Four Smokers of the Apocalypse, Part 4

Four Smokers of the Apocalypse (Part 4 of 4)
an4@anon.lelnet.com

   Certainly, Tamara had run out of the room the instant she'd heard the scream.
And yet, just as certainly, she was standing by the couch with that stupid
fucking lampshade in her hand. There was no explaining how it gone from its
half-assed perch to being clutched between her fingers, but there it was.
   For a split-second, Tamara found herself captivated by it once more. The pink
shade of the shade, the little splotches and blots of reddish colour which
stained the odd looking fabric and metal glove she was wearing on her hand.
She wanted to study it, know its every detail because it was the only way the
rest of this would make any sort of sense.
   And then she swung out with it, catching Melissa in the base of the nose. The
woman tumbled backwards of the couch as fresh blood sprayed itself onto the
lampshade and Sarah. Although the mangled shade was now almost unrecognisable
in shape, Tamara continued to clutch it tightly, even as she expected Sarah to
roll off the couch and perhaps even reach for her gun.
   But the other detective didn't move. Not for the first second or so. Then she
did nothing but bring her cigarette to her waiting lips and inhale deeply.
Tamara knew that gesture from experience. It was exactly the way she smoked
after having sex.
   "Sarah !"
   Turning her head slowly to her friend, Sarah began to come back to herself.
She felt the heady rush of the smoke expanding in her lungs, felt her mind
begin to finally clear. There was something dangerous here in this room,
something deadly, and why was she lying on the couch ?
   Then it all came crashing back down on her, the boy, the teacher, and now the
mother. All of them, and-
   She eyed a broom by the fireplace at the end of the room and suddenly she was
moving again. She left the cigarette in her mouth because she would need her
hands free, wouldn't she ?
   Tamara had taken a tentative step towards the door, her makeshift weapon
still in hand when she realised that Sarah wasn't planning on leaving- not
just yet, anyway. With catlike speed she snatched up the broom and broke it
down near the head.
   A weapon. That was finally reminded Tamara that a gun was better than a
lampshade- they never had you go to the lampshade practise range, did they ?
As she reached for her service piece, Melissa extended upwards from behind the
couch. Her face should have been bloody, the nose broken, but there was none
of that. Just a feral grin and a look in her eyes which made Tamara perfectly
aware of what had happened to Sarah- how close it must have been.
   "Stop or I'll shoot-" Tamara said, feeling like some movie cop as she
levelled the barrel of the automatic at the undead boy's undead mother. Oh,
Tamara believed. You couldn't look at this woman and not believe, could you ?
   Melissa didn't stop. She'd developed tunnel vision and Tamara was in her
headlights now. Tamara didn't understand that fully until she tried to send a
very simple signal from her brain to her hand to depress the trigger of her
piece. It was a simple thing, an electrochemical signal that would turn into a
fast muscle twitch. Only it didn't happen. The gap between the two women
narrowed, shrank, became almost nothing.
   Tamara saw other movement from the corner of her eye but all she could think
about was that she was about to find out what that meat in the kitchen had
felt like when-
   There was the high arc of a jagged wand of wood, and then suddenly, just a
few feet, no a few inches, from her, Melissa sagged. Tamara sidestepped, and
the woman who had until today not walked in years, suddenly was unable to walk
again. Her knees buckled and gave way and she came to rest on the rug, face
down, a long shaft of wood sticking out of her back.
   The smell of smoke was suddenly strong. There was an high pile of papers next
to the couch, Melissa's daily read for perhaps the last month. The cigar had
fallen onto the top of the pile and they had finally caught.
   "How are we going to explain this ?" Tamara asked, looking at Sarah, who was
standing there with her cigarette still dangling from her mouth.
   "We aren't." She walked calmly over to the table, picked up Tamara's purse
and her own cigarettes.
   "What about the fire ? Shouldn't we put it out ?"
   Sarah spared a glance around the living room of the ancient Fraktor place. It
was a shame, really.
   "No. I think it's better that we don't."
   Tamara's eyes travelled to the prone, lifeless form of Melissa Fraktor,
thought about trying to explain why Sarah had driven a broom handle deep into
her back, and decided that maybe she was right. So she took the purse from her
and smiled.
   "God, I could use a cigarette right now."
   Sarah began walking towards the door. "And thanks to me, you can have one.
Let's go."

