Silver Zombie

 

PACKING FOR KANSAS had forced me to dig out one of my conservative TV reporter suits. The Enchanted Cottage’s invisible “personal shopper” apparently wouldn’t touch anything so contemporary and commonplace. My chrome multihanger bought from a closing dress shop remained bare.

What a wardrobe witch! She—or he—had never bothered with my growing collection of casual jeans and tops since arriving in Las Vegas, either. That made me realize my new locale had dropped the whole, mid-tier “working woman” wardrobe out of my life. But that was Vegas. You either tromped the hot streets in flip-flops, surfing shorts, and fanny packs, or you hit the hot spots in glitz and glamour.

I checked my email on the office/den computer one last time … in fact, it was noonish, so Ric was outside tooting Dolly’s horn and Quicksilver was adding the exclamation of a sharp bark to each toot. Guys just don’t want to let a girl have fun.

Only … I glimpsed several occasional but familiar email addys, fresh since the wee hours of this morning. Several bore the .sup extension for the hot new “supernatural” domain. I was hearing from infernobait, stone-donsnow, snowgasm224, cocainiac, snowkissedslut, all at the web address, kissedoffsnow.sup, and brimfulbabe and others from the original leading Snow fan site, snowkissedsluts.sup.

The subject lines were ominous. “It’s OVER!” “Who wants JUST a FREAKING scarf except an Undead Elvis freak???” “Glad I kicked the KISS.”

Ignoring the impatient outside clamor, I opened some of the messages, heart pounding.

My God, I was right. Snow was no longer closing his shows by lassoing his mosh-pit fans with a silk scarf and making them swoon from the multi-orgasms of the Brimstone Kiss.

How long had this been not going on?

That’s what these women had been feverishly texting each other about. The emails were meant to update the older blog members. I saw my name mentioned, usually with gratitude that I’d convinced them to go “cold Kiss” and forget about hoping for a second round of bliss. It sounded like they’d all “gone electric,” anyway.

I was shocked. Could I have been the last Brimstone Kissee? This was no time to do the math. I grabbed my duffel bag and hustled out to install it in Dolly’s huge trunk.

Ric sat behind the convertible’s big red-and-chrome steering wheel, clapping sarcastically. Quicksilver sat in the backseat, his big red tongue lolling out like he was getting heatstroke from waiting for me.

“All right,” I said, jumping into the passenger seat. “Let’s roll.”

My sigh on takeoff blew off any more thought of Snow and all his works for now.

At first, I’d been surprised by how much I resisted leaving Vegas on its own for a week. Now that I’d put various bigwigs of my acquaintance into suspended animation, I felt much better about abandoning the city to its overlords for a while.

Somehow I’d become a freelance gadfly-combination-warrior maid-of-all-work for werewolf mobster Cesar Cicereau, undercover vampire entrepreneur Howard Hughes, and rock star–supernatural question mark Christophe/Cocaine/Snow. Not to mention my landlord, media boss Hector Nightwine.

Pursuing hot new attractions like Shez and his offbeat enterprise was the Vegas mogul’s favorite competitive sport. They’d all be a lot less likely to get up to anything really despicable as long as negotiations over Chez Shez remained in limbo. Much as I wasn’t crazy about seeing Wichita again, I was pleased at the prospect of not having to face evil on a cosmic scale for a whole week.

Quicksilver always loved to ride in Dolly, and seemed even happier than I was to be leaving the Vegas Strip behind as Ric drove us out of town.

No more hoarding Dolly’s big vintage steering wheel for me. I was glad to have Ric alive and well and putting me in the passenger seat. I’d done a hell of a lot for him lately, and he needed to feel he could return the favor.

Quick dashed from one side to the other of the Caddy’s wide backseat, his long tongue flopping ludicrously from side to side in his mouth. The sunglasses that protected his unusual wolfhound-blue eyes from the wind gave him a guy-movie, stunt-dog look, silly but happy-go-lucky.

As we drove up Highway 93, slowed by heavy Vegas traffic, I kept glancing in my side mirror, watching the huge profiles of the Karnak, MGM-Grand, Bellagio, Gehenna, and the Inferno hotel-casinos shrink into the distance.

“Look,” I said when my eye caught a blur of black motorcycles on the freeway access road. “Isn’t that the Lunatics half-were gang?”

While Ric was giving them a glance, Quicksilver was already pawing the sunglasses off his wolfish nose. He leaped out of Dolly onto the bed of a pickup truck loaded with feed sacks in the next lane and then disappeared as he leaped down to the roadway.

