After Dawn, What Came Next

Catcher supposed Janine was right about that. She was a girl, so she ought to know. He set out, leaving the brotherhood’s compound with his bag of mysterious male trappings. He had no idea of what he was doing, but this was going to be his most exhilarating hunt of all time.









































Chapter 41

Alexander took his time getting ready. After all, what else did he have to do but take his time these days? The kids had taken over the mundane duties of home maintenance years ago. He didn’t have to shovel snow, mow the grass, plant and weed the garden, repair the shingles on the ancient roof, or do anything that might possibly resemble anything useful. He was an old man. He was supposed to sit in his damn easy chair and mark the hours and days of his life with the changing of TV channels until it was finally his turn to die.

Some things never changed. In a town of this size funerals were a social event. Everybody would dust off their best and make an appearance to pay their respects to the departed. Gloria…damn, how much older than he was she? After a certain number of years, a person’s age ceased to matter. He had stopped counting a long time ago. Some days he woke up as spry as he had been in his forties and some days, it was all he could do to crawl out of bed at all.

Alexander personally would rather skip the visitation and watch TV. Leigh, she loved a good funeral and had never missed a one. And it was out of his lingering sense of duty to carry the torch that he had dusted off his good multipurpose suit for the occasion. Anna had made the food he had dropped off for the wake earlier today. The dish Anna had made was a nice, respectable funeral casserole. It wasn’t Leigh’s secret recipe chocolate cake, but he didn’t suppose Megan would care or even notice.

He straightened his tie and did his best to tame the snowy white tufts of hair he had left on his bald head. The suit was baggier in the shoulders than it had been the last time he had worn it. The jacket hung on his bony frame and the pants were about an inch too long. The suit used to fit him perfectly. He was old. He was shrinking. What used to be hardened muscle had sagged on his frame. His fingers were so gnarled he could barely fasten the buttons on his shirt. He was in the process of becoming one of those frail old men that he used to pity, back when he had been a young buck in the day.

The last time he had worn the suit; he had the forethought to leave the tie tied. Today, he had slipped the tie over his head and tightened it around his neck like a noose. The tie was a noose, tightening tighter and tighter day by day. The suit, fancy as it was, had been a gift from Janine. At the time, she had tried to be nonchalant, explaining that every man should own a good suit. But, no one would ever claim Alexander Gray was a fool. He had seen the look in her eye and read the expression on her face as easily as words on a page. She had bought the suit in preparation for what lay ahead. This suit had never been worn to any wedding or any auspicious champagne and caviar occasion. This was a funeral suit and she knew, everyone knew, one day, soon, he was going to be buried in it.

Spit shined by the undertaker and decked out in a suit of such fine quality, Alexander supposed he would make a fairly respectable corpse. If he didn’t, it wasn’t like he was going to be around to know about it anyway. The undertaker was just about as old as he was and it was a bit of a contest between the two of them as to which one would be laid out in a coffin first. It was a respectable battle of nothing but pure will and luck they had going on. After all, there wasn’t really any way to cheat at the game of which one of them would die first, now was there.

Alexander had heard over his usual cup of coffee at the gossip mill that was the diner that Glory’s heart that finally did her in. The poor old girl, who really wasn’t that much older than him he had finally decided, had been slipping for years. Folks from town checked in on her from time to time. People in a small burg like this did that. Took turns checking in on the old and infirm to make sure nothing was amiss. It wouldn’t do to have some old codger croak in his bed and not be found until the body started stinking up the neighborhood.

He had made those visits to the old folks and he had received a few of them himself. Stragglers that wandered out to the farm under the guise of a bit of friendly conversation, but were actually checking on him to see if he was still alive. He wondered when exactly it had happened. When he stopped taking care of Alex and she started taking care of him instead. If she only knew… well, she knew, but it hadn’t quite sunk in yet. He was living on borrowed time. He did nothing to hasten his eventual demise, but he did nothing to prolong his life either.

