn’t see that.

- Part Four -

Things are a Little Weird in the Dark

Tony woke up after dinner, after the sun had fallen behind the trees but before it disappeared over the edge of the world. He’d had weird dreams of his grandfather. He and the old man he idolized had been sitting in the very same living room he woke up in, and they had been watching a rerun of a classic baseball game from the 1960s. The Yankees had been playing. Or maybe it was the Mets.

They had chatted about his nana as the game played. His grandpa seemed worried about something that was about to happen, but Tony couldn’t remember what was about to happen, or why, and that bothered the boy tremendously.

Tony sat up in the dark living room and two cats jumped off his lap to the rug. He checked his phone and saw he had no voicemails, or missed calls.

“Mom, come on. Where are you?”

He grabbed his nana’s home phone and dialed his mother and yet again, she failed to answer. This time, the phone call refused to connect. He got an automated message about all circuits being busy and his belly felt weird. Like butterflies, but not in the good way. It felt the same as not knowing what his grandpa was worried about.

The television wasn’t on.

Tony reached over to the end table and picked up the small remote. He turned the set on, and within a minute, wished he hadn’t.

The cashier he met that morning had been right. There was a lot of violence in Africa and Europe. Asia too. And based on the footage of what was happening in America, it was outside, right here too. The cashier was also right about people biting and eating people. That same footage that the newscasters ran over and over again over their shoulders showed the gory scenes play out in spades. Hundreds of pale skinned, mangled people getting up and hurting others for no good reason. He watched over and over as housewives killed children, fathers killed each other and soldiers and police tried to kill them. There was rampant, mass chaos and no one knew how to stop it.

The anchor warned that reports coming in indicated that people were dying, and returning to life in a homicidal rage against all those around them. Thousands had died–tens of thousands–and by dawn the next day, Tony knew that number would be dwarfed.

Tony had seen it all before in a dozen movies, and a part of him laughed it away. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be.

Then he thought about his mother, and his little brother, and the calls he’d made that were still unanswered and the laughing stopped. He searched in the dark and looked for the animals. The birds were silent in their cages for once, and the cats were present, mostly. The dogs he could see were all at the doorway, looking out through the front screen at the state route outside. No cars passed, and the world seemed silent, but still, the dogs remained vigilant against a threat they sensed.

“Nana?” Tony called out. “Nana where are you?”

The silence outside equaled the silence inside. He got to his feet, and the cats disappeared. Down the hall to the kitchen he saw no light, and smelled no smoke. The stove appeared off, but sitting on the burner was a Pyrex dish covered in tinfoil. His dinner.

She wasn’t semi-invisible on the dark brown couch across the room and that meant she was either outside for no good reason, or somewhere else in the house. He decided to try outside first while there was still light.

Tony went to the kitchen and the side door that led to the driveway. He opened the creaky screen door there and stepped out into the mosquito and black fly paradise of his nana’s yard. Several of the animals slipped out as the door opened, and he didn’t dare waste time trying to get them back. The cats went outside all the time anyway, and the dogs almost never ran off the small piece of property. He didn’t think about how they might attract zombies. Zombies still weren’t real.

One slow step at a time the teenager walked to the back where his bike was, and where the red shed was. He looked at the clothesline where the sheets flapped in the light breeze and didn’t see his beloved grandparent.

“Nana,” Tony called out just above a whisper. “Tony, she’ll never hear you. There are no zombies here. You are in the middle of nowhere,” he whispered aloud. “Nana!” he yelled out.

The evening gave him no more response than the ceaseless noise of crickets, and frogs. His nana wasn’t outside.

“I need a weapon,” he said to himself. He closed his eyes and tried to think of where one might be. Grandpa sold all his guns years ago, and the kitchen knives didn’t seem like enough. He opened his eyes and saw the shed. Tony walked over to the door and undid the latch that held the two doors open. He peered into the hot, dark space and a glint of light off to the side caught his eye. He reached out over the stacked cases of canned juice for the metallic object and pulled it off the wall.

It was a sickle. Sharp as it needed to be; he hefted the weight and swung it a few times in the warm summer air. He imagined his grandfather using the sharp tool to cut down tall grasses on the edge of his property during the late summer months. The idea made him smile.

“That’ll do.”

Tony went back in, sickle in hand, and made his way through the kitchen and living room to the hall that led to the side of the ranch where the bedrooms and bathrooms were. The guinea pigs roused in their wood chip filled aquariums as he passed. One of them squeaked at him when he paused and ran his hands across the glass.

He opened the first door slower than molasses running uphill in January. The thin, hollow door kept his secret and swung in without a creak or a groan. The warm bathroom on the other side was empty, even when he built up the courage to pull the curtain of the shower away. It took him almost ten minutes to calm his shaking hands, and build up the courage to open another door.

He chose the guest room–his room–to open next, and he knew the door was quiet. He opened the door 10 times a day, and had confidence in it. Nevertheless he took his sweet time turning the faux brass knob and pushing the door inward. He looked around the near-black room with his sickle hand hovering near the light switch. He didn’t turn it on. What if something saw him?

A car flew by on the road outside just as he leaned into his dark bedroom. The stark white of the headlights careened off the glass covering the dated floral prints his nana had hung on the wall and the flash blinded him. He panicked and backed up, losing his balance as the heel of his sneaker caught on the thicker rug. He fell and smashed his head against the wood paneling of the hall, dazing himself and lodging the sharp end of the sickle in the rug and pad beneath it.

“Shit,” he said as he reached to the back of his head. An egg had already formed where his skull had hit the wall. He twisted his head side to side, testing the growing soreness in his neck. He looked to the living room, then down the hall towards the last rooms of the house.

His tiny, frail nana stood in the dark at the end of the hallway. Lit only by the dim yellow glow of a nightlight in her bedroom she stood silent in her wispy nightgown and puffy slippers. Her hands hung limp at her sides and she faced down at him. Tony couldn’t see her eyes.

She wasn’t coughing.

“Nana? Nana are you okay?” he asked her, slowly turning his feet to face towards her. If she was dead, and if the news was right about dead people, he’d be able to mount some kind of defense against her. Maybe it’d work long enough for him to build the courage to use the sickle on her and save his own life.

“Nana?” he called out again.

Instead of responding, she took a shuffling step forward, and Tony’s heart went as cold as ice. This was it. All the worst the news told him he could imagine was happening. He had to kill his undead nana. With a sweaty hand he pulled the sickle’s blade free of the rug.

She coughed.

“Antonio, why are you on the floor like that?” she asked him, and coughed again. One of her limp arms went to her chest where she pounded between her breasts several times. The other arm went to the paneled wall so she could stand steady.

“Jesus, Nana. I thought you were dead. I almost hurt you,” Tony said.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Antonio. That’ll get you sent to Hell. Your mother taught you better than that.” She hacked up something thick and produced another tissue from her nightgown pocket.

“She did, I’m sorry. I’m just stressed out. Today has been real hard on me,” the teenager said as he got to his feet. He hid the sickle behind his back, ashamed of its presence.

“Long day in the heat. You carried a lot of heavy things in from the store. I’m glad you got all that tomato juice. Each cup is a serving of vegetables you know.”

“Yeah, I did. You’re okay? You’re feeling okay?”

“I’m fine, Antonio. Fine,” she said, waving her hands about as if the cough that was killing was nothing to fret over.

“I’m glad you saw the news this morning and asked me to go shopping when you did. I think the stores were dangerous not long after I got home. I got enough food for us for days. Weeks maybe,” Tony said, feeling relief and more than a little love for his Nana. He expressed it by tossing the sickle into the living room and moving in to give the diminutive lady a hug. She returned it just as fierce as he gave it to her.

“I didn’t watch any news this morning, George,” she said as they let the hug fade. “Come to bed. It’s late and Carson is about to come on. We should work on the garden before it gets too hot outside in the morning.”

Tony watched his Nana turn and walk into the bedroom she had shared with his grandpa for their whole adult life and shut the door. He heard the bed creak as she got into it, and he listened as she coughed over and over until she went silent.

Asleep, or dead he didn’t know.

Tony left the dark hallway and set about making the house more suitable to survive the upcoming days in.

He didn’t have much to work with, and he didn’t know what to do with what he had.

He only cried a little.

- Part Five -

Visiting the Neighbors

“I’ve made some lasagna,” Nana said to Tony. “I want you to bring a pan of it over to the Pulaski family two houses down. They’re very nice people. They drive Hondas. I also want you to make sure the neighborhood animals are doing well. Put food out.”

“Nana, it’s not… like, safe out there, remember? The power is out, the phones haven’t worked in days, the radio stations stopped broadcasting, and the few cars that have driven by go like, a hundred miles an hour. We’ve heard gunshots, Nana. A lot of them.”

“Fireworks, George. Don’t be so paranoid. And if the power is out, how did my stove run? Answer me that, smarty.”

“It’s propane, Nana.”

“Still needs electric,” she with certainty, and five heavy coughs that shook her little body and the bob of white curls on top of her head.

“No, it doesn’t,” Tony corrected. “It’s just fire. If you want me to check on the Pulaski family I will, but we haven’t seen anything move in the area in a couple days. I’ll go and come back for the lasagna once I know it’s safe. Then I’ll check on the animals.”

“The lasagna is best served when it’s fresh out of the oven, George.”

“Nana, I’m not George. I’m your grandson, Tony? Antonio?”

“If you won’t bring them the food, George, I guess I will,” she got up from the tired kitchen table and turned towards the stove where the pasta dish awaited delivery. She crossed the distance and pulled open a drawer. Two oven mitts appeared in her hand and she began to put them on.

“Fine,” Tony said, standing. “I’ll bring the lasagna. Give me the mitts.”

“Oh I knew you’d see the light, Antonio. Here, take these mitts. The dish is hot.”

*****

The pasta and the mitts would be his end; Tony knew that in complete certainty. He walked through the backyard of the house beside his nana’s with both hands in mitts, and both mitts on the side of the Pyrex dish filled with lasagna. Stuck in the rear loop of his jeans was the handle of the sickle. If he had to get to the weapon quickly, he’d either fumble because of the mitts, or he’d slash his hand open.

And if the zombies were real, the fresh spilled blood would bring them in for miles.

He knew it.

Tony was more frightened that his nana would hear back from mother Pulaski that the food was delivered cold.

The Pulaski house was a modest three bedroom ranch just like his grandparent’s place. Probably built plus or minus a year by the same builder who put the studs in the walls he slept behind. The primary difference between the two homes lay in where the secondary door was put. In his nana’s house the door was on the right hand side of the house where the driveway was. The Pulaski back door was an actual back door.

