The Quarry

by Jolie Howard

"Like 'em?" the barman asked, whisking away the empty plate.

Michael patted his stomach and smiled. The ubiquitous southern habit of batter-frying every sort of vegetable had been unexpectedly delicious in this instance.

"'Nother beer?" he said, already filling a new frosted mug.

"Thanks." Michael dug a ten and a couple of ones from the front pocket of his jeans. The counterman took the ten and a sole one, and handed back a handful of coins. Two beers and an ample meal for ten dollars and change.Not bad, not that it mattered. Work could be found everywhere for someonenot minding physical labor or hand-numbing data processing. He'd do either and had survived both. Sipping the fresh foamy beer, he swiveled the stool a quarter-turn.

At the far end of the tavern, two couples gyrated to an old Shania Twain song blaring from several banks of integrated quad speakers. The collector's item jukebox had been converted to play CD's but retained the neon tubing and colorful appeal of his youth. He remembered pumping quarters to hear classics of bubblegum rock by the Cassidys, the Osmonds, and the Jacksons on similar machines.

The women wore tight hip-hugging jeans with long-sleeved shirts cropped at midriff length. Sequins and bangles, earrings and bracelets reflected the Wurlitzer's glow, the effect similar to the mirrored disco balls which graced every dance floor of his early adulthood, now missing in favor of the wild, music-generated oscillations of laser light. The men showed the usual disregard to style, preferring the comfort of flannel shirts with their jeans of darkest indigo. The razor-edge creases of the four pairs of Levi's would pass the toughest military sergeant's muster. The tromp of the heels of the compulsory boots provided the beat if anyone had missed the heavy bass of the upbeat song. Michael watched the intricate choreography, appreciating the practice which had gone into preparation for a Friday night date at a local dive.

A quarter-turn more of the mushroom-like stool swung the pool tables into view. The multicolored shade of the table's chandelier advertised a popular beer, competing with the various brands promoted by the lighted icons, Nascar posters, and NFL schedules which adorned the walls. Four youths played a partnered game on the wide green expanse, attention periodically diverted by a college basketball game on the television bracketed on the ceiling. Michael recognized the strategy; something to do until something better to do happened along.

Another swivel aligned him with the restroom doors, the requisite signs labeling each with folksy fun. Does and Bucks, a mounted head hung beside each. A lacy bra dangled from the antlers of the buck and a cigarette protruded from the plasticized lips of the doe. Some globule of black humor slipped from the tight control he usually kept over such things. Let them have their lives, simple or grand, each as precious and meaningful as his own. Perhaps more so, for in their innocence the small games of life were played, unlike his avoidance of belonging.

Michael allowed his eyes to wander toward the man in the ball cap. He caught the flash as the other's eyes dropped away avoiding his. The long lashes, so envied by woman everywhere, shielded the green gaze, much as the cap's bill camouflaged the handsome face. He dressed the part of a good ol' boy well, flannel and blue jeans, boots and the looped belt chain attached to a wallet stuffed in his back pocket. A startlingly white tee-shirt peeked out from the collar of the buffalo plaid shirt. He looked so at ease in this crowd of strangers and, if Michael hadn't known better, would have blended right in. The unmistakable slither of send - tracing up his backbone - betrayed them every time.

With a puzzled glance, the man looked up. Michael wondered fleetingly what emotion the other had encountered or if the mental maze rebuffed even the abilities of a powerful empath like. No names, he reminded himself. Names were like hoisting flags above the bulwarks of his painstakingly constructed labyrinth, drawing attention to things hidden inside. Things which exposed would get him dead.

Their kind were incapable of solving mysteries, even tiny ones like a simple mouse run. The analogy amused him. Michael let a single mouse of a notion free to negotiate the maze. At some point, the creature would pop out of the trail's end and become visible to someone standing vigil over his mind. Michael left the thought to its own device and concentrated on his present precarious situation.

