‘ve been doing some re-reading over at the Carnival, and I think I need to do a quick revision on the last post or two for Alice before I can forge ahead. Apparently, Squatch is batting the Delgato story back over onto my side of the court for a finish, as well, as he’s not quite sure what to do with the Labyrinth. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with either, but I’m pretty interested in the idea, so we’ll give it a go.
     While I’m working on that, have a look at the (extremely) rough draft for a first chapter in the Samantha story. Somehow, Violent Clay’s infamous Vampire: the Requiem character, Tobias, sneaked into the story in the form of Tobias Cooper. “How’d he get in there?” I asked VC last night at coffee, after telling him that I was “borrowing” Tobias. “It’s Tobias.” VC answered. “He just walked the fuck in. Who’s going to stop him?”
     Point taken.

Samantha (Working Title)

     “Here you go, sweetheart.” Samantha White gave her hundred-watt smile as she plunked a beer down in front of the guy at the bar. She tipped him a wink. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said, putting just a hint of emphasis on the word “anything”. She knew she could get better tips if she kept their hopes up a bit.
     “Sammy!” Megan leaned across the bar, waving. “Need two Millers!”
     Sam grabbed two cold bottles from the fridge and handed them over, making a mental note of them as the skinny little waitress jiggled her way back over to her table full of roaring college boys. Megan had a bad habit of calling for drinks, and then “forgetting” to charge for them.
     The bar was jam-packed, and Sam, one of two bar tenders, was running her butt off. She was glad to see the business because she needed the money, but she had the worst crew ever on to deal with it – at least in the front of the house. She hadn’t seen her other bartender in fifteen minutes, and she was pretty sure it that was because he was back in the cooler getting it on with Lyssa, the waitress who’d been missing for fifteen minutes. Her other three waitresses were just about run ragged. The back of the house was in good shape. Coop was back there ordering his minions around at the top of his lungs like the drill sergeant he used to be, and greasy bar food was flying up into the window faster than the girls could get it out.
     Sam herself had her hands full up at the bar. Every stool was taken and she was pulling beers and mixing drinks at light speed. She’d fallen into the zone hours ago. She was wearing the perma-grin and bouncing around exchanging jokes and insults with her counter regulars without thinking about it. They were all in the weeds and it didn’t matter any more because they had reached the stage of being so hopelessly behind that they were all laughing about it. That was the zone. You just worked fast and hard and knew it didn’t matter because you couldn’t get caught up, and you laughed at the gallows humor of it all.
     That was probably why it took Sam a few minutes to realize that the sudden hike in noise was caused by screaming. She whipped around to find the source, and saw a man who had staggered in the front doors. For a moment, she couldn’t see what all the screaming was about – he wasn’t armed or anything – and then she realized that his t-shirt hadn’t originally been red.
     Also, his throat was missing. Well, most of it.
     