A cement form set of stairs sat on top of a fringe of gray gravel that circled the whole house. Three steps got you to the level of the door and you could hold the wrought iron handrail if you needed it.

As Tony approached the back of the house with the warm dish in hand he gave it a wide berth. He stayed away mostly because he felt evil trespassing in the neighbor’s backyard, but practically because he didn’t know if they were undead or not.

Hell, he didn’t even know if the zombies were real. He hadn’t seen any yet.

Visibility through the drawn curtains was nil. If anything moved inside the home he wouldn’t be able to see it. The glare of the afternoon daylight coupled with the fabric made for a barrier his eyes couldn’t pass through. He felt better about his blankets blocking the windows.

Tony finished his wide circle of the backyard and walked straight at the cement stairs that he guessed led to their kitchen. Of course their stove would have to be in a different place than his nana’s, but still, it made sense in his head. His sneaker-clad foot crunched on the gravel, making more noise than he’d heard in days. He froze, eyes fixed on the thin double curtain of the backdoor window.

The dish got a little hotter in his hands and he readjusted where his fingers were. He looked back up at the window and put one sneakered foot on the bottom step. He paused, and then added his weight onto the foot.

He expected bells, whistles, car alarms and the sound of a thousand windows breaking but his expectations fell short of reality. The step he took made no noise, and failed to set off the marching band lurking in the back of his imagination. He lifted his other foot off the gravel and stepped on the next level of the stairs.

The marching band arrived.

The concrete stairs poured somewhere else and delivered off the back of a flatbed were level only so far as the gravel beneath it remained level. With rain coming off the roof, or kids pounding up and down the stairs the tiny stones moved one by one over the years, and when Tony put his weight on the 2nd step the entire form shifted towards the house.

The rusty, mostly black wrought iron railing mounted in the old concrete levered back towards the side of the house and cracked hard into the vinyl siding. Tony stopped and leaned back, trying to halt any loud damage but it was too late. The sharp end of the railing snagged on the siding and when it popped off the side of the house it pulled a finger-sized chunk free, making yet another loud popping noise.

Something just inside the back door, just behind the curtains moved.

“Shit!” Tony yelped. He dropped the warm dish filled with his nana’s cooking and by the time it shattered on the step that betrayed him he was already ten yards away, heading back home.

Tony got the oven mitts off and threw them towards the side door of his grandmother’s home as his breathing became shallow and ragged. True to his fear when he went to grab his sickle out of his rear belt loop he slashed the palm of his right hand open and he fumbled the blood-slick weapon into the dirt driveway. When he finally got it up off the ground the dirt served to give his skin traction, and despite the pain it caused him, he had a grip on the weapon.

Nothing came. Not even after he caught his breath, and not even after he stopped crying.

Then, for the first time in his life, he lied to his nana when he went inside.

“Thank you for doing that, George,” she said, and Tony’s heart broke.

The infection from the sickle blade in his hand had taken root by then.

- Part Six -

The Apocalypse is at the Door

Tony traded his grandpa’s sickle as his regular weapon in when he found his grandpa’s buck knife several days later.

Bored out of his mind and feeling stir crazy in the mattress, sheet, and blanket barricaded hot box, he allowed a lapse of judgment while his nana smoked her last prized cigarettes in the kitchen. At any rate, she hadn’t called him Antonio in almost a week, and the likelihood that she’d recognize him as he fumbled around in her bedroom’s dresser drawers was nil.

He found the 4 inch folding blade decorated with an etched antler centerpiece in a drawer underneath his grandpa’s black dress socks, beside his boxers. He slipped the knife into his pocket and felt the presence of his grandpa. He felt safer.

The feeling of safety persisted for almost a full day.

The sound of car brakes squealing followed by a heavy bang just outside on Route 18 woke Tony up. He’d become a paranoid, restless sleeper in the scorching July weather since society collapsed, and anytime one of the dogs moved in the house, or when a cat jumped on his bed, or when one of the guinea pigs got into their wheel his eyes snapped open. On nights where his nana snored in her room down the hall, he didn’t sleep, period. The bright red infection in the palm of his hand throbbed him awake as often as not as well.

Never mind the thoughts about his mom, little brother, father, and dead grandpa, and the smell coming from the toilet that was filled with their feces.

The crash got him right out of bed and right into his tattered sneakers within seconds. He didn’t have to get dressed; he slept in his dirty clothes now.

Tony climbed over his hard bed and the thin sheet stretched atop it and went to the window of his room. He pulled the very edge of the towel he’d stapled into the frame back and peered out at the lights in the road.

A single car had skidded to a stop just past the house. A silver minivan with a windshield that had so many cracks in it, it could’ve been frosted glass. The van had turned almost sideways in the road and the driver had stepped out. He walked to the back of the still-running van, and in the red glow of the rear lights Tony saw that the man held a shiny revolver. He also sported a thick, shaggy beard.

Tony hadn’t even shaved since the power died.

On the shoulder of the road where the dirt met the unmowed lawn his grandpa maintained for decades was an outstretched, moaning man. The bearded van driver walked towards him, barrel of his pistol leading the way. Tony could hear everything through the screen of the open window.

“Don’t kill me,” the moaning man begged as he crawled through the stony dirt and onto his nana’s lawn.

“How bad are you hurt?” the man with the gun and the beard demanded.

“Not bad. It’s not bad. My leg is broken. Maybe. Don’t shoot me.”

“I can’t help you, and no one else if going to come through to, either. You’ll die if I leave you. Then you know what happens. You’ll become one of them,” the van driver said. He cocked the hammer on his pistol and aimed it at the guy on the lawn.

“Please. Don’t kill me,” the guy with the broken leg begged again. “Leave me my bike. I’ll splint my leg. I’m riding east.”

The man with the gun looked distraught to Tony. He almost… wanted to kill the guy he’d hit with his car?

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?” gun guy asked.

“Positive. I know first aid,” broken leg man said as he rolled all the way onto his back in the grass. “I will be okay,” he said, and nearly cried out in pain.

“Okay. Fine. I’m sorry we hit you. I didn’t see you. I didn’t expect… It’s so late, and I haven’t seen anyone in….”

“It’s cool. It’s cool. Namaste. Go take care of your family,” lawn man said.

“I hope you make it,” the man with the gun said. He lowered the hammer and took a few steps backward. It was about then Tony realized he could hear a little girl crying in the back of the van.

“I hope I do too,” the man with the broken leg said, obviously unsure.

Tony hoped he made it too.

*****

He didn’t.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Bicycle man crawled in the dark towards Tony in the house for maybe 20 feet before giving up, exhausted and overwhelmed with pain. The man remained still for 30 minutes, gathering strength before he turned around and crawled all the way back to his bicycle and the twin saddle bags attached to the rear wheel near the seat.

Tony watched for a solid hour–riveted–as the man’s movements slowed, and became more and more difficult. He got the zipper on one bag open, and got a plastic bag out. He fumbled with the opening on that bag for what seemed like an hour before he rested his head back until it hit the grass, and fell asleep.

He never woke up.

Tony tore away from the window and ran into the kitchen where he mixed some dry milk with bottled water and made a bowl of cereal. He brought his bowl back to the window as the sun began to rise and ate heaping spoonfuls of it with his reddened, swollen, sore hand as he watched bicycle man die.

Another bowl later Tony watched the man sit up and look around. He completed the motion with no discomfort, and far too fast for Tony. There was no way his pain disappeared like that without powerful drugs. No one outside of a comic book could mend a busted bone in just an hour.

Bicycle man turned his head left, then right, searching the road and his nana’s front yard for anything interesting. He didn’t see anything that motivated him to get up, and he remained there, sitting up, still as a statue. His bent bicycle with one tire was just a few feet away

He sat like that–like a toppled mannequin–for almost 15 minutes before Tony heard his nana coughing. Bicycle man heard her too. His head jerked directly at her bedroom window, and the grandson leapt off the bed. He had to silence her, or bicycle man would come at them.

He bolted down the hall and through the shut door of his nana’s bedroom. Her little body was in the center of the full size bed she’d owned forever, chest racked up and down as her phlegm-filled lungs rebelled. She rolled half onto her side and wheezed as she had a momentary reprieve from the bout of hacking. Tony jumped on the bed beside and grabbed a spare pillow. The act made his sliced palm pulsate with pain and he had to close his eyes to maintain his composure.

“Nana. Nana, shhh. There’s a dead man outside who can hear you cough. Please, stop,” he pleaded with her in a whisper against her ear. She smelled like stale tobacco.

She coughed again, nodding in some kind of acknowledgment. Tony moved the pillow closer to his grandmother’s head.

“Nana, quiet,” he begged.

She coughed. Tony put the pillow directly against her head, making a barrier between her fit and the zombie in the yard. His eyes started to well as he feared he’d have to smother her until the zombie left. He wouldn’t kill her. He’d only do it until the zombie left. He couldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t hurt her, he could never forgive himself it he did but he…

She stopped.

He pulled the pillow away, racked with the anxiety and raw fear that he’d actually smothered her, but he hadn’t. Her chest rose and fell, calm, and smooth. Her eyes stared off towards the corner of the room, vacant, and half asleep. He bolted back to the room that was now his home and peered through the crack between the towel’s edge, and the window frame.

Bicycle man had moved halfway across the lawn, and now lay on his stomach, propped up on his arms in what looked like the middle of a pushup. He had aimed his body towards his nana’s bedroom. He stayed like that for minutes as Tony’s heart threatened to pound its way up and out of him through his eye sockets. Five minutes later, the zombie still stared at his nana’s window and Tony knew her next cough was only a matter of time.

At some point since he returned to his room, one of his nana’s cats had taken up a comfy spot against his calf. On impulse Tony reached down and scooped the feline up, then jumped off his bed. He walked on the balls of his feet through the living room, and into the kitchen. The cat in his hand squirmed and meowed, catching on that something strange was happening to it. Each step closer to the door the cat’s noises became more alarmed, and loud.

Tony undid the bolt on the door, and opened it. Warm summer air came in, and he threw the cat out so it landed in the middle of the driveway, just past the station wagon that hadn’t been driven in a month.

He pulled the door shut, twisted the lock and tip toed back into his room and towel he’d pulled a bit to the side. When he looked, bicycle man had moved. The cat had drawn his attention.

On his mangled leg he’d tried to stand and failed. Tony could tell because just below the knee the calf and foot hung at a 45 degree angle to the side. The meat of the man’s lower leg was stuck in that position and Tony couldn’t help but think a bone was lodged from a compound fracture that had happened. Why he’d died the teenager didn’t know but Tony at last had his proof the man wasn’t human anymore.

