That Which Bites

chapter 11 – JIM KELLY COTTON CANDY

EVERY STEP WAS A spike rammed through each screaming groove of vertebrae. The other injuries she’d endured paled in comparison to the pain in her lower back, so sharp that her twisted ankle didn’t even hurt anymore.

“Even the old geezers are moving faster than me,”

Poe complained.

“Ever heard of the word ‘ageism’?” Morales mockingly asked while holding up his buddy of the day.

“Fine. Be like the rest,” Poe said resignedly. “I know I f*ck up a lot, and I’m the biggest politically incorrect moron there ever was.”

“Well what can I say to–”

“That’s why I need you to educate me,” Poe finished her thought to the relief of Morales. The man was nice enough to pal up with the irascible near-cripple during the march.

Not that he resented Poe’s extra weight or the reek of her sticky marinated skin. He just couldn’t stand being the last person. Anyone or anything could pick them off and the group would be oblivious since they were lagging at least fifty feet behind again.

With the help of her night vision goggles, Poe could see the half-mad look Morales sported in the dark. The tenseness of his muscles and the constant 317

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beaming of his flashlight up the ceiling, on the walls, behind his shoulders, and down on the ground were big indicators that he was petrified.

“Has it been four hours yet?”

“Not even close,” Morales sighed. “And don’t even think about taking another pill. That stuff’s intense.”

“Intense? My back feels worse now,” she whined, reaching in her pocket for two more pills. “These things have been expired for how many years? I think they’ve lost their potency.”

When Megan came back to relieve Morales, Poe still had yet to feel any better.

“We’re here. Union Station is above us,” Megan said, slinging Poe’s arm over her shoulder to relieve some of the weight. “We’ll stop a few feet from the station’s platform just as a precaution to keep from being heard up there. I don’t think the invasion’s begun yet.” She pointed up at the ceiling.

“If they skip Union Station, we’re in deep shit, right?”

“Burnt toast,” Megan answered gravely. “So cross your fingers that our guys will come down and give the signal, stat.”

Poe nodded, too tired to speak. Megan ordered the meandering cattle to take a load off and keep quiet.

Like Poe, most just wanted to rest. Many had lost the ability to speak.

“Is it my imagination or are they looking more animated?” Poe observed tiredly.

“Don’t know if you can see the quarter-size brand on their hands with that schmanzy eyewear of yours.

They’re basically symbols of the different blood farms they’ve been interred. Some have been traded and passed around. You can tell by the progression of burns on their arms,” Megan explained sullenly. “Most 318

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surely remember the biggest farm of all, the Union Station blood factory above us. I’m sure they’re not too happy about it.”

Poe had seen the branded image of a fox, Trench’s signature symbol, between the fork of the thumb and index finger on Megan’s left hand. She’d never thought to ask.

The station was famous for the endless rows of cots placed to maximize space for more bleeders. They endured an eat and bleed routine – eat liver steak, greens, vitamins, and milk and then attach the intravenous needle. This cycle was repeated every three days, leaving the cattle to eat and nap most of the time. Some gained weight, but most lost pounds from stress. Women suffered the worst with leeches rutting on them when bored.

“Listen, Meg. I know you have tons to do,” Poe began. “No need to babysit me. I’m feeling better already.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yup. Just need a nap is all.” Poe thanked Megan and shooed her away.

She took off her pack and slid it down, careful to distribute the weight. Ignoring the wet fecal droppings, Poe laid her back flat on the rough ground. She stretched her muscles again by seesawing her legs and back the way Goss had taught her. It was imperative to get her lower back in good condition. Otherwise, little Penny would starve to death in her bunker.

Before leaving Penny behind, Poe had plunked down Polaroid pictures of Goss next to the doggie bed and taped an extra-cute picture of Legs smiling on three legs. She could have sworn that Penny looked sadder.

The thought of Penny, mute, lame, and alone, nearly made her cry. “Keep it together, Poe. You’ll get 319

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her back,” she whispered in the darkness. After a thorough stretch and some tentative rolling exercises, Poe laid down on the floor exhausted. She took the last of the pills Megan had stored, eventually drifting asleep into a sweet and sour lemonade dream full of Jim Kelly and his cotton candy hair. Above the subway tunnel was the mother lode herself. The infamous Union Station.

(((

“Poe. Poe,” Megan whispered in her ear, nudging her to life. “You better wake up now.”

Poe shook her head, pried open her heavy lids one by one, and found darkness. Her body ached, especially her back, but for some reason, she felt much better. She felt around, touching tracks.

“Something’s going on up there.” Megan pointed at the ceiling on top of which was Union Station.

Gunfire echoed and ricocheted. “Get your things together.”