The pills Thomas prescribed him. He had stopped taking them months ago. He ate whatever in the hell he wanted and he’d be damned if the barn that was supposed to be off limits to him was actually off limits. Alex worried he’d have a heart attack, slip and fall in the shower and break his hip, or any of a thousand other mishaps would happen to him. He was supposed to be wearing an emergency dialer around his neck, just in case something happened. Well, fuck that. Eventually, something was going to happen and by the grace of God, he hoped it was something quick and fatal.

One of his buddies from back in the day had fallen over dead mowing the grass last summer. Lucky bastard just popped a clot and fell over dead, just like that, quick as a blink of an eye. Alexander straightened his tie once more for good measure. Funerals were a good place to pick up women. Hell, his cock had not saluted the sunrise in…well, in too long. He supposed to the pack of old biddies that would no doubt attend such an auspicious occasion as a funeral. He was a prime catch. He had all of his natural teeth, most of his mind, and a few strands of hair left. He would never do such a thing at his age, but still, it was nice to pretend he had it even though sometimes, he forgot where he put it.

Damn, he missed Leigh. What in the hell was he hanging around here for anyway? She was up there, waiting for him. These days there were more people up there he wanted to see than were down here. His mom and dad, his sister, Lucien, Mack, his precious Leigh, Jack that old damn horse, and Penelope his prize pig, they had all crossed the Great River. More often than not he spent more time in the past than he did in the present. Being left behind sucked. Surviving your own life should come with a t-shirt and lovely parting gifts. He knew exactly why he simply couldn’t or wouldn’t lay down and die. He lingered on and on and on for the living. For Alex and Erica, and Fallon, for those he would someday too soon leave behind himself.

The brothers were attending the funeral to pay their respects. Megan did a good job of pretending to be human, but she wasn’t. It was going to take no small measure of fooling to make a girl who had been turned a vampire in her twenties resemble anything close to the fifty something year old woman she was supposed to be. Her grief though, that would be real enough.

Alexander eyed the cane resting in the corner with no small measure of disdain. Alex insisted he use a cane when he went out. He didn’t need a damn cane. He would rather crawl on his belly like an old snake than use a cane or worse, a walker. As a joke he had asked John Mark to make a few modifications on the cane. A blade sharp enough to split hair was hidden in the shaft. One never knew who was coming to town and far too often people, especially vampires, underestimated the old. To die in battle…the thought filled him with a giddy sort of pride. It’d be a good way to die, defending his family.

Who was he kidding? Alex didn’t even let him drive after dark. He was going to die an old man, withered as a raisin left too long in the sun, in his bed. Alexander walked out onto the back porch and watched the last lingering rays of sunlight slowly fade. He slipped a cigarette out of his suit pocket. He had stashed it there the last time he had worn the suit. Leigh’s funeral. He hadn’t lit it then, but found a sudden hankering for a hit now.

The cigarette was a hand rolled. Real cigarettes had been outlawed years ago. He had a cache of loose tobacco down hidden in an old coffee can in the basement for when the urge hit him. If an occasional smoke hadn’t killed him yet, it wasn’t likely going to. Alex would be here any minute to pick him up. She’d smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes and no doubt, be furious with him for smoking. But, what was she going to do about it? Ground him? Confiscate his Geritol or God forbid, his prune juice? Alexander chuckled at the idea of handing over his prune juice and took a long drag. He coughed and hacked, sputtering like an old engine from the harshness of the smoke, but damn, was it good. The cigarette reminded him, for what good he was to anybody, that he was still alive.

Alex was going to have to go incognito to the funeral, as were several of the brothers. It wouldn’t do to have people that were supposed to be dead or at least twenty-five years older than they actually looked mulling about a funeral parlor. There were damn few left that remembered Alex and John Mark, or Robbie, or Barbara for the people they had been. Soon, there wouldn’t be anybody still alive that would remember or that could remember them at all.

Alexander frowned at the hand rolled cigarette between his fingers and watched the tobacco burn up in a cloud of pungent white smoke. The cigarette certainly wasn’t a Marlboro red. Wasn’t even close. He couldn’t tell anybody why he had lit it now when he hadn’t on the day of Leigh’s funeral. Perhaps, it was a simple act of defiance, or simply because he could, and for no other reason. He flicked the butt off the end of his thumb and watched the glowing embers sail across the yard in a graceful arc.

