He rounded the front of the truck, staying out of the beams of light. He told us to stay back. Keep the light on the thing.
“Looks like you caught yourself an abalsom,” Lyle said simply, as if pointing out a flat tire. He kept his rifle on the mound.
Abalsom. I racked my brain trying to translate the word, coming up with nothing specific. The sheriff noted my confusion, shaking his head like my ignorance was pitiful. Well, there was only my grandmother to blame.
“Simply put, this is what you’d call a zombie. This is the result of a turn gone bad.”
Sekou and I shared a look to say Lyle was losing it.
“A turn gone bad?” I repeated. This man had was tripping and trying to take us with him. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Nana and I would never kill, much less turn someone intothat.
“Don’t believe me? I’ll let your grandma explain. Get in the truck while I square this fella away.”
Sekou and Hailey didn’t have to be told twice. They moved faster than me, and I could move pretty damn fast.
Lyle moved toward it, gun at the ready. I moved in sync with him on the other side of the beams. He stopped and I stopped too. He looked over at me.
“I said get in the car, Ada.”
I wiped at my face again, then pointed in the direction of the thing. “You’re gonna need my help. You don’t know what I can do.”
Lyle looked me dead in the eye. “I know more than you think. I know that if you wanted, you could rip him apart. Or suck him dry. Though what he’s got, you want no part of.”
An understatement. There was no way I was drinkingthat, whatever it was. I didn’t appreciate Lyle’s tone. No one ever spoke to me like that. What my grandmother and I were had always been inferred instead of spoken aloud and as bluntly as Lyle just had. He had been on the mainland for so long, yet spoke to me with a familiarity that made me uncomfortable and resentful.
The monster growled in its sleep, bringing me back to the dangerous present. “What if it wakes up? Aren’t you gonna shoot it?”
He considered it. “Thought about it. But we’re gonna need it.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my sockets. Need it? For what? That thing just tried to eat my face off.
“We need it to figure out what we’re dealing with,” Lyle said, his eyes returning to the thing. Its body wasn’t heaving like it was taking breath, but a whole lot of steam was coming off it in wisps, like it was running on hot.
Lyle said, “Always gotta know your enemy. Gotta study them.” He inched closer and I inched with him.
Without looking my way, Lyle reached in the pocket of his plaid jacket and pulled something out. He bunched it up with one hand and tossed it across the beams at me. I caught it. A rough burlap sack. I held it up to him questioningly.
“To cover its face. We don’t know what it can see. Or if it’s a conduit.”
“For who?” What Lyle was saying was unbelievable because for someone to speak through a thing like this… that was practicing dark arts. That was blasphemous.
“I’ll tie off its hands and feet. Bind it up real good. You get the sack over its head and we’ll cinch it so it can’t see where we’re going and call its friends or its boss.”
I nodded, beginning to grasp what he was saying.
I looked into the inky voids of the monster’s eyes and wondered what might be staring back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
At Lyle’s house, we tied the monster up out back, leaving it in his work shed, and finally made it inside, just as the night began to give way to morning.
I started in. “Sheriff. We’ve seen one of those before. A few days ago, in Charleston. A whole bunch of them tried to attack Hailey and me.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on and why I’m up at this ungodly hour playing the role of vampire hunter with a bunch of kids?” he said matter-of-factly.
I updated him about the mysterious woman who could break through my defenses and probe my thoughts and all of the connections that pointed to her as a possible link to Naira. “What is it?” I asked when Hailey looked like she wanted to say something then thought better of it.
Hailey hesitated, and I waited impatiently. There was no time for this. Naira’s life was on the line.
