V-Wars

Walker himself kept dozing off during the day and when he was awake, he was silent. He was haggard and gaunt. Thompson walked to the compound from 12 Vega a few times, keeping to the shadows, confirming his suspicion that Walker was staying up all night, every night, maybe in hopes of seeing the Mendozas or maybe trying to stop Bobby from shooting unsuspecting passers-by. Walker was very troubled. The vampire that was feeding off Walker Morrisey was the vampire of stress.

When they went into town, Bobby bought lots of coffee. For Walker, he said, but Walker said, “You drink more than I do.”

“Only in the morning. You’re a fucking addict,” Bobby said.

Thompson got a reputation for hard drinking because he went to the Shaft as often as possible. He worked there to make money, washing glasses and cooking meth. For a while he also went to contact his handler. His handler kept promising an extraction. Sit tight. Sit tight. Somebody will get in touch with you.

Sit on this.

Thompson stopped placing the calls.

— 9 —

“He’s a vampire. Anybody can see that,” Bobby yelled at the TV in the O.M. bar.

Thompson, Bobby, Fug, and Walker were watching the primetime show, Freedom Fighters. It was set in World War II, because that that was the last war where people could express their patriotism without getting smacked down for it. Even with the world simmering in hellfire, if you said the wrong thing in public about the president or vampires or mutations, you might get a little visit from Homeland Security. Unless, of course, you lived in a place like Sonrisa. Sonrisa got little visits of another stripe — “relatives” of the locals, who were really people escaping over the Mexican border. People who had not gotten the memo that Bobby Morrisey was the mad emperor of Sonrisa. Bobby, who waited until they tried to sneak back out of town. Then Bobby and the O.M.s roared after them in the desert, killed them. They died easily.

They died more easily than Moncho, even if you counted Moncho’s headshot wound as a simple graze. These desperate people died like ordinary people. So far, Thompson had gotten away with aiming wide. He hadn’t killed anyone. Walker had gotten away with aiming wide, too, which Thompson knew by observing him. No one could keep score of the kills, although they tried. The others bragged, counted coup. Walker mostly looked down, then excused himself to check on Little Sister and Manuel. The kids were not allowed at O.M. club meetings, or murderous romps in the desert.

At the Shaft, the actor on the screen gave a speech about the dream that was America and the O.M.s immediately threw back their shots. Bobby and Fug hooted like apes. Walker looked drunk and tired, and Thompson maintained his cool detachment. It was a drinking game to go with the show — a belt every time someone said “America” or “these United States,” and a shot for the death of every Nazi, French collaborator, or beautiful Japanese propaganda slinger. The rules of the game were updated on the Internet, and somehow, Bobby kept current on them.

They still went to the post office box, and Bobby still retrieved his mystery deliveries. Thompson still didn’t know what was in them, but he was beginning to suspect it was LSD or some kind of other hallucinogenic. Because Bobby was going off the deep end in a big way.

“That actor, he’s a vampire,” Bobby said again, and the scattering of patrons in the bar nodded. “Those Hollywood liberals protect them. Tolerate them.”

“Fuckin’ A, Bobby,” a grizzled old man said at the other end of the bar. “Bodie, give Bobby a drink on me.”

“Tequila,” Bobby said, grinning over at the man.

Thompson pondered the amount of alcohol being shipped to Sonrisa. He watched trucks come in with booze, food, and other supplies; the town’s single trash truck chugging around on trash day; the school bus lighting out each school day. The wheels of civilization went round and round. Infrastructure had not yet uniformly shattered in the U.S. the way it had in Mexico.

The way it so had in Mexico.

The four O.M.s were waiting for Monster, Poison, and Johnny Rocket to come back from the hunt. The O.M.s were the real vampires of Sonrisa, flying over the sand in their trucks; running illegals to ground; swooping after the vans and SUVs of coyotes who still dared cross the vast, uninhabited wastelands to transport their human cargo. Maybe the coyotes and wetbacks had heard of the Ocotillo Militia, and maybe they figured, Orale, chinga, there were only seven of those biker guys in a huge desert.

Seven biker guys with trucks and guns, and plenty of food and water. Even Walker gave up saying prayers over all the people Bobby shot. Bodie put the tequila shot on the pitted wooden bar. Bobby tore his gaze from the flat screen to pluck it up, and in doing so, glanced at Bodie. Bobby froze with the shot glass halfway to his mouth. Bobby’s eyes narrowed, studying the bartender, his crow’s feet causing deep furrows that reminded Thompson of the Bog Man of Mexico. Thompson felt the sudden tension flare up around his president like a wall of flame.