“Madre de Dios,” Ric swore, fighting to maneuver Dolly’s nineteen feet between the pickup and a roaring semi into the far right lane. “My Vette this is not.”

“Dolly may not be nimble, but she has the horses and the heart,” I told him. “Just keep flooring it.”

Ric roared the car onto the next exit ramp, reporting on the rearview mirror action while I twisted my head to watch it.

“Those crazy bikers must be doing seventy on the access road,” he shouted into considerable wind noise. “They’re a public menace.”

“Do you see Quick?” I pleaded.

“No. He’d be a block or more back by now at this speed,” Ric yelled.

“Not necessarily,” I said, as I watched the last motorcycle in the long line spin out sideways in a cloud of dust. The desert seeped everywhere. “Don’t slow Dolly down to more than forty.”

“The speed limit is …”

“Forget any law-abiding FBI guy stuff,” I told him. “I’m watching. We’ll need to accelerate fast to get back on the freeway on the next entrance ramp. Time it so you make the crossroad light on green.”

“You want me to race the biker gang to the crossroad? Are you crazier than those half-werewolf Lunatics? Your dog on foot has fallen half a mile behind us by now.”

“Nooo. That’s why we have to time getting to the intersection just right. Quicksilver really doesn’t like the Lunatics. They attacked me on practically my first day in Vegas.”

“I remember, but …”

“You don’t remember like Quicksilver remembers … ooh, see that? Ouch.”

Ric, who’d responsibly kept his eye on the road and the speed limit, stole a sideways glance at the oncoming knot of formidable motorcycles. The salivating, fanged, hairy half-werewolf riders added a new dimension to the Hell’s Angels’ long-terrifying image. Another Harley spun sideways, taking out two … no, three bikes beside it like huge shiny black bowling pins.

“I can cross lanes and stop that gang, Del, if you think they ran down Quicksilver, but I don’t want to crease Dolly on my watch. You’d be more likely to kill me than those bozos. Hijo de puta!”

Ric jerked Dolly’s big wheel to keep her untouched as neighboring vehicles fled the oncoming action, heading into our lane while dodging the were-bunch on the rolling thunder overtaking us all.

In my side mirror, the lead biker’s snarling face was growing bigger and uglier, his overreaching front wheel closing in on Dolly’s pointed chrome taillight. We were verging directly into the gang’s path.

The bikers maintained their bowling-alley vee formation, not about to back down from colliding with a despised “boat” like a vintage Caddy giving them a challenge.

Then a cloud of gray that reminded me of a mini-version of the creepy spectral hyena desert “fog” surmounted the leader of the pack’s leather-jacketed back.

The rider’s clawed, fingerless gloved hands shot up off his handlebars. His fur-eared head twisted hard to the left as he fell from the saddle. His Harley went down, striking sparks from the pavement as it drove ahead in a sideways stop and his gang plowed into it and each other in one howling, screeching, shattering, squealing cloud of metal and leather and blood and fur.

And chrome.

Dolly.

“Hang on, Del, and don’t look back,” Ric shouted. “I’m making that green crossroad light like you said, and I don’t want to do an accident report on this one. We’ll circle around and find Quicksilver on foot. Damn, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. Don’t do anything insane.”

Something thumped into the backseat in a cloud of dust as police sirens converged on the intersection dwindling behind us, where small engine fires were sending up smoke signals into the settling dust.

“Go up the on ramp and back onto the freeway,” I shouted.

Ric sent me a disbelieving look as Quicksilver nudged my shoulder with his dust-powdered nose. He smelled of gasoline, leather, cheap hair gel, and flea powder. Ugh.

“I knew the dog could fight, but you never mentioned he was a racehorse too.” Ric nervously eyed the rearview mirror. “I don’t think any civilians got caught in that mess.”

“Nope. The gang had bullied all the accompanying traffic off the road, so Quicksilver had a clear alley all the way to take them out before the next intersection.”

“You’re not telling me he planned that mayhem to the last second?”

A cold wet nose brushed my cheek.

I twisted around to pat the backseat for his sunglasses until I, oof, found them and perched them on his nose again.

“Delilah?” Ric insisted.

“Yup. He’s a yuppie puppy. A can-do puppy. Quicksilver can pace most any vehicle for a short distance, and at street speed, indefinitely, I know from experience. He knew he could get those dangerous Lunatics off the asphalt without involving any innocent victims, or he wouldn’t have gone after them.”

“You can’t tell me a dog, any dog, would take that into consideration.”

“That’s just his breed instincts coming out. He’s half wolfhound under that lupine package. Werewolves are the only lupines left in the Continental U.S., and these half-weres are the worst of the breed. So Quick’s their law-enforcement nightmare.”

