Chapter 4
~ Goin' Down South ~
As the sun began to set behind them, the six vampires in their Bloodmobile rolled across the North Carolina state line. About an hour earlier, they had stopped at a Wal-Mart to buy a bottle of sunscreen for Steve; after that, though, it was going to be a constant drive until the next morning came around, stopping only when someone needed a bathroom break.
Steve had decided to pass his time by digging several comic books out of the cardboard box and reading them back-to-back. He was surprisingly quiet the whole time, considering that he was... well, Steve.
Pugh, of course, was focusing solely on driving the Bloodmobile. Elvis, in the passenger's seat next to him, had unfolded a map of the southern United States and was carefully reading over it to see just how far they would be able to go in one night. They had left the Wal-Mart at 6:30 and hadn't stopped once since then; at that rate, they'd probably end up in some middle-of-nowhere town in Alabama by the time the sun rose the next morning.
Rhombus just sat quietly in his place next to one of the Bloodmobile's windows, occasionally taking a look outside as they passed through a small town or drove by an old roadside restaurant. Zamboni, sitting next to him, was reading through some sort of magazine for vampires; the cover showed a variety of fictional vampires from recent books and television shows, but with some changes so they looked more like real vampires--pointy ears, very pale skin, and so on.
Crurotarsi, sitting between Zamboni and Steve, would glance over at what the two of them were reading every once and a while. Like Rhombus, however, she spent most of her time looking out the window.
Hours (and a few quick bathroom breaks) passed, and finally the sky began to grow a bit lighter as the sun prepared to rise up past the mountains on the horizon. By this time, the vampires had--as Elvis had predicted--ended up in the state of Alabama. And, judging by the total absence of houses in the distance (and even other cars on the road), they had indeed arrived in the middle of nowhere.
By this time, everyone was getting pretty tired--they had been on the road for almost twelve hours, after all. Pugh pulled the Bloodmobile over into a gravelly area on the side of the road, and everyone proceeded to remove their seatbelts and get ready for bed. After closing the curtains around each window of the vehicle, Pugh climbed up onto one of the three top bunks; Elvis and Crurotarsi followed, taking the other two beds on top and leaving the bottom three to Rhombus, Steve, and Zamboni. The six vampires removed their shirts and tossed them to the floor (as it's generally pretty uncomfortable to sleep fully-clothed in the middle of the day), and within a few minutes they were all starting to drift off to sleep...
Later that day, once everyone woke up and got ready to go once again, Pugh pulled out his laptop and started searching around for any information on where all the vampires hung out in Alabama. Of course, since this information was probably kept secret from the human population, a simple Google search just wouldn't do; instead, he went to one of several well-hidden websites that made up the Internet's vampire community.
"Hmm... apparently there's only around a hundred vampires in the whole state," Pugh said, looking up from the computer for a second.
"Anybody near here?", Rhombus asked, watching through one of the windows as the first car they had seen the entire time--a beat-up, rusty old pickup truck--drove past.
"Well... I'm not sure. It says here that there were a handful of vampires living a few miles south of here the last time the site was updated, but I can't find any more information than that."
"Heh," Zamboni laughed, "Guess we really are in the middle of nowhere, then. Any humans nearby?"
Pugh typed away at the computer for a bit, then clicked something and did a bit more typing before finally coming up with an answer.
"Not many," he said, "And none within a mile of the spot where the local vampires live. Looks like we'll have to head into one of the cities if we stay here long enough to run low on blood."
"Don't forget," Elvis spoke up, "If we can find a place to live that's far enough away from the humans, chances are we won't have to worry too much about the torches-and-pitchforks crowd."
"Wait," Steve said, looking up from yet another comic book, "Do they still use torches and pitchforks here? I thought hillbillies all had shotguns and chainsaws and stuff..."
Elvis sighed.
"It's a figure of speech," he explained. "Haven't you ever seen any of the old monster movies? Whenever all the angry villagers come out, they're always waving torches and pitchforks around."
For a few minutes, everyone was fairly quiet. Pugh typed away at his computer again, attempting to find out anything he could about the vampires living just a few miles away. Other than the fact that they were all part of the same family, however, he hadn't really found much. And then, suddenly, Steve jumped up, setting his comic book aside.