Ravenous, horrid and hateful bicycle man used his three good limbs to crawl and dig his way across the lawn towards the car and the cat, making no sound other than what the scrapes of his limbs made against the grass, then the gravel.

Tony couldn’t hear him breathe, and he should’ve.

In the morning bicycle man was long gone, as was the cat he’d thrown. Tony didn’t see any blood through any of the windows.

Nana never asked him about her missing cat, and Tony never offered to bring it up. And perhaps most heart breaking for Tony was that he didn’t think twice about lying to his nana.

- Part Seven -

…And Then it came in the Front Door

Several muggy, snore and cough filled nights later, Tony sat on the edge of his nana’s bed, near the door that led to the hall. Surrounding the bed were the 3 dogs and now just 3 cats that loved her as he did. Despite their love for Nana, the Guinea Pigs and birds were in the living room.

She wore a thin, floral print nightgown Tony had seen her cook a hundred breakfasts in. The garment was her favorite of all her house clothes, and between his fits of crying Tony thought it fitting that the gown would be the last thing she wore alive.

Young Tony wasn’t a doctor, but he knew his nana’s time was short. The unhappy animals did too.

Her coughing had gotten worse since the car accident outside. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was a lifetime of smoking, maybe it was allergies, maybe it was just her time. She spat up wad after wad of thick, dark mucus until she didn’t have the energy to spit, or the tissues to spit in, and then the stuff sat in her throat and vibrated in an unholy tone, reverberating her ill chest like a broken organ. She was drowning.

Since the morning she continued to breathe in shallow gasps, but her eyes weren’t opening. She hadn’t eaten or drank anything either, and Tony knew she’d wet the bed. The room stank of her urine.

“Did my bedroom stink when I wet the bed, Nana? I bet it did. You never would’ve said anything though.”

As the sun rose, a sliver of light slipped in through the crack between the side of the blinds and the window frame on the east side of the house. The white beam cut through the dust and pollen, leaving a white wall suspended in the air. Tony imagined the white light was the barrier between life and death. On this side of the light, everyone was alive. On the other side of the light… not so much.

Then his nana’s ragged, wet intake of air stopped, and his imagination was made wrong. The two cats that had been on the bed stood, and jumped off. One of the dogs whined and the others left the room.

“Nana?”

Her body remained still.

“Nana?”

Still nothing.

“Christina Angellini?” he tried her full name. Most of her name came out okay, but a good portion of it was composed of somewhat verbal sobs.

She did nothing, and Tony knew then and there he had several problems on his hands. He was alone now. Really and truly alone. He had a dead body in the house. Dead bodies came back as zombies.

He didn’t have a plan for this, but set out to make one right quick. As he went about it, he cried, and the dogs whined beneath the kitchen table.

*****

He knew Nana was dead, and that she didn’t feel pain, but he couldn’t bear the idea of smashing her head in, or stabbing her in the eye, or doing any kind of damage to her. He loved her, and she deserved better than that.

Tony ushered the dogs and cats out of her room and into the hallway. He shut the door behind him and went through the living room and kitchen, and after getting his sickle handy and peering out the windows of the kitchen, he stepped outside into the morning. Bicycle man was long gone, and he couldn’t hear anything in the vicinity. As the birds chirped, he went to the shed in the backyard.

Swinging his sickle left and right in the tall grass he got to the door and undid the clasp. Tony tucked the sickle away and pulled the metal doors open, revealing his grocery store bounty of canned juice in cardboard flats. He hadn’t touched the drinks yet, and hoped he never had to.

Two flats of six tin cans at a time he moved them from the shed to the kitchen floor. It took him the better part of the hour as the heat of the day grew, and as he became drenched in sweat. By the time he had the shed cleared of food and the few usable items he’d lost track of time, and had almost forgotten about why he was doing what he was doing. Every lifted case made his damaged hand feel worse and worse, and all he could do was fixate on the predictable agony each case brought him. By the time he finished the pain ran all the way up his arm to the shoulder.

When one of the dogs whined as he dropped a case of apple juice, his memory started working.

“Oh no. Nana. I got to get her moving.”

Tony tucked his sickle into his jeans pocket (he’d made a clever incision in the bottom of the pocket the blade slipped through) and made sure he had his grandpa’s buck knife handy. He could never hurt his nana, but the weapon was courage in real form, and he felt better having it.

Through the stale kitchen that hadn’t smelled like cooking in days and the living room that stank of guinea pig shit he headed. Down the hall and to the door of his nana’s bedroom. He pressed an ear to the thin, hollow door and listened. He prayed for the sound of her breathing.

He heard nothing.

He twisted the knob with great care, doing everything he could to avoid making noise. His efforts were rewarded; the door made no sounds as he pushed it inward. Lying in the center of the bed was nana, still as the sheets beneath her. The room still stank of her dying piss.

“Hey Nana. I’m sorry that took so long, but I needed to move the food back into the house. I’m going to put you in the shed now. I’ll carry you out. Just gotta stay still for me while we move, and all should be great.”

Tony let the dead body of his nana listen to his explanation and when she didn’t respond, he decided she’d heard him, and had agreed to the terms of his offer. He folded his grandpa’s knife and slid it into the pocket opposite his sickle, which was soon tossed on the bed. The garden tool was cumbersome in his pocket as he tried to lift his nana.

He’d envisioned lifting her up like a hero off the cover of a romance novel but that hope was dashed. She wasn’t a big person by any means, but Tony wasn’t like the men on the covers of those books. He was a skinny kid who lifted cans of Coke and did math homework eagerly.

When he tried to pick her up and put her over his shoulder his back gave out, and he dropped her with zero grace back on the bed. He almost began to ball out tears over dropping his nana but regained his composure when he remembered she was already dead, and that he dropped her on her back, on the bed. Not the worst thing that could’ve happened by a long shot.

After doing the math on it, he got her moving by putting his arms under hers, and interlocking his hands across her breasts. With her feet on the floor he could walk backwards and more or less have her own feet support some of her weight. Not majestic or heroic looking, but she would move, and it would be good. He knew his mother and father would approve.

He backed up down the hall, through the smelly living room and into the kitchen. He almost tumbled on the cases of juice he’d just brought in, but managed to catch himself at the last second. The back of his ankle whacked good and hard against one of the tall cans, sending a jolt of pain up to his knee but he’d live. In fact, he noticed that with the ankle pain distracting him from how bad the cut on his hand hurt, his nana had grown lighter by half.

“Nana, I feel like I could carry you all the way outside,” Tony said. “Strong as an ox.”

Nana stopped moving.

Not “Tony stopped walking.” Tony kept backing up, but Nana stopped moving. He backed two feet away from her before he realized she’d latched onto the edge of the cabinets near the kitchen. With old hands she’d clawed into the soft, stained pine and put an anchor down. Tony stood, stunned and elated that she had remained upright after he let her go.

“Nana, you’re alive?” he muttered to the white back of her curly haired head.

Without replying she spun and faced her grandson Antonio. The woman standing in front of Tony was his nana. This was her, and this was her kitchen but Nana wasn’t home anymore. The fierce brown eyes she’d had his whole life were gone. Instead she had sickly yellow-gray orbs embedded in her jaundiced, sunken skull. Her lips peeled back as her bizarre eyes fixed on Tony, showing him her tobacco stained teeth.

“Nana?”

As the dogs went wild barking, she launched at him. Faster than he’d ever seen her move at any other point in his life she used her hands and legs to propel her whole body forward onto his. The slight boy wasn’t ready, not in the least, and he went down on the stacked flats of large juice tins. His back careened off the pile of cans and the weight of his grandmother drilled the corner of the beverages deep into the area between his shoulder blades. He cried out in pain as the tender muscles near his spine were split apart by the impact. Both of their bodies tilted sideways as she snapped her teeth at him and they spun, reversing their order.

Tony came to a rest atop his grandmother, face to face. She bit up at him, digging her claws into his neck and pulling down, trying to fit his face, his neck into her mouth.

“Nana, please! Let go of me!” Tony screamed as he pushed away with all he had. But he was already tired. He’d just carried all those drinks in, and he hadn’t slept and wasn’t in good shape and she was endless… She’d never tire, and eventually–soon – he would get tired and-

Tony watched as the top row of her teeth came loose and slid in her mouth.

False teeth.

“Forgive me,” he whispered to her. Tony leaned to the left, and punched her in the face as hard as he could with the right.

The fist knocked Nana’s face sideways and dislodged her upper dentures. The half-circle shaped prosthetic spit came almost all the way out of her mouth as she continued to bite up and down. The hard plastic of the two apparatus’ clicked and snapped as she chomped and yanked down on him.

Emboldened by his sudden willingness to fight, he punched her again, glancing the knuckles of his fist across her lips and knocking the upper denture all the way out of her mouth. It skidded across the floor of the kitchen and went underneath the oven.

She kept biting, and one of the dogs behind him joined her. A sharp stabbing pain pierced his ankle where he’d banged it just a bit earlier. A fast glance told him it was the sheepdog his grandpa loved, Kojak.

“Dammit, get off me Kojak!”

The dog yelped in fear and backed away, but growled at him the second it stopped moving. Then it started barking in his face at full volume.

Tony managed to knock his nana’s left arm off his neck with his right, and then pinned it down with his forearm. As she kept biting, and yanking with the other arm Tony kept his relative cool (at least he hadn’t screamed yet) and pulled the other arm off. Once that arm was pinned under his forearm, it was a simple matter to wiggle his legs and trunk up until he sat on her chest. He put his knees on his nana’s upper arms, pinning her under him and rendering her harmless. She twisted her head side to side and tried to bit his inner thighs, but with half a mouth of fake teeth she couldn’t get purchase on his jeans.

Tony looked around and saw a wooden spoon on the stove. He reached over, grabbed it, and slipped it into his nana’s mouth when she opened it. A quick pry later the U-shaped bottom plate came out.

He laughed like a madman, and as he caught his breath, he tried to think of how he was going to get nana out to the shed. Kojak continued to bark and pace around the kitchen, angry at the grandson.

When Tony finished plotting how to get her out of the house, and followed through on the plan, he returned to the sedate yellow filled with frightened, angry animals and curled up into a ball in his grandpa’s recliner. He fell asleep by noon, and cried as he slept through the hot summer day.

None of the cats sat in his lap, and none of the dogs sat near his feet.

- Part Eight -

PONG. PONG. PONG.

Just like Nana, Tony was hungry.