I eyed Quicksilver stretched out on the long backseat, licking his toes free of dust, gasoline, and probably asphalt burns. Not to worry. Dog saliva will soothe wounds, but Quicksilver’s saliva has proven to have instant healing properties for him, and, on two occasions, Ric. That’s how my two mucho macho males had bonded despite initial territorial disputes over custody of me. They knew I didn’t want to see either one of them hurt.

“It’s the motel bathtub for you tonight, buddy,” I told Quick, “for a good soak and cleaning. No arguments.”

He ignored me and lapped away like a cat.

“Okay. This time we’re really on the road,” Ric said, letting Dolly out to high speed and settling his frame into her cushy, red-leather comfort.

“Your Vette is a railroad flatcar compared to Dolly, isn’t it?”

“I like road feel. Dolly drives like an overweight rolling marshmallow to me.”

I peered into the side mirror. “She didn’t lose any tail-light?”

“Naw.” Ric grinned and pushed the speedometer up past the speed limit. Vegas had diminished to a piece of sparkling glass winking from Dolly’s mirrors. “That broken chrome you spotted was from the tinsel on all those hopped-up Harleys.

“And if you want to put me into the motel bathtub tonight for a good, long soak,” he added, “I’m all for it. Hell, I earned it for my performance as a dog chauffeur.”

“A-plus driving, partner. With a gold star.”

UTAH’S SUNSET-COLORED MESAS and cliffs resembled the spectacular Valley of Fire attraction near Las Vegas, only it went on for hundreds of eye-candy miles.

To reach our first night’s stop near Green River we crossed a plateau of almost eight thousand feet and came back down to earth through Spotted Wolf Canyon, where Quicksilver ran along the winding interstate. Quick resumed his rumble seat through the sheer canyons of the San Raphael Swell.

Ric was driving, so I enjoyed striking views of Devils Canyon as we ascended Ghost Rock Summit and noticed a side jaunt to Goblin Valley State Park. By twilight, we found a motel with separate cabins and a big claw-footed tub. Quicksilver dried himself by spending the chilly night outside, howling for a full moon, no doubt. Ric dried himself on the cool, scratchy motel sheets with me.

Fed and fueled, we got on the road early, all of us smelling of pine soap as we headed into Colorado and its mountain air. Even Dolly looked freshly washed and shined. Maybe the ghosts and goblins had given her a moonbeam rubdown after her rocky start out of Vegas.

My silver familiar had morphed into a New Age necklace studded with turquoise for the morning drive. Instead of curling shyly around my big toe nights, as had been its habit, now the familiar was twining itself over Ric’s and my interlocked fingers and limbs, slipping like a mobile cold shiver over our overheated skin.

I didn’t mention the new silent partner in our sex life. Ric had the single Silver Eye now, whatever that meant. He popped a brown contact lens over the pale reflective iris every morning, like taking a pill, to normalize his looks.

Remembering the nightmare visions from being the main course at a vampire feast under the Karnak only made him more gung-ho to get to Kansas and unearth the cause of my trauma. Part of that was his ex-lawman, good-deed mentality. I think another reason was that concentrating on my issues pushed his own back from the front line.

So … this was a contradiction: I was actually happy that my youthful unhappiness made such a good diversion for Ric.

Here we were, both pretending the other needed our help most.

I started out driving while Quicksilver made up doggy dreamtime in the backseat and Ric turned Dolly’s radio dial left and right up and down the FM and AM ranges. All we got was static wail.

Dolly’s big wheels were no joy to navigate around hairpin mountainside turns. I recalled reading a beauty tip that driving a big old wheel without power steering was great exercise for the bust support muscles. Dolly had power-everything, but, even so, my entire body was putting English into those continuous hairpin turns. I was sure to be sore tomorrow.

Still, the sun poured down sparkle on the speedy roadside creeks following the twisting mountain roads. Towns and even glimpses of habitation were rare in the mountains. Ric used his cell phone to map the highway for likely stops. I’d never adulterate Dolly’s vintage integrity by adding any slick, modern gadgets, not even the threatened fuzz buster.

Light faded fast amid these impressive peaks. I yawned in the deepening shadows and checked the gas gauge. Dolly wasn’t stingy with gasoline, but her tank was built for travel. The road went ever down and down until we finally hit the deserted flats again.

“I’ll drive now,” Ric said. “All those major curves must be exhausting to hold on to. I speak from experience.”