   "You used my credit card transactions to find me ?" Lisa asked, managing to
sound only vaguely offended.
   "Standard police practise, Lisa. You also bought a carton of cigarettes and
two pounds of Oreos at the Rite Aid. I don't suppose that any of the cookies
are left, are they ?"
   Lisa smiled. "No. Hunting vampires is hard work. Oreos make it a little
easier. That and beer, of course."
   Naturally, all Sarah could think of was how hopelessly absurd this
conversation really was. Vampires. It was like a sick joke, the sort usually
played out in her subconscious. 
   "It took a lot of faith, stabbing a woman who had been in a wheelchair
twenty-fours ago in the back with a broom handle. How were you planning on
explaining it ?"
   "I didn't think that far ahead," Sarah said. "And as much as I like the
ambiance of your room, I think we should be moving on. I have a feeling that
right now is one of those now or never moments."
   "She'll try to get a third, and then leave town," Lisa said as she reached
for her purse.
   "What ?" Tamara asked, bending her head down to light another cigarette. That
was all she'd done since they'd left the Fraktor house to burn to the ground,
and Sarah couldn't blame her. 
   "She'll look to add a third to her little group, and then she'll find
somewhere else to set up shop."
   "Why three ?" Sarah asked. "Why not four or two ?"
   "Because that's the way this one works. It's her little personality quirk."
   "You know her ?" Sarah asked, perturbed as she closed the hotel room door
behind them.
   "Of her. We haven't had the pleasure of meeting, but there's information on
her that's out there. Let's just say that most of what you think you know
about her is fabrication and lies."
   "Give me an example," Sarah said.
   "Well, you think she's twenty-eight. Try fifty-eight. Married twice, attended
college three different times, and has more money squirrelled away than the
three of us are likely to ever make in our lives. In other words, she's a very
typical member of her species."
   They walked out into the chilling night air.
   "Except for this group of three thing," Tamara said.
   "Exactly," Lisa said with a smile. "The question is who that third would be.
And I doubt that you have very much time to figure it out."
   "I think I know," Sarah said. "Everybody in. We'll have to hurry."