Leaving, he'd be followed, conspicuous in an abrupt departure. Staying would mean one of two things: drinking more beer, a definitely dangerous behavior, or; nursing the one he had until his spectator grew inattentive. A third alternative occurred to him, grabbing the bull by the horns - not outright, but finessing the critter.

Slipping from the stool, Michael wandered toward the dart-board, passing close by the fellow in the cap. "Gotta problem?" Michael asked, stopping beside the young man. The other's startled expression would have entertained him in other circumstances.

"Uh, no."

"Then why are you staring?" Michael perched in the chair across from the watcher.

"Your face looks familiar, I was tryin' to place you," the man said.

Michael waited, sipping his beer.

"You remind me of a guy on FOX. You know - 'Have You Seen This Face' - where they try to find people."

"What guy?" Michael asked. A good cover story. Well, no one said their kind were stupid.

"The guy in that lab accident, chemical spill."

"When did this happen?" Michael settled back into the chair.

"Six, eight months ago."

More like ten, but time flies when one is being hunted. Another good cover story.

"What kind of chemical?"

"Something weird, makes him paranoid and dangerous. But he was an old guy. You're too young," he continued. "Sorry to bother you." The young man extended his hand. "Allan Mills."

Reluctantly, Michael shook it. Contact made, far less horrible than he'd feared.

"Mike Stoltz." He resisted the urge to wipe his hand.

Allan motioned, indicating refills. "I owe ya one."

The waitress acknowledged with a nod.

Unexpected offer, but he should have anticipated it. Drunks are easier to read with their defenses befuddled by the effects of alcohol.

"So what brings you to Hazard? You don't talk like a local."

"Neither do you," Michael pointed out.

"I drive truck. I overnight here cuz the food's good and cheap and the motel's clean."

Michael had stayed another night for the same reasons. Had the thought slipped out or had the reasons been obvious?

"I'm just passing through," Michael said.

"Where's home?"

Michael shook his head. "Gave up on that. A while back, I realized I didn't like my life anymore, playing the game but despising it. I decided to look around for something else."

"Want work?" Allan pulled out his wallet and located a card, which he held out to Michael.

"My twin runs a temp agency. She needs workers." The printing on the cards ran to three lines. A familiar name, an 800 number and an e-mail address.

"No street address?"

"Nah, Internet. Katrina's really good." Allan smiled a bit sheepishly. "If you mention my name when you call, I'll get a referral fee."

Michael tucked the card in his own wallet. "If I call, I'll do that."

The waitress brought the beers, taking a couple empties and a five.

They sat in a companionable quiet; observing the basketball game, commenting on the state of the economy (pretty good), and the state of the highway system (really bad). Allan mentioned snow in the mountains to the north and the fog he'd encountered on his trek. They always could provide a description which painted the vista as clearly as if he'd been the beholder.

The bells on the door jangled and a trio of young women entered. One, a blonde with a fancy French braid plaited down her back, gave Allan an interested double-take.

"Your girl?" Michael asked, playing his part, knowing the other's predilection for blondes.

"No." Allan grinned. "Not yet. Maybe later." He caught the bartender's attention and pointed to the trio, now hovering at the other end of the counter. "On me," he mouthed. The savvy fellow nodded his understanding, served drinks to the ladies and, refusing their money, pointed to Allan and Michael. The blonde raised her glass and smiled in their direction. The waitress delivered two beers and collected payment for the extra drinks.

Michael watched the ancient ritual, aware of the young man's advantage in the game. How easy to be the perfect hunter, if one knew exactly what bait the quarry wanted.

"Married?" Allan asked.

"Divorced. You?" Michael replied.

Allan shook his head. "Not exactly."

Michael deliberately shut the lid on any thoughts of the girl-woman to which the answer referred. He shook his head.

"What?" Allan asked, playing a friendly game of eyeball tag with the pretty woman.

"Nothing. Just remembering my glory days. Lots more to worry about these days"

"Worry? Not me. Stress'll kill ya as quick as disease. I've had the HIV vaccine and PanHep."

