The Thing that Walks Away

First I followed the footprints backwards, now I walk alongside them. I leave the car behind with my own trail of prints. I don’t trust myself to drive right now. On paper, this should be a short walk, but you know how things go in heavy snowfall like this. And it’s been snowing for days. The sun has been gone for just as long. And accompanying the darkness is the most brutal string of murders I’ve ever seen.

I don’t take my eyes off the foot prints. With this much snow, in this constant gray, it would be so easy to lose the trail. All that snow—it’s like the world is screaming at me to stop. The snow keeps coming, the sun stays dead. ‘Turn back,’ it says.

I should heed the warning. I really should. Part of me has no idea what waits at the end of this. But, oh God, part of me knows exactly what has to be there.

I pull the flask out of my pocket. My doctor would kill me if he saw, but he would have to get in line. I hit the flask hard, as I have been all morning. I get this image of a cowboy marching through the desert, only a few drops left in his canteen.

Eleven people dead. And one missing. So let’s call that twelve people dead. I drink again. One way or another, it’s a monster waiting at the end of this path.

But I can be just as inevitable, can’t I? Inevitable like the bottom of my flask. Inevitable like the very blood in my veins. I can do that, right? I guess so because I eventually see lights ahead, then the hard lines of a building. There are a few cars in the lot, but they’ve been converted to demented igloos. And I’m sure their owners had walked home days ago.

The sign out front is covered in snow, but I know this place. I’ve been here too many times before. I guess you’re thirsty too, aren’t you, you bastard?

There’s a sign that says all are welcome. But it’s stuff like that that doesn’t account for the monsters out there. All are welcome? Even the Dahmers? The Hitlers? Lucifer himself, is he welcome?

They let you in here, I guess. And you must find that just as funny because when I step inside, there you are, smiling.

The man at the booth raises his glass to me. “Morning, detective.”

I’m squeezing my flask in one hand and the other rests on my gun.

“Why don’t you join me?” he says.

I tell myself I am also inevitable as I step forward. Not inevitable like the law or justice or what’s right. I step forward as myself. Just me. It’s me and him. That’s what this is about now. Me, him, and the let’s say twelve dead. I sit.

He smiles wider. His teeth are perfect and sharp like a dog’s. “You found me,” he says. He twirls his glass of wine and drinks.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. I ask it like that so I don’t get caught up in the impossibility of it all. I drink so I don’t shake.

“Having a drink,” he says. “But that’s not what you mean. I could explain, but I kind of want to show you.” He stands and unzips his jacket. He lifts his shirt up to his chin, revealing a torso so pale it’s almost blue. Not a single bullet hole.

My flask is empty now. Nothing to be done about the shaking.

“Cold, detective?”

“I shot you.”

“I know. I was there.”

“How?” It had been some time since I’d stepped inside a church. But I felt certain I was sharing a table with the devil.

“Let’s get you a drink,” he says. He raises his hand at the counter and the lone man behind it. “Hey, Bill…”

The man smiles as he walks up to the booth. He looks stoned. “Get you something, detective?”

I nod at the glass of red across from me. “I’ll have what he’s having.”

Bill’’s smile breaks apart for only a moment. “That isn’t…. Sir, we don’t serve wine here. I can’t have you drinking that. No outside liquor in here.”

The man smiles at me, then at Bill. He sips from the glass. “It’s not wine, Bill.”

Bill blinks hard. “It’s…not wine.”

“That’s right. So don’t worry about it. But the detective doesn’t want what I’m drinking. He wants a whiskey.”

Bill nods and keeps nodding. “I won’t worry about it. Hey, how about I get you a whiskey, detective?”

I don’t answer, but Bill leaves anyway.

“What’s in the glass?” I say.

“Oh, you know.” He leans forward. “How about those footprints, huh?”

“This you being cute?”

“Be honest with yourself, detective. Really honest. We’re in the midst of one of the longest, darkest winters that even I’ve seen. It’s no coincidence eleven people are dead. You know this.”

“Of course it isn’t a damn coincidence," I say through my teeth. I realize that beneath the table, my gun is half drawn. “You did this. Eleven people would still be alive if not for you.”

And the way he said eleven, maybe there was still hope for the twelfth.