     The man staggered in three more steps, and then buckled to his knees. He swayed there for a moment, and then toppled forward.
     The bar went quiet in a slow wave out from the door as people turned to look, the clink of glasses and the shouts and hollers dying out, leaving only the juke box to blare loud rock music. Sam flipped her bar towel over her shoulder and hustled around the counter to the door, numb with shock. A pool of red had spread out underneath the man.
     The juke box cut off. Some college kid said, “That dude is dead, man!”
     “Megan – call the cops!” Sam yelled, crouching to peek at the dead man. She could just barely see the ragged edge of the wound in his throat. Behind her, she could hear the muttering spread out from the college kid who had yelled, rippling through the crowd and growing more strident. Great, panicked drunks, Sam thought. She swiveled on her toes to see if Megan was making the phone call, and heard the glass shatter in the foyer. She swiveled back in time for the glass in the main doors to burst over her as something leaped through.
     Fortunately she was crouched down, and whatever it was went over her head. Sam didn’t see it – she’d flung her arms up over her face as she’d heard the glass go. She felt it go over head, though, and as she went to stand, her boot slipped in the blood and she went on her back, which saved her from the next three things which flew in the broken door.
     Things went very quickly. She heard the screaming and the stampede of panicked feet, chairs scrapping and clatter to the floor as people leaped up, glass breaking and chaos erupting. She scrambled to her feet, flipping her hair out of her face. Glass clattered down off her as she scooted out of the way of the stampede flowing towards the door. All she could see was terrified faces – she couldn’t see what was causing the fear. She fought through the crowd, yelling incoherently for Megan, and finally lunged through the back of the rush, just in time to duck as a head, no longer attached to its body, flew by her face. Sam spun to follow it, watching it fetch up against the foot of the bar. She blinked as she recognized Megan’s face, slack with horror.
     It was surreal. Sam didn’t even have time to feel sick as she spun back to see what was wreaking havoc in her bar. She expected gang bangers – she found monsters instead.
     They looked like people. Or, more accurately, they looked like they used to be people. Now they were . . . Sam’s mind stretched, attempting to accommodate the inclusion of this new phenomenon. What the hell were they? They looked like corpses, with their fish-belly white skin mottled gray or green or both, and a few were in raggedy clothes, and they were all in various states of rot or injury. The smell of them was sickening, like meat left out in the sun for a day or two. They were moving, though, fast and strong and agile as they tore through the crowd, flinging blood and meat as they went, their fingers stretched out into claws, their eyes – those that still had eyes – lividly red, their mouths full of jagged teeth. And how they howled, like screaming panthers, as they snatched up Sam’s former patrons and ripped out throats and chunks of skin. They were moving so fast that it took Sam a second to realize there were only four of them.
     “Sam!”
     She turned, and spotted Coop behind the counter with Dory, her other bartender. Dory had the Louisville Slugger that was kept behind the bar, and Coop had the good meat cleaver, the one that still had the wicked sharp edge.
     “Get back here!” Coop yelled.
     Sam ran for it, planting a hand and vaulting the bar effortlessly, dropping to her knees almost before Coop could shout “Down!” A body flew over her head, all teeth and mad eyes and talons, smashed off the coolers, and dropped down on Sam. Fortunately it was tight quarters back behind the bar, so the creature couldn’t get room to maneuver around on Sam. She hooked one arm over its shoulders without thinking about it, and swung it down off her, tucking it under her arm, face out, over her knee. She bunched one hand and started driving it down into the thing’s kidneys, hoping the thing still had kidneys. It flopped like a fish, snarling and hissing, but she couldn’t tell if she was hurting it.
     “Watch it, gal!” Coop lunged over her, slamming down with the cleaver, nailing the thing right in the back of the head. It straightened with a cat-like growl and then went limp. Sam tossed it off her, standing and whirling to face the melee, fists tight and in front of her in a guard position.
     How long had it been since they walked in? Not even five minutes yet, Sam knew, and already the room was sprayed in death. Many patrons had made it out the doors, but far more had not, and were strewn across the floor, which was painted in blood. Sam glanced around. “Out the back?”
     “Can’t – they’s outside!” Coop exclaimed. “Two of ‘em cleaned out my kitchen boys.”
     “What the fuck happened to them?”
     Coop, a gigantic slab of muscular, bald, Black man, turned and looked hard at Sam, flexing his tattooed shoulders.
     “Oh.” Said Sam. Tobias Cooper was an ex-marine, three-time felon, and not a man to be screwed with lightly.
     Dory brought the baseball bat up. He was already covered in blood – right, he’d have been in the back, too, Sam realized. “Guys!” He said, warning.
     Sam reached out and grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose, jerking the shot nozzle out of the end of it. She soaked a dry rag with the vodka, jammed it down in, and stuffed her hand in her pocket for her lighter.
     While she was doing that, Dory had turned to the end of the bar, where one of the creatures was snarling. He had the bat cocked up over his shoulder, getting ready for a home run swing. The last two creatures were – feasting – on a final customer. They’d torn chunks out of the body and were slurping and sucking up the blood. Sam’s stomach did a slow roll as she lit the end of the rag. To her right, she heard the distinctive sound of a Louisville slugger hitting live meat and Coop yelling, “Dory, hold it!”
     The rag caught and Sam flung it side arm at the remaining two things. It whipped through the air, around and around, trailing fire, and slammed into the hard tile floor at the feet of the monsters. It shattered and fire flowed out. Sam grabbed up a bottle of whiskey, chugged a shot out of it, and flung it after the vodka.
     “Might want to grab the fire extinguisher.” She said with the calmness of shock. The pool of fire had found the two monsters, and whatever the hell they were, they were extra flammable. They caught like dry wood and blazed.
     “Damn, girl!” Coop had just finished the final creature and turned to look, the glow of the flames glistening red on his dark skin. Dory took one look, shoved the bat at Sam, and ran for the fire extinguisher.
     Dory put the blaze out with a few blasts from the extinguisher, and finally, the bar was silent. Sam found she was shaking. Coop was remarkably calm, standing there behind the bar with a Sam Adams, digging a battered pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket. “Want one?”
     Sam took the smoke. Coop had to light it for her. “Dory?” He asked.
     “No.” Doran Perdain was milk white, wide-eyed, and trembly. “I’d take a beer, though.” His voice was hollow, strengthless.
     “Catch.” Coop tossed a cold one to the younger man. “Here, Sammy-girl.”
     Sam took the beer and without thinking about it, tipped her head back and put it away like a champ. She slammed the empty down, wiped her mouth, and hit the cigarette. “What in the hell are those fucking things?”
     “Dunno. Dory, you watch all that horror movie shit.”
     Dory was a little guy, not much taller than Sam, working at the bar to get through college. He was majoring in history, Sam knew, and at the moment he looked like he couldn’t decide whether to barf his guts, crap his pants, or both at the same time. He started when Coop spoke to him, running a hand through his sandy, blood-streaked hair and pushing his wire-framed glasses back up his nose. “I don’t know.” Dory said, voice shaking. “I mean . . . they’re like . . . all rotting, but zombies are slow, and – and — “
     “They were, like, drinking that guy’s blood.” Sam said. Her voice sounded dull, even to her. She was a pretty woman, muscular and curvy, dressed for success for the night, which meant she was wearing the bar’s logo’d tank top with plenty of cleavage hanging out, and jeans tight enough to read the date on the quarters in her pocket. She had long, dark hair and fair skin, big brown eyes heavy on the make-up and a full mouth painted red. She ran a hand through her hair, cigarette dangling from her lips. “Hey. Listen.”
     They stood silent, listening to the city outside. Flint, Michigan was a loud city at the best of times, but this was a different kind of loud. They always heard some sirens, and they always heard a few gunshots. It was Flint. But this . . . this was nothing but sirens and gunfire, punctuated by screams, crashes . . .
     “What the hell.” Dory whispered.
     “Barricade the doors.” Coop rumbled. “Quick. Sammy, grab a table.”
     Sam moved mechanically, grabbing the table Coop had pointed at. “Omigawd, Carlie’s home alone.” She said, freezing. “Coop, I gotta go get Carlie.”
     “You can’t go out there, Sam. It’s gotta be bad – just listen to it.”
     “I got to.” Sam held her hands out helplessly. “Just hold the fort, guys. I’ll be back.” She headed for the back of the bar. Dory followed after while Coop went to work barricading the doors.

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