“What time is it?” Poe asked, finally hearing the faint sound of gunshots from above.

“It’s about four-thirty.”

At the mention of the time, Poe’s eyes widened.

“Four-thirty! You mean I’ve been asleep all this time?”

“Shh!” Megan warned her. “You don’t want to alert them that we’re here, do you?” She ruffled Poe’s shorn hair and left.

Poe sat up. Her rickety lower back caused her to chomp down on her lower lip. Four-thirty! That means I slept for hours. Impossible!

Somebody must have slipped off her goggles when she was conked out. Slowly she put them back on and busied herself by refilling empty magazines.

She took out a water bottle from her pack and drank 320

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deeply. Something was different about her, but she could not put her finger on the change. Was it disorientation or some weird flurry in her tummy?

Your place is on the roof, said a soothing voice inside her head.

“I think I’m a little stoned.”

She forced herself to eat an ancient granola bar with extra-wiggly protein for strength and to down a generous libation of water. She liked the detached, floating feeling, like being in a Bullet Time reality where spectacular movement happened at a mind-blowingly slower pace. No tension whatsoever.

Morales waded through a herd of cattle to seek her out. He chatted about nothing of substance, giving Poe the impression that her friend with the Adonis body was a nervous wreck.

“I wish you’d brought one of those Anakin goggles for me,” he said after touching on Chinese take-out. “Oh, and Sainvire finally sent a messenger, a really skittish one.”

“Morales,” Poe sighed, a sure sign of annoyance.

“What did the messenger say?”

“They’re laying low. They can’t make a move until the third strike force gets here to cover us. We don’t have enough fighters to beat them back until then.” He wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead.

“Sainvire didn’t expect the number of sentinels sent to protect the depot after Trench’s hotel and Parker Center were decimated.”

“What’s the strike team? Where’s Sainvire?”

“The strike teams are escaped custodians and ex-cattle rehabbed in the California Central Valley.

They’re emptying Union Station of cattle as we speak.

Sainvire and his vamps are with them.”

Poe could tell that Morales wanted to be around her for the evacuation. She couldn’t be his security 321

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blanket at that point because she wasn’t sure her back and ankle were going to hold, even with the help of amped-up drugs.

“Get back to the front of the line, Morales. I need to pee.” She held up her hands near his light to show that the discussion was over. “I can’t protect you. I’m too whacked.”

Poe was in the midst of zipping up and discarding a travel-size tissue pack when the order came from one of Sainvire’s vampires to climb to the subway platform. She buckled her drunken sombrero cactus belt quickly and arranged her pack and weapons for easy access. By the time she hobbled back to the end of the line, she found that most people had been coaxed forward to be hauled up to the platform. With her tweaked back and ankle, it was almost impossible to squeeze past the crowd. She sat down, stretched some more, and waited.

“Sufferin’ succotash,” Poe said drowsily. “You have to be positive like Goss and Sister Ann used to be. If you’ve gone this far, then your odds are better than average,” she said in the dark. “The pills’ll help you perform better.” She wasn’t even nervous.

Watching cattle wiggle their way to the front gave her a bad feeling. At least I’m packing heat. The poor dolts can’t even protect themselves. Her attempt at optimism ended with a bang.

Several bangs, actually, seemed to originate from the platform above where vampires and subhumans of different factions clashed. The odds were getting lousier by the second, and with her injuries, Poe had an unpleasant premonition that she was going to die that evening. And she wasn’t ready one bit.

(((

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“Pull ’em out! Haul ’em up faster than this for f*cksakes!” a croaky undead yelled from the platform.

From the looks of him, things weren’t going as smoothly as his boss had envisioned. Now that there was the possibility of whizzing bullets damaging him for ages to come, he didn’t seem so gung ho about rescuing a bunch of food.

“It’ll be hella faster if somebody’d give some boxes or ladders for the cows to step onto, you idiot,”

somebody replied from the tracks. “Pushing their flabby asses up is getting old.”

It was taking far too long to get the one hundred-plus cattle to climb to the high platform. A ridiculous amount of bullets reverberated around them. The chaperones practically heaved their weakened charges up. Careful handling of the humans was crucial since their bones were brittle after being bedridden for so long. The half-hour leeches gave the cattle to stretch out and roam each day wasn’t enough.

Flying to the platform with an impaled dead in his talon, Sainvire ordered, “Esper, make sure the cattle stay behind the riot shields until they’re deposited on our train.” He stabbed the wiggling vampire youth in his clutches one more time and let him slip to the floor.

Several bullet holes punctured the master vampire’s clothing. He’d been busy rustling cattle at the biggest blood farm in the city.