Just like Nana, Tony went without.

His fear of running out of the food he had led him down the path of starvation. Surrounded by gallon upon gallon of vitamin laced, delicious, sugary drinks, and boxes of cereal and dry milk, and a metallic mountain of canned goods he ate next to nothing. He feared starving so much, he had found a way to save his food and starve anyway.

Out in the red metal shed he heard as his nana banged against the wall over and over again.

PONG.

PONG.

PONG.

Her pace had become almost perfect in its robotic precision, and it was one of the things on the long list of things driving Tony mad. He’d sit there, looking out the window above the sink for hours, listening for the sound of her voice in the metal coffin he’d put her in.

“Antonio, it’s Nana. I’m okay. Please come outside and let me out so I can cook you some supper,” he hoped he’d hear. But no. Just PONG. PONG. PONG.

Even his terrible sleep offered no reprieve. He’d sit in the dark, sweating under the cleanest of all his stained sheets thinking about his family so he’d dream of them but when he succumbed to sleep the dreams he had were never the ones he wanted. He’d dream of his frightened grandpa, and after his nana died he’d dream about her, but he never once dreamed of his mother, or father or little brother.

Until one night he dreamt of his little brother Frank, and somehow that made everything worse. Tony stopped trying to dream about his family.

The dogs never trusted him again. They’d skulk in the other rooms of the house when he was awake and when he slept, they’d slink into the kitchen with the cats and eat their meager rations, dispensed by the weary and lonely teenager. He’d let them out each morning to piss and shit, and they’d circle the shed a thousand times before he got angry and hissed at them to return. They’d come in, frightened of him, and inevitably they’d shit on the kitchen floor. Tony had no paper towels left to clean the crap up with, so he used a spatula, and flung it out the door into the neighbor’s yard with his puffy, swollen hand.

All the while… PONG. PONG. PONG.

“Shut up, Nana!” He hissed at her one morning as he tossed the dog’s shit across the driveway. “I can hear you, the neighbors can hear you, the students up at Auburn Lake can hear you. You’re going to get me killed,” he said to her. “You’re yapping like a hungry toddler.”

Tony felt bad for talking at his nana’s corpse like that, and he retreated behind the screen door and sat on the floor, crying. His mind ran to his mom, and how she’s beat the snot out of him for saying what he’d just said. He was out of line, and he was-

Right. He was right. Nana was yapping like a hungry toddler.

“You’re hungry. I haven’t given you anything to eat,” Tony muttered to the linoleum between his legs. “You must be starving. But what would you want? Zombies eat people, but I don’t have anyone to feed to you, not that I would even if I did.”

One of the birds tweeted in its cage, and Tony knew he had something he could offer Nana.

*****

Tony opened the shed the following morning after hearing his nana beat on the walls again. The parakeet (or was it a cockatiel?) he’d put inside the door blindly flew out and over his head, disappearing into the nearby trees. Nana had gone hungry.

Furious, Tony stomped into his grandparent’s ranch where he grabbed a second bird. He brought it out, clutched in his fist and when he got to the ajar door, he twisted its little neck until he felt stuff inside break. Tony tossed the bird’s twitching corpse into the shed where his nana was standing, and he shut the door and threw the clasp.

Nana’s ceaseless banging on the walls stopped for almost five minutes, but then resumed. The meal was insufficient. It made sense. She hadn’t eaten in a very long time.

“You need something bigger to eat tomorrow,” Tony said, and looked at one of her cats as it scratched the post his grandpa had made out of a 4x4 beam and some old rug in the living room. “Something with more meat on its bones.”

*****

With the rising sun, Tony threw his nana’s fluffy white Persian into the gap in the shed door. He heard the cat meow, then hiss. A terrible struggle ensued and the cat let free awful, terrible noises of feline aggression followed by complete silence.

Relieved, Tony went inside and ate 6 green beans from a can he’d opened several days earlier. He felt he earned the meal after making sure his nana was taken care of.

Before he finished the 6th green bean his nana was back to banging on the wall of the shed, and Tony sat in his grandpa’s recliner, and cried himself to sleep. He felt powerless. He felt weak. He felt sick.

He was bored and worse yet, he was unhappy.

Next morning, he’d kill the cat, and then throw it in. Nana might need the help, considering her advanced age.

*****

On his way out to the shed with the other, final cat he could find, Tony realized he’d made a terrible error in judgment. His realization came from kicking his nana’s top denture across the kitchen floor. It had lain there, abandoned, since their life or death struggle the morning of her death, and it occurred to him that without teeth, she certainly couldn’t eat meat on a plate, let alone meat that tried to escape from her.

“Let’s get that other denture out from under the stove, and get you to Nana,” Tony said to the final cat as he sat it down on the floor. “It won’t be long. And look at the bright side; we’re almost out of cat food anyway, and you love Nana. If you could tell me how you wanted to die, I bet it would be like this.”

Fifteen minutes and a denture soak and brush later Tony was at the shed, cat in the carrier Nana used for trips to the vet. He sat the cat down in the tall grass and laid her teeth and the special “denture insertion system” on top of the carrier and pulled the red door open.

Lashed to the bench at the back of the shed was Nana. Tony had gotten her out to the shed only suffering scrapes from her nails using a dish towel and a broom. The towel got tied around her face and the broom was duct taped to her waist. Tony got her out to the shed at arm’s length with the broom and when she was inside the red metal outbuilding he used a half dozen hooked bungee cords doubled up with more duct tape to affix her to the bench. She had some range of motion, but could never escape the shed unless she broke all 4 bonds then the thrown bolt across the doors.

At her feet were the dead birds, and the dead cat. They were uneaten and peaceful on the plywood floor. She pulled at the elastic restraints and tried desperately to reach him. He felt sick to his stomach. The scene was awful. Gut wrenching emotionally as well as physically. The smell and the lack of dignity for her and…

“Nana, I’ve got your teeth. I’m giving them back, but you can’t bite me with them, okay? I brought you Colby. He wants you to eat him. Told me himself. Now if you can just stand still for a minute, I’ll put your dentures back in, and then let Colby in.”

She clamped her gums down over and over, making a wet, heavy smacking sound. The force her jaws must’ve been generating could’ve rended flesh with ease, and that sent chills up and down Tony’s spine, right where he’d taken the cans to the back. It still hurt.

His “denture insertion device” was a Rube Goldberg if there ever was one, Tony’s grandpa would say. A rubber band ran around the top and bottom plate running from side to side so as not to impede the biting motion once installed. The banded dentures themselves were attached to the end of a reaching gripper arm that his nana used to grab things off of the top shelves in the kitchen. Simple stuff, really. Tony knew grandpa would’ve laughed, and been proud of his invention.

He picked up the clamp handle of the gripper and entered the stifling heat of the dark shed. No matter how cool the night became every morning the inside of the shed felt like a muggy August afternoon. It smelled of death around the clock as well.

He waited for his nana to open her mouth, and he darted the clamp into her face, and pushed the false teeth in. They jumbled about for a second, and then slid into the place they were designed for. The wet smacking disappeared and the noisy clacking of the plastic teeth took over.

“You look angry at me, Nana. Don’t be. I’m about to help you. Antonio has breakfast.”

Tony retrieved the carrier and the cat from the grass outside, and took the hissing animal out. Just as he was about to underhand it to the woman he loved dearly, deep pangs of regret and guilt struck him. The cat meowed, and he agreed.

Tony’s hand went around the cat’s throat and clamped down. Weak as he was he still had the strength to keep the cat from escaping, and he needn’t worry about being clawed; Colby had been declawed for years. The black and white animal thrashed and tried to hiss at him as he let it suffocate in his fist. It didn’t take long for the innocent creature to expire. Before it stopped twitching he threw the carcass at his nana’s feet and as soon as he saw her go for the unconscious pet, he backed out and shut the shed’s door.

He heard wet crunching noises, and then silence.

Nana didn’t bang on the wall of the shed for several days. He celebrated by eating six more green beans at dinnertime, and he didn’t cry at all. He kept thinking about how proud everyone would be of him.

- Part Nine -

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Nana remained sedate and fed for several rainy days, and a bored Tony used that time to test out how sharp grandpa’s knife really was. First he cut sheets of yellow lined legal paper he found in a drawer into a pile of shreds, then he moved on to an old towel. After that he considered cutting one of the dogs a little (Kojak, because the hairy bastard bit his ankle), but that seemed cruel and a waste of a meal for his nana.

So he cut his arm. One press and slow drag of the buck knife’s blade left a crease in his skin that went almost all the way through and drew a thick runner of blood. He had to do it all with his left hand because his right had swollen up as fat as an oven mitt and was spider webbed with red tracers along the skin. The red lines were moving up his forearm now too, and Tony was pretty sure that meant it was a bad infection, but he kept taking a Tylenol every morning, and rubbed hydrocortisone cream on it at bedtime. He’d mend soon.

He knew it.

But the cutting continued. The first day it was two cuts on his right forearm and two on his right thigh. It felt so good. Powerful. The second day it was four more cuts on his arm and six more on his leg. Then he started to dig at the wound across his palm.

The tip of the blade opened up the barely healed scar and released an alarming flow of thick blood filled with white pus. The gooey discharge ran down his wrist and forearm until it plopped quarter-sized drops on the rug.

The dogs came over to sniff the potential treat, but backed away. Kojak whimpered.

“Shut up, Kojak. You’re the first to go when Nana’s hungry again. She’ll eat you up and stop that whining for good. You never whined around her before, and you won’t now. You should be grateful I still feed you after you bit me.”

Tony dug at the cut until all the pus ran out of it, and the fresh, bright pain cleared his head.

At sundown, Nana began banging on the side of the shed.

Tony looked down at Kojak and sighed with satisfaction.

*****

It took Tony the better part of 15 minutes to find a leash. Grandpa and Nana never used leashes for the dogs, as they believed in letting the dog choose to come home and listen, but he knew they had one. He found it in the pantry, hanging on a nail behind an old mop.

He resolved to mop after feeding Kojak to his nana.

He slipped on his favorite hoodie and slipped the leash over Kojak’s head like a choke collar. The dog resisted, but when Tony assured the old hairy beast that they were going to see Nana, its fear and revulsion of him turned into excitement.

He peered out through the door’s curtains, saw nothing in the driveway or street, and opened the door. He pushed the screen door open, and Kojak bolted.

“Dammit!” Tony belted out at the exuberant animal as it jumped off the steps and ran towards the back of the house.