Bodie didn’t notice. He was watching the TV, cheering with the others when one of the Freedom Fighters garroted a Nazi. Then he moved away, whistling the Freedom Fighters theme song as he lined up shots for the drinking game.

“Oh, Christ, they got Bodie. They got to him,” Bobby slurred under his breath. His hand went to his quick-draw pocket, where he kept his .38.

Walker jerked his attention away from the TV and looked at his brother. He traced Bobby’s line of vision. Bodie was clearly in Bobby’s sights. Walker ticked his glance toward Thompson. Thompson looked steadily back.

“They got Bodie.” Bobby’s lips were rubbery from all the alcohol.

Thompson had learned not to underestimate him when he was drunk. Thompson stayed quiet, focused. Walker was fighting to do the same.

“They turned him into a fuckin’ vampire,” he went on. His hand wrapped on the .38 and he began to pull it out of its holster.

“No, Bodie’s okay,” Walker said.

Thompson tried to warn him off with a headshake. After all this time, you’d think Walker would know better than to argue with his brother when he was wasted.

Bobby’s head whipped toward Walker. He drew his lips back, showing his teeth in utter rage, like a pit bull. Thompson watched Walker’s spine straighten. Fight or flight.

Stand down, Thompson thought, wishing there was such a thing as ESP. Shut the hell up.

“The hell?” Bobby said finally. “Look in the mirror behind the bar. Tell me what you see.” He swung his head at Thompson. “You, too.”

Thompson complied. First he saw the crack he had made when he’d thrown the empty tequila bottle over a year ago. Then he saw Bodie’s face as he capped the tequila bottle — untroubled, older, not unusual.

“You can see it,” Bobby insisted. “You can see his eyes glowing.”

“No, Bobby,” Walker said, glancing again at Thompson. “He’s fine.” He pursed his lips. “Tell him, Thompson.”

Don’t you dare try to throw me under this bus, Thompson thought. Where adrenaline should have rushed in, Thompson just felt tired. He probably deserved this.

Bobby’s head bobbed in Thompson’s direction. “You want your full patch?”

Walker and Fug both stared at Bobby. Fug remained inscrutable. Walker was freaking. Thompson kept loose, same as in the desert, same as when he had killed Moncho. In a motorcycle club, if your president told you to do something, you did it. Or else he wasn’t your president.

“It’s not the old days,” Bobby said to Thompson. “Recruit like you, you can’t just leave.”

My bike says I can, Thompson thought, but thanks to his government education, he kept his features neutral. He had done all these equations in his head. He had a mental big wheel with everyone’s name on it that he could possibly think of, and he gave it several spins a day: What if Bobby decided Father Patrick was a vampire? What if he went after Johnny Rocket? Or Manuel? Or Little Sister?

“He’s probably bleeding into our drinks,” Bobby said, “to turn us.”

“Vampirism is not contagious,” Luther Swann had assured the public, over and over and over. “You can’t catch it, and no one can give it to you.”

But vampires could kill people. They did kill people. In the past six months, there had been seven deaths in Sonrisa, not counting the people Bobby had killed out in the desert, not counting the old man he had shot by accident while he was trying to gun down the Mendozas. The community had fragmented into clusters of gossip. The little medical clinic was gone, so no one could pronounce cause of death. Dehydration, an accident with a chainsaw, a heart attack. Straight up blood loss. Others started looking funny at the Ocotillo Militia. Who the fuck needed to use a chain saw in Sonrisa?

“You have to kill him,” Bobby said to Thompson in a low voice. “If you don’t kill him, you’re not an O.M., and there’s nowhere for you to go.”

My bike says there is, but it would be six against one in the deep damn desert and for all he knew, Bobby had jimmied his brakes or punched a hole in his gas tank. There was the Uzi.

“I’ll do it if you tell me to,” Thompson said steadily, “but maybe I should watch him. He may have turned other people. Or we can find out who turned him.” He cocked his head as if the thought had just occurred to him, but he had practiced this contingency a dozen times in front of the mirror in Moncho’s bathroom.

Bobby swayed on the barstool. “You can torture it out of him. Shove a cross down his throat. Make him eat garlic ’til his guts dissolve.”

Neither of those things affected vampires. It was a mutation. It was just DNA. It wasn’t Bram Stoker or Vampire Diaries. Bobby said Swann and that reporter bitch Nitobe and all the people in authority were lying to people to save themselves. That they had made a deal with the vampires — throw them the little people and live to lie another day.

“Make him tell you who they are,” Bobby said, pushing off his bar stool with his .38 in his hand. He aimed it at Thompson. “Now.”

“Bobby, no,” Walker said.