The Reformed Vampire Support Group

  Dave had no problem with that. He caught the keys that were tossed at him and locked up the storage compartment. Meanwhile, Father Ramon exchanged a few words with Sanford before hoisting himself into the seat next to me. Then Dave slid behind the steering wheel.

  Doors slammed on both sides of the cabin; I found myself suddenly hemmed in. For a moment Dave sat contemplating the dashboard, as Father Ramon lifted his hand to Sanford.

  ‘Keep in touch,’ said the priest.

  ‘I will,’ Sanford promised gravely.

  At which point the engine roared and the headlights flicked on. When Dave released the handbrake, I knew that there was no going back.

  I was on my way.

  ‘Bye, Mum!’ Frantically I flapped my hand, leaning across Father Ramon to catch my last glimpse of her. It could have been quite a traumatic moment, but Father Ramon was very smart. Before I could even digest the fact that I was off on a perilous mission, he shoved a street directory into my hands.

  ‘I’m going to be asleep,’ he said, ‘so you’ll have to navigate. You need to get us onto the motorway. Once we’re across the mountains, you’ll be needing this map.’ He began to unfold an enormous sheet of paper. ‘Can you see it properly?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Even the feeble glow emanating from the dashboard dials was enough for someone with my highly developed night-vision. ‘Which road are we taking? This one here?’

  ‘That’s right.’ The priest traced his finger along a wavering red line, rattling the stiff paper as he did so. ‘We’ll be going through Dubbo, towards the Barrier Highway.’

  ‘Dubbo!’ I stiffened. ‘That’s where my dad came from!’

  It was a reflexive comment, with nothing emotional about it. But the two men exchanged glances over the top of my head.

  ‘Uh – yes.’ Father Ramon’s delivery was hesitant. ‘Does that bother you, Nina?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ I was surprised that he would even ask, because we had discussed my father often enough in our group meetings. For your information, my father was a waste of space. He left Mum the minute he heard that she was pregnant, and died two years later in a car crash. According to Mum, he’d been driving under the influence, and had run headfirst into a telephone pole.

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ I assured the priest. ‘My dad never meant anything to me – you know that. He was just some bastard who didn’t have the guts to hang around after he got my mother knocked up.’

  The words were barely out of my mouth before I realised that I’d dropped a huge clanger. But then I made it even worse by trying to correct my mistake. Hurriedly I assured Dave that I wasn’t accusing him of being a bastard, like my dad. ‘I mean, it wasn’t the same for you, was it?’ I said haltingly. ‘You were much younger than Dad was, and – um – well, you were only seventeen, weren’t you? Just a kid, really. Not old enough to be a father, even if that girl’s parents had actually let you be one, which of course didn’t happen.’ When Father Ramon nudged me in the ribs, I made a clumsy attempt to shift topics, inquiring if Dave had brought along any compact discs. (Being a dealer in second-hand music, he tends to like a soundtrack when he’s driving.) ‘I don’t mind what you play, as long as it doesn’t put you to sleep. Ha-ha,’ was the best that I could manage.

  Sometimes I wonder how other people put up with me.

  Dave produced a crooked half-smile. ‘I don’t think Father Ramon will get much sleep if we play any of my CDs,’ he observed, without taking his eyes off the road. It was a grisly moment. God, I felt bad. Because if there’s one thing that Dave regrets more than anything else, it’s the way he abandoned his pregnant girlfriend, some thirty-odd years ago. Not that it was entirely his fault. She was only sixteen, and her parents moved her away (out of Dave’s reach) when they discovered that she was pregnant. Apparently she wrote to him once or twice, but by then he’d dropped out of school to play in a band; his life was all sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, at that stage, and he didn’t write back.

  Maybe he would have, eventually. Maybe, if he’d been given a few more years, he would have matured enough to start behaving like a real dad. Maybe he would have tried to forge a connection with his son or daughter – who now, oddly enough, must look twice as old as Dave does.

  But then Casimir showed up near that harbourside hotel. And by the time Dave started to feel remorse for what he’d done, it was too late. He was already a vampire.

