Chapter 1: Trouble
Chapter Text
"...and everybody knows that you're in trouble."
Everything was normal, up until and even after the kid lunged up on stage. Fifty fucking kids a day clambered up onstage somehow, no matter how many times Gerard bitched to security about it, so when Frank caught the movement out of the corner of his eye he thought, "here we go again," and braced himself for impact. He kept playing as the kid's arms closed around his neck and was about to try to shake him off, laughing, when there was a hot rush of breath and then, suddenly, pain, the dull red pain of someone biting him hard on the neck.
"Jesus fucking christ," Frank shouted, shoving the kid off of him, swinging the neck of his guitar around and slamming it into the kid's gut. His neck throbbed, but his hand when he pulled it away from his throat and looked at it was damp only with saliva and sweat and nothing more. The kid, a normal-looking kid in a black t-shirt and ratty jeans, his brown hair lank in his face, fell to the floor laughing and pointing. Gerard was still singing over on the far side of the stage, but Mikey had stopped playing and swung his bass around behind his back, ready, and Bob was standing up, both drum sticks in one hand.
"You're going to thank me later!" the kid screamed. "You're going to thank me!"
Maybe because they heard or maybe because they finally realized they had no rhythm section, Gerard and Ray turned around, Ray's guitar coming to a jangling stop like a woman being choked. The kid was scrambling to his feet when the security guards finally grabbed him, finally, wrenching his arms behind his back, but the kid still laughed and kicked his feet out. "You're going to thank me!" he said again as they hauled him off the stage.
"You're a fuckin' lunatic!" Frank shouted back. His neck felt hot and tight. He touched it again, carefully.
"You okay?" Gerard asked, coming across the stage, the mic still dangling in one hand. He grabbed Frank's shoulder with the other hand. "Let me see."
Frank allowed Gerard to lift his hand, wincing. The crowd roared, frustrated and hot, but man. The fucker had bit his neck. He tilted his chin back and let Gerard look. Gerard's fingers touched in the center of the heat, brushing gently. Frank closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth. "It's all right," Gerard said softly, his hand curved over Frank's shoulder. "It's just red or something."
"Jesus, what was up with that kid?" Ray asked, coming over. They were all standing around him, now, except Bob, who was still leaning over his drum kit. "He was nuts." Mikey didn't say anything, just looked over Gerard's shoulder at Frank's neck. "You all right?" Ray said.
Frank nodded. He didn't really feel all right. He felt hot and dizzy and shaken. And bitten. A kid just bit him. But that was sort of it, because he'd been bitten, but not really injured. It hurt, and it was fucking weird, but it wasn't really anything but fucked up. Not enough to stop the show. "I'm okay," he said.
"You sure?" Gerard said. He glanced out at the crowd. He meant "fuck them; we can stop this now," and Frank was grateful, he really was, but that wasn't fair. Not when he wasn't really hurt. Still, he wanted to kiss Gerard for the thought.
He nodded. "Let's just do this."
Gerard nodded. He slapped Frank's shoulder, squeezing it. "Cool," he said. He strode off to the center of the stage, Ray following after.
"You sure," Mikey said softly.
"Yeah," Frank said. "I mean, you know. I'll live." Mikey nodded.
"All right, you little fuckers," Gerard shouted into the mic. "Here's the rules: No fucking, no fighting, no punching, no biting, only moshing, RIGHT FUCKING NOW!" The crowd bellowed and turned into a writhing mass of hands and heads and open mouths. Frank smiled at them, but he was faking, fumbling through the chords. His neck hurt. And his head hurt. And these little fuckers were fucking insane and all he wanted to do was get back to the air conditioned bus and never hear the words "Warped Tour" again if it meant he had to put up with this shit. Fame was cool and everything, but there were fucking limits.
He made it through the rest of the set by watching Ray for cues, tossed his guitar to the tech almost before the final chords had finished reverberating through the amps, and leapt off the corner of the stage. The rest of them would follow him or they wouldn't, he didn't care. He just wanted to take a shower and get the sticky feeling off his throat.
"Frank! Frank!" Gerard caught up to him, draping an arm around his waist and pulling him close, making him stumble. The rest of them flanked him, walking quietly. None of them seemed to have their normal after-show exuberance, not even Ray, who lived for shows. "You all right, man?"
"I'm fine." Frank squirmed, trying to untangle himself from Gerard. There were people backstage, people who could see, but Gerard just held him tighter and finally, Frank gave up. It was how most of his relationship with Gerard worked. "One of our fucking fans just tried to draw blood, but I'm cool, man."
"We should call the doctor," Gerard said. "Just in case."
"In case what?" Frank said.
"The human mouth is seriously gross," Ray said. "You may have to get a tetanus shot."
"What?" Gerard released Frank. He was such a fucking baby about needles. It was maybe the one thing that had kept him off the horse.
"Yeah," Ray said. "When I got bit by a dog in the tenth grade, I had to have a tetanus and a rabies shot. It sucked."
"Frank has rabies?" Bob asked, coming up beside them. "You gonna start foaming, little man?"
Frank snarled at him. He wouldn't admit it if anyone asked, but their stupid shit made him feel all right. Not great, and his neck still hurt, but better. They all came on the bus with him, even Mikey, who hadn't been on the bus much lately. They all crowded around him and looked at the red spot on his neck and Ray called the tour doctor, who was a shockingly old guy named Steve.
Steve was also pretty fat and wheezed as he climbed up the bus steps, but it was strangely reassuring to have an old fat guy look at his neck and say, "nah, you're fine." The tour doctor on the Taste of Chaos tour had been whip-thin and had worn designer glasses and had had a tattoo on his neck, which had freaked Frank out when he saw him for a sprained finger. He knew it made him a hypocrite, but he didn't want his doctor to have a neck tattoo. Frank was pretty sure that Dr. Steve didn't have any tattoos. His fingers fumbled over Frank's neck.
"Nah, you're fine," Steve said. "There's not even a scratch. Just a bruise." He reached into his bag and pulled out a syringe.
"I thought you said I was fine," Frank said, leaning away from the needle.
"Sure," Steve said. "I'll give you the tetanus and some antibiotics and you'll be fine."
"Oh, jesus," Gerard moaned, and disappeared from Frank's line of sight.