I smiled faintly at his double entendre. I was pretty tired from the constant tension in my shoulders, and it was twilight in the shadow of the Rockies. He sped Dolly along the empty road, knowing my arm and back muscles craved a hot shower.

“A good kind of exhausting,” I added. “That’s real driving, not just steering.”

“Yeah,” Ric said. “And I was sitting, helpless, on the outside, gazing two miles down into ravines and hoping Detroit’s Largest didn’t plan to take us on a Thelma and Louise dive.”

“Guys just so hate being not in control.”

Quicksilver, who’d slept through the mountain pass, sat up and growled protest from the backseat. He was a guy too.

“Look.” Ric pointed to a highway sign that was all words and no pictures.

The type was huge, but impossible to read while we were whizzing by at ninety miles an hour.

“Let’s do that,” he shouted into the wind whipping past Dolly’s big-screen fifties windshield.

I had no idea what kind of off-road hokey attraction he was talking about. They were usually ill-kept reptile farms or fireworks shacks out here.

“The sun is setting,” I pointed out, jerking my head over my shoulder to look past Quicksilver’s sunglasses-free mug, all black nose and white teeth.

A spectacular, pollution-abetted sunset was setting the western mountain peaks afire, turning the dimming sky into a psychedelic painted desert of purple, orange, green, and gold.

“We should be finding a motel for the night,” I said.

“This is better.” Ric surprised me. I was sure he was eager for a replay of last night. His ordeal had done nothing to weaken his libido. The contrary, even.

“There’s nothing out here but mileposts, Ric. I know this is the Big Nowhere, but I need a hot shower, some food, and a comfy bed right now.”

“It’s all right back there,” he said. “In a unique way.” He swung Dolly into a U-ey on the deserted two-lane that her Queen Mary turning circumference shouldn’t have been able to make without hitting the shoulder gravel.

I winced for her vintage everything, but most guys have some freaky car mojo going. Dolly spun the one-eighty in a disciplined, ladylike fashion, no squealing brakes or unseemly spray of road grit ruining the polish on her black-satin chassis.

I felt my right wrist getting heavy under the weight of a single handcuff dangling a broken chain. No, not this time. I was wearing a charm bracelet again, loaded with tooth-sharp, tiny icons I couldn’t see in the dark. Even the silver familiar was going along for the ride.

“I’m getting to love this babe of a boat,” Ric said, turning her up an asphalt-paved two-lane road I’d missed spotting in the rapidly descending twilight.

I still was in the dark about the meaning of the sign, especially as Dolly’s headlights scanned no sign of human habitation except barbed wire fencing along the small but oddly smooth road.

“It gets really dark out here without any lights for miles,” I pointed out. Again.

“So what? We’re not afraid of vampires, are we?”

“Out in the heartland, vamps are not major tourist attractions, or hidden empires, or mere mob muscle, like in Vegas,” I said. “They’re plain and simple bloodsuckers, and always hard at it.”

Ric just laughed.

Frankly, his laughter was worth as much to me as my non-vamp-perforated skin these days.

Staring into the dark for a sign of civilization, I spotted a large silvery pale expanse with faint lines forming interior squares, like a concrete wall. And we were heading right for it.

Quicksilver whined and braced his long-nailed front paws on my leather seat back. He knew that was a no-no. At least he knew enough to plant them and stop, with no overexcited canine churning that would damage the leather, but he wanted a good view of our eerie destination as much as I did.

And then I spotted …

“Cars. That’s a parking lot in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yup.” Ric sounded smug.

“I don’t see any motel cabins or buildings. Or showers.”

“I wasn’t really looking for rain while driving a convertible with the top down.”

“Food.”

“See that blocky little building in the middle of the parked cars there?”

“Looks like an animal shelter in a very small town. Ish. Sheets?”

“Red leather not turn you on?”

Ric eased Dolly into a vacant area up against what looked like a parking meter. Then he buzzed up the driver’s window a few inches and clamped the parking meter head onto the glass.

“Ric. Why is that thing abusing my vintage window? Those fifty-six Biarritz Caddy windows are hell to replace. I know, because Quicksilver smashed through one to defend me against the Lunatics the day that I adopted him in Sunset Park.”

“Relax,” Ric said as the hovering white alien ship dead ahead produced a vaguely colored glow and tinny music blared into the Cadillac.

“Are we going to be abducted, or what?” I shouted, hands over ears and body braced for instant levitation. “I’ve got enough ‘missing time’ in my personal history already.”

Ric remained calm. “Guess you never had a chance to patronize a restored twentieth-century drive-in movie theater. Me neither.”

He stretched his arm over my seat back.

“What do you want from the food shack, Date?”