The dog reached the end of the leash in a few short seconds, long before it slowed down or Tony could close the gap. His left hand (the good one) had the strap in it, and the leash connecting his hand to the dog went taut and almost yanked his arm out of the socket. The dog’s running power was enough to pull Tony straight off the top step and send him through the air and onto his stomach in the gravel drive.

His chest hit hard enough to lose all the air in his lungs and his face smacked down hard enough to split his chin, punch a tooth through his lower lip and cut his eyebrow. He tasted blood as his vision swam. His left hand went back and forth, tugged side to side by the dog that wanted to see its mom in the worst way.

“Fucking Kojak!” Tony yelped out far louder than he wanted to, but he was beyond thinking. All he had was anger.

Using his battered, bruised and infected body he grunted his way to standing and yanked hard enough on the leash to send Kojak tumbling back towards him. The choked dog whimpered and rolled onto its back, showing Tony its belly and gasping for air.

“You little bastard. Why did you do that? You know you have to wait for me to go. You’re not a puppy. Grandpa loved you and you’re acting like an asshole. What would he say to you right now?”

The dog didn’t say anything; it just rolled over onto its stomach and got to its feet. One step at a time it backed away from Tony.

“You should be scared of me. I’ve survived this thing. I’m a survivor. My mom and dad and little brother and Nana and Grandpa would be proud of me. And you know what? I was going to choke you out with this leash before I fed you to Nana, but now, screw you. You’re going in awake, little asshole.”

Something choked Tony from behind and slammed him backwards to the driveway. His skull crashed into the small, sharp stones and he felt a hundred pinpricks of pain where they had drawn blood. He blacked that thought out as he looked up at the rainy sky with eyes that swam with stars. His hoodie had been yanked up into his neck where it still threatened to strangle him and more pressing; a very dead man stood at the top of his head, and he looked down at him with an emotion that Tony couldn’t place.

The zombie went to the ground on Tony’s head with a crash, letting its own knees buckle to get down to him faster.

Tony was quick. He rolled to the side just as the zombie collapsed and he avoided being trapped by his head. He did feel as something thicker than the rain slapped against his ear and stick there, wet, cool, and gooey.

“Ahh, no! Fucking hoodie!” he screamed at the sweatshirt that betrayed him. He tucked and rolled away from the threat as fast as his tired body would allow, making his hood flop around his neck even worse. Two arm lengths away from the stranger trying to eat his face he spun to his stomach and tried to crawl hard away.

But the man had his sneaker by the heel.

Tony yanked the foot free, and lost the footwear in the process.

Then the man had his pant leg, then had his fingers inside the waistline where his cold, dead fingers pressed against the skin of Tony’s back, and Tony couldn’t shake him. The clothes he wore would be his undoing.

He mustered all of his meager strength and stuck his knee out to the side, rolling his body so the pocket his grandpa’s knife was in could be gotten to. The act of moving made the zombie’s frenetic clawing and grabbing abate for a second, and Tony avoided looking in the face of the thing. He could see dried red blood all over his face, and he didn’t want to see a wound, or evidence that he wasn’t this dead man’s first meal since death.

The knife popped out of the pocket and fell to the gravel near his hand.

“Dammit!” he yelled at the knife, the zombie, the dog that watched and the rainclouds that dripped down onto him.

The zombie didn’t respond; in fact, the thing made no noise other than the crunching of the stones in the driveway beneath the struggle. No breathing, no grunting, no moans of the undead, nothing other than the occasional clacking of its teeth as it snapped them shut just inches from the arm Tony had jammed into its neck.

As the weight of the struggling monster bent and buckled his arm Tony got the knife from the ground and fought to open it. He had to put his good hand very near the face of the thing he wouldn’t look at and he stared at the antler centerpiece of the knife to avoid the gaze of the man trying to eat him. His fingernail caught the groove in the side of the antique blade, and he pried the knife open and felt it lock in place.

He moved it into his hand fully, and jammed the blade upward into the snarling monster’s eye.

The zombie shuddered twice and a thick wad of viscous gray fluid fell from its ruptured eyeball straight into Tony’s open, angry mouth.

His empty stomach revolted, knotting up and forcing out a stream of bile. He turned his head sideways and threw it all up on the ground next to his ear. When the burning yellow acid ran out, he heaved and heaved, eyes fastened shut, pinned to the ground by the dead man atop him. He sobbed and cried and wailed and bit the knuckles on his swollen, infected hand to remain as quiet as he could.

When he regained his senses and strength, he pushed the zombie off him, and ripped the hoodie off. He pulled off his jeans and kicked the remaining shoe off into the backyard near the bulkhead door. Then he found Kojak. The sheepdog had walked over to the shed and curled up beneath the shallow overhang that protected those standing at its door from light rain. Kojak stood, and whimpered as he approached.

He cried when he hit the dog over the head with his fist until it went unconscious, and he cried as he shoved its heavy body through the door.

Ashamed, Tony walked in his underwear back to the house, and he curled up on his grandpa’s recliner, and sat alone, and afraid until he heard his nana banging on the side of the shed again.

- Part Ten -

Grandpa Might not be Proud

He couldn’t stand the whimpering. Night after night in the depths of his weird, fever dreams Tony could only hear Kojak’s whimpering as he walked toward him in the rain.

The sound of the dog’s plaintive cry for another human’s help cooked Tony’s unwell soul as if he’d fallen straight to Hell. And now, in the wake of all he’d done in the name of the love he had for his nana, he was sure he was hell bound.

All of his nana’s animals were gone. The Guinea Pigs went into the shed, chirping and clicking gleefully as if he was about to give them a carrot. They never came out.

The dogs were gone, the cats were gone, and the birds were as well. He had fed all of his grandparent’s pets to his nana, and when that was done, he left the house and found other animals to give to her. There wasn’t much, but he wasn’t picky, either. He picked up a few animals that either starved or dehydrated and threw their carcasses into the metal structure she was banished to. He found a few skittish animals that braved loss of life or limb to come to the food bowl he left on the kitchen door’s steps.

They were strangled and thrown into the dark place for nana the moment they let their guard down. Those that fought back weren’t strangled; they were just thrown into the dark for the undead woman to feast on. Tony never went in. He didn’t need to see the final moment. The shame of it would be his final failure.

And Tony did all of this as naked as the day he was born. He didn’t trust his clothes anymore. His hoodie nearly choked him to death and offered the zombies a handle to grab onto and his shoes and pants did the same. Had he not worn the sweatshirt, he never would’ve been slammed to the ground, and had he not worn his sneakers or his pants he would’ve scampered away and to his feet where he would’ve killed the zombie with ease.

He knew that’s how it would’ve gone, and he knew how proud his grandpa would’ve been of him.

He knew.

Sometime in the middle of an actual muggy August afternoon an emaciated, malnourished Tony stood at the kitchen sink. Dirty dishes were as high as they could be stacked and the smell of old, rotting food pervaded. The kitchen would never smell like his nana’s cooking again. He ran his fingers along his hard, exposed ribs and watched the side of the shed.

His nana could reach one side of the outbuilding, and for weeks now she had been punching the same spots over and over. Like a cyst beneath the skin bulges pushed out where she’d hit the metal. Rounded mounds of deformed wall shook and vibrated as she banged on the side.

He imagined her. Arms still kept in check by the tape and bungee cords, legs the same. Forced to stand for months now, trapped in the pervasive darkness of the shed his grandpa bought at a hardware store. His grandpa had never intended for this. Tony had never intended for this.

He knew that.

Struck by a moment of questionable inspiration, Tony searched the house for the sickle and found it where he’d dropped it. He walked out of the house, naked and unafraid and walked around the pale yellow siding until he reached the shed.

PONG. PONG. PONG.

“Nana. I’m gonna come in, Nana,” he croaked. He was so thirsty. Not thirsty enough to drink the juice he’d gotten. No, that had to be saved so he could survive.

He walked to the door and lifted the bolt, then threw it to the side. The act took more effort than it should’ve but then again, he was skin and bones now. A husk of the boy that came to help his nana in June. He pulled the doors open and allowed the scene to sink in.

The movement of his dead grandmother drew his eyes first. Not out of fear, not to ensure that she was still restrained by the cords and tape, but because he recognized her face, and wanted to see that same love he’d experienced his entire childhood. It wasn’t gone. The only thing Nana had for Tony now was malice, and hunger. She pulled at the bindings he’d applied and struggled with her endless strength to get free, to get him.

He cried, and looked at her feet.

She hadn’t eaten anything. Not one meal he’d given her during her time in prison. The sheepdog, the collie, the Persian cat, both guinea pigs and every other neighborhood pet he’d captured lay dead on the floor. Some he’d killed and thrown to her in the hopes she’d eat a dead animal, and some he’d choked out to make her eating them easier. A few of the pets had probably starved or died of thirst in the baking heat of the shed but all of them were intact; no bites anywhere he could see, and no blood ran from places she’d feasted.

She didn’t want their flesh; she wanted his. His and anyone else’s who came too close to her manufactured teeth.

“Nana. I think I should’ve killed you,” he said just far enough away from the charnel house to escape most of the wrath of its smell. “I couldn’t have before, I don’t think, but I know now I should’ve. I thought you deserved to live, but now… I see that you aren’t alive. You haven’t been alive for a long time, and this is no way to treat you.”

He broke down crying. His feeble legs folded at the knees and he collapsed into the tall grass, untouched all summer long. He closed his eyes and cried thick tears into his normal hand, and the swollen ruined hand that had gone dark green on him. When he opened his eyes he saw a tick on his knee, and left it there.

It didn’t matter.

He stood up, and that took time and a lot of effort.

“Nana, I wish I could’ve been smarter. More brave, or whatever. I wish I could’ve been a better grandson. I wish you had gone before all this happened so you could’ve been with grandpa, but now, I’m not sure how it all works. If you’re okay with it, I’m gonna kill you now.”

Tony lifted his hand and stepped forward, but realized he had dropped the sickle. He sighed, and bent his achy, infected body over and felt through the grass until he cut his finger on the sharp, hooked blade. The sting of the cut was a reward; knowledge the blade could do its last deed well.

Before he could change his mind, or think of what his mother would say or do in that moment, Tony stepped up into the shed, and swung the sickle at his nana’s head.

*****

It made sense to Tony that Nana deserved a burial, but he didn’t have the strength to move her. He’d buried the man that tried to kill him in the driveway already, and that had cost him days of soreness and he still felt it now. He was too weak to bury her, and if he had any strength to cry because of that, he would’ve.

Instead, he gave her a shrine.