Standing there on his back porch and watching the sun go down, he supposed he should feel something more than what he did for old Gloria. He felt sorry for Megan, for her loss. He knew more than a thing or two about loss. But, as for Gloria, he wasn’t sad for her. On the contrary, he was rather happy. He straightened the lapels on his jacket with his gnarled fingers and winced at the crackling and popping of his spine, as he stood upright as tall and proud as a man of seventy-six years could.

Dressed to the nines in his someday burying suit and thinking he should at the very least be grateful for the chance to wear it beforehand, he thought about funerals and what they meant. The fancy coffins and sappy flowers, the memorials and graves, none of that stuff was for the dead, but the living the dead had left behind. The funeral was your t-shirt, the lovely parting gift, at the end of your long journey, the been there and done that that was the sum of your life, and his was going to be a fine occasion, when the time came, indeed.

Alexander pressed his fingertips to his lips and blew a kiss to the first star to brave the dimming sky. Leigh’s star shone brighter than all the rest. It always had. For Christmas one year he had bought her an actual star, a real bargain at less than twenty dollars and change online. He didn’t know which one of those stellar pinpricks of white light bore her name only that it was there, twinkling in the darkness, bigger, brighter, and more brilliant than all the rest.

Yes, his time was coming, sooner rather than later. He would hate to leave Alex and everyone else behind. But, that was the way things were supposed to be. He would be remembered as he remembered those who had gone before him. It had been a good life, one filled with purpose and love. He would never die a warrior, but that he didn’t, made him no less brave. He had done good things in his lifetime, he and Leigh, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret not one second of his life. This old house and that faded red barn would still be standing long after he was gone. And Alex, yes his death would break her heart, but that she would be around long, long after he was dust in his grave and this old house fell into a pile of decayed wood and well, that was something to be proud of, now wasn’t it.









Chapter 42

“Dad is smoking again,” Alex growled under her breath. She stormed through the front door intending to give him an earful. “What part of cigarettes will kill you doesn’t he understand?” she rhetorically asked. She did everything she could to make sure his last days were happy and as healthy as possible. She made sure her father had three nutritious meals a day, a clean house, the yard was mowed in the summertime and the snow shoveled in the wintertime, the truck was in perfect working condition, and that he took his medicine everyday. Her dad didn’t have to worry about or do anything. All he had to do was relax and enjoy life. How did he thank her for all the hard work she put into keeping him alive? He was out on the back porch, standing there dressed in his Sunday finest, reeking of cigarette smoke? She didn’t think so. Not only no…but, hell no.

Chance reached out and grabbed his wife by the bicep to stop her. Alex was a redhead and had the fiery temper to match. She barely noticed his grip on her arm tightening to slow her rampage as she dragged him down the hall. Alex was so intent on her ranting and raving about her dad’s apparent lack of good sense and irresponsibility, that she couldn’t have seen the bigger picture if it whacked her smack dab between the eyes.

Chance did not and had never condoned smoking, but he understood Alexander’s occasional indulgence. Alexander wasn’t irresponsible, nor was he thankless as Alex believed. Alex’s father wasn’t defying Alex, but rather, exercising what little control he had left over his own life. She was right about one thing though. Her father had nothing to worry about and that was the whole problem. Alexander was a man of action verbs and she had left him with nothing to do in her zeal to protect him from the inevitable. Alexander was going to die. He was still alive because of her and only her. Alexander knew his daughter wasn’t ready to let him go just yet.

Chance could see it in Alexander’s rheumy blue eyes. He longed to be done with this life and move on to the next. He wanted to be with Leigh and all the countless others that had gone on before him, but he was stuck here, waiting it out until he was certain Alex was going to be ok.

Chance was a warrior to the very core of his soul. He had been in combat and knew the thoughts that entered a warrior’s mind on the eve of the battle. Geared up and sharpening his blades in preparation a man had a lot of time to think. When the battle came, he would give no thought to himself or of what might happen. He would go out on the field and engage the enemy. Do what needed to be done. Alexander was in a warrior’s head space now, battling an enemy he had no hope of defeating. He was prepared to die. He, like any good warrior, only wanted a choice about how he did it.