  The rest of us have tried telling him that a lot of young blokes find it hard to shoulder parental responsibility. We’ve reminded him that he hasn’t dumped a girlfriend for more than three decades (that he hasn’t, in fact, even had a girlfriend since 1973). We’ve even pointed out that he shouldn’t feel bad for not making peace with his own dad, who was a selfish, abusive, alcoholic dickhead.

  Poor old Dave, however, seems to have a permanently inflamed conscience about his past. Nothing will ever lessen the guilt he feels about deserting the mother of his unborn child. And what makes it even worse is the fact that he can’t have any more kids, because vampires aren’t capable of reproducing. Not in the normal way, at least. We can only pass on our infection.

  It’s a pretty dismal state of affairs for every one of us. But Dave has always found it particularly depressing. Even certain pieces of music tend to set him off. I remember he once took me to the Tuesday meeting, when Father Ramon’s car was being fixed, and Marianne Faithfull began to sing ‘As Tears Go By’ on the radio. Dave immediately plunged into such a black mood that everyone else talked about it for the entire meeting. Father Ramon speculated that Dave had abandoned his old girlfriend in the flesh, but not in the spirit. Sanford observed that, in Dave’s mind, she probably represented the Unattainable Past. Horace stressed the importance of getting over someone who was probably a grandmother by now, and who wouldn’t look twice at a weedy, listless, wax-faced vampire anyway.

  I didn’t play a big part in that discussion. I was feeling too miserable, for various reasons that I won’t go into. And Dave didn’t say much either, because he never discusses his old girlfriend if he can possibly avoid it. That’s one reason why I pegged him for a broken-hearted romantic casualty quite early on. That’s also why I shouldn’t have mentioned my dad to him there in the truck. Sometimes I can’t help thinking that Dave blames himself for what Dad did. It’s very odd.

  Disheartened by Dave’s continuing silence, I sought help to clear the air. I appealed to Father Ramon.

  ‘Is that right, Father? Would you prefer it if we didn’t play any music?’ I asked, in pure desperation. And the priest nobly came to my rescue.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about keeping me awake,’ he said. ‘I can sleep through anything. I’ve slept in puddles. I’ve slept through earth tremors. I’ve slept beside the world’s noisiest two-stroke engine—’

  ‘In South America?’ I inquired, and he nodded.

  ‘When I was doing mission work,’ he acknowledged. Occasionally he’ll provide you with titbits about his eventful youth, talking about gunfire during a funeral, or floods in a slum, or how he once had to perform an exorcism. But he clearly wasn’t about to recount anything of interest that night. On the contrary, having decided that he’d done his level best to improve Dave’s spirits, he yawned and arranged himself for a nap, placing Bridget’s folded scarf under his head.

  ‘Wake me at four,’ he said. ‘We need to make sure that you’re all wrapped up before daybreak.’

  Then he sniffed, wriggled, cleared his throat and closed his eyes.

  For a few minutes after that, Dave and I didn’t speak. There didn’t seem to be much point, since he was in one of his morose moods, and I had run out of distracting ideas. We gazed out at the unfolding vista of glowing shopfronts, deserted side streets, fast-food outlets, bus shelters, traffic islands, nature strips and tail-lights. Car yards began to proliferate; the road became wider. I could no longer see into people’s living rooms, which were shielded by screens of foliage. Illuminated signs warned us about approaching exits
, as the lanes in front of us multiplied.

  Then suddenly great walls of concrete reared up on either side of our route. And I realised something that prompted me to break the extended pause.

  ‘You know what?’ I said softly. ‘This is all new. I’ve never seen this before, have you?’ When Dave shook his head, I looked out again a landscape that was undeniably and inescapably foreign, filled with wonder at the scale of what I’d missed. ‘I haven’t been this way in thirty-five years,’ I breathed, as Dave nervously checked the rear-view mirror.

  But there was no one behind us.

  8

  I’ll never forget that trip to Cobar. It was a revelation. Once we’d left the city behind, the space outside our truck became endless. A cloudless, starry, immeasurable expanse arched above us. Densely wooded hilltops stretched on forever. The road ahead seemed infinite as it unfurled like a black-and-white ribbon in the glow of our headlights.