"Hey, you guys... I just thought about something," he said, glancing around to the rest of the vampires but mostly towards Pugh. "What're we gonna do about all the mail and bills and stuff from back home while we're driving around out here?"
"That's not a problem," Pugh said, looking up from the computer. "The pigeons will bring everyone's mail inside and pay the bills while we're gone, and I turned the water and electricity off when I left the house."
Steve looked a bit confused.
"Uh... did you just say that pigeons were going to pay our bills?"
"Yep," the older vampire replied. "Pigeons. I've been training a whole flock of them to fight, read and write English, and open doors, and before we left I split the flock up and sent some of them off to each of our houses."
Steve's jaw dropped, and he now looked even more confused. He knew that pigeons were fairly smart creatures--he wasn't some dumb human who wouldn't know intelligent life if it bit him in the ass, after all--but he had still never heard of a whole flock of pigeons learning how to read and write in English, pay people's bills in their absence, and so on.
"But... but... how do they write? Do they, like, hold a pen in their beaks or something?"
"In their claws, actually," Pugh corrected him. "Takes a lot of practice for them to get good at it, though, since they need to stand on one leg and hold onto the pen with the other at the same time."
"Huh," Zamboni said, glancing over toward Pugh. "So that's what you've been up to during those months when the Bloodmobile wasn't running... training flocks of Olympic athlete pigeons to write checks to pay the bills."
For a few minutes, there was silence once again. Before anyone could even get used to the quietness, however, Steve spoke up again.
"Okay, so the pigeons can get the mail and all that stuff, but... what about my job?"
"You work the night shift at Wendy's, Steve," Crurotarsi said. "It's fast food. If you go a few days in a row without coming in to work, they'll just find somebody else to flip their burgers. No problem."
Steve groaned a bit, but then realized that... well, she had a point. It wasn't like there wouldn't be any more fast food jobs left when he got back home. He went back to his comic book, like always, while Pugh continued to search for information on the Internet.
"So," Rhombus spoke up about a minute later, "When are we going to go meet the neighbors?"
"Hmm... good question," Pugh said. "I think I just found a map of the area that has the place marked, so... how about right now?"
Everyone strapped themselves back in, and soon the Bloodmobile was rolling off down the road once again. This time, it wasn't such a long drive--just one mile down the highway, Pugh made a right turn onto an unmarked road leading into a forested area. Before too long, the freshly-paved road gave way to an older one; another mile or so down the road, even that asphault was gone, replaced by loosely-packed gravel. By the time they reached their destination, the road was little more than a dirt path with trees leaning in close on either side, barely giving the Bloodmobile enough room to move.
In a clearing just about a hundred feet down the road, shaded by the older and taller trees that rose high above the ground, were three run-down old trailers propped up on cinderblocks. The grass around them looked like it hadn't been trimmed at all in months, if not years; occasionally part of an old appliance or a broken children's toy could be seen poking up between the tall green blades, but for the most part it was impossible to tell what might be lying hidden in the yard. The only thing clearly visible above the grass was a scarecrow, shaped roughly like a human body but with X'ed-out eyes and various rips and tears in its clothing. Hanging around its neck was a sign clearly labeled "NO TRESSPASSING."
"Uh... I dunno... I don't think I like the look of this place," Steve said, almost shivering at the sight of the apparently-strangled scarecrow.
"Not exactly the most welcoming," Zamboni mumbled, glancing around the yard as the Bloodmobile rolled to a stop just short of the disturbing scarecrow. "But who knows? Maybe they're just getting too old to keep the place cleaned up like they used to."
"Something tells me that's not too likely," Crurotarsi said. "Probably the whole 'sign choking the scarecrow with X'ed-out eyes' thing. Kinda hard to do that by accident."
Despite all the signs that it probably wasn't such a good idea, Pugh parked the Bloodmobile and hopped out of the door. Slowly, the other vampires followed, with Steve being the last one to get up from his seat. He walked over toward one of the open doors and poked his head outside, staring nervously in the direction of the three trailers and watching for any sign of movement inside. After a few seconds of absolutely nothing scary happening, he finally stepped outside of the vehicle and closed the door behind him.
