Annie of the Undead (6 page)

“Annie! Fuckin’ shoot it! Shoot the fuckin’
animal!”

“Shoot the fuckin’ animal, huh?”

The other dog-monsters were gnawing at the
fence.

“Shoot it! Shoot it! Fuck! Oh!”

Shoot the fuckin’ animal. You know, there are
times when we’re placed in a position of power by –call it God or
fate. Call it chance. Whatever it is, sometimes we’re given the
opportunity to help someone in need, someone in desperate, mortal
need. Maybe that person had ill intent. Maybe that person wouldn’t
have held out that hand for us if they were in the same position of
power and we were in need, and maybe we know it. But if we can find
it in our hearts to do the right thing, to hold out that hand, to
use that power as Ghandi might, or Jesus, or Mother Teresa, maybe
our decision can help in some small way to make a better world.
Maybe we can learn to forgive.

But this just wasn’t one of those days.

The snarling continued after I’d squeezed the
trigger, but Short John wasn’t talking about himself anymore. In
fact, my once-manager, sorta-sugar-daddy, tried-to-be rapist, and
would-have-been killer made no more sound at all. I’d hit where I’d
aimed. I’d shot the animal.

It didn’t seem prudent to stick around and wait
for the police. I broke down a pool skimmer and used one of the
segments as a crutch to get the hell out of Dodge. Snow was falling
fast now. It would cover my tracks wherever I went.

The only problem was that I had nowhere to
go.

So I was sitting on a bridge in the park in the
dark (yes, yes, like a damn aardvark), not thinking about the guys
who had just tried to kill me, or the bitch who had given birth to
me, or the jerk who had told me I wasn’t worth rehabilitating, or
the fact that I knew he was right. I wasn’t thinking about the fact
that my ankle throbbed or that my clothes had been torn to shreds
by ravening beasts spawned in the fetid underbelly of Detroit where
I too had been spawned. I wasn’t thinking about my dead brother, or
the rat bastard known as Tim who had treated me like a blow-up doll
five or six days a week for two years, or the fact that everyone
else in my life, including me, had turned out to be an asshole. I
wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was sitting out on a bridge
in a blizzard in Michigan in October in nothing but rags with a
frozen-wet foot, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about life, the
universe, and everything. All I was thinking about was the cold
metal of the .45 in my hands.

I had checked the clip. There were nine rounds
left. Short John, Satan rest his soul, had used high-capacity
magazines. I found myself strangely amused that those nine rounds
could have been put into me.

A single light illuminated one end of the bridge
from which I had come, the fat flakes of snow swirling down like
manic ghosts in its light. The other was out. I sat between the
light and dark, in the gray borderland halfway across the bridge,
holding that gun in my hand and not thinking. No good at all could
come of thinking.

Something moved out in the dark amongst the
falling flakes. I raised the gun. It was a little dog, frail and
short haired –a mere thing. It started to pad onto the bridge, head
down and licking in submission. It couldn’t have been more than
twenty pounds, a far cry from the other canines I had dealt with
that day, but the last thing I wanted to look at right now was a
dog, or a living thing, of any kind.

I made a snowball and lobbed it at the cowering
creature. It yelped and ran back into the snow, but after a moment
it came back, crawling on its belly. Just a thing with bad
instincts.

I made more snowballs. Each time I threw one,
the dog shrank back, but each time it returned, wretched,
desperate. It had nowhere else to go. It must not have to have come
to me.

Finally, I stopped throwing snowballs, if only
because the snow was turning to powder. I pointed the gun at the
mongrel instead, but the little thing had stones or was stupid and
walked against the wind. It crept up to me, so slowly, so low. It
whimpered as it came. As it neared, I saw that its coat was matted
with grunge. Little balls of ice sparkled at the ends of its
whiskers. It was emaciated, its ribs sticking out like tent posts
through its filthy hide. It was shivering.

God damn it.

I lowered the gun. I fished into my pocket and
found the stick of buffalo jerky I hadn’t bothered to eat. The dog
whimpered with desperate glee as I unwrapped it, its little rat
tail wagging furiously.