“We’ll do our best, Kaleb,” said Ezperanza, a tall woman dressed in black riot gear accented with a yellow beret. Part of Sainvire’s Chicano army forced to hide in the Central Valley, the woman bristled with intensity. It was her moment to avenge her people who’d been ill-used by the vampire conspiracy from the very inception. “But I gotta tell you, there are only a handful of shields available and they weigh more than most of us.” Cut from industrial equipment like 323

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coke ovens and furnaces, the metal deflected bullets rather nicely. However, the weight proved problematic for non-vampiric folk.

People assigned to protect the transfer of cattle from the subway tunnels to the above ground train had to contend with the bombardment of bullets and batons while keeping the line moving. The train was on the opposite side of the station.

“Just try your best,” the gray-eyed vampire said grimly and disappeared into the throng that fought the Council sentinels.

Megan gasped, having pulled a 120-pound woman using her back and leg muscles to the platform. “Hey, you there with the baby face,” shouted Megan to a vampire who worked for Sainvire. Her uncle had disappeared to help hold the line.

“Are you talking to me?” asked the blue-eyed vampire that looked sixteen with a Sonny Rollins goatee and a red beret. He gave the redhead a cursory glance. He was too busy scanning for men in blue.

Megan’s eyes narrowed, but she did not let go of a bony elderly hand. “If you guys want us to hustle then you’d better get more men to pull these people out of the tracks! We’re getting hernias here.”

“Sainvire said that we should keep a sharp lookout,” he said defensively. “An’ we’re keepin’ a sharp lookout.” After his statement, an errant bullet grazed his left temple, heightening his distaste of the situation.

Megan used her leg muscles to heave another blood heifer out of the tracks, praying her back wouldn’t snap. “Well I’m a relative of his. If you don’t do what I say, I’ll personally get Sainvire to kick your head in!”

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Her chest heaved from exertion and annoyance.

Megan stared down the insolent vampire that finally lauded her with eye contact.

“Resorted to dropping names, eh?” Morales said despairingly, sapped by cattle pulling himself.

Maybe it was because those red-lashed eyes showed no sign of relenting, the baby face vampire told his cronies, the Red Berets, to help out with the body extraction pronto. He, however, stayed glued where he stood. Sporadic gunfire danced dangerously down the metal-paneled halls of the station.

The undead joined them in lifting the bodies out of the subway tracks, and the line moved swifter and thinned just as quickly. Until, of course, the wind in the platform started picking up.

At first, nobody noticed the change.

Megan’s mouth went slack, and her eyes took on a look of abject fear. She turned to Morales who looked as terrified as she. Train!

“Poe!” they both mouthed at once.

(((

It was a nice breeze, but she thought nothing of it.

Not until one of the cattle from the back snapped out of his stupor and began wailing and violently clawing his way toward the front. The man was saying, “Train’s coming. Help. Train’s coming!” End-of-the-world chaos battered the crowd as the remaining cattle caught the electric fear of death in the air.

Poe quickly took to her feet, looked around, and touched the slimy walls. Sure enough, she felt vibrations.

Her mouth opened and closed, unsure of what to do. She looked at her hand clutching a weapon to ward off her opponents and almost wept.

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“Guns are useless against a train!” she reasoned, her pill-muddled head clearing.

She fumbled for the whistle around her neck and blew, hoping that the cattle would stop stampeding.

She had already witnessed three older folks get stepped on and used as stairmasters. The shrill warning had the opposite effect upon the scene of panic.

“Calm down!” Poe yelled. “Don’t trample each other!” But her efforts fell on deaf ears.

Her lower lip trembled then relaxed as the number of cattle thinned. “Megan and Morales will get all of them up the platform,” she said out loud. She allowed herself the luxury of a smile for bravery that disappeared far too quickly as a train’s high-pitched whistle hooted twice, stripping her of daring. There were at least twenty souls left, mostly elderly. Poe stepped closer into the light until she saw the high ceiling of the station waiting area. Her head was four feet short of the platform above.

“ F*ck me,” she grunted as she pushed a crouching man up at the expense of her lower back.

“Thank goodness for drugs! Get up, you! You don’t want to mess with a train.”

The whistle sounded nightmarishly closer. The Metro Red Line was supposed to be a dead route.

“Poe! Are you down there?” Megan screamed over the sound of cattle crying to be helped and the blaring of the train.

Poe shook her head before answering. “Yeah, I’m here.” She elbowed her way to the front, lowered her goggles to her neck, and sheathed her gun. The station lights blared into her cornea. The mob scene reminded her of a Laker championship game she once saw as a kid where crazed fans trampled a basketball player’s spouse.