“Focus, detective,” he says. “All I’m asking is that you do your job.”

Bill brings my whiskey then he leaves in a daze. I snatch the glass and drink. My doctor said the drinking doesn’t do me any favors. Take my pill every day, and I can expect a long life; this isn’t like the eighties. But I drink anyway. Sitting here, in front of this man, it doesn’t feel like I have much time left.

The man across from me leans back. I notice dents in the wood where he was gripping the table.

“What does it matter what I think?” I say.

“Where did you find the footprints?”

“You know where.”

“Tell me.”

I feel a wave of warmth pass through me urging me to do what he says, compelled almost.

“I found your footprints at the cemetery,” I say, imagining the scene from an hour ago. “The footprints were outside your grave.”

He’s practically drooling at every word.

I continue. “The snow was fresh. There were no footprints leading toward your grave. Just away.”

“And?” he says, taking a sip from his glass.

“And your grave was empty.”

He laughs. “Isn’t that something, detective?”

I squeeze my glass to keep from shaking. I drain the whiskey.

“I want you to say it,” he says. “I want you to compile all your little clues and look me in the eye and tell me what exactly it is sitting across from you.”

“Just a killer,” I say. “Not the first I’ve sat across from either.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth. “But I’m so much more. I’ve been doing my work since before you were born. Since before your father was born and his father before him. There have been countless detectives. Countless men and women sitting across from me with dark spots under their eyes and not enough liquor in their cups. Those are not the first footprints I have left outside an empty grave.”

I raise my glass at Bill for a refill.

“You aren’t the first killer, I can tell you that,” I say. He really was like all the rest. He wanted to be special. He believed he transcended humanity. Maybe saw things the rest of us couldn’t. And maybe this one could actually fit the bill. But he had killed eleven people in my town, my home. “And you won’t be the first killer I’ve stopped for good.”

Bill brings me a fresh glass. I take a drink. I pull my gun out from under the table and rest my arm, aiming right at the killer’s chest.

“Bill,” I say, “why don’t you head home for the day?”

Bill looks at the killer as if for permission.

“Go!” I say, and Bill spurs into action, breaking from his daze and running out the door.

The killer’s hungry eyes are on me. He nods at the gun.

“You’ve tried that before, detective.”

“Hey, try, try again, right?” I say. “Tell me what you did with the boy.”

“Bullets, steel, fire. All of it’s useless. I’m not like you. My DNA replicates faster than anything you can do to me and…. Well, let’s not pretend you’d understand.”

“Is he alive or not?”

He lifted his glass and drained the final drops onto his tongue. “It’s complicated.”

“Tell me where he is. Dead or alive, tell me where he is right now.”

“I won’t be doing that.” He smiles and shakes his head.

My hand sweats around the gun.

“I’ve been around forever,” he says. “But I’m the first of my kind you’ve ever met. That is because of me. I am the very reason your race has not gone extinct. I’m disciplined. I’m principled. After I feed, they come back, but I wait for them, and I eliminate them. If not for me, detective, you would have eleven more empty graves. And eleven more hungry killers.”

“Tell me where—”

“No!” He slams the table. “I have fed upon the boy, but I need him to awaken before I can finish my work. Even if your toy could stop me, there would be no one to stop the boy. You would be up against another killer, just as hungry but not as disciplined. Be honest with yourself. If it was a child sitting across from you now, would you be able to pull the trigger?”

“You’re going to take me to him.”

“You’re making me mad, detective. This game of cat and mouse was fun, but you can see now that it was never a game you could win. In fact, you need me. I am an essential part of the ecosystem.”

“You’re delusional.”

“You have to pick your battles, don’t you? Think about your own life. You humans only get one, and you’re valid in not wanting to throw it away for nothing. Choose to live. I’m not asking you to do much.”

We’re the owners of our actions, I believe that. Maybe not the sole proprietors. We get a little from the folks, from whoever pushed us around in school, and shoot, being born ugly is just plain chance. But yeah, I’d say it’s mostly us.

So I guess I’m the one responsible for cocking the hammer back on my .38 special, right there in that monster’s face.

His lips peel back, widening his grin.