  Barrelling along, I was filled with a strange and unfamiliar sense of freedom. I suppose it’s common enough to feel this way when you’re on the move, but you have to remember that I normally don’t get out much. Even the air that wafted through our open windows had a wildly invigorating freshness to it.

  After crossing the mountains, we reached the edge of the Great Western Plains. And I couldn’t suppress a cry of wonder as I gazed down at a view that most people wouldn’t have been able to see, in the middle of the night.

  ‘Wow!’ I exclaimed. ‘Just look at that!’

  ‘Uh – yeah.’ Dave’s tone was distracted, because he’d reached a very steep slope that was hard for him to navigate.

  ‘Do you think there’s a lookout somewhere?’ I asked. ‘Do you think we could stop?’

  ‘Maybe. I dunno.’

  ‘We ought to stop soon. It’s important to take a break every two hours when you’re driving.’ I glanced at him doubtfully. ‘Besides, you’re not used to long hauls like this. You must be getting pretty tired.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘When did you learn to drive one of these things, anyway? Did your band have its own bus, or what?’

  ‘We had a van,’ Dave revealed.

  ‘With graffiti all over it?’ I always liked to hear about Dave’s short-lived musical career.

  But for some reason, he preferred not to discuss that stage in his life. I always used to wonder if it reminded him too much of his former girlfriend.

  ‘We had stickers on our van, not graffiti,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Oh yeah? What did they say?’

  ‘Dumb things,’ he replied, looking vaguely embarrassed. ‘You wouldn’t want to know.’ Then he flicked an uneasy glance at the priest.

  But Father Ramon hadn’t been disturbed by our chatter. Clearly, he was able to sleep through anything; in fact he didn’t even wake up when we narrowly avoided hitting a fox on the road. Though Dave braked hard, and I yelped, and the engine stalled, Father Ramon slumbered on peacefully.

  After that, I didn’t bother keeping my voice down. I felt free to exclaim at the moonlit views, and to complain about potholes, and to comment on the farmhouses that we passed. Dave didn’t say much. He’s never been a hugely talkative person, and driving in the country must have been quite a challenge after thirty-five years spent pottering around suburban backstreets. At last, however, he proposed that we discuss our plans.

  ‘We haven’t decided what we’re going to tell this Barry McKinnon guy,’ he observed. ‘If we show up on his doorstep, and he’s actually there, what’s the procedure? Do we mention those bullets straight off? Do we explain how we found him? Or do we go in undercover, so we can search his house when he’s not looking?’ Dave’s long face grew longer as he contemplated this last scenario. ‘I suppose we could pretend that we’ve broken down,’ he said, ‘and ask to use the guy’s toilet.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose we could do that.’ For the first time I really focused on the task ahead; until that instant, I had been more concerned about our journey than our destination. I tried to imagine the mysterious Barry, who lived in the middle of nowhere without a phone. I tried to imagine knocking on his front door at ten o’clock at night.

  I tried to picture a welcoming grin – a friendly reception – and I couldn’t.

  ‘This is going to be hard,’ I muttered.

  ‘You’re not wrong.’

  ‘What do you think we should do?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Dave scratched his jaw. ‘Hard to say, until we get there.’

  ‘If we see garlic and crucifixes all over the place, then we’ll know where we stand,’ I remarked, and he gave a sour little smile.

  ‘Yeah. That would make things a lot simpler. Scarier, but simpler.’

  ‘We could tell the truth, in that case. We could just introduce ourselves, and explain why we’re no threat. I mean, it’ll be pretty obvious, even to a fanatic.’ I peered down at my fluffy pink coat, and my chewed fingernails, and my wasted legs in their wrinkled tights. ‘We look so feeble and hopeless.’

  Dave grunted. Something about the timbre of that grunt made me turn my head to study his expression.

  ‘What?’ I said. And he sighed.

  ‘Well – I was wondering if it might turn out to be a problem,’ he confessed. ‘The way we look so harmless, I mean.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he might not believe that we’re vampires.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just think about it, Nina. We can’t fly. We can’t turn into bats. We aren’t a bit like Zadia Bloodstone. How are we going to prove who we are? Unless we fang the guy.’