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“Take my hand,” said a voice she recognized to be Morales’. Poe clutched his arms. As she was getting pulled up, two or three cattle hung on to her legs. They were screaming above the train whistle for help. The whoosh of wind extinguishing the last of the candles many cattle still held added to the madness.

Stuck, Poe hollered, “Let go! Stop it!” But her voice was drowned out by Morales and Megan’s desperate bellows and the frenzied cries. She gave her throat a rest as she glimpsed the headlights of the train emerging from the dark tunnel.

Half of her body was suspended where the cattle hung on to her legs. She could feel their bony ribs as they hugged her limbs.

But it was the desperation on Megan and Morales’

faces as they tried unsuccessfully to pull her to safety that made her sob. She opened her mouth to tell her friends about Penny, but there wasn’t enough time. She closed her eyes and prepared to be separated from her lower extremities.

That was when her belly hit the platform, sprawled between the exhausted bodies of Megan and Morales, her boots missing the train by a hair. The three remained panting as they watched the train slow.

“Poe, you crazy girl,” Megan cried, embracing her friend.

Morales joined in by taking Poe’s face between his large hands and planting a slapdash kiss on the mouth.

“What are you trying to do, suffocate me?” said Poe breathlessly but with mock anger.

“Sorry to interrupt the love fest, but you three better get up and head for Platform C,” urged a familiar voice with a linty edge. “As you can see, the Council just brought in a trainload of reinforcements, and from the looks of it, they came from North Hollywood.”

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“Sainvire?” said Poe inaudibly. Perhaps his keen ears heard her whisper for he looked directly into her face, drinking in her unkempt, beaten appearance. He was there. All would be well.

“Poe,” he nodded then glanced at the tracks.

“Glad the train didn’t get you.”

With those words, Poe lost her concentration and looked behind her. Pieces of body parts decorated the edges of the tracks. She gagged. The scene reminded her of a magazine her sister had smuggled into their house when they were kids. It was the print version of Faces of Death. There was a whole section on Japanese salarymen who threw themselves in front of moving trains.

Megan gave her shoulders a squeeze. “C’mon, Poe.”

Morales cocked his Magnum and asked, “Want to ride piggyback?” Poe shook her head and thanked her friends for pulling her up just in time.

“It’s nothing, Poe. You’d do the same for us,”

Megan answered. “Besides, we were doing a poor job of it. My uncle, here, had to give the extra tug.”

Poe looked to where Sainvire stood, tense and bloodied. Bodies were stacked high for the day and Sainvire was aware of each and every one. He stared unsmiling and said, “Get a move on. Platform C is on the other side of the station, where the long distance tracks pick up.”

(((

“The train is loaded with overseers and vampire farmers,” said Rodney, an African American soldier, walking briskly alongside Sainvire.

“The best-laid plans gone to seed,” said Sainvire with flint. “So the Council’s secret weapons turn out to 328

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be farmers and rancher vampires with sun immunity?

They could’ve used them earlier when the sun was still up.” He allowed himself a small victory, though the working subway spur used by cattle that afternoon, thought to be decommissioned long ago, rankled him.

The subway train that nearly flattened Poe originated from the Universal City Metro stop. The once renowned Universal City Walk that used to thrill tourists despite the steep parking price and over-hyped storefronts was now an agrarian vampire community where vegetables appeared in neat rows and animal husbandry thrived alongside Jaws, T-Rexes, and Shrek.

The harvest was grown for human cattle to consume in downtown Los Angeles.

The heavy sound of concentrated gunfire goaded Sainvire’s people to move faster as they crossed the upper platform to the trains. “They must be disembarking,” Megan cried.

“Load everyone on the trains quickly! We’ve overstayed our welcome here,” Sainvire pronounced, his eyes resting briefly on Poe who was too busy hobbling along with a cattle buddy. He turned and flew toward the line of demarcation.

Most cattle were dehydrated and weakened.

Armed guards left opaque bottles of Gatorade on the seats of the train. Boarding them onto heavily graffitied trains bound for the Central Valley proved to be a bother after cattle emerged to the ground floor by the escalators. Council vamps shot and slashed at the strike force trying their hardest to escort cattle to the train cars.

“The people with white bandanas on their sleeves aren’t fighters,” Morales told Poe. “So don’t shoot ’em.

They’re here to feed, guide, and guard the cattle. They were trained with knives, axes, and machetes –

weapons that don’t ricochet in trains.”

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“This siege is really organized,” she said, gazing at the fierce fighters sporting different colored berets and fending off the enemy in riot gear. They followed the plan blueprints to the dot. “I had no idea.”

White bandanas proved to be the most able soldiers against the Council’s minions who tried to infiltrate the herd of cattle and kept them from boarding the train.

“Um, Sainvire,” Poe hailed, seeing the master vampire return from the front lines with a supply of Kevlars and guns ripped from the bodies of the enemy.