A blatant lie. Allan would have no use for either.

Michael stuck around long enough to be a partner in a mating dance disguised as a pool game. The ballet developed into a chase as Allan said and did the right things to intrigue and entangle the blonde's affections.

Looking back as he collected his jacket from the row of hooks near the door, Michael could see Allan embracing the girl from behind, nuzzling her ear and bared shoulder. At one time the slick trick would have gone unnoticed by him, but the tiny trickle of blood on the supple neck snared his attention before Allan's tongue could wipe it away. Capture complete.

Zippering the heavy jacket gave him some comfort. The weight of the unregistered handgun in the lining felt like having a friend nearby in the worst part of a monster movie.

All traces of daylight had been smudged from the sky. The high blowing clouds speckled the moonlight with shadows and fleeting illusions of movement. Staring into the darkness provided no answers. Any number of possible ambush sites between the bar and the motel. Paranoid? Maybe. But even paranoids have real enemies.

The clarity of his memory had become so different since the antidote. Instead of bare bones and foggy impressions, the past took on a sepia-toned concrete reality. But were these memories any more accurate than the venom-induced ones? Truth could be slippery, based on perceptions instead of facts. Truth: hers and his. Hers stained with that which passed as her affection; his crayoned with the sticky wax of abject fear.

Standing inside the pitch blackness of his room, Michael waited until he saw Val - or Allan - and his conquest depart in an expensive red sports car. The vanity license plate confirmed his suspicion of Allan's dubious claim of driving truck. VIRARAN, it proclaimed. Viraran, slaves of the masters' blood.

Somehow Michael doubted if Kate - his business partner, longtime love, and sometime stalker - considered him her master. Though, if she'd asked, he could have told her that she was indeed a slave - of her nature and the viraran inability to conceive of a new way, another choice. Innovations were painstakingly learned and rarely forgotten. Kate and Val, and all of their kindred were as securely caged as poor crazy Miranda.

Remember everything and live in her shadow world. Or forget everything and live in his own. Kate never recognized a third alternative in her pursuit of his heart and soul. But at least one other option existed. Remember everything, reject both the lives she offered and find another without her help or interference. Maybe the road would lead back to her after he explored the possibilities, but he didn't see how.

Though she'd argue the point, he considered viraran parasites, contributing nothing tangible, lacking in compassion, unable to connect or integrate in human society. Holding themselves apart, skimming the surface like a surfer, until the crash at the end of the wave. The collapse would inevitably come, their subterfuges less and less effective in the increasing sophistication of human civilization and technology.

Katie had wanted him to find a solution; a new survival mechanism to allow viraran a future. Not seeing in her single-mindedness that each delay of the end, each layer of cards added to the intricate structure, each adopted identity and clever costume change merely brought the certainty of tragedy and genocide much closer. The longer avoided, the greater the penance on this debt.

Contemplating debts and penance, Michael dozed off, his exhaustion more complete than his anxiety. He dreamt of Katie, in a dress as bright as the sun, with her provocative lips that kiss-compelling red.

The sharp rap on the metal-core door catapulted him fully awake, to his feet and into a chest-crushing, sweat-soaked panic simultaneously. A second, fainter knock oriented him in the strange, dancing, shadow-light glow of the muted television.

Grabbing his discarded flannel shirt, Michael wiped his face and neck. Breathing deeply, he regained a semblance of control.

It could be only one person tapping at the door, one person who could have followed the scampering, imaginary white mouse freed earlier, luring the raptor.

Michael said, "Coming."

His hand shook, requiring a stern mental tongue-lashing to still the tremble. Think calm. Think labyrinth. Think closed boxes with no labels. Don't think.

Inhale, exhale. Again. Keeping the chain in place, he cracked the door - knowing what he'd see made it no easier.

"Oh, it's you." Michael kept his voice even and cool.