"So... uh... are we just gonna go up and knock on the door, or what?"
Pugh nodded.
"That was pretty much the plan, yeah."
"And if they're as unfriendly as their yard suggests," Elvis added, "Then we'll just go somewhere else. There's plenty of middle-of-nowhere out here for everyone."
"But... what if they're, like... some kind of crazy serial killers or something?"
"I think you're forgetting a few things here," Zamboni said, barely holding back a laugh. "Pugh, for one thing. Back in the eighties, he trained under Afronian Gorgonzolas... you know, the most powerful ninja who ever lived?"
Upon hearing the word "ninja," Steve suddenly didn't look quite so scared.
"Oh yeah!", he blurted out so loud that whoever was inside the trailers could probably hear him. "Watch out, psycho killers! Pugh's a ninja! He'll kick all your asses! Woo-hoo!"
As it turned out, Steve's outburst was indeed heard from inside the trailers. For a moment, there was a sound of shuffling feet from within the closest of the three; then, the flimsy screen door on the side suddenly swung open and slammed against the outside of the mobile home. Standing in the doorway was a large, hairy, shirtless vampire, wearing little more than a torn-up pair of denim overalls (with one strap broken and dangling down in front) and looking like he had not had a bath in quite a while.
"What's all this racket?", he yelled, glancing out across the overgrown yard toward the group of unfamiliar vampires. "And who the hell're y'all?"
One by one, the vampires introduced themselves.
"I'm Pugh."
"Rhombus."
"My name's Zamboni."
"Crurotarsi."
"And I am Steve Yamamoto-Genryuusai."
There was a brief moment of silence after Steve spoke, during which a cricket hiding somewhere in the grass just happened to chirp several times. The rest of the vampires gave Steve strange looks; Crurotarsi would have probably punched him again, if not for the fact that they were standing nearly ten feet away from each other. The vampire standing in front of the trailer also gave him a funny look, which he then extended to the rest of the group.
"Yer not from around here, are ya?"
"That's right," Pugh said, taking a few steps into the tall grass, "We're from Virginia. The humans up there found out about us and went nuts, so we decided to try and find someplace else to live for a while until things calm down a bit back home."
"Dang humans," the other vampire said, "Can't stand 'em myself. 'Specially them kids. Always find 'em sneakin' around here after dark, lookin' for who-knows-what. Had to shoot another one just last week."
He stepped out of the doorway, walking down the old, rickety wooden steps until he was standing knee-high in the grass, and then turned back toward Pugh and finally introduced himself.
"Anyway... the name's Crowbar. Yer welcome to stay here with me 'n' the family as long as ya want, just pull your trailer up over here with the rest of 'em."
For the next few minutes, the vampires all split up. Pugh went back over to the Bloodmobile and moved it out of the path of the road, parking it closer to the other three trailers; meanwhile, Rhombus and Zamboni decided to go inside the first of the trailers and meet the rest of the neighbors, while Elvis, Crurotarsi, and Steve headed over to one of the others.
Zamboni and Rhombus climbed up the wooden stairs leading up into the trailer, glancing around at the unknown stains and scratches on the walls as they passed. The two vampires walked over into the first room they came to, where they found a kitchen table where a scrawny-looking young vampire was sitting and gnawing away at... something.
Rhombus's eyes widened a bit in shock.
"Is that a groundhog?"
Zamboni turned toward the child and immediately his face scrunched up a bit into a disgusted look.
"Are... are you eating that?"
"Naw, I'm jus' drinkin' its blood!", the kid answered, pulling his mouth away from the poor rodent and revealing his blood-stained fangs. "Whad'you think I am, retarded or somethin'?"
Zamboni and Rhombus glanced at each other, then back in the young vampire's direction. He had apparently stopped paying any attention to the newcomers in the room, stuffing his face back into the groundhog's side and messily slurping away. At about this time, Crowbar had followed them back into the trailer.
"Oh, I see y'all just met my son Truck," he said, coming up behind the other two vampires. "Youngest in the family, y'see... kid's only ten years old. Hasn't quite grown into drinkin' human blood jus' yet, so he's gotta catch them woodchucks 'n' squirrels 'n' stuff instead."