She and her friends were about to board the train, but she just had to get something off her chest. “Sorry, but I have some information that might be useful to you,”

she lied.

“Of course,” Sainvire said. He inclined his head politely though the tenseness of his face and the rigidity of his movements urged her to talk fast.

“Megan. Can you distribute these please? And get on board. We’re set to leave.” He added as an afterthought, “While you’re at it, help Morales find a more functional sidearm.”

“Right,” said Megan with a nod, hopping up to follow Morales. The door latched closed behind them.

Knowing it’s always better to unburden one’s self in the face of death, she just wanted to apologize. “I’m sorry for shooting you.”

Sainvire ceased his constant shifting and looked at Poe. “You’re forgiven,” he said then took her face between his hands and gave her the gentlest of kisses.

Before she could enjoy the moment, the nagging voice inside her head said, You belong on the roof!

As if sensing danger, Sainvire let go of Poe, pulled her close to the ground, and roared, “Poe, stay down!” He sliced at the air above her head. She had ducked just in time to avoid the swampy arm of a vamp 330

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intent on doing her ill. Her only new injury was a slight bump in the head from where the sliced arm clunked her.

They were done for. Slavers chipped viciously at Sainvire’s lines of defense. They were surrounded.

Many of the attackers were carrying old-fashioned pistols while others carried mallets and hatchets. The San Fernando Valley farmer folk were old school vampires who abhorred gun violence. Sainvire’s fighters were simply too outmanned to keep their position.

“Ah, I think our little talk will have to wait, Poe,”

Sainvire said with clenched jaws as his eyes honed on five flying undead headed toward the train.

“Sure,” Poe nodded. And what’s this about the roof again?

To his men, he yelled, “To the train. Now!”

She was encircled by friends and the resolute Sainvire, and she hadn’t thought to arm herself just yet.

It was a grave mistake. Before she could take the first step inside the train, Poe was yanked back by the straps of her pack where her weapons were lodged.

When a gun barrel appeared millimeters from her ticker, Poe’s heart rate didn’t fluctuate. She made a mental note to ask Megan the name of the wonder pills she had taken if ever she survived the night. Sainvire was gone, fighting his own battles.

“Oh, please no!” sobbed Poe, her shoulders quaking from grief. Poe belted out the worst kind of weeping worthy of Brenda Blethyn, Halle Berry, and Sally Field. The pestilence to the ears would have sunk the Titanic a day sooner. The train engine coughed back to life. She could feel its power emanating along its sides.

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were busy fulfilling the Council’s decree. He would have been more than willing to shoot her had she not begged, “Don’t shoot me, mister! I’ll be your personal food bank. I’ll shine your coffin. Just don’t shoot me!”

“Hold on, girl,” the bald, medium-height jelly belly of a vamp called out. “No one’s going to do you in. You’re the one with the virgin neck they’re looking for.”

“Virgin neck?” Poe whimpered dramatically. “I’ll be drained by the Council?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I believe they might torture you first for the things you’ve done. Honestly my hands are tied. All I can do is pray for your salvation.”

Poe took the opportunity to grab hold of the gun’s muzzle and tipped it up and back, breaking his trigger finger. “Take that, you corn-fed son-of-a-bitch,” cursed Poe, abruptly stopping her weeping. She had learned that particularly dirty trick from Goss himself, though he couldn’t picture such a tree of a man blubbering to any dead to save his life.

Evidently the years the farm hand had labored in the fields had chiseled him into one impatient vampiric machine. He merely grunted, saying, “Forgive me, Lord.” He began throwing punches at her, broken finger and all. Poe covered her face with her elbows, tightly deflecting blows. This was one of Sister’s favorite muy thai defense shields for close combat.

Theoretically, the person throwing the punches would believe he is beating the crap out of his enemy but underestimates elbow strength, which can deflect even the hardest of blows. If the farmer had been human, his fist would have bruised for hitting rock-hard bone. Too bad for Poe, her head was beginning to reel.

But she waited. The moment the farmer slowed, Poe swung a vertical elbow to the cheek, followed by a 332

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horizontal strike to the temple and another on the nose.

The vampire face was laden with veins pumping dead liquid to the eyes, skin, mouth, and roots in the scalp.

The more she pounded with her elbows, the more damage she inflicted on the face.

“I can’t handle vampires!” she gritted when her clothes snagged on an incisor the length of a toothpick.

“Even an abstainer one like you!”

The brackish liquid luridly seeping out of his face surprised Poe and completely stupefied the vampire.

Both Poe and the farmer had no idea of the amount of pseudo-plasma in a vampire’s face.

