Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [16]
The driver’s side door of the idling car—no, a pickup truck, he saw—opened, flashing Saul the Cotre Ranch “endless trail” logo. Phelps stepped out.
He must have been searching the highway for me, Saul thought. He felt relief at being found. He was more battered and bloody from fending off homicidal siblings than from anything the ranch had thrown at him. And yet beneath that relief was a dismal emptiness at knowing he’d be taken back to the ranch. So much for finding a new life.
“Saul, get in the truck,” Phelps said, then reached across the truck’s seat for something.
Saul stepped into the headlights’ beam. “Two psychopaths are in there.” He held aloft the aerosol. Despite the drizzle, flicking the lighter would probably ignite the very air around him, but he couldn’t let Phelps get hurt because of him.
“I know,” Phelps said.
“Wait. You . . . you know?”
“Course.” Phelps hefted what could only be a crossbow. “Boys watching the closed circuit told me you did good.” He began walking toward the store.
“But—”
Phelps carefully pushed open the door. “Shit, looks like I’m cleanup crew tonight.” He spit on the ground and chuckled. “Get into the pickup. And don’t be messing up my radio stations. They’re a bitch to program.”
Saul noticed that Phelps left the keys in the ignition. He told himself to count to a hundred while the man made the fatalities. If he wasn’t back by then . . .
But he was, with a grin, before Saul reached sixty-eight.
As Phelps smoked a cigarette and drove, Saul had to listen to Patsy Cline walk after midnight and Merle Haggard avoiding mirrors.
“You weren’t supposed to even know about their kind till Christmas.” Phelps flicked hot ash out the open window.
“Hanukkah.”
“Right. Hanukkah.” Phelps managed not to mangle the word.
“So the other boys at the ranch . . .”
“Some know. We’d been luring that pair through the internet for months. The boys were supposed to go out hunting tonight. ’Cept someone messed with the gate.”
“Guess I’m in trouble.”
Phelps didn’t say anything but kept driving. The truck’s cab was bitter cold from the wind.
Phelps braked the truck to a stop in the middle of the road. “Minnesota is a couple miles north. Just follow the road. Truck stop not far over the border.” He pulled out a scuffed leather wallet. “Bounty on two of ’em—let’s say two hundred.” He held out four wrinkled fifty-dollar bills to Saul.
“I don’t understand,” Saul said.
“You’re the one who ran. Thought you wanted out.”
“But—”
“The boys who know . . .” Phelps crushed his cigarette into a crowded ashtray. “Well, they work extra hard ’fore they can go out hunting. What you went through before, that’ll seem like a Hawaiian vacation.”
Saul still had the aerosol can in his lap. He could never look at it the same way anymore. Tonight had transformed it from a cheap, lemon-scented air freshener into an aluminum trophy. And he could feel transformed, too. He didn’t want to step out of the truck and keep walking down a highway. Not after what he’d seen, what he’d done. He looked Phelps in the eyes. He knew the man was ready to pass judgment, depending on what Saul did next.
He fingered the top of the aerosol. “Ever light the spray? I mean, when you’re fighting one of them. Like a mini flame-thrower?”
Phelps slipped the money back into his wallet, back into his slacks. “Never wanted to burn my face off,” he said.
Saul knew he had passed the test. They’d turn around, head back to the ranch. And whatever grueling crap he’d face when he woke would be fine, because this time he’d been the one who chose the ranch, and this time as reward, not some punishment.
Still, he couldn’t resist leaning out the window as Phelps put the truck in gear. His hand was steady as he held the lighter to the can and squeezed. Saul found himself grinning as a tongue of blue-and-yellow flames licked the cold night air.
Gap Year
by Christopher Barzak
When the vampires came to town, there was an assembly in the high school gymnasium. Retta and Lottie sat next to each other on the bleachers, like they did every day in study