   Kim was more than a little unsettled. Until this morning, she'd always been
glad for the huge window in her room, for the opportunity to look out on their
big front yard and the old oak which had always been there, like a steady
friend.
   And yet now-
   If she looked out there, would he be there ?
   Of course not, Kim told herself. As she lit a cigarette she decided that when
she finished, she would put the lighter down and look.
   First she inhaled deeply. For a brief instant it made her forget Jon
entirely. It was the first cigarette she'd had since coming home half an hour
ago- the novelty of the privledge of being able to smoke in the house had not
yet sunk in at all and it was wonderful to be able to sit at her desk and take
the cigarettes from her purse and leave them out where her family could see
them. No more hiding the cigarettes and lighter inside a roll of tissues, no
more running upstairs to change her clothes- as if they weren't always at
least a little smoky, even when clean- and brush her teeth. She could smell
smoky if she wanted to- and while some people might find that disgusting, the
truth was that she very much did want to smell smoky.
   She didn't get up right away. Jon faded slightly in her thoughts and instead
it was Sarah she considered.
   The detective was stunningly beautiful to Kim. And despite her claim that she
had just begun smoking yesterday, she certainly didn't look as though that was
the case.
   It was pleasant watching Monica smoke- to a point. But the teacher had a way
of looking as though she knew exactly what she was doing, as though she used
smoking the way some women used makeup and perfume as an artifice. There was
no art (at least not in the worst sense of the word) to the way that Sarah
smoked. She just enjoyed it, and did so with a very appealing style.
   Kim watched herself in the mirror as she smoked and her once would be
boyfriend was entirely forgotten. She decided that there were two holds which
worked best for her. The first was with the cigarette pointing straight down,
held between the first and second fingers of her hand. All the fingers stayed
curled and the smoke from the cigarette drifted straight upwards, coating her
hand and sleeve with that wonderful smell.
   The second was with her elbow bent and wrist cocked, the cigarette angled
away from her face. Withe her elbow on the desk, she could reach the cigarette
without moving anything save for tilting her neck and wrapping her expectant
lips around the cigarette, after which she would take a long inhale, her eyes
studying the way the smoked curled up from the end of the cigarette and twine
itself in her luxurous wavy, strawberry blonde hair.
   She also practised trimming ash from the cigarette. Watching Sarah smoke had
remined her that she didn't always remember to keep her ash properly trimmed.
Sarah did a nice job of that without being obsessive. Kim settled on a
combination of thumb flicks and a more effective but less frequently necessary
tapping of the middle of the cigarette with her fully extended index finger.
   Kim smoked the entire cigarette this way, and for the first time in her life
she understood that  you could smoke for no other reason than the simple and
pure enjoyment of drawing smoke into your lungs for the high of carbon
monoxide and nicotine, rather than to turn someone's head or be cool- not
that both those things weren't important.
   She'd forgotten Jon entirely as she stuck a second cigarette in her mouth. As
she moved the lighter's pretty flame to meet the tip her door swung up and
there was her mother, a freshly lit Salem Lights 100 in her hand. A day ago,
Kim had experienced the terrible stomach thud of being caught in her room with
lit cigarette in hand. Today, she just turned and smiled.
   "Watching yourself smoke, honey ?"
   "How'd you know ?" Kim asked pleasantly. The thought that she was about to
have a nice conversation about smoking was very enticing.
   Neither of them heard the wail of the firehouse siren in the distance.
   "When I was about a week past my sixteenth birthday Grandmother sat me down
in the kitchen- Grandad was working late that night- and told me very calmly
that she knew I'd been smoking for over a year. It had really been almost two
years, but I didn't correct her. I thought sure she was going to tell me that
I was in deep trouble- grounding and all that. Instead she said `No daughter
of mine is going to sneak around like there's something wrong with what she's
doing.' The funny thing is I was about a week away from having the same
conversation with you- especially since you knew I knew. But the thing I
remember most was going up to my room that night- your room- and watching
myself in that same mirror, because in the two years that I smoked before I
had permission, I probably never had once gotten a good look at myself doing
it. I needed a lot of work."
   She stopped in front of the mirror, lifted her cigarette to her lips and drew
on it very prettily.
   The volume of smoke she exahaled was superior. It drifted into her own hair,
which was very much like Kim's, and she smiled in her nicotine halo.
   "You're much farther along style wise, but can I give you a tip ?"
   "Sure, Mom. You know, this is really cool. I like-"
   "To talk about smoking, right ? I still do. That's why I would never have
married your father if he hadn't let me talk him into trying smoking. The
night he gave me this ring-" and she held out the hand holding the cigarette
to show off the rather large-stoned ring that she'd had for almost twenty
years "-I said no. When he asked me why I very honestly told him that I
couldn't picture myself marrying a man who wasn't a smoker."
   "You told him that ?" Kim asked, amased. She had no idea that her cigarette
and cigar smoking father- recently he'd even been experimenting with the pipe
Kim had given him for Christmas- had ever not smoked. The idea was absurd.
   "He didn't say a word. He got up and walked out of the kitchen of the house
and I thought I'd lost him. Thank God Grandad and Grandmother weren't home.
They never would have forgiven me. But he came back fifteen minutes later with
a pack of Marlboro 100s and sat down and lit one. He said that he was already
feeling like he was a smoker just being with me so why not ? I made him smoke
three of them before I said yes, and he promised me that night he'd never
quit. The sex was so good-"
   "Mom !"
   Her mother smiled. "Here's my advice. You're right handed, which means that's
the hand you need to write with and type on your keyboard with and all that.
Start smoking left handed- you have to be able to smoke with your left hand if
you want to smoke and drive, for instance. At least any of our standards. And
let me tell you- you want to smoke and drive. Make no mistake about that."
   Kim immediately switched the cigarette to her left hand and practised the
same holds.
   "Thanks for the advice, Mom."
   "Honey, any time you want to talk about how wonderful smoking is, I'm your
woman. I love it- and I love you."
   That was near what Kim called the sap limit, but she hugged her mom anyway,
because she did love her, more than ever.
   That said, Mom tracked back down the stairs to see what sort of devestation
her husband was reaking in the kitchen. 
   Finally, after she'd finished the second cigarette and lit a third, the
window called to her. Beckoned her.
   She had to know. She had to get up and look out that window and get used to
the idea that Jon would not be there, that it was in fact safe to stare out
into the darkness and not expect to see dead boys.
   Kim was sorely disappointed.
   It was impossible, but just as she slid the window up, thinking that it would
be nice to sit in the sill and enjoy a smoke in the cold night air, the most
amasingly awful thing met her eyes.
   It was Jon. He was hovering- floating- his feet ten metres off the ground,
looking at her with his puppy dog eyes.
   Absurdly, he was holding a lit cigarette in his right hand.
   Oh, the times since she'd started that she'd wanted to see a lit cigarette in
his hands, wanted him to understand that smoking was more than something which
made women sexy or sexier.
   "Hello, Kim. I've picked up a new habit."
   "Yeah," she said, entirely deadpan, glad her mother had shut the door to her
room behind her. "Levitation."
   "Come on outside. I have someone here who wants to talk to you."
   That would be Monica. The only thing more absurd than that her very much dead
friend was floating outside her window was the certainty with which Kim knew
that Monica was behind all this. She caught a whiff of some strange smell
coming from Jon, and it wasn't cigarette smoke. Her delicate nose knew that
smell.
   It was sex.
   If someone could bottle that smell, she thought, they'd be rich in a matter
of days.
   "Should I pack first ?" she asked, wondering how it was she knew exactly what
he- what they wanted.
   "Come on down and we'll talk. Tell your mother you want to take a walk- I see
they let you smoke in the house now. That's cool."
   There was a but in the sentence, like `but where we're going is cooler.'
   The saddest thing was that even after the converstaion that she'd just had
with her mother, there was a part of Kim which wanted to go. There was a
certain- evil was the only word that described it- gleem in Jon's eyes.
   Kim had gone to a play last night called Calling all Smart Girls- and the
gist of it was that smart girls- and Kim was most definitely one of those,
liked bad boys. And whatever the hell had happened to Jon, starting with him
balling his teacher, had turned him into a very bad boy indeed.
   And that was when things got weird.
   