While the vampire stared fixated at his hands covered in squid ink, Poe bent down and picked up his fallen six-shooter. She was in the midst of a melee where every sentient being seemed to be bashing and shooting each other. Her elbows hurt, but she was hoping the meds would numb the pain just like the other injured parts of her body.

Poe cocked the gun and pointed it at the farm boy’s chest.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, his voice fading. “A girl’s killed me,” he spoke with surprise. He looked pitiable reaching for his antiquated hoe, goop pouring out of his face. It would be a real shame to kill him, but what could she do?

The vampire gripped the handle of his hoe, determined to perish with it in his hands. He squared his shoulders and faced his fate without complaints. It could have been the lingering effects of the drugs, but the leather-skinned vamp reminded Poe of Elzeard Bouffier, a simple man who only wanted to plant trees in a barren land. Perhaps her mind was addled.

“You’re a farmer?”

The vampire nodded, jaw working. “From Iowa originally.”

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“Look, I don’t want to kill you. Most likely it wasn’t your idea to come here today. And I heard rumors that farmers only drink animal blood.” The man did not move, perhaps from angry pride.

“If you promise to go back to your farm this minute, I’ll let you off the hook. Are we square?”

Poe repeated the question, but this time she lowered the gun. The man looked as though he was losing an inner battle, from bruised dignity perhaps. He had been thrashed by a human girl. After a few interminable seconds, the man nodded.

“We’re square.”

(((

The vampire farmers were a hard bunch to manage. And to kill. Most carried deep convictions that couldn’t quite blend in the new bite-and-suck order. They were left alone to produce a regular supply of meat and fresh produce for the city cattle. The price of autonomy was to side with the Council if ever the new order was threatened.

The stalwart Council had also bused a delegation of ancient guards who looked intractable and impossible to hurt. The eternally extended yellow teeth and the line of inky drool on the side of the mouth were fearsome enough to scare off potential enemies.

But even more alarming than the Ancients’ yellow walrus teeth were another round of infant vampires crawling out of every grate and vent to add to the carnage. They worked like a circus act, tossing each other at the nearest halfdead, human, and vampire like psychotic apes. At least they didn’t discriminate.

Poe followed Sainvire with her eyes, willing him to be unharmed. She watched him slash a vampire from shoulder to hip and skewer a particularly nasty 334

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baby with his other hand. Three babies dropped on him at once and tried to gouge out his eyes, making him easy prey for lurking ex-LAPD officers bearing bulletproof vests, tazers, and guns.

A few feet from Sainvire was Joseph, gleefully kicking and stabbing vampires with garlic oil-soaked stakes. From the look of things, Joseph had bullet holes on his shoulder and stomach area that hadn’t yet fused.

He wasn’t as quick a healer as Sainvire. But he was still grinning. Nothing, it seemed, could keep the vampire from showing his pearly whites.

“Mom. Look after that loco grinner. He reminds me of my brother,” Poe prayed as her nose rested on a windowpane, fogging it up. “And look after Sainvire.

He has good intentions.”

You’re needed on the roof, a voice impatiently said.

The cattle who’d woken up impatiently awaited the diesel locomotive to pull out of the station, away from the fighting. Poe pried herself from the window and the human cow she had squeezed between. The only thing she heard from them were sighs of relief.

“What am I, stupid?” she told the voice.

“You know,” she addressed the cattle. “It’s okay for you to tell me off Scarface- style for parking on your body.” It occurred to her then that she could be the only person alive to think Pacino horribly overacted in the film.

Poe walked the length of the train a step at a time, searching for Megan and Morales. She sidled against anxious cattle scrambling for seats and vampire guards yelling orders to keep the aisles clear. The little girl sitting between female cattle waved at her as she passed by. She survived the fall back there!

“You okay?” Poe asked awkwardly, having never dealt with a child in a while.

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The girl in potato sack with large wary eyes and a dirty face nodded but did not speak. Poe smiled shyly and continued with her search for a familiar face. She found them in the third car standing in a queue to use the toilet. Poe’s eyes blinked rapidly. Megan and Morales whispered briskly with Perla and Maple. The older women were armed for war.

Instinctively Poe tightened her grip on a Calico 9mm one of the white bandana guards had handed her on Megan’s order. The funny looking piece, not much longer than a standard issue gun, held up to 100

rounds. Except for the hard recoil action, the gun was perfectly workable.

“Poe! Glad to see you safe,” said Perla, rocking G.I. Joe pajamas and a protective vest. She was the first to approach Poe and give her a big hug. Maple followed. It was so unreal, especially amidst the cattle cries and the combat outside.

“I think you’ve just jinxed me,” Poe coughed.

“Now I know I’m gonna eat it for sure.”

