This story is set sometime after Michael’s transformation to full vampire, but not long after; Shane’s still getting used to the idea that his best not-a-vamp friend has switched sides. There’s a little bromance, and a lot of Frank Collins.
I might have been thinking just a little bit about the iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Zeppo” . . . but only in the undead football player sense. And yes, I quoted the eighties movie Buckaroo Banzai. Guilty as charged.
Living in West Texas is sort of like living in hell, but without the favorable climate and charming people. Living in Morganville, Texas, is all that and a takeout bag of worse. I should know. My name is Shane Collins, and I was born here, left here, came back here—none of which I had much choice about.
So, for you fortunate ones who’ve never set foot in this place, here’s the walking tour of Morganville: It’s home to a couple of thousand folks who breathe, and some crazy-ass number of people who don’t. Vampires. Can’t live with ’em, and in Morganville, you definitely can’t live without ’em, because they run the town. Other than that, Morganville’s a normal, dusty collection of buildings—the kind the oil boom of the sixties and seventies rolled by without dropping a dime in the banks. The university in the center of town acts like its own little city, complete with walls and gates.
Oh, and there’s a secluded, tightly guarded vampire section of town, too. I’ve been there, in chains. It’s nice, if you’re not looking forward to a horrible public execution.
I used to want to see this town burned to the ground, and then I had one of those things—what are they called, epiphanies? My epiphany was that one day I woke up and realized that if I lost Morganville and everybody in it . . . I’d have nothing at all. Everything I still cared about was here. Love it or hate it.
Epiphanies suck.
I was having another one of them on this particular day. I was sitting at a table inside Marjo’s Diner, watching a dead man walk by the windows outside. Seeing dead men wasn’t exactly unusual in Morganville; hell, one of my best friends is dead now, and he still gripes at me about doing the dishes. But there’s vampire-dead, which Michael is, and then there’s dead-dead, which was Jerome Fielder.
Except Jerome, dead or not, was walking by the window outside Marjo’s.
“Order up,” Marjo snapped, and slung my plate at me like a ground ball to third base; I stopped it from slamming into the wall by putting up my hand as a backstop. The bun of my hamburger slid over and onto the table—mustard side up, for a change.
“There goes your tip,” I said. Marjo, already heading off to the next victim, flipped me off.
“Like you’d ever leave one, you cheap-ass punk.”
I returned the gesture. “Don’t you need to get to your second job?”
That made her pause, just for a second. “What second job?”
“I don’t know, grief counselor? You being so sensitive and all.”
That earned me another bird, ruder than the first one. Marjo had known me since I was a baby puking up formula. She didn’t like me any better now than she had then, but that wasn’t personal. Marjo didn’t like anybody. Yeah, go figure on her entering the service industry.
“Hey,” I said, and leaned over to look at her retreating bubble butt. “Did you just see who walked by outside?”
She turned to glare at me, round tray clutched in sharp red talons. “Screw you, Collins—I’m running a business here. I don’t have time to stare out windows. You want something else or not?”
“Yeah. Ketchup.”
“Go squeeze a tomato.” She hustled off to wait another table—or not, as the mood took her.
I put veggies on my burger, still watching the parking lot outside the window. There were exactly six cars out there; one of them was my housemate Eve’s, which I’d borrowed. The gigantic thing was really less a car than an ocean liner, and some days I called it the Queen Mary, and some days I called it Titanic, depending on how it was running. It stood out. Most of the other vehicles in the lot were crappy, sun-faded pickups and decrepit, half-wrecked sedans.
There was no sign of Jerome, or any other definitely dead guy, walking around out there now. I had one of those moments, those Did I really see that? moments, but I’m not the delusional type. I had zero reason to imagine the guy. I didn’t even like him, and he’d been dead for at least a year, maybe longer. Killed in a car wreck at the edge of town, which was code for shot while trying to escape, or the nearest Morganville equivalent. Maybe he’d pissed off his vampire Protector. Who knew?
Also, who cared? Zombies, vampires, whatever. When you live in Morganville, you learn to roll with the supernatural punches.
I bit into the burger and chewed. This was why I came to Marjo’s—not the spectacular service, but the best hamburgers I’d ever eaten. Tender, juicy, spicy. Fresh, crisp lettuce and juicy tomato, a little red onion. The only thing missing was . . .