Frank rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said. He pulled up his sleeve and turned his head, but the tetanus still hurt like a fucking bitch, so much that he didn't even really notice the antibiotics going in. He blinked back some water.
"All right," Steve said. "Let me know if it gets red or inflamed at all, okay?"
Frank nodded, swiping his hand under his eyes quickly. "Yeah, I will."
Gerard came back after Steve left and sat across from him, sipping a beer. "You want one?" he asked, holding the can out.
Frank shook his head, sighing. He didn't want one. He didn't want a goddamn beer and he didn't want Gerard to have a goddamn beer, but there wasn't anything he could fucking do about it. He'd had that conversation with Mikey three weeks ago. "No," he said.
"You gonna come out with us?" Bob asked. They meant out to see the other bands. There wasn't time on the Warped Tour to go off the grounds and see anything except maybe a club or a movie or a mall. They moved on too quickly, a punk rock carnival, packing up its tents and rolling on to the next town.
Frank shook his head. "Nah," he said. "I'm staying in."
"What about you, Mikes?"
Mikey shook his head. "I'm going to hang out here for a while," he said, meeting Frank's eyes. That was nice of him. He'd been spending most of his free time with Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy lately in some weird sort of platonic boycrush way. Gerard said that they were fucking, but Frank didn't think it was true. Mikey didn't fuck as many people, boys or girls, as Gerard thought he did. Mikey wasn't Gerard, as much as Gerard sometimes forgot that. It seemed to Frank that, while Pete and Mikey might end up doing something sometime, at least if Pete's googly love eyes at Mikey were any indication, they weren't doing it yet. Probably.
"God, I thought they'd never leave," Gerard said, leaning across the empty space between them and putting his hands on Frank's knees. "How do you feel?"
Over his shoulder, Frank saw Mikey snag the beer from where Gerard had left it and chug the whole thing. He smiled. "I feel okay," he said.
"Let me see," Gerard said. He knelt on the floor between Frank's knees and tilted Frank's head back. Mikey stood up.
"I'm gonna take off," he said.
"Later," Gerard said.
Frank lifted his chin in farewell. On his way out, Mikey hooked the remaining three beers from the six pack Gerard had bought the night before. He waved them at Frank as he left.
Gerard's fingers on his neck were tender and careful. "This doesn't hurt, does it?" he breathed. He was so beautiful close up -- his brilliant eyes, his smudged makeup, his dark hair -- that sometimes Frank couldn't even believe he was real. He'd said that once, maybe two months ago, when he and Gerard had just started fucking "as friends with benefits," and Gerard had blushed madly and told him to shut up. Frank should have known that Gerard's newfound sobriety was doomed from that minute, he thought. Gerard had no idea what he was to other people, what he meant to them, not even to Frank. Not even to Mikey.
"No, it doesn't hurt," Frank said.
"It's just a little red," Gerard said. "Can I kiss it?"
"I haven't washed it yet; that's sort of..." he was going to say "gross. That's sort of gross," but Gerard was kissing it already, his tongue swiping over the sensitive skin, his hands spread like starfish on Frank's thighs. Frank felt the tingle of contact everywhere. "God," he said instead. His eyes fell closed.
They had done it for the first time on the last night of the Green Day tour, high on success and stadium tours and just the unbelievable coolness that was their lives at that moment. Frank remembered looking around at the empty stadium after the show, the crew already hard at work tearing down the set, the stage being dismantled almost under his feet, and thinking that this was what it was like to be fulfilling your destiny. He'd had to sit down.
Then, later, back at the hotel, Gerard spilled into his lap like warm honey, his eyes sparkling, his mouth wide with laughter. The first kiss had been friendly, like the stage kisses, affectionate and meaningless, but after a while Gerard was pushing Frank's t-shirt up, urging his arms over his head, and Frank was gasping that they were just friends, friends with benefits, that this was just friendly sex and they would still be friends in the morning, and Gerard was laughing and nodding and saying "quit saying the word 'friends.'" And that was that.
It changed at some point. Frank wasn't sure when, but Gerard no longer made out with other guys (girls had never been his thing, at least, not on the tour) and Frank had told Jamia that he needed to be on a break and find out what else was out there. She had thought that he meant "fuck groupies" and he didn't correct her and tell her that what he meant was "fuck Gerard." He thought maybe her impressions would be more forgivable in the long run, if he ever wanted to be forgiven.
At this moment, he didn't want to be forgiven. Gerard had climbed up on his lap and peeled Frank's shirt off (Frank spent a lot of time at least half naked when he was alone with Gerard) and was kissing his shoulder, hands running over Frank's naked and tattooed skin. "Grr," he said, and bit Frank right where his neck turned into his shoulder, hard enough so that it was a little painful but also made Frank feel pinned and helpless and hot. Gerard laughed when Frank squirmed and kissed the spot.
"This is your fault," Frank sighed. His hands curled around Gerard's arms. Gerard's laugh was low and sultry against his skin.
"That was one song," he said, rocking gently on Frank's lap. "On the first album, even. One song."
"Still your fault," Frank muttered. "'You and you're all 'vampires are so cool. I'd rather be a vampire than dead.'" The last word was swallowed by Gerard's mouth on his, the faint sour taste of beer and the overwhelming taste of Gerard, something Frank was just starting to think he could recognize.
"Over you go," he said, pushing Frank to the side and turning him over until Frank was on his stomach on the couch, Gerard pinning both wrists above his head with one hand. He slipped the other hand under Frank's body and undid his pants. Gerard seemed to like it when things were a little bit difficult, when Frank resisted, or still had some clothes on that Gerard's fingers had to work around, or when they were in danger of being caught. Nothing was ever vanilla with Gerard.
He managed to get Frank's pants open and down around his knees and Frank pressed his face into the couch cushion and groaned, because Gerard was licking his way down Frank's spine, slowly, his mouth hot and Frank's skin cool where it had already been. Gerard tongued the spot low on his back, right before his ass. "I'm going to do awful things to you," he said, his breath hot over the small of Frank's back. Frank shivered.