A noticeably uneasy Morales peeked out the window to watch the battle and briefly waved at her.

“Seriously, what’s the plan? The train’s barely moving,” Poe asked, pondering what warranted all the hugging.

Apropos, the train lurched forward, throwing Poe halfway down the aisle and banging her left funny bone on the metal seat bars. Before she could get her bearings, the train pitched backward and hurled her toward the toilet. She screamed, “No!”

As the train pulled at a snail pace away from the platform, gunshots sprayed the train. Enemy dead clung to the side of the trains like barnacles. Sainvire’s chaperones appeared, spraying holy water on the windows and waving lethal sabers slicked with garlic oil at the vampire foes trying to break in. Some scraped 336

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the vamp barnacle away with bullets and clubs hanging from broken windows.

Perla drew near the window and fired at the closest ones to her, saying, “Shoo!”

The bathroom door slammed open and a woman in her late thirties named Georgette shuffled out. She wore chain mail down to her knees. It looked to be an authentic hauberk relic, looted along with her club purported to be William Wallace’s.

“Whoa, Gimli!” Poe said in awe, still on the floor and collecting her bearings.

Georgette walked over Poe’s legs and slammed open a window to let herself out. The woman can fly!

“That’s Georgette. She’s from up north,”

explained Perla.

“Everyone down!” Morales yelled. Perla shoved a slow-to-react cattle down forcefully.

Two elderly cattle suffered from cardiac arrest.

Their hearts could no longer take the stop-and-go stress. Morales went to the next train car with Poe and Megan close behind to check on other passengers.

The compartments were poorly lit. Poe kept her goggles in hand. The train chugged away from the station into the violet and pink-streaked evening sky, and Poe’s good leg almost buckled over in relief. She made her way to the next compartment to check for casualties but was beset by an earsplitting noise.

“Jeez! What now?” complained Megan.

“That would be six really evil airborne vampires mocking us from the window outside,” Morales answered, harassed. Two enemy vamps held on to the window ledge while running along the train like Clark Kent in the comics. One of them punched the glass and tried to snatch a passenger within.

“Get down!” Maple calmly ordered two shaking passengers. “Watch out for hot shells and glass.” She 337

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fired out the window, hitting a fanged one, and watched him tumble out of sight.

Poe followed Maple’s example and fired at the other audacious vampires. Despite the bad gun recoil, she was able to shoot down two peskies. The dead that got away gave Poe the finger and punched and kicked in more windows before flying away to the next car.

The cattle sitting by the cracked windows scrambled on all fours down the aisle, a little slow on the take, blocking Poe’s way.

“Shit! They’re on the roof!” said Morales in panic. The one-two gallop of feet landing could be heard.

Get on the roof! The voice in her head returned.

Poe fired skyward with her Calico, showering hot shells on those closest to her. “Sorry!”

She was almost positive that she had shot someone. Pandemonium kicked into high gear among the beleaguered cattle who rushed to the aisle for safety. Before she could fire again, Poe pitched forward as the train braked to a scratchy deceleration.

Slammed against the connecting door, her shoulder suffered agonizingly on impact. It was the drugs. They made her clumsy and hear things. A dark figure punched the window closest to her open and swung in feet first, barely missing the seated cattle who yelped in alarm. For the second time that day, a large pair of hands picked her up and dumped her on an empty seat.

“Are you okay?” asked Sainvire.

“Uh huh,” Poe answered, looking away. “If you try to pick me up again, I’ll shoot you.”

“You’ve done that plenty.” He took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the brown glop seeping from a thigh wound. “Do me a favor. Try not to shoot at the roof for the next five 338

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minutes,” Sainvire advised. “Some of us might want to keep our members intact.”

“Maybe I can go up there–”

“Don’t be daft. You can barely walk as it is.”

Poe belligerently assented. She knew the roof would equal a swift death – hers. Before she could vilify herself about shooting the master vampire, however, Sainvire frowned at Morales and said, “Get a better gun, Morales.” With that, he dove out the window.

“Whoa, Poe. You shot the master vampire again,”

said Morales glibly. “Don’t you know he’s on our side?”

“Put your Magnum away, Morales,” Poe said testily. She imagined the man blowing up cattle or her at close range. “And get yourself a decent gun.”

“You two follow me,” said Megan. “The train’s stopping.”

The three tensely made their way into the engine room. The conductor was an ex-cattle by the telling bite marks on his neck. Unlike the other ex-cats she’d seen fighting around the station that made it a point to hide the marks of former servitude with bandanas, the dark man with pronounced Pacific Islander features displayed them proudly. Perhaps they were reminders himself of the importance of his job.

“Evenin’.” He tipped his colorful fedora. He was busy slowing down the noisy locomotive to a stop.

