Page 77 of The Undead

I started to get out of the car. Adam grabbed my shoulder and held me still, searching my face anxiously.

“I hope not,” he finally said, and touched something deep inside me that I’d thought broken forever. He broke the stare and slid out to stand there in the covering darkness.

I was locking the car when Adam froze.

There was somebody standing under the tree next to the house, a cold white shadow with no pulse, no life. Adam’s eyes were focused on it, not blinking, not looking away. He waited. Sure enough, it moved a few lazy steps out into the warm glow of the porch light.

Sweet William could look human, after all. Very human. He’d dressed himself in layers of rags, a grimy Texas Rangers baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, grime smeared over his exposed skin. He looked disgusting, but not really dangerous—not until you saw his eyes, his colorless cool eyes that were about as close to human as the eyes of a shark.

“You’re goin’ to ask somethin’ stupid,” William observed with a slight smile. Adam’s balance changed, a bare instant away from attack. “She’s close, Adam. Real close. Closer than you think.”

William looked away from him. His eyes wandered over the Volvo with emotionless curiosity, then over me the same way. And focused, suddenly.

“Why, he’syours, Adam. After all that talk about how you’d never bring anybody into this life, and here he is. My, you can pick ’em, can’t you?” William looked back at Adam, his smile faint and masklike. “And so can I, Johnny Reb. You woulda died in a ditch if it weren’t for me.”

He waited. Adam waited him out.

“You’re borin’ me, Adam Josephus Radburn Bradley. Borin’ me somethin’ terrible. You’d better ask me where she is. ”

“Where is she?” Adam asked. There wasn’t any urgency to it, just the words, as if he already knew.

“Well, now, she’s been some trouble to me. Lilah and George, they were inconvenienced, you might say. And it took me a good long time to feel better after that little square dance.” William suddenly dropped the cozy hick accent. His voice was liquid and pure and cold. “You’d better ask me for her life.”

“I ask you for her life.”

“Ask me not to hurt her.”

“I ask you not to hurt her.”

“Father.”

Adam froze again, ice-cold. I couldn’t feel anything from him, not even anger. Not even tension. His eyes were dark and very wide.

“Father” he murmured, and after all the other words, that one seemed to catch and hang in his throat, a cry of pain. “Don’t hurt her, William. What does it matter to you?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter a pin to me, Johnny Reb. Not a pin. But it does matter to you, now, doesn’t it?” William reached in one grimy pocket and pulled something out, something that smelled like fresh warm blood. He lifted it to his mouth. He licked it with a gray outstretched tongue, then rubbed the blood over his lips in a grotesque parody of lipstick.

The piece of meat he was holding was a heart, heavy with blood. He extended it in one smeared hand and smiled, red lips parting to expose bloodstained teeth.

“Oh, it does matter to you, doesn’t it?” he whispered. And laughed.

Adam screamed, a high inhuman sound of rage and horror that echoed from every house and wall, and launched himself at his enemy. He was maddened and desperate, but William moved like a praying mantis to Adam’s grasshopper quickness. And William ended up on top, one hand gripping Adam’s throat. He took the bloody flesh and stuffed it into Adam’s mouth, then slammed it shut and held it there while Adam’s body shuddered and fought. When Adam went limp, William stood up and looked at me.

I took a step backward.

He pointed one finger at me and shook it from side to side. Behind it, his eyes were cool and mocking. Oddly human.

“Better be careful,” he murmured. “I always finish what I start. Always.”

He took two steps into the shadows and he was gone, all gone.

Adam had gotten to his knees, as slowly and painfully as any human. I ran to him and got there in time to hold his shoulders while he vomited out the Moody flesh and strings of saliva, shaking and making harsh choking sounds. He stayed there, crouched and broken, until I pulled him to his feet. When the light spilled over his face it was the face of a corpse, mottled gray and white. Only his eyes were alive with suffering. He’d lost his glasses. They lay broken on the ground next to him.

“It was hers,” he whispered to me, and put his hands on my shoulders. His whole body trembled. I caught him as his legs gave way. “Oh dear God, it was hers and I liked the taste of it …”

I looked at the house with a sudden shiver of fear. Adam had collapsed against me, dead weight. I dragged him back to the car and got him into the passenger side, then ran for the house. I didn’t bother with the lock, just knocked it open and burst into the kitchen.

It was painted with blood. Blood dripped from every available surface, red streaks down the white tile and pooled on the floor. Sylvia’s blood—but Sylvia wasn’t there. I backed away into the hall and began to search every room—again—one room to the next until I’d come to her bedroom upstairs.

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