They fucked on the bus couch, with half their clothes still on, Frank pinned under Gerard's heaving body, feeling the moist heat of Gerard's breath on his neck . Gerard said his name -- "Frankie" -- his voice going up at the end like he was surprised. "You're so amazing," Gerard panted, slipping his hand underneath Frank's hip as he collapsed, pressing him down. Frank groaned. Gerard kissed his throat, nuzzling into his hairline. "Roll over," he whispered in Frank's ear. Frank did, squirming under Gerard's damp skin, his jeans still tangled around his ankles. Gerard's hands roamed over his body and then he was gone, rubbing his rough cheek gently over Frank's belly, tracing the outlines of the tattoos with his mouth, then one wet finger. Frank loved it when Gerard did this -- there was something about looking down the length of his body and seeing it happen, spreading his legs, feeling Gerard's hair on the inside of his thighs, Gerard's hands on his knees. "Gerard," he breathed, lifting his hips. "Oh, Gerard."
When Frankie kissed him afterwards, Gerard didn't taste of beer anymore.
It wasn't a permanent solution, taking Gerard's alcohol away. For one, it wasn't like he couldn't get more anytime he wanted, especially on the Warped Tour, where kids smoked bowls right in front of the security guards. And two, he was starting to get mad about it.
"Seriously, Frank, what happened to it?" Gerard was bent over, peering into the mini fridge, wearing only his black jeans. "There were, like, four or five beers in here."
Frank shook his head. "Don't know, man."
"This is bullshit, Frankie. You guys are cadging my beer and it's totally fucking wrong of you."
Frank sighed, pulling his jeans and underwear up all at once. The material bunched up in the crack of his ass uncomfortably, but that sort of fit his mood. "Dude, I have been right here in front of you the whole fucking time. I did not take your beer."
"Well, then who did? Mikey? Ray?"
"Why do you have beer in the first place?" Frank asked. "You quit."
Gerard stood up and banged the fridge shut. "I can have a beer or two when I want one, Frank. You're making a huge deal out of nothing."
Frank sighed. He probably was. Gerard had started drinking again maybe two or three weeks ago, at first just taking a sip of Mikey's beer, or Ray's, on the rare occasions when they had them. Frank remembered the first time he'd seen it, remembered the feeling of his eyes bugging out of his head at the sight, the line of Gerard's neck as he tipped his head back to empty the can. The thing was, Gerard hadn't fallen back into those old predictable patterns -- the binge drinking, the drugs, the partying. He had a beer from time to time, maybe one or two every few days, less than a six-pack a week. He did the shows sober, he met the fans sober, he talked to interviewers sober, he wrote the music sober. And then he had a beer or two. It wasn't such a big deal.
"You quit," Frank murmured, almost to himself.
"Whatever," Gerard said. He picked up his t-shirt off the floor and yanked it back on. "I'm going to listen to the new stuff Ray did. Try to write something."
"Okay," Frank said. Not five minutes ago, Gerard had been lying on top of him, his hands stroking over Frank's sides, his breath steaming up the back of Frank's neck. Not five minutes ago, Frank had been happy. It was funny, sometimes, how fast things changed.
Frankie woke up from a dream of Gerard holding him down, gnawing off his fingers, his mouth slack and gaping with black blood.
"You all right?" Mikey asked, pulling his headphones out of one ear.
Frank wiped a hand over his face. "It was just a bad dream," he said. Mikey nodded, but he didn't put his headphones back in. Mikey did that a lot, sat and looked at people with hardly an expression on his face, like a really warm statue. It had creeped Frank out when he first met Mikey, back when he was in Pencey and Mikey was just an intern at Eyeball, making copies on the shitty Xerox machine in the office and carrying expensive coffee drinks in cardboard trays. He would sit in rooms, in meetings where he wasn't supposed to be, and listen to things he wasn't supposed to hear and no one would even notice him or remember that he'd been there until three days later when someone would say something and Mikey would say, in his strangely deep voice, "actually, they're supposed to get seven percent of the revenue," and then everyone would turn around and gape at him. If it was Gerard who had made the band famous, it was Mikey who had made sure they hadn't gotten screwed on the Reprise deal. "How's Pete?"
Mikey's mouth tensed up in what passed for a smile. Frank sometimes wondered what had happened to make Gerard and his brother so different. Gerard told everybody everything and Mikey told nobody anything. "He's good," he said.
"You came back over here, though," Frank pointed out.
Mikey shrugged. "I was just. You know." He waved a laconic hand in the direction of the bunks. "But he's fine, I guess. I should have stayed over there."
"Well, tomorrow," Frank said.
Mikey showed his little half-smile again. "Maybe. Tomorrow's a new day."
"Wow," Frank said. "You're so profound."
Mikey shrugged and plugged his headphones into his ears. Frank stood up and picked his shirt up off the floor. He went back to the miniscule bathroom and brushed his teeth and splashed water over his face. The bite had faded to a faint red patch, only visible when Frank hooked one leg over the edge of the sink and pressed his nose to the glass. "I guess I'll live," he muttered. He dried his face on his shirt.
Gerard was asleep in his bunk in just his underwear, one arm thrown over his head. He slept in the bottom-most bunk, so Frank had to kneel down to really see him. He was so pale, his skin made almost translucent by the black cotton sheets and the dark hair tangled over his forehead. He'd been working out since he quit drinking, an hour four or five times a week, and while he was thinner, his skin was still smooth and androgynous. He was never going to have the sharp whippet-like definition Mikey had. That must have come from their father, who Frank had never met. Frank brushed his fingers over Gerard's hair. Gerard stirred. Frank wanted to touch him again, but Gee was a light sleeper and would wake up and be a bitch for sure, so he didn't. Instead, he stood up and pulled the heavy curtain on Gerard's bunk closed, shutting out the faint light from the lounge. Then he climbed into his own bunk and pulled his own curtain shut and fell into his own sleep. He didn't dream again that night.
Chapter 2: Deal
Summary:
The crowd settled back uneasily, afraid of what it had done.
Chapter Text
II. Deal
"...everybody knows that the deal is rotten."
Mikey stopped Frank on their way out of the rehearsal truck the next afternoon, one hand on his shoulder. "Hey, I got you something," he said.
"What is it?" he asked, cautiously. Mikey was quiet but he sometimes played the grossest practical jokes. One time he put jizz on a sandwich Gerard had stepped away from for, like, a single second, a feat Frank had been both disgusted and amazed by.
"Here." Mikey handed him a white t-shirt. Frank unfolded it, holding it out in front of him like a flag. "Don't Bite The Guitarist," it said neatly, written in fat black magic marker.