“Trees and shit blockin’ the tracks.”

“And drums, too,” Poe added, pulling on her night vision goggles.

The driver made tsk tsk clicks and placed his .22

within easy reach. From the roof came the sound of running footsteps, bodies getting slammed, and a bevy of angry epithets. Some sections of the roof showed 339

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indentation from the weight of undead bodies getting walloped.

Two vampires landed right in front of the train, the crank headlights spotlighting them.

“My God!” Megan exclaimed. “That’s Kaleb!”

“And Joseph!” added Poe.

Acrobatic vamps in black ninja outfits pursued the two.

“It’s a good night for a costume party,” grinned Morales.

Sainvire stuck his talons at an overweight dead while a black clad Joseph finished his enemy with swift Double Dutch blows to the heart. Apparently Joseph had fists of fury. The two friends kept a sharp lookout for anyone trying to disrupt the cleaners who ran or flew ahead to clear debris off the tracks.

When all was clear, Sainvire half-carried Joseph by the shirt collar back to the roof. The handsome and affable vampire could not fly one lick. On the way up, Joseph paused to wave at his rapt audience.

“Poe, go! Shoot them!” Morales pointed at three extremely tiny vampires sweeping the tracks.

“You crazy, man?” the driver said. “Our mission lies in the hands of that sun dead and two vamps.

They’re the sweepers. The littlest guy’s named Ed. He can probably lift this train car with no problem.”

Sure enough, the creatures hauled debris away with their bare hands. Ed, the runt vampire, tossed an uprooted oak trunk with a flick of a wrist. Poe whistled in awe, damaging further her split lip.

“Amazing,” Megan said, staring at a female vampire lift a sand-filled drum and fling it twenty feet away from the tracks. “I’ve heard about these guys, but I thought it was all BS.”

Then it occurred to Poe. I should be up there.

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The train hadn’t gone far at all. They were still perilously close to Union Station, the biggest cattle operation in the city. And City Hall, inundated by ex-LAPD goons, was just around the corner.

Don’t know what it is, but it’s the same head-voice that tells me where to point my gun with supernatural accuracy, Poe said in conversation with herself. “The voice I trust more that any other,” she muttered.

“They’re almost done,” the driver said. “Then we can hightail outta here.”

“I need to get to the roof.”

“That’s not funny, Poe,” muttered Morales, punching her shoulder lightly. Poe’s face remained determined.

“Poe, you can’t possibly go up there,” Megan began, knowing that Poe had already made up her mind. She reverted back to her nervous habit of tracing her bite marks with her fingers. “Your back is banged, and you’ll need to balance up there when the train moves.”

“I gotta. I can shoot real good, especially with that rifle,” she said with a nod at the driver’s Winchester.

“That’s my good luck charm.”

“Yeah, but you can’t use it in this little room while driving a train. You got your .22 for that.”

“It’s suicide, you dummy!” Morales argued.

“Sainvire and Joseph will stop them.”

Checking her gear, she chucked out heavy ammo and weapons that were dead weight. There were half a dozen sidearms lifted from the makeshift headquarters.

“Hope you can use this stuff,” she said to the driver.

“Sure, kid,” he smiled. “I can always use some firepower now that you’re taking my good luck rifle away. By the way, I’m the only one who knows how to 341

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handle this bucket, so maybe one of you ought to guard me, eh?”

Poe made sure her pack was light and her guns loaded and ready to go. She sheathed throwing knives on her wrists holsters.

“I took some of the pills you gave me, Meg. I should be fine.” She glanced at the grim-faced Morales. He was stubborn in his silence on the topic.

He did not want the weighty responsibility of sending Poe to her death, and he was far too faint-hearted to go with her.

“But Poe–” Megan started. Poe didn’t let her finish but gave the woman a quick hug.

“The train’s not even moving.” Poe wanted to quote Sister Ann’s view on precarious missions: When there’s adrenaline and danger, there’s nothing you cannot do. But it wasn’t the time to be a wise ass, especially when hardly a trace of adrenaline trickled in her veins.

It’s the right thing to do, the voice whispered in her ear.

“This is for you,” she said to Morales, placing a Sig Sauer 9mm in his hand. “It has fifteen rounds, and here are extra magazines.”

“You keep it. You’re the one dumb enough to climb up the roof to have your neck broken.”

Poe sighed. “Morales, this is your shit here. I lifted the bunch from your HQ. Hidden in the oven, you know. It’s been dead weight all this time. Old Dirty Harry there will get you popped quicker than Orville Redenbacher. And besides, you gotta protect, um–”

“Chamba,” the driver supplied morbidly.

“Um, Chamba. Can you please open your door?”