“I hate dogs,” I warned it as I handed the jerky
over.

The dog took the shriveled meat tentatively in
its mouth, then spun about as though trying to decide where to take
its loot. Finally, it lay down in the snow and started to gnaw, not
thinking about anything other than its prize, its mind perfectly at
peace in that moment.

I dug in my pocket for that last cigarette, took
it out of the now completely flattened box, and straightened it
out. Then I searched for the lighter.

But Chris’s lighter was nowhere to be found. I
must have lost it sometime during that Short John fun. I’d sure had
plenty of opportunities. I’d lost everything else.

That was it then. It was just me and the dog and
the .45 in the snow, freezing our asses off. I put the crooked,
unlit cigarette in my mouth, and then I laughed.

And laughed.

I must have scared the dog. Without warning, the
little cur glanced over its shoulder, jerky hanging half-eaten from
its jaws, then it started up like a flushed stag and ran into the
snow, tail tucked between its skinny legs. So it would gnaw its
prize somewhere else, the little traitor. Like everyone else.

“That was a kind thing to do.”

The voice had come from behind me. I hadn’t
noticed anyone approach, too tired maybe, or just stupidly
inattentive. I whipped around, hurting my bad ankle in the process,
but I managed to bring the .45 up through my wince.

There was a man standing there in the snow. He
wore a long, dark coat, dark gloves, dark pants, and a long, blue
scarf around his neck –a man scarf. I had never seen anyone but
Euros on TV wear one before. White snowflakes collected on his –oh
yes, dark felt hat. He was a couple inches under six feet and quite
thin with a neatly trimmed bit of facial hair as coal black as what
was on his head. He was the most immaculate creature I had ever
seen. He was standing very still, like a statue, like he’d been
standing there for a while, watching me. Not just watching,
staring. It creeped me out.

I sighted him in.

“You better get the hell on, whoever you are.
I’m not trickin’, and I know how to use this better than the dirt
bag I took it off of.”

The snow must have muffled his steps, I thought.
That was how he’d snuck up on me. But I didn’t see any footprints.
How long had he been there?

“I think you do,” he said with a little music in
his voice, a slight Spanish accent. “You can do anything you set
your mind to, can’t you?”

“I can shoot that hat off your Eurotrash
head.”

“Please do. It would amuse me greatly.”

He smiled, and the snow-softened light
illuminated his teeth. He seemed to have a bit more of them than
necessary. Two in particular.

That was when the hair started to rise on the
back of my neck –or, no, it was probably just the cold.

“I think you better just slink on outta here the
way you came. It’s just me and Old Painful tonight. Three’s a
crowd.”

“I know you have had a difficult night. You have
reached the end of your ability to cope, no? What are you planning
to do with that weapon? Kill? Or kill yourself? But, no.” He leaned
on the bridge with sudden histrionic flair, putting a thoughtful
hand on his chin and regarding me with a researcher’s eye. “I do
not think you the suicide kind. I think you will use those bullets
on the most deserving. Your mother? Her former lover?…Your father,
if you could find him.”

What the…

“Killing them might be a good way to spend those
bullets and end your free life, but you have so much more potential
than that, Annie.”

On that note, I squeezed the trigger.

I had seen a lot of weird shit in my life. I had
seen a naked Filipino man knock over a Badd Burger with a pellet
gun. I had seen two dogs stuck together in a fuck that lasted four
hours. I had witnessed OJ Simpson get acquitted for murder, and I’d
seen an incarcerated murderer choke to death on an OJ box (yes, the
box had had a little help accomplishing the feat). I had been
witness to the reelection of an administration that, in eight
years, had cut the throat of the American economy while its own
people made off with billions of dollars; failed to bring to
justice the world’s most wanted man; and bungle two wars, getting a
lot of poor folks’ kids killed in the process. I’d seen Jesus in a
stain on the bathroom floor. Hell, I’d even lived to see Michael
Jackson propagate. Now, whether or not there was actual coitus
involved, that’s some weird shit.

But I had never seen a man catch a bullet.