Frank grinned. "That's so cool," he said.
"Gerard did it," Mikey said. "I mean, it was my idea, but he actually did it."
"This is awesome," Frank said. He took off his grey shirt and pulled the new one over his head. It was a little snug -- a clear sign that Mikey had picked it out -- but the letters ran right across his chest in two neat rows. "How'd you get it so perfect?" he asked, touching it.
Mikey grinned a full-fledged grin and held up his own t-shirt. "on t et he uita ist," was barely legible in black smudges on his skin just above his nipples. He'd worn the shirt while Gerard had lettered it.
"Dude," Frank said. He was truly touched. "This is really cool of you."
Mikey shrugged, tugging down his shirt. "Well, I'm a really cool guy," he said.
"And modest," Frank said.
"Handsome?" Mikey asked.
"Oh, gorgeous," Frank answered. "And have I mentioned humble?"
"And really really good looking," Mikey said. "Don't forget that part."
"How about I forget the part where you're a total assmunch?" Frank said.
"Yeah, forget that part," Mikey said.
They went to the stage and stood in the wings, watching Thrice flail around and shout obscenities to the audience. Frank thought it was much nicer going on after a band like Hawthorne Heights, who screamed a lot in their songs, but in between songs would thank people for coming and say stuff like "you guys have been super great to us." That way when Gerard said "fuck, fuck, fuck" and deep throated the microphone, there was more of a contrast. Coming after a band like Thrice -- a band that used "fuck" as a substitute for "hello, we're Thrice" -- microphone fellatio looked like a parlor trick.
There was the inevitable lull after Thrice finished and Frank contented himself with watching the waves of sweaty, bruised Thrice fans pushing toward the back of the crowd while pale, dark-haired MCR fans shoved to the front. It was like one tide going out and a black tide coming in.
"So," Bob said, coming up behind him. "How do they look?"
"Normal," Frank said. "Mostly."
"That's about right." Bob bounced his drumsticks off Frank's shoulder, tapping him lightly, tata tat tat. "No worries," he said.
"None at all," Frank answered. He knew that Bob's affectionate drumming meant "don't worry; I'm watching out for you," even if it was something that Bob himself would never say. Bob had spent a couple of years with The Used -- that was how they had met him, during Gerard's ill-fated infatuation with The Used's lead singer Bert -- and Frank had come to think of Bob as a sort of emotional Superman, able to keep the severely fucked up from falling apart in a single bound. He'd been really great when Gerard had quit drinking. Even though that had been like the worst time of Frankie's entire life, Bob had just been ... Bob, calm and rational and totally not pissy about anything. Bob was a good guy to have at your back, Frank thought.
"Righteous," Bob said. Then he slipped past Frank and headed out on the stage to start the drumming for Cemetery Drive. The fans hardly noticed him. Frank loved them, he really did, but sometimes, Frank thought the fans were totally stupid.
Nothing happened. They went on, they played, Gerard asked the audience about his ass and the only excitement came when a girl in the mosh pit whipped her own shirt off and security guards had to rush in and try to save her before she got groped to death. They didn't even have to stop the show for that one, security was so quick. Maybe, Frank thought as he tore into "Thank You for the Venom," because there were boobs involved.
"Good one!" Gerard said, slapping him on the back as they came off stage. Frank grinned at him.
"You staying?" Ray asked. Frank nodded. They would sometimes scope out other guitar players, just him and Ray, listening and concentrating and seeing what things they could use. People, even the music critics, thought that Gerard did most of the writing for the group, but what they didn't get was that Gerard did almost all of the lyric writing, but Ray was responsible for most of the music. Mest wasn't exactly their style, wasn't something they usually would stay for although the guys were cool, but that was sort of the point. Frank grabbed a towel and a bottle of water and leaned back against the metal structure of the stage. Ray settled in next to him, pulling a small tube of earplugs out of his pocket and tipping two into Frank's palm.
It was interesting to Frank to see how other bands played. When he was onstage he tried to stay on his side, just because Gerard was a fucking lunatic and Frank didn't want to accidentally poke his eye out or something, but Jer Rangel, the lead guitarist for Mest, was a maniac, pacing the stage like a lion in a cage, roaming back and forth behind his singer, Tony, the cord of his guitar trailing behind him. Then, it happened. One second Jer was shredding, leaning down toward the thin empty moat that separated him from the audience and then he jumped, so easily that he practically just stepped from the stage, and he was in the audience, crowd surfing, still playing although that wouldn't last long. Frank had learned long ago to leave the guitar onstage.
"Holy shit!" Frank gasped, grabbing Ray's wrist. "That is too fucking awesome!"
Security leapt into the crowd after Jer, yellow specks in a sea of black. Jer's guitar, separated from its owner, flew over the top of the crowd and landed onstage. Feedback wailed from the speakers. Tony stood on the edge of the stage now, laughing and pointing and waiting for his guitarist to get the fuck out of the crowd and back onstage.
And then he was, borne out of the crowd on the shoulders of three or four security guys, crawling over the crowd barriers and up onto the stage, shaking his head and smiling. Tony went over to help him up, laughing. He grabbed Jer's arm and that was when Frankie saw it. Blood.
It ran down Jer's arm and dripped off his fingertips into a rapidly growing puddle on the stage and Jer wasn't smiling, he was grimacing, his hand held out like a little kid who wants his mom, and a bunch of people, staff people, rushed onstage and circled around him and ran back and forth talking on walkie- talkies. The crowd settled back uneasily, afraid of what it had done.
It was one of the walkie-talkie people that Ray grabbed by the arm and asked "what the hell happened?" A young girl, an intern or something, maybe twenty, her blond hair tied up in a stubby ponytail, her eyes wide, her walkie-talkie clutched like a doll to her chest. "Oh god," she said. "They bit him."
Chapter 3: Boat
Summary:
"I know what you are," the girl said to him, smiling.
Chapter Text
III. Boat
"...everybody knows that the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows that the captain lied."
The second he found out what had happened, Gerard got on the phone with Chris, who was back in New Jersey arranging for the recording that was supposed to happen after the Tour was over, and starting yelling about how people were getting eaten and he didn't care what the fucking contract said, there was no provision about cannibalism and if they didn't get more security, like instantly, they were walking. "This is the second goddamn time this has happened!" Gerard shouted into the phone. "It's open season on guitarists!"