Her favorite animals went at her feet, and on her legs like she would’ve wanted, and the other animals he found went somewhere around her. He arranged them in a pattern that made sense to him, and when he was satisfied that the arrangement paid her enough respect, he exited the shed, and threw the sickle into the woods.

It didn’t make sense to have the weapon that killed her in the shed with her body.

Tony went back into the building and pulled the doors shut until the blackness covered the whole scene like a body bag. He sat cross legged on the plywood floor and felt the sharp jab of a splinter pierce his butt cheek. He breathed through his mouth so he didn’t gag, and he sat there, covered in a thin film of sweat. He would’ve dripped with sweat, but he had nothing inside him left to push out the pores.

The husk of Antonio picked up his grandpa’s buck knife and found the groove on the side of the blade. He plucked at it with a filthy fingernail that hadn’t been cut in weeks and pulled the blade open until he felt it lock in place.

He didn’t have the courage from it anymore. The knife didn’t protect him like the talisman he thought it was. It was a sharp piece of metal, no more and no less. It would do the job too, if he could get it done right.

Tony leaned back until his back met the floor and he took a deep breath through his mouth. He could taste the rot. He could hear the maggots and flies. He was already dead.

The boy rolled over onto his stomach and propped the knife up so the handle was against the floor and blade pointed to the ceiling. Breathing hard and feeling lightheaded in the heat, he pushed his abdomen and chest up until he reached what might’ve been a pushup position. He wiggled forward, one hand holding the knife upright until his chin and throat were directly above his grandpa’s blade.

Tony remained in the dark, unafraid until his arms shook from fatigue, and gave out one last time.

The Vampire of Menlo Park

Thomas Alva Edison 1910: Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.

January 10th, 1883

Menlo Park, New Jersey

It was early evening, and a heavy snowfall that deadened the world had just begun outside. A frightfully young intern wearing the best set of clothes his family could afford approached the intricately carved cherry door that marked the entrance to the office of one of the 19th century’s greatest minds. His family had sacrificed much for Geoffrey to get this after school job, but in his mind, it was all worth it. The great door was ajar a few inches, and the young man rapped his knuckles hesitantly and adjusted his spectacles before speaking.

The door emitted a bit of a creak as he spoke, “Mr. Edison sir?”

The Wizard of Menlo Park was always at work. No matter the hour of the day or night, Thomas Edison was shut into his office, or into one of his basement level laboratories, working on the next scientific achievement that would make the American life better.

“Geoffrey, you may enter,” Edison responded.

The pre college intern took a deep breath and pushed the ornate door in, stepping a few feet into the wide and deep office. He stopped ten paces from the massive desk where Edison sat, sipping on a crystal goblet filled with blood red wine. The man was flanked on either side by tall windows that had been shuttered firmly against the light and cold. The room was cool, lit by several of the electric lamps Edison had invented himself, and it reminded Geoffrey of a mausoleum. Edison was only in his mid thirties, with a long, powerful face, bold chin, porcelain skin, and a thick head of dark hair, parted strongly to the left side. Presently he wore a pinstriped vest and a fine cotton blouse, buttoned straight to the neck. He was handsome, and unforgettable. Geoffrey looked in many ways the same as the inventor, though he was sickly. A childhood bout with typhoid fever had stunted his growth, but left his mind untouched. Geoffrey aspired to be a scientist like his idol, Thomas Edison.

“Mr. Edison, sorry to intrude. I came up to tell you that Mr. Bradley asked me to let you know that he’s gone home for the night. I’ve just come from the electric lamp factory. The snow is quite thick.” Geoffrey’s palms were clammy, and his breath the tiniest bit ragged. Being around Edison made him unreasonably nervous. He looked around to the fine wallpaper and tall bookcases to obscure his thoughts. The office felt cold, but was quite luxurious.

“Very good, Geoffrey. Do you have time for me to ask you a few questions young man?” Edison took another small sip from his goblet, leaving a tiny trace of the thick red wine at each corner of his mouth.

“Of–of course, Mr. Edison.” Geoffrey smoothed out the front of his slacks nervously. It also served to dry the sweat on his palms.

Edison licked the corners of his lips in a strange manner. Geoffrey almost thought it was vaguely sexual. But that couldn’t be.

“Geoffrey when you stay up late at night, how do your faculties operate? Are you able to function in a scientifically sound manner?”

Geoffrey had to think carefully. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “Well sir, I don’t typically stay up past nine or ten at night. I’ve got school early in the morning, and then I come here immediately afterwards. I suppose I would say that if I were to have a task to focus on, I can stay up late and be useful. School studies, for example.”

Edison’s expression hardened, and he looked boldly at Geoffrey, making a powerful eye contact that Geoffrey couldn’t break away from. He felt his heart quicken as Edison’s eyes bored into him, evaluating him, rooting him still on the hardwood floor of the office. The power of the man!

Edison broke his eyes away after an eternity and lifted the goblet in his large hands once more. Geoffrey noticed for the first time how long and delicate the mastermind’s pale white fingers were. Edison swirled the thick wine in the ornate crystal repeatedly. Geoffrey watched as the lush red liquid coated the smooth glass making the shape of a parabola over and over again. Finally Edison put the wine in his mouth and with a single swallow downed the glass’s contents.

“I’ve made arrangements with your parents, Geoffrey. Starting next Monday you will be removed from your school, and granted an early diploma. I have need for a late night lab assistant, and if you feel that you can follow my exact instructions, and respect my needs for complete privacy and secrecy, I would like to offer you that position.” As Edison finished his statement he leaned forward on the desk, interlacing his long fingers together and resting his powerful chin atop them. His dark eyes–were they red?–leveled off at Geoffrey, and suddenly he felt as if he had no choice in the matter.

And he didn’t.

“I would be more than delighted sir,” Geoffrey said, his voice almost not his own. The young man could swear that Edison was mouthing the very same words along with him.

“Very good, Geoffrey,” Edison said and leaned back in his plush, high backed leather chair smiling. “Please take the rest of the week off, and spend some time with your family. Please arrive here at 5pm on Monday. Bring a dinner for yourself. From then on, you will be kept very busy helping me. We have a world to change, after all.”

“Thank you, Mr. Edison!” Geoffrey said with genuine glee. “I will do my best to prove my worth to you. I won’t disappoint!”

Edison smiled again, “Beware my wrath, Geoffrey. Other assistants of mine have later said that I am quite… bloodthirsty. Ravenous, in my needs.”

Geoffrey could only manage a series of elated nods. He was beyond ecstatic, and Edison’s vaguely sinister tone went entirely over his head.

“Close the door when you leave Geoffrey. Have an enjoyable night, and do be careful in the snow.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Edison sir. Thank you again,” Geoffrey said as he backed out, pulling the heavy cherry door shut. The sturdy lock caught with a metallic snap and Geoffrey turned around, leaning against the door, grinning ear to ear. He couldn’t be happier as he started to walk hurriedly down the hallway to head home. He was to be Thomas Edison’s personal assistant!

His mind mercifully obliterated the memory of Edison’s smile, and the two long fangs that had slipped out through it.

*****

Geoffrey knew that time didn’t dilate. It was scientifically impossible for a minute to take longer than sixty seconds, and the same theorem held true for the length of a weekend. However, the remainder of the week that Thomas Edison offered him the job as lab assistant, and the weekend he spent with his family felt like the longest stretch of days that had ever passed on this blue and green Earth.

When Geoffrey entered the building everyone else was leaving for the night. Only the managers and senior staff remained, and they were bundling up against the cold as Geoffrey stripped off his layers. Mr. Bradley, the hawkish, bearded man who worked as one of Edison’s manufacturing managers was tightening a scarf around his neck as Geoffrey unbuttoned his sweater.

“You’re going to want to leave that on,” Bradley said gruffly, fishing around in a tall, pressed copper bin for his walking cane.

“What sir?” Geoffrey asked, his fingers hovering over a brown button.

“Your sweater. Mr. Edison keeps the basement laboratory quite chilly. The colder temperatures serve the experiments he performs down there,” Mr. Bradley responded. He pulled an ornate cane from the bin, topped with a carved brass head of a bird of prey. It was beautiful, but had a darkness to it that Geoffrey couldn’t quite place.

“What research does Mr. Edison do down there, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Mr. Bradley put the tip of the cane to the floor and leaned hard on the brass bird. He searched for an answer for some time, long enough for Geoffrey to button his sweater all the way back up.

“I don’t know, Geoff. No one really knows. He only brings down a single assistant at a time, and when they are let go, they are sent away to boarding schools, or universities far abroad. Their secrecy is bought with an education, or a bribe. In fact, I’ve never seen or heard from any of his assistants once they’ve left his employ in that basement.”

Geoffrey swallowed with a very dry mouth. He felt silly for being scared.

“I will say this, Geoff, I will not work with Mr. Edison at night. Not since he took ill a few years ago. He’s changed. Harsher, colder. Obsessed with lighting the night, fearful of candles in an irrational way. Fire in any form, truthfully. Where are the stoves on this side of the building I ask you? And I couldn’t tell you when he last took a meal. He’s quite strange now. Be wary boy. Very wary.”

“Wary of what? Do you think he’s gone mad? Thomas Edison, genius of our age, mad?” Geoffrey was half frightened, and half shocked.

Mr. Bradley leaned in close to Geoffrey. The teenager could smell the coffee on the businessman’s breath as he spoke, “I won’t be with him at night, and I had this made. Just in case.” Mr. Bradley lifted his cane and gave the brass head a twist. The top of the cane came free, and he lifted it, revealing a slender, foot long wooden spike. The tip was as sharp as a pencil’s.

“Mr. Bradley, that’s quite strange.”

The older businessman shrugged, and examined his odd tool, “It’s made of ash. Ash is a good wood, Geoffrey. There’s a power in it. Science hasn’t shown us why, but many cultures have recognized that. Call me superstitious, but I feel better knowing I have this. Be careful, Geoff. You’ve a bright future ahead of you. I would hate to see it lost. Good evening.”

And with that, Mr. Bradley left the warm confines of the building, trudging out in the packed New Jersey snow.

Geoffrey didn’t feel much warmer after the door swung shut. A chill had set into his bones that would take a good long time to fade away. He picked up the small black lunch tin his mother had filled for him, and he set off down the hallway to Mr. Edison’s office.

*****

The time with Mr. Edison passed quickly. The vast majority of it was mundane when compared to Mr. Bradley’s odd paranoia, and soaked through and through with the science that Geoffrey wanted so badly to learn. One sunless night turned over to the next, and one week into another, and before he knew it, the New Jersey winter had given way for the burgeoning warmth of spring.

