Free King Carrion by Rich Hawkins Page A

his hand. She held her hands together to her chest. Her tongue, already blackening, lurked at the threshold of her mouth and the sharp teeth there. She looked down at the bodies of the two vampires then appraised Mason with an expression of fear and uncertainty.
         “Mason, what’s happened to me?” Her voice sounded different; a change in her vocal chords.
         Mason couldn’t answer.
         “Won’t you help me, Mason?”
         “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
         “You let them hurt me. You let them turn me into a monster.”
         “I tried to protect you. I tried. I…” He put one hand to his face and stifled a sob in his throat. “I tried to keep you safe.”
         “It’s all your fault, Mason.”
         “No it’s not.”
         “Liar! Yes it is! You’ve damned me to Hell!” And with that she fled from the room and the house, too fast for him to stop her even if he wanted to.  He let her go. Let her go into the dark, to join others like her. The converts.
         Mason called after her, but his voice was lost in the silence around him. There was no more screaming from outside, just the moonlit night and the reddish glow of a nearby fire. Even the sirens had stopped.
         He dropped the hammer and slumped upon the sofa. Looked down at the floor. And he sobbed gently for his crimes, aching with regret and miserable with heartbreak, dwelling in the dark like a forgotten ghost.
     

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     
    In the dark of the night Mason left the house behind and walked on the road with his torch sweeping about the shadows and the dead bodies he passed.
         Even now he struggled to comprehend the night’s events. He expected to wake from a nightmare or find himself restrained upon a bed in a room in some kind of institute for the deranged.
         Beyond the street, parts of the town were burning. Plumes of smoke rising to the sky. Distant cries with the breeze. Darkened houses on either side of the street; some with their doors open or ripped from the hinges. Smashed windows and wrecked cars. A blue Volvo had crashed into a garden wall. There was a corpse without a head sprawled on the road near the driver’s door. A set of keys in one hand. The head was nowhere to be seen.
         Mason kept walking, stepping around pools of blood slowly turning black. He passed one house where a muffled voice called out for help; but the author could not disguise the laughter in its voice, and Mason was not foolish enough to take the bait.
         He sat upon a wooden bench near the river running through the town, and listened to the water flow and whisper. He looked at the row of houses across the road. Tall trees were listing with old age. Dead streetlights. A silver gleam from the light of the moon and the stars. The smell of smoke on the air.
         He felt numb, but not from the cold all about him. Part of him knew he was in considerable danger out on the streets, but he didn’t care too much about that. The vampires had attacked the town, and fed well. If they found him here and fell upon him, he would just be another dead man.
         Unless he rose again as a heartless, hungry thing.
         Countless thoughts of Ellie filled his mind. He remembered their wedding day and the years that followed. The good times. The bad times. The things that drove them apart and left them separated and miserable.
         It had all gone to shit.
         To distract himself from the siren call of alcohol in his blood, he rolled a cigarette with the last of his tobacco and smoked it while he watched the street, waiting for some monster to come along.
         Maybe Ellie would come to find him.
         He ignored the approaching sound of a car, and did not look up as it sped past. Then there was the scream of brakes as it came to a stop. The crunch of the gearstick being wrenched, followed by a gentle whine as the car reversed and stopped