"He's such a total diva," Mikey said, awed by Gerard's performance. Bob, who Frank suspected had seen much better fit-throwing while he was with The Used (or much worse, depending on how you looked at it), shrugged.
"So what, exactly, happened?" Mikey asked.
Frank shook his head. "I dunno. He stage dived, dove, whatever, and when security pulled him out, he was bleeding."
"There was, like, a chunk of his arm missing," Ray said.
"But was it on purpose?" Mikey asked.
Ray shrugged. "Who knows? I mean, we couldn't see, but it wasn't like that kid who jumped on stage. It was probably an accident."
"Probably," Frank said, nodding, although he'd been in plenty of mosh pits and didn't know how someone could accidentally bite a chunk out of someone's arm. He supposed it was possible.
"Does this mean we have to make him a shirt, too?" Mikey asked.
They didn't have to make Jer a shirt, though, because Mest pulled out of the Tour the next day. Jer had been taken to the hospital that night and hadn't returned, and no one Frank knew saw any of the other guys before they left. The bus was just gone in the morning and that was it. Frank talked to some of the guys from Thrice and the Hawthorne Heights drummer and a couple other people who were on the same stage, but no one knew where they went. Stacey, one of the PR girls who hung around with Mest offstage, told Bob that Jer hadn't answered his phone since it happened. The news said that he was recovering and fine and warned people about the dangers of human bites and had quotes from Tony saying they'd be back on the Tour in no time, but no one actually on the Tour seemed to know when that would happen. It did mean, though, that everyone else got an extra four minutes or so, so that was sort of cool, if Frank didn't think too hard about the blood dripping from Jer's fingers, spattering on the stage.
"You have to stop thinking about it," Gerard told him a week later while they were curled up together under a clean hotel sheet, naked and freshly showered. "You're freaking out. It was an accident."
"I know," Frank said, although he didn't know that at all. "But still. It had to be a pretty major thing. Bite. I mean, they keep talking about it on the news and stuff. And. You didn't see how much blood there was."
"Frank, man." Gerard sighed, stretching out flat on his back, arms behind his head. That was one of the new things Gerard had started doing since he'd starting working out. Frank remembered when he wouldn't even let anyone touch his stomach, let alone show it off. Frank put his hand on it -- the newly flat pale flesh just above Gerard's pubic hair -- just as a test, and Gerard didn't even flinch. "You have to let it go."
"Sure," Frank said, drawing his hand up Gerard's chest and down his stomach slowly. "I know."
"And you keep wearing that shirt..."
"It's my good luck shirt," Frank said quickly, his hand closing over his bare chest reflexively. He liked the "Don't Bite the Guitarist" shirt. It felt like a warning. "You wear the same clothes everyday anyway."
"But I don't have to. I wouldn't refuse to go on if I couldn't find them."
"Yes, you would," Frank said. He wasn't entirely certain that was true, but Gerard was pretty picky about his clothes and besides, he'd just had to dig through his bag to find the shirt. It wasn't like it had been lost or anything. Just ... misplaced. For, like, a minute.
"No, I wouldn't," Gerard said. He arched his back slightly and spread his legs, encouraging Frankie's casual hand over the arch of his hips. When Frank obliged and slid his hand around Gerard's cock, Gerard closed his eyes and opened his mouth, just a little, just enough to make Frank want to stop and stay in this instant and look at him forever.
"Yes, you would," Frank said, squeezing. Gerard reached out blindly and grabbed Frank's arm and pulled him in and that was all either of them said for a long time.
"I know what you are," the girl said to him, smiling. She was one of the interns -- Frank had seen her around before, usually with a walkie talkie on her belt, like there was now. She'd stopped him right inside the backstage fence, a clipboard folded into the crook of her arm, a pen wedged in the top of it.
"Yeah, well." He laughed a little. "I know you, too."
"No." She shook her head. Her smile was slow and knowing, the way that people smiled right before someone went down on them, lazy and intimate. Coming from this girl he hardly knew, the smile made Frankie uncomfortable. Had she seen something she wasn't supposed to see? Had he and Gerard done something outside the bus? Frank couldn't remember. "I know what you are," she repeated, drawing a fingernail down his bare forearm.
He took a step back. "Well, whatever. I'm going now," he said.
"See you later, Frankie," she called after him. "See you around."
"Not if I can help it," Frank answered, but softly, so she couldn't hear him.
Gerard was on the bus smoking and drawing something in black pen on a cheap sketchpad that he'd gotten at a 24 hour Wal-Mart two states ago. They had all realized during the first Warped Tour that there were way too many hours in the day when they weren't playing or watching others play and there was only so much sleep a person could get, so Gerard had a whole paint set and canvases and everything in a little cabinet in the rehearsal studio in the back of the bus, but he'd still made the bus stop a few days ago and wait while he'd gone in and bought an 8x11 art pad and some normal roller ball ink pens. "I'm keepin' it real," he'd told Frank, when Frank had expressed disbelief. "I'm going back to my junior high roots."
"Hey, I got a question," Frank said. Gerard, who was drawing something dark and twisted, like an evil tree from what Frank could tell, looked up. "Did we, like, make out in a public place or something? One of the interns was acting all weird."
Gerard tipped his head to the side, thinking, his pen tapping his mouth. "Not that I'm aware of," he said finally. "I mean, besides on stage."
"Maybe that's it," Frank said. But the girl had looked at him so knowingly, like she'd seen something besides the obvious and orchestrated kisses Gerard planted on him at every seventh show. He shrugged. "Who the fuck knows. What are you doing?"
"Drawing," Gerard said. Unlike some other artists Frank had known, Gerard didn't get mad at you if you talked to him while he was drawing unless it was something serious or real. Like, when he'd done the cover for Three Cheers, he'd been sitting in his mom's kitchen talking to Frank while she cooked dinner, because the artwork was only supposed to be a mockup and wasn't a real project. Frank still remembered Gerard holding his paintbrush above the paper and letting the red splash onto it, hardly even looking down.
"What is it?" Frank asked, leaning over his shoulder.
Gerard shrugged. "I dunno." That wasn't what he meant, because Frank could see clearly that it was a house and there was a tree and a short fence in front of it. The tree was huge and twisted, like it was a hundred years old. So far, it didn't have any leaves on it. It didn't look like it was going to. But Gerard didn't mean that; he meant that he didn't know why he was drawing it. It was different from the way Gerard usually drew, less stylized and cartoon-like and more realistic.