That’s right. He caught the bullet. Of course, I
didn’t believe that he had actually caught the bullet until after I
had fired two more, almost point blank, and watched him pick them
out of the air like he was catching a ball. Then I was pretty sure
he hadn’t been storing squashed bullets in his pocket for just such
an occasion. No, he’d actually caught them, as evidenced by the
distance they pushed his arms back as he absorbed their forward
motion, and the fact that I was sure I hadn’t missed.

The sight made the cigarette drop right out of
my mouth, and I was never one to waste a smoke.

So here was a guy who could catch bullets, not
get hurt, and who knew more about me than the average nut job you
meet on a bridge at four a.m.

The stranger held the trio of bullets up for me
to see, then shrugged, smiled, and tossed them into the snow. He
stared at me, waiting. Waiting for what? My reaction?

“What kind of fresh hell is this?”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you just caught three bullets in
your hands. What the fuck else would it look like?”

“You would be surprised.”

He took a step toward me.

“No, no, no. You stay right where you are,
José.”

“Or you will do what exactly?”

I’ll…I’ll…
Fuck.

There was a distinct twinkle in his pale eyes.
He was really enjoying this –enjoying this…what? What was this?

I suddenly felt like a cat toy.

“You’re awfully pale.”

He took a step closer.

And there’re some…uh, sorta big teeth…in
your…”

“Yes.”

He took another step.

“And you’re, uh, not breathing, are you?”

“No.”

“And there is a big ol’ snow glob caught on your
eyelashes…and it’s not melting.”

He reached up and plucked the fluffy flake from
its perch. He took off a glove and held it in his bare hand. Others
collected beside it. His hand was bluish, cold-looking. The
snowflakes did not melt.

“Yes, sometimes that can be a problem,” he
said.

He was standing near enough to breathe on me
now, if he had been breathing. He took hold of my hand –the one
without the gun, and dusted the snowflakes into my hand, where they
instantly melted. He held my closed hand in both of his, and they
were absolutely ice-ice cold. We stood there in silence for a
while, me shivering and sweating at the same time, he so, so still,
like a concrete statue on a grave, or like a corpse in one. Like a
dead guy. A walking…

“Oh, Jesus fuckin’…next it’ll be ninjas. Where
the fuck are the ninjas?”

He stared at me, unblinking. His eyes were like
an endless sea of greenish glass. When I looked straight in, I
could not see the end of them.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “to have complicated your
evening any further. I realize that seeing the bullet thing can
lead to certain disconcerting thought processes.”

“Cat shit. You planned this.”

That little smile.

“You’re bored with them. You’ve had enough.
Perhaps I can show you a better time.”

“What are you talking about?”
“Come with me. Amuse me, as I will amuse you. The night can be
beautiful, if you know how to exploit it.”

“You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“You think this is a ruse? Cameras behind the
bushes?”

“What bushes? And no, I saw what I saw. But
assuming that you are a…a…You can’t wait for me to say it!”

“I don’t hear it very often.”

“Well, I’m not going to caress your ego.”

He frowned in disappointment.

“If you are
that
, then it’s more than
likely that this is all a game. Get the stupid little mortal all
deluded and then slurp! You shouldn’t play with your food.”

“That’s not what I think of you.”

I pulled my hand away and crossed my arms
stubbornly.

“Prove it.”

The stranger grinned very wide, and for the
first time I got a very good look at his hardware. His teeth looked
like anyone else’s teeth who had never had braces to straighten
them, except the two conspicuous canines, slashing down like
sabers.
Ninjas,
I thought.
I would definitely prefer
ninjas.

He turned around in the snow, swinging his arms
out like a little kid. He smiled at the dark skies. He stopped
abruptly and turned back to me.

His voice was filled with delight.

“This is much more fun that I expected.”

“Great. Dinner and a movie.”

“Ha!” he laughed, then suddenly became very
serious, the way the weather changes in Michigan when you think
you’ve got a sunny day on your hands, and then bam! You don’t.

“Annie, I have been watching you all night. I
don’t want to kill you. I am a vampire, yes. Killing is fun for me.
I do it as often as is sensible, but I don’t want to kill everyone,
and I don’t want to kill you. Can you understand that?”