Val - Allan, dammit - his lips an amazing red from a recent feed, posed there like some hunk in a porn movie, a six-pack in one hand, a flip-top hip bottle of Jack in the other. No doubt carrying some killer weed in one of his pockets, covering all the bases. "Did I pick up the wrong signal? Should I go?"

Michael closed the door far enough to detach the chain, then swung it wide, holding on tightly to quell the tremble which had returned. "No, you read it right. Where's your blonde?"

"Sleeping." Allan looked at Michael through the lashes of his averted eyes, gauging the emotionless face. He'd get nothing there, Michael vowed. Allan snapped open the whiskey with his thumb and took a long draw, then slid the bottle along his host's arm, to rest at the back of his shoulder. He gripped Michael's neck gently, the cold plastic an anchor. The visitor followed his hand, stepping into the room, kicking the door closed with his heel. With his lips and tongue tasting of whiskey and blood, Allan kissed Michael.

Katie had been more wrong than right about the issues which had sent Michael reeling, searching for amnesia. It had never been about how he felt about Val, or making love to him. Somehow, sex across species lost some of the repugnance with which human homosexuality had always filled him. Val's experienced prowess made some things easy to ignore. A good lover is a good lover is a good lover - and that which we call a rose, by any other name, would still have thorns.

Afterwards, standing in the bathroom checking for the tell-tale scratches on his neck and arms, Michael reconsidered the situation. Val hadn't used venom in an effort to reconnect, so Katie hadn't sent him. Only one possible purpose remained to explain this seduction. He'd been declared dangerous, fair game for the huntsmen among the viraran. The gun lay behind the Bible in the bed-side stand. Michael had hidden the weapon, hoping not to use it, especially not on Val.

The bathroom door creaked slowly open. Val stood in the square of light, partially dressed.

Michael bent over the sink and rinsed his face. Val tossed him the towel. Drying his water and sweat dampened face, Michael met the sober green gaze in the mirror. The cool of the eyes matched the metallic chill of the gun Val drew along his quarry's spine. Val draped his elbows over Michael's shoulders, the weapon inches away, allowing him to recognize it as his own.

"Now what do I do?" Val asked.

Michael swallowed hard, trying to remember anything which might stop Val's course of action. Trying to forget this handsome, charming man, a friend and occasional lover, was also a cold-blooded killer.

"You don't have to kill me, Val," Michael said, striving to not sound too desperate.

"Everything. From the beginning until now. Not just viraran stuff - everything." Michael forced himself to ignore the gun. Val didn't need it to dispose of him, only to make his death a suicide for the human authorities.

"How did you find me?"

"GPS? Dental implants, radioactive dyes in your vitals, viraran talent? Take your pick, sport. One is as good as another." Val slid open the medicine chest, leaning hard against Michael to reach it. "Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

Val tapped the gun on Michael's temple. "Whatever it is you ran away to hide, whatever it is which hides your mind from me, whatever it is you erased from the lab's data banks. The age-antidote or whatever it really is. Where is it?"

Val couldn't see the answer, though the puzzle pieces lay all around him. Viraran would not control the antidote. It would take a human - an intelligent paranoid one - to find how the pieces fit together.

"Until I figure out whether the antidote is a good thing or a bad one - for humans and viraran - I won't tell you."

"Then I have to kill you." Val's eyes filled with viraran tears, quickly drying before actually spilling.

Val nuzzled Michael's neck. With teeth sharp and slick, the viraran fed. Michael felt the burning in his veins moments before the venom hit his brain in a sensation like watching an acetylene torch explode. Flash-bang.

Michael regained consciousness with a wave of nausea. He felt firm, warm hands support his head over the trash can beside the bed.

"Here." Val handed him a plastic courtesy cup with water to rinse his mouth and a tissue to wipe his chin.

For some strange reason, Michael felt the need to apologize. "The bite never made me sick before. Maybe the antidote?"

With a wry smile, Val suggested a more mundane answer. "Or fried green tomatoes, beer and half a bottle of Jack Daniels."

"Do you always play nursemaid to people you plan to kill?" Michael asked, grimly amused by the viraran's solicitous care.

