This man was now drinking the blood from my wrist. I could see the crazy
motherfucker swallowing my blood. I looked toward the grass, and the other two guys were biting their victims, too. I began to feel faint.
"Don't hurt him, Kyla!" a voice shouted, in the night. It was hard to be sure from where exactly. Blackness had seriously started encroaching along the edges of my vision. The voice might have been coming from the van. "He's the only one who helped me!"
And with that, the man let go of my wrist. My hand dropped, and I fell
forward on my face. I was completely drained of all my energy. I lost all desire to move.
As I lay there, feeling as if I had been attacked by a grizzly bear, I could hear the sounds of approaching sirens. I'm no stranger to sirens or even to being ingested. If you grow up as a street brawler like me, you get used to both;
however, I was too weak to move.
Now, I seriously felt drugged, and my neck and wrist hurt like hell.
Suddenly, Randy was by my side. He knelt, which took him a heartbeat
longer than most people since he was so damn tall. He lowered his face to mine, and I was struck instantly by the strong scent of coppery blood on his breath.
Indeed, blood was dripping in large globs down his chin. My stomach flip-flopped.
"Is this true?" RendRandyed me.
"Is what true?" I could barely muster out.
"Did you help Dera?"
"Yes," I said. "Of course."
He glanced over his shoulder to the others. "Then let's get the hell out of
here." He looked back at me and grinned through all the blood. "And, you're coming with us."
Amazingly, he gripped the back of my shirt and lifted me clean off the
ground. I found myself briefly dangling and gasping for air before he threw me into the back of the open van like a sack of potatoes. The rest of the freak show gang of bloodsuckers followed in behind me and the side door was
slammed shut.
Kyla, the same guy who tried to feast on my arm, started the van and threw
it into reverse. Dirt, grass, and mud kicked up and soon the tires screeched rubber trails across the sidewalk and back onto the asphalt street. I heard it. I smelled it. Burned rubber, acrid against the metallic copper scent of their breaths in the van. There, Kyla shoved the gearshift into 'drive' and the van
squealed away, briefly slewing sideways.
Most of the seats had been removed from the van. The other freaks were
hanging out the windows, bracing themselves against the madcap turns. Only Dera and the redheaded girl were looking at me. A brief thought ran through my head that I was in some sort of Scooby Doo horror flick in an alternate universe, or that I was having a pizza-induced nightmare, but the pain in my back, neck, and wrist was so all-consuming that I knew it was real. I was hurt, bad. I, martial arts professional, was nearly slayed by a baseball bat and a bloodsucker.
I wanted to ask where the hell they were taking me to a hospital?-- but I was still weak and oddly drained of energy. I could not even speak. And so, I did the only thing I could think of. I closed my eyes and hoped that I would awaken
from this terrifying nightmare.
I must have passed out in the van.
When I next opened my eyes, the redheaded woman was half reclining next to me. She had my wrist in her hand and was swabbing rubbing alcohol on the bite marks from a first aid kit with a red cross on the container. "Does it hurt?"
she asked.
"A little," I said, not wanting to wuss out in front of her.
"Kyla is terry for biting you. He thought you were one those pricks
at the party."
"Yeah, sorry about that, dude. That was totaled. I should have realized
they were all wearing those matchy-matchy Izod polo shirts with their logo,"
Kyla said to me from the driver's seat, without turning around. "I thought you were making a run for it."
I had no idea how to respond to a guy who had just bitten my neck and drank blood from my arm. I'm sure my expression said it all. It was a cross between What the hell? And Seriously? Did you drink blood?
Instead of answering, I turned back to the redheaded girl and asked, "Where
are we going?"
She looked at me with a softness that was a complete one-eighty from what I had seen earlier when she was whipping dudes into submission. "We're headed to the Flatlands. It's just north of Arrowhead."
"We're in the mountains?" I asked.
The girl nodded. "We weren't about to stick around and allow you and Dera
to get arrested." She grinned a little. "We're not complete monsters."
Being arrested was nothing new to me. Then again, explaining the bite marks on my wrist and neck to the police might be hard to do. Yeah, it was probably best to get the hell out of Dodge. Then again, getting the hell out of Dodge with these weirdos might not have been my best choice, though. Not that I had much of a choice.
Ready sat pressed up against the inside of the car door. With his long limbs bent sharply, he looked a bit like a giant praying mantis. He had his arm around Dera. A protective gesture. It reminded me of a father protecting his young daughter. Anyway, Randy was staring at me, and it was making me feel extremely uncomfortable. I'm not used to feeling uncomfortable. I decided I didn't like the feeling.
He stared at me for another few seconds and then asked, "Did you seriously beat the shit out of those five guys before we got there?"
I thought about his question. I wasn't sure if the king freak would be
impressed by that or threatened. Finally, I shrugged and said, "Yeah, I did."
"With only your hands?" he asked.
"And my feet," I said.
Randy nodded. "Impressive," he said. He was now stroking Dera's hair, who
sat impassively. I couldn't see if she liked his touch or not. Anyway, he seemed to treat her more like a pet than a human being, which I found creepy as hell. He looked back at me. "So what's your name?"
"Ben."
"Well, thanks, Ben. I'm not sure what would have happened to Dera if you
hadn't stepped in."
Was this guy for real? Was he truly acting this normally?
He and his buddies just finished ripping the flesh and drinking the
blood of the partygoers; he just sat there, calmly petting Dera, as if she was a pet cat.