"I like it," Frank said. He pressed his face into the curve of Gerard's neck.
"Ray's in back," Gerard murmured.
"He knows. They all know," Frank said, but he stood up straight anyway, settling for drawing his fingers over Gerard's nape. "I like it," he said again.
"You can have it when I'm done," Gerard said. That was another thing Frank liked about Gerard's drawings -- he gave them away. Frank had three or four of Gerard's sketches taped to the ceiling of his bunk already, including a drawing of himself that Gerard had done in about six seconds, and looked just like him even though it was just Frank's eye and his pierced lip and a scribble of hair.
"Cool," Frank said. And even though Ray was in the back, Frank leaned down and kissed him right on the back of the neck, quickly. He couldn't help it.
They hadn't been doing signings because the security was just a fucking mess and kids kept sneaking in the back of the tent or pushing through the front or standing outside and staring at them in ways that creeped Frank out, but in Kansas, the signing booth was actually a building with solid walls and air conditioning and doors that could be shut, so they decided to do one. It was important -- to Gerard mostly, but also to the rest of the band -- to actually talk to the fans. Some bands, even bands who, in Frank's opinion, were lucky to be on the Warped Tour, had the attitude that fans were a nuisance, that they were things to be avoided, like germs. Frank himself felt that way sometimes, when all he wanted to do was walk around the grounds and grab himself a lemonade vodka freeze and see some people play, but he couldn't because he'd get recognized and mobbed and it just wasn't worth the trouble. But the fans, as much of a pain as they were sometimes, loved them. Loved the band. Loved the music. And signings were a good way to remember that, to talk to people one on one and say "hi" and "thanks" and "nice to meet you."
So they were doing one at 2:30pm in Bumfuck, Kansas, a couple of hours before they went on. Frankie took his spot at the table on the far end from Gerard. Chris had designed the seating set up after a signing at the last Warped Tour where some girl had pushed past Ray and come straight over to Frank and Gerard and asked them to tag team her. The truth, which Frank didn't like to think about too often because it was so fucking stupid, was that after Gerard, he was the person the fans came to see. So he sat at one end and talked to them first and Gerard sat at the other and talked to them last, and the other guys sat in the middle in whatever order they wanted and talked (or didn't talk if you were Mikey) when they wanted.
The doors opened. Heat and people rolled in like a wave. "Hi," Frank said to the first girl, thirteen or fourteen at the most, in black jeans and a tank top and black and white striped socks on her arms, which was apparently a new thing although in Frank's humble opinion it looked super stupid. "I'm Frank," he said. "What's your name?"
It went on like that for about half an hour, Frank saying hi, asking names and signing his own onto paper, CD covers, magazines.
"Hi," he said to a kid wearing a black t-shirt and a leather cuff. "I'm Frank."
"I know who you are," the kid said.
Frank looked up. The kid was maybe sixteen or seventeen, brown hair cut short, blank eyes, pimples scattered across his chin. "What's your name?" Frank asked.
The kid slid a magazine onto the table, an old Kerrang! a picture of the band all bloody and beat up on the front cover. That was a fun photo shoot, Frank thought. He blinked.
"What's your name?" he asked the kid again.
"Sign it with your real name," the kid said.
"Frank is my real name," Frank answered, looking around. Bob, who was next to him, was chatting with a mom and her nine year old son, smiling and signing. The security guy by the door had his back to the table, watching for signs of disturbance in the line. Frank might as well have been alone.
"No, your real name," the kid said, leaning down, his hand flat on the table. His breath smelled of rotten tuna and puke. Frank gagged a little, shaking his head, and then he saw it.
On the kid's wrist, right near the edge of the leather cuff, a crusted red half-circle, the color of old rust. He looked up into the kid's eyes. "What's my real name?" he asked.
The kid smiled, and his teeth were stained too, lined in red, like he'd eaten one of those tablets they gave out to elementary school kids to see how well they brushed their teeth. His eyes glimmered with malice. His face was so close to Frank's that he could smell the blood, flecks of it becoming airborne with every breath. "You know," the kid said.
Frank could feel his heart beating, rapid fire, against his ribs, sweat rising on his forehead despite the air conditioning. This kid. This goddamn kid with his smart ass smile. "Fuck off," Frank murmured, scribbling his name across his magazine face. He shoved it back across the table. "Have a nice day." His own smile felt wide and toothy. No one came up to his fucking table and threatened him. No one.
The kid took a step back, just one, eyes flickering, and slid his magazine over to Bob. Frank stood up, smiling at the girl who was next in line. "One minute honey, okay?" he said, shoving back his chair. He edged past the other guys and crouched down by Gerard's chair. "There's a kid coming up," he whispered. "He's at Ray."
"What about him?" Gerard asked.
"He's fucked up, man. We should watch out for him."
"Fucked up how?" Gerard asked, but it was too late, the kid was standing there, magazine almost obliterated by signatures.
"You again," Frank said, standing up, one hand on Gerard's shoulder.
"Hey," the kid said, smiling shyly. "I'm a huge fan." He seemed smaller than he had at the other end of the table. Normal. Ordinary. Frank couldn't see his teeth.
"Thanks," Gerard said. "We're really glad you like us."
"Oh, I love you guys," the kid said. "I was telling Frank, you know. Earlier."
"What happened to your arm?" Frank asked. "You didn't get hurt or something did you?"
The kid paused and there it was, the sly expression that he'd had at Frank's end of the table, the shifty look. "Oh, nothing," he said, rubbing the wound. "I'm fine."
"Okay, well," Gerard said, glancing between Frank and the kid. "Have a good day, man."
"Yeah, you too," the kid said and then he was gone, out the far door and into the crowd.
Gerard grabbed Frank's arm. "What the fuck?" he whispered in Frank's ear, his breath hot and moist. Frank shook his head.
"Later," he said. "I'll talk to you about it later."
He tried to forget about it and focus on the kids in front of him, smiling and saying hello and letting people take his picture. They were almost done -- Frank could see the end of the line just outside the door -- when a teenage girl leaned down and flashed her breasts at him. "Could you, like, sign your real name?" she asked. Frank was too busy staring at the bite mark on her left breast to answer.