Chance thought of Leigh and how she had passed from this life into the next. Her death had been long, painful, and drawn out. She had tried as hard as she could to hang on, for Alex and for Alexander. Given her own choice, Chance doubted she would have lasted as long as she had. But, for their sakes she lived far beyond the time Thomas gravely estimated she had left. Alexander didn’t want to die that way, suffering in his bed. He wanted to go out fighting like a warrior.

Alex would wrap her father in bubble wrap if she could. The brothers didn’t mind taking care of things around the house. Chance enjoyed the mundane repetitiveness of mowing the grass and making whatever repairs were necessary to the old house. Alex wouldn’t even let her dad pick up a hammer to pound a nail into the wall. She wouldn’t let him do anything out of fear of risking him. He could slip and fall; she’d argue when Chance suggested that Alexander do a few chores for himself. He could have a stroke or a heart attack any day. Yeah, he could, but he’d go out happy and feeling useful instead of so damned useless, like Alex unintentionally made him feel.

Alex didn’t let her dad drive at night. He could get in a wreck. She had Anna cook his meals for fear he’d exist on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and microwave dinners. She counted the pills in the bottles lining the shelves in the medicine cabinet to make sure he took them. She faithfully dragged him to see Thomas every month. She panicked over every little sniffle and cracking joint, any little bump that popped up on his weathered skin was enough to send her into a frenzy. Alexander went along with her ideas for how he should spend his golden years because he didn’t have any other choice. If he failed to comply, she’d hound him to death.

She didn’t know Alexander snuck into the barn and puttered around. She didn’t know he dropped the pills Thomas prescribed down the drain. She didn’t know about his stash of loose leaf tobacco in the basement or the canister of Folgers dark roast coffee he kept hidden underneath the bed. And she didn’t know…well, she did, but wouldn’t admit that she was doing a fine job of ruining what was left of her dad’s short life with her over protectiveness.

Alexander Gray was not the kind of man to give up. He wouldn’t starve. The grass wouldn’t grow up around the house. He wouldn’t slip on the ice or in the shower and break a hip. Caffeine was not going to shorten his life expectancy. The little pills he didn’t take but only pretended to weren’t going to make him live any longer. And a couple of puffs off an illegal cigarette weren’t going to kill him. He wasn’t going to die because of his heart. At least not the one in his chest that occasionally skipped a beat. Alexander Gray wasn’t going to go out of this world until he was good and ready. And while the time was coming, it wasn’t coming today. He wasn’t going anywhere until Alex had finally accepted the inescapable truth and could let him go.

“Alex, leave him alone,” Chance said.

Alex glared at her husband and shook of his hold on her sleeve. She was dressed like an old woman. Janine had carefully made her up and added streaks of gray to her red hair. The hair extensions and the clothing, her faked stooped posture and the wrinkles made out of stage putty gave her a glimpse of what she would have looked like if she had aged. It was creepy to still look so young and see the representation of older self in the mirror’s reflection. No creepier though than designing her own demise and shopping for a headstone to add legitimacy to the plan. She had to die officially on paper. Her death was scheduled for two decades from now and would be as legal and final as any death ever could. But, it wasn’t a real death, not her death anyway. Alexandria Gray had to die. Alex, the person she was and had yet to evolve into, never would.

What was terrifying though was to look through the weathered screen door leading onto the back porch and see the reality of death for what it was. To see her dad, leaning against the post, flicking a cigarette butt out into the yard, wearing that damn suit. He had other clothes, but he insisted on wearing the suit he intended to be buried in when the time came. Seeing him in it, the looseness of the fit on his aging body, sagging on the shoulders that were once so broad and strong, so capable of bearing the weight of the world, gave her cold chills.

She should bury him in his birthday suit instead of the fine wool Italian cut suit Janine had bought for him. Damn it, her dad was not going to die. He was not. Chance’s grip on her arm loosened. He gently stroked his fingers up and down her bicep as if he knew exactly where her thoughts were. He probably did. There were no secrets between them. He couldn’t understand where she was in her head though. His parents didn’t age. They weren’t going to die. He was never going to have to tell them goodbye and wait the very, very long wait she would have until he saw them again.