   No one knew about the white Toyota Celica with the Vermont plates that Monica
had kept hidden in the back of her garage for the last year. So Sarah had
driven by it without giving it a second glance.
   Of course, Monica had seen more than enough of Sarah's car earlier in the day
to know exactly what it looked like, and she knew immediately that things were
not going the way she would have liked, no, not at all. She also knew that
someone had started a fire at the little man's homestead, and that could only
mean that the jig was certainly up.
   Still, Monica liked a little excitement.
   So as Sarah's car strolled past, the school teacher thought she might just
stick around and find out what was going to happen next.
   Until she caught a glimpse of the woman sitting in the back seat of the
detective's car.
   Lisa MacDonough had never seen Moica Jones. But Monica knew that face because
there were times she saw it in her dreams- no woman of her- peculiarities-
could afford not to know that one face. Lights off, she backed into the
nearest driveway, turned the car in the other direction, and left Pittsford
behind without so much as a second thought about not securing the triumvarite
she'd hoped for.
   She just lit a cigarette and drove and drove and drove.

   Sarah was curious about the contents of the duffle bag Lisa had trundled into
the backseat of the car but had hesitated asking because she knew well enough
that they were veering into territory that was not her own, and she had a
strange feeling that Lisa wasn't a woman who needed to rely on broken brooms
to dispatch-
   Whatevers.
   Seriously weird was exactly what Sarah was expecting.
   Nevertheless, seeing Jon Fraktor floating outside Kim's window caught both
detectives by surprise.
   Sarah was about to reach for the siren when Lisa's hand stayed her.
   "This is my department," she said quietly, and that was she revealed what was
in the duffle bag.
   It was a crossbow loaded with a wooden stake.
   Lisa smiled. "I got the idea from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Great show. A
little campy, but you  take your ideas where you can get them."
   Normally, Sarah would have prevented one civilian from shooting another in
the back with an outdated weapon, but these were strange days, and the
civillian hovering outside that young smoker's bedroom window was already
dead. Tamara started instinctively to get out of the car, but Sarah reached
out and stopped her.
   As Lisa slid from the back seat, Sarah leaned back in the seat and lit a
cigarette. She drew deeply on it and then handed it to Tamara, who followed
suit.
   It didn't take long. Sarah felt a momentary pang of worry that the other
woman might miss and send that deadly bolt just a hair wide, perhaps taking
out Kim instead of-
   She used the word vampire, and it felt right.
   Jon never saw what was coming. The crossbow released, almost silently. The
large wooden missle cut air, whistling in a quiet, high pitched way. Jon
pivotted, turning to face the sound just before the bolt caught him in the
centre of the chest.
   There was the sickening sound of crushed bone and then he was flying no more.
The body spun once, heals over head, and then drifted earthward. Well, it
wasn't exactly a drift, and Sarah expected that the sound of impact would be
loud enough to raise the family and perhaps everyone on the block, and how
would they explain that ?
   But as soon as poor, twice dead Jon hit the ground, his body and the stake
within it both crumbled into a fine powder which the suddenly stiff breeze
carried away.
   To give her credit, Kim didn't slam her window shut, but rather closed it
quietly.
   Lisa walked back toward the car, no discernable look on her face. Now Sarah
did get out of the car. She walked up to the door, perfectly calm while Tamara
watched in mute amasement as her friend quickly explained that she needed to
take Kim downtown and ask her a few questions about Jon. The parents almost
demanded that they be allowed to come along, but in the end, Sarah convinced
them that wasn't really for the best, that their little girl was in no trouble
and would be returned shortly.
   She had a feeling they would never know how close it had all been.