Chapter 4: Coming Apart
Summary:
They were above him, holding his arms, pressing against him, and he felt someone's warm breath on his throat, the prick of hairspray-stiffened hair against his cheek, and there it was, the hard red pain he'd felt before, the pain of teeth.
Chapter Text
IV. Coming Apart
"...everybody knows it's coming apart."
"Look, it's fucking weird is all I'm saying," Frank said, throwing up his hands. The others were just sitting there on the couches looking up at him like bored school children, even after he told them about the kid with blood in his teeth.
"Dude, have you met our fans?" Ray asked.
"No." Frank shook his head. "It's more weird than that. This isn't some chick coming up and asking Gerard to bite her neck. This is kids that have actually been bitten. Like, there are tooth marks. This girl had a bite mark on her boob!" He flapped his hands at his chest, frustrated. They didn't get it. They thought he was insane. "There's blood," he said, finally.
"Frank," Bob said in a very reasonable voice that made Frank want to strangle him. "I know you're freaked out by what happened to you --"
"What about Jer?" Frank asked. "He lost a chunk of his arm."
"That was an accident," Ray said. "You know that."
"Ray, man, at this point, all I know is that two different kids came up to me today with bite marks on them and asked me to sign my 'real name,' whatever the fuck that means, and some kid tried to gnaw on my neck and some other kid practically bit a guy's arm off and it's freaking me the fuck out."
"Vampires," Gerard said. He hadn't said much the whole time Frankie was trying to describe what had happened in the signing booth, the creepy kid and his bloody teeth and his horrible breath, and Gerard just sat there and let everybody else basically tell Frank he was nuts.
"Wait, what?" Ray said.
"It's from comics or Anne Rice or something," Gerard said. "Some secondary source. A vampire asks for your real name to get power over you. They use it to charm you. They think they're vampires."
"Jesus," Frank said. He felt something in his chest loosen. Vampires. Their fans were fucking insane, sometimes. "Fucking nutcases."
"Really," Mikey said, nodding. "I saw, like, a thing about it on Dateline, how kids are pretending to be vampires and biting each other and shit." He shook his head. "It's sick, man."
Frankie folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. It was still fucked up, kids biting people, but he still felt better, like some weight had been lifted, like one word from Gerard had fixed things. Of course these silly kids thought they were vampires. They read too much bad vampire fiction and watched too many crappy videos and they were stupid kids who were looking for something to believe in. Stupid, but Frankie could sort of understand it. It wasn't so long ago that he'd been looking for the same thing.
Gerard smiled. "Well, yeah."
"Were the bite marks, like." Mikey made fangs with his fingers and tapped them against his neck. "You know. Vampirey?"
Frank rolled his eyes at him. Mikey was seriously too much. "No, dude. They were not."
"Okay, so what are we going to do about it?" Bob asked. "We can't just have kids, like, biting each other --"
"Or biting me," Frank interjected.
"Right." Bob nodded. "Or biting Frank. Should we say something?"
Gerard shrugged. "We could. We could, like, put out some sort of public service announcement or something about how biting people is dangerous because of blood-borne diseases or something."
"This is all your fucking fault," Frank said. He collapsed into the bean bag chair on the floor, shoving his fingers into his hair. They were still totally insane, these fans, but at least they were totally insane in the way that all teenagers were insane. That was something. "I blame you."
"Hey," Gerard said, holding up one hand. "You're the one that has 'tasty' written on his ass, apparently. No one's been asking me for my real name."
Frank blinked. It hadn't occurred to him that it was only him. "Really?" he asked, looking around. Everyone else shrugged.
"Just you, man," Ray said.
"You're vampire bait," Mikey said. He wasn't smiling, exactly, but his face was all scrunched up like he was trying to keep it inside.
"Shut the fuck up," Frank said, sighing.
The next day they called Chris and got him on the public service message thing and reminded him about the extra security detail because, Frank told him, "I don't want to be a teeny snack," and then Mikey gave him a new t-shirt, a red one that said "Vampire Bait" across the front in Gerard's careful handwriting, and Gerard gave him boxers that said "tasty" across the ass and groped him on the bus in front of everyone.
"This explains a lot," Bob said, grabbing his water and heading out the door.
That afternoon, Jer died.
Frank found out about it from Ray, who was always getting news updates on his Treo. It was annoying, usually, Ray bounding into the room and shouting, "oh my god!" like something important was happening, and then telling them the NASDAQ was up six points and laughing hysterically, but this time when Ray unclipped the phone from his belt and said "oh my god," his voice was very soft and uncertain, much the way he had sounded in the hours after Gerard's grandmother had died. Frank, who'd been reading on the floor in a patch of air-conditioned sunshine, looked up.
"What," he said.
Ray glanced at him. "Where's Gee?" he asked.
Frank shrugged. He pushed himself up to a sitting position praying that it wasn't something with Gerard's mom. There was just no way they could handle that at the moment, not when Gerard was already semi-off the wagon. It just couldn't happen. "What, Ray? What happened?" he asked.
Ray sighed. "Frank," he said.
Kurt Loder was doing the announcement when they turned on the television, his face solemn and older-looking than Frank remembered seeing it. "...guitarist Jeremiah Rangel has died of an unknown illness. Rangel was hospitalized last month after a fan attacked and bit him, but it is not known whether that attack contributed to his untimely death. His attack is only one of several biting incidents reported across the United States in recent months, including the violent attack on Representative John Adamson, a congressman from Illinois, and an incident involving My Chemical Romance guitarist and fellow Warped Tour participant Frank Iero. Once again, Mtv is sad to report that Mest guitarist Jer Rangel has died at the young age of twenty-seven. We now return..."
Ray clicked off the television. "I'm calling Dr. Steve," he said. Frank, who had flinched when he'd heard his name, just nodded.
Dr. Steve didn't seem quite so relaxed about the whole thing once he heard about Jer, but there was nothing he could do except draw blood and pat Frank on the knee reassuringly. "I'll have some tests done," he said. Frank nodded again. He couldn't say anything. He couldn't remember ever wanting to say anything. Steve stood up and almost got creamed by Gerard, who came flying through the door, black boots clambering up the bus stairs, face flushed from exertion.