Geoffrey thought it odd when Mr. Edison asked him to come in later and later as time progressed. First it was half past five for a week, then six, then half past six. It wasn’t until Geoffrey realized that his arrival times to the basement lab were only scant minutes after the sunset each day that he felt something was amiss. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

It didn’t help that in three months of working with Mr. Edison, nine or more hours at a stretch, all he consumed was glass after glass of thick red wine, all from the same locked cabinet. Not one meal, nor bite of food.

His curiosity could take no more.

“Mr. Edison?” Geoffrey asked in a moment of solitude. The two men had just completed a round of esoteric experiments on filament composition. Thomas was trying to find a bulb filament that would illuminate longer. The search had consumed them of late.

“Yes, Geoffrey?” Edison said dismissively as he penned immaculate notes into a leather bound journal.

Geoff sat his own notebook down on the lab counter and took a deep breath before continuing, “I’ve been your assistant here for several months now. I want you to know I’m thankful, but I have some questions. Personal questions I’d like to put forth, if you don’t mind.” Geoffrey adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.

Edison lowered his quill; he favored using an inkwell and quill late at night, and picked up his ever present goblet of red wine. “Previous assistants have asked personal questions Geoffrey. Many of them did not like the answers they received, leading to their resignation, or termination. Ask what you will, but be mindful that the answers you seek might only muddle your feelings.” The genius sipped at his wine, and inclined his head, indicating for Geoffrey to speak.

Geoffrey swallowed down yet another dry mouth as his heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears. He steeled himself, and asked his first question, “Why do we only work at night?”

Edison was quick to answer, “I dislike the sun. Also, it amuses me that the research we do to eliminate the darkness of night is done at night. I find it fitting. Poetic.”

Geoffrey nodded apprehensively. He didn’t quite like that answer, but was scared to press the issue. “I also wondered about your diet sir. We’ve spent so long together these past few months, and I’ve never seen you eat so much as a single bite of food. All I’ve ever observed you eat or drink is that wine sir, and that worries me. How you stay well is mystifying.”

Edison cracked another wry grin, revealing teeth stained pink from the wine, “I’ve found that my stomach has a gentle constitution since I took ill several years ago. I eat very little now, and my wine soothes my humors.” He lifted the glass chalice and took another sip to emphasize the point.

“I see. I guess I just–well, I find it odd that we aren’t using the larger laboratory upstairs, where the others work, and you avoid sunlight entirely, and you never eat. It’s very odd, and I worry.”

“Don’t fret, Geoffrey. I am as healthy as an ox, and I plan on being around forever. If you play your cards right my son, I might just keep you around here for a good long time as well, and you will learn more science than you can imagine. We will change the world! Now, fetch me another bottle of the red please. I seem to have run out.” Edison downed the remainder of his glass and motioned for the sturdy wine cabinet in the corner of the low ceilinged room. Bolstered by the distraction of the small task, Geoffrey hopped up and retrieved the last heavy red bottle. He shut the stained glass door to the now empty cabinet, and started walking back to Edison.

“This is the last bottle, sir,” he said as he walked around one of the larger lab counters.

“Oh dear. I’ll need to send for more tomorrow. This bottle should get me through tonight though. Do bring it here. Be careful,” Edison snapped his fingers impatiently. Geoffrey thought it looked almost nervous, almost frantic.

Disaster struck. Geoffrey, lost in thought about Edison’s near manic moment, cut the final corner near the lab counter too short, clipping the bottom of the bottle on the hard soapstone surface, shattering it. The red wine issued out the broken bottom in a flood, covering his best slacks and creating a substantial spill on the smooth tile floor. The cleanup would set them back the rest of the night.

“Oh no, Mr. Edison! I’m so sorry!” Geoffrey said, looking down at the floor and the red spill. His foot was in the center of the mess, and he turned slightly, causing the foot to skid and slide on the wine. The consistency of it struck him as odd, and he knelt quickly, putting a knee and a finger in the dark red pool. He lifted the red fingertip to his nose, but before he even smelled the coppery, iron filled blood, he knew what it was. He stood, and saw a look that was beyond rage, and something entirely inhuman on the face of his mentor.

“Mr. Edison-“ Geoffrey said, suddenly very frightened for his life.

Edison moved–no, Edison launched over the lab counter like an enormous predator cat. Geoffrey didn’t have the time or sufficient reflexes to move, and literally before he knew it, his head was bouncing off the tile floor, and he was blacked out. When he came back to consciousness, Edison was crouched over his chest with one hand holding his neck against the floor in a grip that was vice-like. Edison looked positively feral, and radiant with rage. Long yellow-white fangs came down where the canines should have been in his mouth, and now for certain, Geoffrey knew Edison’s eyes were red. They glowed not unlike the red embers from Edison’s light bulbs.

Geoffrey was taken aback by how cold he felt against him.

“I SAID BE CAREFUL!” Edison snarled in Geoffrey’s face, his mouth stinking of rotten blood. “Now I’ll need to feed Geoffrey! And you are the only meal here tonight! What will I tell your parents when you’re a husk in a closed casket? Moron!”

Geoff couldn’t breathe. Edison’s claws were shutting his windpipe, and he gasped and sputtered, trying to say something, say anything that might buy him his life. Finally, as he was about to succumb to the blackness once more, Edison let up the tiniest bit, and the closing circle of death retreated.

Geoffrey coughed, “Mr. Edison, what are you? You’re cold, you’ve been drinking blood? You–you’re a beast!”

The fingers tightened again, “Do not presume to tell me what I am boy. I am primordial! I am advancement beyond humankind, beyond the brittle flesh of the living! I am the first of an old kind to take back the blackness of night. I am a vampire!” Edison snarled, baring the fangs once more.

What was a Vampire? Geoffrey choked out a broken series of words, “What? How?”

Edison looked down to the pool of blood and ran his hand through the spill. Blood red fingers disappeared into his mouth one by one, and he suckled on them like a babe at a teat. The tiniest amount of the vitae seemed to stabilize the monster that had erupted.

“I was approached by a wealthy businessman while on holiday in Europe. He gave me an offer I could not refuse. Eternity to research my obsessions. All I need sacrifice was my life, and the sun. But you see, that is not a loss at all, my boy, for I have created electric light.”

Geoffrey nodded slightly. Edison’s hand had loosened more. It seemed like the blood had calmed him. “But you also need to drink blood? Do you kill?”

“Vampires are ageless creatures from beyond the curtain of death young boy. Not human, not alive, but more. Yes, I need to drink blood to maintain my existence. Yes the sun is my bane. Yes I must kill now and again but sacrifices must be made, Geoffrey. To advance science you must question everything, even morality, even God. Every soul that meets their end in my red wine glass furthers mankind as a whole. It is a small price to pay, murder.”

Geoffrey was nearly speechless. Nearly. “Who dies?” he asked.

Edison was now sitting on his haunches, gargoyle-like, “Anyone at first, when the thirst is strongest. But now, just immigrants. I have several men who offer jobs to immigrants getting off of boats in New York City. A few every week is more than enough. In fact, I’m contributing rather substantial funds anonymously to the creation of a new immigration center. It is to be called Ellis Island. But no one will know I have anything to do with it, right Geoffrey?” Edison’s glowing red eyes flared as he looked back down at the young man below him.

Geoffrey shook his head, his eyes fixated on Edison’s long fangs, “Of course sir. Nothing you say shall ever pass from my lips. I understand completely.”

Edison continued. He was fervent, zealous, “Your predecessors Geoffrey, some were just incompetent, and they saved the lives of immigrants, feeding me instead of the foreigners. But some, like you, asked the questions. You are the smart ones Geoffrey, the inquisitive minds. But are you different from the others? Can you handle the truth of who and what I am and persevere in the face of that reality? For the good of science? For the good of mankind?” Edison looked away, then back again, but with a different kind of smile entirely, “Or will you become just another cabinet of red wine for me?”

Geoffrey nodded emphatically, “Sir, I understand. You’ve given everything to be one of the world’s most prolific minds, and I’d do the same. No one can understand what it means to truly seek knowledge in the way you have, and the way I wish to. I would do anything for the world, for science.”

Edison’s eyes lost their raw flare and faded back to a normal color as he regarded the boy on the floor below him. Geoffrey watched as his eyes drifted down to the throbbing artery in his neck, then back up to his eyes. Edison’s fangs slowly retracted back into his gums, much like a cat’s claws.

“You seek eternal life?” He asked softly.

“I don’t seek eternal life, Mr. Edison. I wish to seek. To learn, to study, and to know. If that means I must be as you, I accept that sacrifice.”

“You cannot know what you say, you are far too young, too naïve. You have not yet proven yourself loyal enough to receive that gift. You’ve sacrificed so little. But I shall spare your life for this night. I have a strange faith in you that I have never possessed over my previous aides.”

Geoffrey was ecstatic. “Thank you, good sir. I shall prove my worth, as I said. I know I will.”

Edison stood, the knees of his pants, and his face covered in blood. “I suggest you never drop another bottle of my wine if you wish to live, Geoffrey. Quite literally it is the one thing that is keeping my teeth from your throat every night.”

*****

It took Geoffrey two full weeks of sleepless days to build up the courage to approach Mr. Bradley. He knew it had to be done, and the only man who Geoffrey thought knew enough about Edison’s… condition, to be of any assistance.

Geoffrey couldn’t fail in this, or Edison would kill him. And drink him.

Mr. Bradley sat in his office, his hat resting on the top of the spike filled cane in the corner. Mr. Bradley wore only his vest, and he was sweating profusely. The early summer heat had risen dramatically, and the assembly line was even hotter. Several of the immigrant workers–those Mr. Edison hadn’t drained of blood–called the sweat den the devil’s den. Mr. Bradley wiped his brow with a white handkerchief and shuffled some forms on his desk, looking for something in the numbers and words.

“Mr.-, Mr. Bradley?” Geoffrey asked from the doorway. Geoff had come into work far earlier than usual, specifically to meet with the man about Mr. Edison, and his... needs.

Bradley looked up from his sweat stained paperwork and assessed Geoff. “You’ve gotten a bit pale, Geoffrey. All these late nights with Mr. Edison have taken a toll on your complexion.”

Geoffrey laughed nervously, “They’ve certainly taken a toll sir. Speaking of which, I was wondering if I could steal a few minutes of your time? Regarding Mr. Edison and the… condition you spoke of?”

Bradley sat the paperwork down and stared at Geoffrey. There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence, and Geoff thought Mr. Bradley might’ve forgotten what he was referring to, or wanted nothing to do with the conversation. Finally he motioned for Geoff to take a seat in the hard wooden chair near his desk.