Rhombus flinched a bit as Truck almost tore the groundhog in half to get to the last of the blood, sending most of it splattering all over the tablecloth. Zamboni didn't even look, instead turning back toward Crowbar.
"You said he was the youngest in the family," he said, "How many kids do you have, anyway?"
"Oh, jus' three... usedta be four, but Chip tried drinkin' some beer a couple years back. Got sick 'n' died."
"Ouch. Yeah, you've got to be careful with anything made out of grain," Zamboni said. "So where's the other two kids? I haven't seen anyone else around except for little Truck here."
"Oh, they done moved out," Crowbar said, pointing past a nearby window and toward the other two trailers. "Betty's livin' in the big trailer with 'er husband 'n' their own kid now, 'n' Tractor's got his own place over yonder in the other'un."
Both of the other vampires glanced out through the window, spotting Crurotarsi, Elvis, and Steve pushing their way through the jungle-like grasses toward the larger of the two trailers. They were greeted at the door by two young vampires, the girl (who must have been Betty) carrying a tiny wrapped-up baby in her arms. On closer inspection, Zamboni noticed that they looked... a bit too similar to each other.
"Funny how two people who look so much alike would end up married..."
"Oh, that's jus' 'cuz they's cousins," he replied, sounding surprisingly happy considering that he was basically telling a couple of total strangers that his only daughter was having sex with one of her cousins. "Daddy always said it's better to keep it in the family, y'know... can't believe them dang humans're tryin' to outlaw that kinda thing."
"Err... yeah," Zamboni said, taking a step back. "I think it's already illegal in most states... I guess they haven't gotten quite that far in Alabama yet."
Crowbar nodded, then walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a box of cheap wine. He sat down at the table, let out a strange sighing groan, and opened the wine, chugging down at least a third of the box before finally putting it down.
"Anyway... y'all're welcome to have breakfast here with us," Crowbar said, glancing over at Truck for a second and ruffling his hair. "The wife's gonna be comin' back in from the city with a nice fresh human any minute now. Should be plenty o' blood for everybody."
"Nah, that's okay," Rhombus said, "We just ate an hour ago."
"Well, that's fine by me," he said, shrugging slightly and gulping down another mouthful of the boxed wine. "Jus' means more blood for us, I guess."
With that, Zamboni and Rhombus waved goodbye to Crowbar and Truck, then headed toward the front door of the trailer. They found the rest of the vampires already waiting for them outside. Steve was sitting inside the open door on the side of the Bloodmobile, looking absolutely terrified, while the rest were standing around a few feet away. Though they didn't seem quite as disturbed as Steve, they didn't exactly look happy about things, either.
"I am not living here," Crurotarsi said, crossing her arms. "The oldest son, Tractor? Nothing but a drunk and a pervert. It's no wonder they make him live in his own trailer."
"What's wrong with Steve?", Rhombus asked, glancing over toward the youngest of the vampires.
"Walked in on the fifteen-year-old cousins making out," Elvis groaned. "And it didn't look like they were going to stop there, so... yeah. Nobody wanted to stay in that trailer much longer."
"Well... Crowbar didn't seem like that bad of a guy, but... I can't say I approve of the family's eating habits," Zamboni chipped in. "Dragging home living people and then drinking all of their blood? I thought even the worst of us stopped doing that back in the twelfth century."
"Agreed," Rhombus said. "I've never felt more sorry for a groundhog in my life."
"Well... it looks like everyone's already decided on this one," Pugh said, walking over toward the driver's-side door of the Bloodmobile and climbing back in. "Let's head off down the road again and try to find somewhere a little nicer to live."
The rest of the vampires rushed back into the vehicle, strapping themselves in so quickly that Pugh wasn't even able to start the engine before everyone was ready to go. Steve seemed to recover from his state of redneck incestuous makeout session-induced shock almost instantly, looking like his usual goofy self as he yanked a comic book out from the cardboard box he had brought them in and flipping it open to where he had left off. A few minutes later, the Bloodmobile had turned around and left the home of the inbred redneck vampires, driving back down the road toward the main highway that--hopefully--might lead to someplace better...
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