   Naturally, they didn't take her to the station house. Sarah called into the
plainclothes unit which was watching Monica's house. They told her that
nothing was wrong, but then took a second look and realised that the garage
door was open and upon further examination, the house was empty. Sarah should
have been surprised but found she wasn't. They put out the obligatory APB but
she knew it would prove fruitless.
   So they sat in the back of L'Infantia, smoking cigarettes and eating what
they all agreed was one of the best meals they'd ever had.
   "I want to thank you again, Lisa," Kim said as she pushed her empty plate
away. I don't know that I could have said no to him, you know ?"
   She lit a cigarette with very steady hands and tried her best to smile, but
the truth was that she felt sheepish and a little small with these adults.
   Lisa understood the look. It had all started for her in not such a different
way, and she felt a little sorrow for this pretty young woman.
   "It's never easy. That's the hardest part of the game. But see what four
smokers can do when they put their heads together."
   Although Sarah wasn't quite done with her Penne Salmon Garlic and Dill she
pushed her own plate back and lit a cigarette as well, noticing with some
satisfaction that Kim had adopted her smoking technique, elbow bent on the
table, cigarette held in very plain view. Her combination of thumb taps to the
filter and index trims was exactly what Sarah had copied from her sister.
   "Is that the tie that binds us, or is it the V thing ?"
   Tamara laughed, lit her own cigarette, the Virginia Slims looking perfect in
her smaller hand.
   "I'd rather think it was that we all demand to be seated in the smoking
section. That's certainly a more pleasant thing to bind together a friendship
with. And I just want to thank you again for talking me into starting up
again, Sarah."
   Kim and Lisa put their cigarettes in their mouths and clapped politely.
   All four women couldn't help but notice one gentleman sitting a few tables
over almost squirt his pants watching the two women with cigarettes dangling
prettily from their pale lips.
   Sarah smiled at him, inhaled deeply, and gave out the sort of exhale which
would ensure that he'd not be standing up anytime soon. It was Dirk Johnson,
the city's prima facia DA of choice in any difficult case, and someone Sarah
had always been interested in. The way he smiled back at her, weakly and
slightly embarrassed, made her wish she'd started smoking a long time ago.
   Filing that away for future use to her advantage, she reached across the
table and patted Lisa's hand. 
   "If there's any one reason this all ended well, it's Lisa."
   This time three cigarettes went into eager mouths for another round of
clapping.
   Dirk found himself wishing that they'd keep doing that all night.

   "You're sure that you want to do this, Sarah ?"
   The detective, who was not a detective for the next week, at least, laughed
aloud as Lisa tossed her gear into the trunk of the rental.
   "I've never taken time off before, and I didn't do it to second guess what
we're about to do. Besides, do you know how hard I had to work to find a B and
B within fifty miles of Randolph which offers smoking rooms. I was really
pissed off that the Old Tavern doesn't. It used to be my favourite place to
go."
   "Well, being a smoker means bearing a few crosses. I'm sure the Taper and
Tonic is a great place."
   "An humidor in every room. Too bad I don't smoke cigars."
   "I'll teach you how if you'd like," Lisa said cheerily, and Sarah thought
that might just be interesting.
   After they'd paid a certain ex-school teacher a visit....
   

   
   	

   
   
   

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