  It was a good point. As I turned it over in my mind, I realised that someone brought up on a diet of Bram Stoker might have trouble accepting the dismal reality of our condition. Even if that person did believe in vampires.

  ‘What about these?’ I said, tapping one of my canines. ‘These should do the trick, shouldn’t they?’

  But Dave shook his head.

  ‘I dunno,’ he replied. ‘They’re not especially big. Not like the ones in the movies.’ He gave a sniff. ‘You could open a can of fruit juice with those fangs in Underworld.’

  ‘So what do you suggest, then?’ I snapped. ‘Are you saying that one of us should volunteer to lie out in the sun?’

  ‘Come on, Nina.’ His tone was patient. No matter how hard I prodded him, he would never get riled; I figured he simply didn’t care enough to waste his energy on a sharp retort. ‘I’m not saying that,’ he murmured. ‘I just think we should be prepared.’

  ‘In case our killer doesn’t believe Father Ramon?’ I asked, jerking my chin at the priest. As Dave hesitated, I had a flash of inspiration. ‘Even if this guy doesn’t think we’re vampires, he’ll think we’re vampire supporters. And any vampires with friends like us must be harmless,’ I argued. When Dave didn’t answer, I shrugged. ‘Maybe you don’t agree,’ I said, turning away from him, ‘but whatever happens, you ought to shave. Without all that hair you won’t look so suspicious.’

  Dave’s mouth twisted. ‘Gee, thanks,’ he said dryly.

  ‘It’s true. Scrubby chins are for B-grade villains. You must have noticed.’ Then I spotted the fuel-gauge dial. ‘We’re getting a bit low on petrol, Dave.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’ll have to stop at the next town.’

  Luckily, the next town boasted an all-night service station, with a well-lit convenience store attached. As we pulled up beside a vacant pump, I stared in astonishment at the gigantic road train that was sitting nearby. Never before had I been so close to such a large vehicle.

  It felt as if we’d parked next to a cruise liner.

  ‘Have you done this before?’ I inquired of Dave, overwhelmed by all the bright lights, big trucks and oily smells. Dave must have understood that I wasn’t thinking clearly – that I was confused by the unfamiliar surroundings. Because he said, very kindly, ‘I’ve got my own car, Nina.’

&nbs
p; ‘Oh. Yeah. Of course.’

  ‘Do you think we should wake Father Ramon?’

  We both surveyed the priest, who was still snoring away. It seemed a shame to disturb him. ‘He probably wouldn’t thank us,’ was my conclusion, and Dave agreed. But when he reached for the doorhandle, I caught his arm.

  ‘Do you think – I mean – can I go too?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Come on, Dave. Please? I haven’t been to the shops for months.’

  You may be wondering why I had to ask permission – and why Dave seemed so reluctant to oblige. The reason is simple: I hadn’t been blooded. And although I’ve already mentioned blooding, I didn’t really explain how important it is. You see, once you give in to that first impulse, and fang someone, you’re in trouble. You could fall off the wagon again at any time. According to Horace, the memory of that initial buzz stays with you; you’re like a heroin addict. But if you resist, you’ll never face the same degree of temptation ever again. Resistance gets easier and easier. That’s what Sanford says, anyway, and I believe him. After all, he’s had a hundred years of experience.

  Horace was blooded just before he bit Sanford. Gladys was blooded at the Magdalene hospital; she fanged Bridget after a woman gave birth nearby. Bridget herself was blooded when she witnessed an accidental knife cut in the convent kitchen. But unlike Gladys, Bridget stood firm.

  And she wasn’t the only one.

  There are many theories as to why some vampires withstand the urge to infect people and some don’t. Sanford maintains that he never succumbed because he had the support of his wife. He says that Bridget was able to control herself owing to her very strong religious faith; she was accustomed to fighting what she called ‘the devil’s snares’. And Dave was lucky. His blooding took place the morning after he was infected, while he was staggering home. Though he passed another Saturday-night casualty on his way – a man who was bleeding from a split lip – Dave was still strong enough to ignore his own sudden, irrational desire to attack the guy’s jugular vein.