Val laughed. "Come on, sport. Give me a Plan B. I'd really hate to make you dead."

Plan B - a reason not to kill him, the out for which Michael had hoped. He stood, thinking better on his feet.

"Katie wants a viraran solution. So do I. I can't find one if I'm dead," Michael argued, spreading his hands in entreaty.

Indecision clouded Val's opal eyes. "Come on, sport," Michael coaxed.

A ghost of a smile appeared on Val's face at Michael's mockery of his favorite endearment.

Seriously, Michael went on, "I can't believe Katie wants me dead. I would never hurt your family. I love Katie - and you."

Tears sprung again to Val's eyes. "You just can't bear to be near us."

Michael's eyes stung at the infinite truth of the remark.

Val stood, stretching. "So that's your Plan B." He shook his head, regretfully.

"It's called faith and trust." Michael reached out and caressed Val's tousled hair. "Viraran have no God to merit theirs. Can't you put yours in me?"

"I wish I could read you. I still can't, you know."

Michael knew. "It's not so bad - faith and trust," he said, feeling a shifting, a barometric change in atmosphere.Val tucked the gun in his waistband, looking like some incredibly virile street-punk.

"That I caught." he said, grinning.

"I sent it FedEx."

Val yanked on his white tee-shirt. "Keep the card, Katie will wait for you until you die - a much longer wait now, I suspect." He gathered his flannel shirt and lined denim jacket. "I'm glad. The world will be lonelier without you," he said in a lost-boy voice.

Michael nodded, a throat lump kept him from speaking.

Val turned to face him, feral eyes glowing. "I'll dump the gun. Lose your laptop, get a different car. GPS tracking."

He smiled at Michael's incredulous expression. "Techno-stupid, yes. But eventually we catch on to your human tricks."

Michael suspected at least a couple more electronic devices tagged him, or maybe not. Viraran played by a strange set of rules, but they adhered to them just the same.

Reaching out with his uncanny quickness, Val grabbed Michael by the throat. "Don't fuck me on this. I will find you. No second chance."

Lacking the insight of mental voyeurism, the viraran tried to judge the human's sincerity by visual clues, finally releasing his grip as Michael's vision became indistinct, gray and fuzzy around the edges. "T'hell with it.I wanted to spare you anyway."

Pushing his arms into the jacket and his feet into the boots, he said, "You gotta go to sleep now, sport." In a impersonal but oh-so-gentle way, Val slipped his teeth into Michael's wrist.

"You got time to lock the door - use the chain. You never know what might wander in."

Michael laughed, tipsy with relief and venom.

"I'll miss you," Val whispered, unwilling to say good-bye.

"Me too," he murmured a groggy reply.

"Well," Val shrugged. "You got our number."

Michael closed and locked the door and fell into the closer bed, waiting for the steady throb of the sports car engine to fade into the distance.

Lying laughing, safe for now, in an anonymous bed in an anonymous motel in an anonymous state of mind, Michael considered the bill of goods - the lies - he had sold to Val.

Katie's profound distrust of humanity's ethics had basis in fact. Unless protected or taught a new way to hide, viraran would be feared, hunted and ultimately destroyed. Their phenomenal telepathic abilities would simply give more cause for alarm. Their myriad psychic talents, though useful to mankind, wouldn't save them.

Jealousy for the viraran's tremendous life spans and prodigious gifts could not be alleviated, even with the human longevity conferred by the secret age-antidote. Their artistic souls and beautiful countenances would gain them no mercy. The viraran could be loved, desired, even worshipped - but never understood. Their synaptic pathways were forever untraceable by mankind. Alien.

Man fears what he cannot understand.

Humans destroy what they fear.

Michael shook his head, seeing no way out, no accommodation, no sanctuary for viraran on Earth.

No providence, he thought...

No place for vampires, not even a cherished one like Kate, who danced like an winged angel and, likewise, lifted a man to Heaven with her kiss.

The End