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.In fact, there’s no we at all.It’s just me.”“You don’t know any other of your kind?”“Nope.” It wasn’t a lie, either.Coburn had never met another of, in Abner’s words, you people.Well, okay, that might not be entirely true: someone made him what he was.It was not an accident or a disease or a curse from God; his first memory as a hollowed-out, replaced-by-the-demon-of-blood-hunger vampire dude was a dark shape—a man, he believed—walking away and standing in a doorframe before finally turning and leaving.Forever.Coburn followed a set of bloody boot-prints for a while, but after 20 feet or so the tracks dried up.And that was the only thing he knew of another like him.Once in a while in the city he caught a smell of something—something familiar, something sinister, a little like blood and a lot like death—but then it was gone again, more a ghost than anything.“Wow.So that means—”Coburn felt the RV grumble to life and start to move, and he used that as a chance to interrupt Ebbie.“Listen.Abner.I don’t really want to talk about this, and while I’m happy you feel so comfortable around me despite the fact our first introduction had me using you like a ham sandwich, what I really want is for you to tell me about whatever plan you hairless monkeys have concocted.You picking up what I’m laying down, fat boy?”The man looked stung.It was what it was.Coburn wasn’t here to protect their feelings, he was here to protect the food supply.Abner, now quiet and meek like a wounded mouse, pulled out a road atlas and flipped it open to the Pennsylvania map.He opened a red plastic cup, the kind that must’ve once contained the plastic toys known as a Barrel of Monkeys, and upended it.Pieces from a different toy—the pewter game pieces and green plastic houses of Monopoly—spilled out.With pudgy fingers, Ebbie began to move most of the pieces to the margins of the map, but then moved the Scotty dog game piece to the East end of the state.“This is us,” he said, tapping the dog on the map to drive the point home.“We’ve been in and around this area for a long time.But we’ve been wanting to go West because we keep hearing that out West is where society’s started to rebuild.The plague didn’t hit them like it did here, so they had fewer zombies and had a chance to mobilize.But there’s a problem.”He took a number of the little green houses and started plunking them down at the West end of the map, each at the mouth of various highways and interstates.“This is what we call the Cannibal Nation.”“A nation.Of cannibals.” Coburn almost laughed.“So you’re saying that a bunch of man-eater motherfuckers have organized.Like a political party.Or like the Boy Scouts.”“I dunno what you’d call it, I just know that they got smart about it.They figured out that the East Coast had a whole lot of people.And that it was like a plague zone: lots of rotters making fast work of a big population—New York, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore, Boston.It’s the megalopolis of the Eastern seaboard.Lot of people trying to migrate West to get to the safe zone, to be with the rest of humanity.The cannibals know that it’s like a cattle chute, though, and so they set up their camps along those roads and wait for people to come through.Sometimes they lure them in, other times they just attack like a kicked-over hive of killer bees.They’re preying on the dream.The dream of going West.”Something about this smelled goofy.Maybe it was that these idiots didn’t know how to think like predators, and that was one thing Coburn knew very well.He knew how to mess with people’s heads.How to plant ideas to get them to do what he wanted.He’d tell a couple of club chicks about some new VIP lounge, he’d even make up some tickets with a bullshit address on them—oh, that sweet smell of exclusivity—and they’d come-a-running.There’d be no club.Just him.Waiting in the darkness of the warehouse or walk-up or whatever it was.Fangs out.Like a roach motel—they check in, but they don’t check out.“It’s probably bullshit,” Coburn said.“C’mon, Abner.Use your goddamn head.These cannibals? They set up the story.About the safe zone and going West and all that garbage.The myth of Western expansion died with the gold rush, there’s no magic white tower in Wichita or Minneapolis.Those places are dead, just like here.You were sold on a lie.” A cold realization struck him: “And that means that I was sold on a lie, too.”He stood up and set Creampuff down.He didn’t like being lied to.Didn’t like being duped.It was all bullshit.He was going to kill them all.Right now.There were no pockets of humanity Out West.They got sold on a rumor, and now they were dragging him along toward some mythical Wizard of Oz Shangri-La fol de rol.If the so-called Cannibal Nation really existed, then that right there was his food supply.He could graze off those man-eating idiots for months, even years.It was time to wet his fangs.Abner had no idea what was coming.He just stared up at the vampire, his plump, cherubic face a mask of innocence and naiveté.Coburn was going to rip that face off its mooring and throw it to the dog.“It’s real,” Abner asserted, as Coburn’s fangs crept out over his lower lip.“We met some people who’d been there.”The vampire hesitated.He wanted to drink, but still: “…You did? You met people who’ve seen this with their own eyes?”“Yeah.About three months back.They called themselves missionaries.They said it was their job to go back into the infested states, find the lost sheep and steer them Westward—to put them on a ‘pilgrimage,’ that’s what they called it.”Coburn sat back down.Still suspicious.He pushed the fangs back with his tongue.“Uh-huh.And you’re sure these weren’t just a bunch of cannibal assholes pretending to be some kind of holy travelers? How do you know?”“If it was a lie it sure was a convoluted one.” Ebbie shrugged.“They told us how they snuck back through the woods and didn’t use the roads, they told us to do the same—”“And why didn’t you?”“We’d lose the RV, and it’s kind of been our home.”“Uh-huh.Go on.”“They told us about how they had set up farms and had livestock and crops growing and even had power in some places, and they said that they were bringing in new folks every day and they had about ten thousand people now and that they belonged to this group, this group that had set all this up, these folks called the Sons of Man—”At this, Coburn felt the blood drain from his face and move fast toward his dead heart—there the surge of blood gave the crumpled muscle a little kick and the heart shuddered once, twice, and then gave a third spasm before once more going inert.“The Sons of Man,” he said, hands balling into fists, his nails biting hard into the flesh of his palms.“Shit.Shit.”And then it all came back to him.CHAPTER SIXTEENThe Sons of ManHe thrust up his middle finger, a fuck-you flagpole flying the colors of the I-Don’t-Give-A-Shit nation.Coburn licked blood off his teeth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]