“What is it you need to talk about?” The plant manager asked, pulling the bottom desk drawer out and producing two tumblers and a bottle of scotch.

Geoff watched him slowly pour a finger in each tumbler, mesmerized by the brown, oaky liquor splashing up the sides of the glass. Finally he spoke as Bradley pushed the drink across the desk to him.

“Mr. Edison has changed sir. Before I started to work with him, something dire happened. Something I think you’ve suspected all along.”

Bradley downed the finger of scotch and immediately poured twice as much into the glass. He swirled it around and licked his lips, “What can you tell me young man? Make no statements that aren’t fact. In this manner I suspect there’s precious little we can afford to guess on.”

“I believe Mr. Edison is a vampire,” Geoff said quietly, looking over his shoulder at the open office door. He felt a bead of salty sweat trickle down his cheek. He couldn’t tell if it was from the sweltering humidity, or from nerves.

“Where did you learn that word?” Mr. Bradley asked, sipping at the scotch.

“I read it in a book. Mr. Edison also said it a few times. It caught my curiosity so I did a bit of research,” Geoffrey replied, sipping at the harsh liquor. It burned his throat as it slid down, and he wondered why anyone would drink it.

“I think you’re right, Geoffrey. I’ve wondered for a good long time since Mr. Edison took ill, and since he stopped eating and going out at day. I’ve also thought it strange how he talks poorly of religion now, saying it’s all bunk. I’ve Romanian blood in me, and my mother and father told me of the blood drinkers. Have you seen him drink his wine? It’s blood, isn’t it?”

Geoffrey sipped the liquor, and slowly nodded.

“I knew it. I’ve known all along. He is one of God’s forsaken.”

“I don’t know what to do, Mr. Bradley. I accidentally dropped a bottle of his… wine the other day, and he nearly killed me. Teeth as long as a wolf’s, and eyes that glowed like coals. He had such strength sir. He held me down like a bear might hold a river salmon. I was able to talk him out of killing me, and since I’ve been able to stay in his good graces.”

“He’s a murderer.”

Geoffrey nodded, “I think he’s been killing people every week since he took ill, as you said he did. What do we do?”

Bradley’s hand shook as he tipped the tumbler once more this time draining it. He started nodding, building in rapidity to the point where Geoffrey though the man might be having a small seizure. Finally he stopped, setting the glass down on the wide oak desk with a clink.

“What do we do sir?” Geoff asked again.

“We kill him, like my ancestors did in Romania, the same way they have for centuries. I will drive my ash stake into his cold dead heart. And to be sure, we shall strike his head from his shoulders, and bury one far from the other. Are you with me, Geoffrey? Do you have the courage to do this with me?”

Geoffrey reached across the desk and picked up the bottle of scotch. With shaky hands he poured an inch of the liquor, and downed it immediately, wincing from the scorched throat it gave him. He nodded, almost of a different mind, “Yes, Mr. Bradley. I don’t see as if I have a different choice in the matter.”

The factory manager got up and walked around the desk, closing the office door gingerly. He sat back down, and produced a clean sheet of letterhead paper from a stack. He picked up a pencil, and started to jot notes.

“What are you doing?” Geoff asked.

Bradley looked up and scratched his beard with dirty fingers. Geoff thought there were a few new gray hairs. Quite a few.

“First, we plan.”

*****

“He sleeps in a dormitory in the basement,” Geoffrey told Mr. Bradley two weeks later. It was then deep into the core of the humid New Jersey summer, and the heat was crushing in the mid afternoon. The sun bored through the slats in the window shade like daggers made of flame. Glasses of iced tea one after another did their best to fight against the dehydration, but it was a lost cause until the sun went down.

Bradley looked over the notes Geoff had written earlier and nodded. They had their plan.

The manager spoke, “My mother once told me that the vampires are weaker during the day as they sleep.”

Geoffrey didn’t know how to respond, so he nodded. He felt his heartbeat quicken.

“We go now. We do this and end it all. Today, Thomas Edison meets his end, Geoffrey, and we will either be hailed as heroes, or criminals should we do this wrong.”

“I don’t know if I-“

“You’ve no choice. Take the cane, I’ll get the torches. Today, we use only the light that fire provides us. Edison’s electric light will not shed justice in this, the good Lord’s matter,” Bradley stood, and for the first time, the manager looked confident. Righteous. Just.

Geoffrey grabbed the brass headed cane and followed the man out into the hallway towards the stairs that would take them down to where Edison’s cold, dark lair was.

*****

Edison’s body was in a container that looked exactly like a seven foot long water chest. A large padlock hung from it, but Geoffrey knew it to be false. Like the chest it hung from, it was all only for the sake of appearance. A single ornament designed to dissuade the viewer from the real purpose of the chest.

In his left hand Bradley held the lit torch they had made from a scrap of wood, a handkerchief, and some of the vodka the Russian immigrants from the factory drank so freely. It burned bright and clean, casting orange light and black shadows across the finely appointed apartment. In his right hand Bradley held a large cross. He made the sign of the holy trinity and motioned for Geoffrey to approach the chest with him.

The young man held his breath, his heart hammering away. Adrenaline coursed through him, electrifying his every nerve and muscle, much like Edison’s loved energy might. He had never felt so alive, or so close to death. It was a queer exhilaration.

“Open it,” Bradley said quietly.

Geoffrey walked around the newly minted vampire slayer and took the torch from him. He handed off the hawk headed cane and with a nod, lifted the padlock, raising the lid of the water chest as well. Bradley had already unscrewed the spike from the cane, and had it at the ready.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Bradley,” said Edison from the corner of the room, several feet from the chest. His voice was low, and full of malice.

Bradley spun, producing the holy cross at the area of the bedroom Edison had spoken from. Geoffrey lifted the torch to try and shed more light on the vampire, his hand shaking like a leaf blowing in a pre-storm wind. The shadows, impossibly black and thick peeled away from the corner of the room like a cloak unfurling. The darkness was unnatural, and the torch’s flame did little to pierce it. Edison took a step forward into the room, his fangs bared casually. He looked omnipotent.

“In the name of God I command you to hold still unholy beast, creature of the night, Satan’s spawn!” Bradley shouted, his voice booming with a religious might Geoffrey was astounded by.

Edison’s eyes flared like the torch’s flame, and he rooted his feet to the floor. He was held firm.

“I have come to you as an agent of our holy God to end your murderous ways! I shall drive this stake made of ash into your dead, evil heart, and I shall stop this blasphemy of the living order!” Bradley raised the head of the cane high, showing it to Edison as he might show a shard of the holy cross itself. Edison’s eyes showed something Geoffrey had never seen, and never expected them to; fear.

“Be gone, foul demon of Satan!” Bradley yelled, and he brought the stake down into Edison’s chest.

The wooden stake busted apart against the white shirt Edison wore as if it were made of tissue paper. Tiny shards of wood fell impotently to the floor as Mr. Bradley’ hand thumped into Edison’s flesh. All that remained in it was the brass hawk’s head. The factory manager, full of the fury of his holy God, had done no more than wrinkle the vampire’s shirt.

Edison smiled, and wordlessly backhanded the man hard enough to twist his head completely around. Geoffrey stood, open mouthed, watching Mr. Bradley’s face contort and twitch, turned entirely around to the wrong direction. Beyond that, he watched as Edison caught the body from falling, and sink his teeth into the limp neck of the dying man. There was a wet, sucking sound as all of the man’s vitae was drained from him. It took less time to turn Mr. Bradley into a dried husk than Geoffrey imagined it would’ve.

Edison dropped the carcass on the floor as he might’ve discarded a spent cigarette. He looked up at Geoffrey and smiled once more. Geoffrey lowered the torch, and stood his ground, frightened of what would happen next. Edison walked slowly over towards him, stopping when he was mere inches away.

“The cane?” Edison asked.

Geoffrey swallowed. His whole life hung in the balance, and his next words would tip it one way, or the other, “Balsa wood. I switched it earlier today when Mr. Bradley was at lunch.”

Edison smiled, “Very clever. I always knew he disliked me. Even before I was turned into a vampire. He was so poor at hiding his faces. A good poker opponent though.”

Geoffrey smiled, and beamed.

“Well done my young boy.”

“Anything for science, Mr. Edison. Anything.”

“Make your arrangements for travel. Your parents think you’re going to Germany to school. You won’t be seeing them again, ever.”

“Very good, sir.”

“It will be nice to have reliable help here in the laboratory Geoffrey. Now all that’s left, is a body double to pretend to be me. Someone to grow old, and marry, and be seen during the day when I cannot be out and about. We’ll start that search immediately after you’ve become as I am.”

“Very good, sir.”

Edison put his arm lovingly around the young man and the two gazed at Mr. Bradley’s desiccated body. “The sacrifices we make for science.”

About the Author

Chris Philbrook is the creator and author of the urban fantasy series The Reemergence, as well as the dark fantasy series The Kinless Trilogy and the post apocalyptic epic Adrian's Undead Diary.

Adrian's Undead Diary, the story that got Chris on the literary map now has all eight titles available in print, eBook and audio. In order, they are Dark Recollections, Alone No More, Midnight, The Failed Coward, Wrath, In the Arms of Family, The Trinity, and Cassie. Also set in the world of Adrian Ring are Unhappy Endings and London Burns.

Chris' first book in print was The Wrath of the Orphans, the initial book of The Kinless Trilogy, set in his Elmoryn fantasy world. You can get it here on Amazon in print and for the Kindle as well. Book two and three are The Motive for Massacre, and The Echoes of Sin.

Tesser: A Dragon Among Us is Chris' first foray into the world of urban/contemporary fantasy, followed by Ambryn & the Cheaters of Death and Fyelrath & the Coven's Curse, with more planned.

Chris is the owner of Tier One Games LLC, his game development company.

Chris calls the wonderful state of New Hampshire his home. He is an avid reader, writer, role player, miniatures game player, video game player, painter and procrastinator. He and his wife welcomed their first daughter Willow to the world in April of 2016.

If you would like Chris to sign your eBooks, head over to http://www.authorgraph.com for a personalized message from him.

For more info on Chris, head over to his official author website and sign up for his newsletter at: http://www.thechrisphilbrook.com

Or follow him on Twitter @PhilbrookAuthor

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Can’t Wait for More?

Look for Chris Philbrook’s FREE short fiction eBook, At Least He’s Not on Fire.

Find it on Amazon, Goodreads, or Smashwords today!

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JSGEKIK

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21948978-at-least-he-s-not-on-fire

Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/430970