“I can’t tolerate disrespect,” he says. “That’s one thing I cannot do. What you are about to do will cost you your life.”

“You’re going to take me to the boy,” I say. “It really is that simple.”

A strand of pink drool dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“No.”

I pull the trigger. I pull it again. That bastard’s body jerks. Damn it, I keep pulling that trigger until the ringing in my ears is replaced by dry clicking.

He bleeds, sure. I can actually see through him.

Then he rolls his neck, cracking it. And the pale flesh begins to stretch, reaching over the red wounds. Bones shift and snap back into place. He drags his nails across the table and groans, coughing as air fills his lungs again.

The monster grabs the table and throws it. It spins end over end until it smashes into the bar, sticking out of it like a thrown knife. I reach for the extra bullets in my jacket. Ice cold fingers grab my throat. Then there’s burning as his nails pierce my skin. He throws me like the table.

I land on my ass by the door. Something in me breaks. Like a rib or my hip, something deep in there. My doctor’s going to hate that.

I get a few bullets loose from my coat, spilling the rest. I start to load them. And I’m still trying to load them as he grabs my hair and pulls me out the door. I hear popping along my scalp. Oh God, then I feel it too.

He tosses me on my back. I sink in the snow. All that sensation makes me go blind for a moment. I only got the one bullet, and I consider using it on myself.

But no. I need him to drink before I die.

“You have to pick your battles, detective.” He removes his bloody shirt. He closes his eyes and stretches his arms out, soaking up the blizzard. Whatever’s inside his DNA has perfectly sealed up his wounds. “Because you humans can't afford to lose a single time.”

I shoot him with that last bullet. It hurts too much to speak, but I manage to laugh.

He’s fast. He’s on me like a wolf. With one hand he holds me down, with the other he presses my head back. My neck is right there for him.

At first I think he’s pressed molten prongs into my throat. But even over my scream, I hear him swallowing. Drinking. Drinking me. There’s a numbness behind the pain, and it is fast approaching.

“Didn’t lose.” I feel my throat moving around his fangs as I speak.

It’s hard for him to stop drinking, but his gulping slows. He pulls away. He looks down on me with red eyes and red mouth, a real monster.

“What did you say?” he growls.

I can only get one word out. “Poison.”

We have had some really serious medical advances in the modern world. It wasn’t long ago that an HIV diagnosis meant you had only about ten years left to live. But in ‘96 they introduced something called highly active antiretroviral therapy. And hey, wouldn’t you know it, a guy like me could expect to live just about a full life. HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not a beast, HIV. Makes the monster crouching above me look pathetic. This monster had killed eleven, let’s say twelve. But AIDs has killed over forty-four million. And a lot of that is because of negligence, stigma, and the withholding of resources. Real human things.

These are the things you ask your doctor after you get the news. He won’t tell you, but you’ll find out anyway. And you’ll carry those stats around in your back pocket, next to your flask. Which you were supposed to throw out.

It’s getting hard to think. That numbness is wrapping me up now. I was supposed to have so many years ahead. First thinking HIV would cut things short, then learning that wasn’t necessarily the case anymore. And now here I am again, just sprinting right toward the end, huh? I almost don’t even feel the snow.

Blood drips from his mouth. The funny thing, if anyone else drank my blood, the odds of passing the disease would be low. But with him, with the monster, the blood is going inside of him. Not just his gut, but his veins, beneath his skin. I can see it flowing under his pale flesh, making him glow red in the gray blizzard.

How much of my blood courses through him? It doesn’t matter. It’s enough. Enough for him, enough for every other demon he creates. If he was human, simply biting another human would not pass the disease. But for a monster like this, the way he feeds and heals changes everything. His DNA duplicates too quickly. Like he said, bullets, steel, and fire do nothing to him. I’m guessing that also means human medicine is just as useless.

And everyone he bites? Well, it’s like infecting a wasp with a disease before kicking it back to its hive.

This will kill the boy too, the twelfth victim. I’m conscious enough to understand that. But I will be ending the line of monsters here and now. He has no chance of creating more without infecting them. You have to pick your battles.

I’m numb as a rock now. I smile though, looking up at him. I say it again. “Poison.”

He doesn’t know exactly what I mean, but the vampire knows enough. He knows fear.