"Holy shit, Frank!" he said and grabbed him up and hugged him close. His breath rasped and heaved in Frank's ear, sort of like it did when they were having sex. Frank patted his waist. "Are you okay?"
Frank nodded again, against Gerard's shoulder. "Dr. Steve's doing tests," he said.
"Tests," Gerard said. He pulled back a little, his eyes wide with concern. Frank shrugged. "God," Gerard said, kissing him on the mouth and then pulling him back into a hug. "What the fuck is going on?"
They were still going on. Tour management had called Chris and demanded that the show go on and pointed out some nasty provision in the contract about cancellation and penalties, so they were going on at 4:35, just like they were supposed to. Frank felt like an astronaut getting strapped in to a space suit when the guitar tech hung his guitar around his neck. He stepped up to the microphone and took a deep breath and waited for the monster inside him to take over and eventually, halfway through the third song, it did and he forgot everything for a while.
Afterwards, he wandered around backstage for a little while, watching the other bands, idly curious about how they were holding up. Some of them either didn't know or didn't care -- guys who were still piss drunk and laughing, guys shoving each other around, smiling into the afternoon sun. Frank decided that they didn't know. The other option was too depressing.
He headed back to the buses at six or so, hungry and sad and ready to go to bed and wake up and have everything be normal again, instead of hazy and weird. There were fans by the gate, a cluster of girls and a few guys, all in their teens, dressed in black hoodies and jeans despite the heat, sunglasses hiding their eyes. "Frank!" they shouted when they saw him. "Frankie!"
He looked at them for a minute, considering, but it wasn't their fault that someone had died, and it wasn't like they had known the guy. They were just kids trying to meet someone semi-famous. Frank walked over.
"Hey," he said. "Hi. Um, there's been a sort of accident, so I'm not --"
"Oh, Jer," a girl said, nodding sympathetically. "Were you a friend of his?"
"Sort of," Frank said. "So, um, I'm not going to stay for pictures or --"
"It's real sad," a guy said, shoving his hand through his dark hair. "Did you see it happen?"
"Well," Frank said. "I was there, but--"
"I was there," another girl said, a tiny girl with black and white striped socks on her arms and red red lipstick. "I was there and I saw the whole thing. It was awesome." The other kids laughed, nodding, their teeth flashing in the afternoon sun. They were all around him, Frank realized. While he'd been distracted by their questions they had circled around him, the way a wolf pack would a wounded deer. He fought back the rush of adrenaline. They were just kids. Just stupid unfeeling kids.
"It wasn't awesome, you little freaks," Frank said, raising his voice over their laughter.
They stopped laughing and looked at him. He could feel their eyes through the dark plastic of their sunglasses. One kid had on mirrored lenses and he could see himself in them, warped and small.
"You didn't just call me a name, did you?" a tall kid asked. "Cause that's fuckin' rude, man."
"Seriously!" the little girl said. "Some people get famous and think they can say any shit they want! God!"
"That's bullshit," someone said. "You're lucky you're who you are and not just some normal guy or we'd tear you to pieces."
"Yeah, that's about it," Frank said. He shoved the tall kid, trying to get him out of the way.
"Fuck you!" someone yelled, and then they were on him, all seven or eight of them, grabbing at his clothes, punching him, yanking his hair so that his head jerked back. Someone got him in the stomach, low, just above the waistband of his jeans and his breath whooshed out of him in a wave. He could barely hear them anymore, but he could see them, their merry faces, their black-shaded eyes, the reflection of his neck in the mirrors above his head. They were above him, holding his arms, pressing against him, and he felt someone's warm breath on his throat, the prick of hairspray-stiffened hair against his cheek, and there it was, the hard red pain he'd felt before, the pain of teeth.
And then it was gone, and the girl who'd bitten him was flat on her ass on the pavement. The kids who'd had his arms dropped them. The one who'd punched him stepped back. Frank staggered backwards, pressing his palm to the side of his neck, but there was nothing, no blood.
"It's true," the girl said. "It's him."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Frank screamed at them. "What the fuck is your problem?"
"You leave us alone!" the tall kid shouted, standing in front of his fallen friend. "Don't come near us."
"ME?" Frank shouted. "Fuck you and your fucking psycho blood sports, you little assholes! Don't come near me!"
"Come on," the tall kid said, helping the girl to her feet, one eye on Frank. "He's nothing. Forget about him. We'll find someone else."
"Fuck off!" Frank shouted. He grabbed some gravel from the ground with his free hand and threw it at their retreating backs. It bounced off the shoulders of their hoodies, but none of them turned around. "Fuck off, you little freaks!"
He stood and watched them go, chest heaving. His neck throbbed. They wandered back out toward the fairway like a murder of black crows, blending easily in with the crowd.
"Fuck," Frank muttered, when they were finally out of sight. "Motherfucker." Then he fainted.
When he came to, he was lying on the bench seat of a van, his head in Gerard's lap. "He's awake," Gerard said. Pete, Mikey's friend from Fall Out Boy, leaned his head over the seat in front of them. His face was swollen and red, like he'd been beaten or crying.
"Hey," Pete said, weakly. "How's it going, man?"
"They attacked me," Frank mumbled. "There were a bunch of them."
Pete blinked and retreated and a minute later Frank heard soft sobs over the hum of the wheels on the road. He pushed himself up, falling against Gerard. Pete was in the seat in front of them with Mikey and some other guy that Frank recognized, but couldn't name. He was slumped over, his head in his hands, Mikey's arm around his shoulders. Frank looked at Gerard.
"They got on stage," Gerard whispered. "They got Joe and Patrick. They killed them."
"Who?" Frank asked. Gerard sighed and squeezed him tight. His breath was hot on Frank's neck, hot and jagged.
"Vampires," Gerard whispered. "Vampires."
Chapter 5: Dice
Summary:
The water slid over his face and erased his tears as they came.
Chapter Text
V. Dice
"...everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed."
Gerard didn't really mean it about the vampires, a fact that became clear as he whispered, his breath rasping in Frank's ear. "The cops think they were on PCP or something. Fucking fucked-up kids. One of them bit one of the cops while they were being arrested. The cops wanted us to stay and give statements, but I said fuck that. We weren't sticking around for them to figure it out. Not after they found you face down in the parking lot."
"They attacked me," Frank said again, his voice thick. "Like six of them. Or eight." They had told him what was going to happen. "We'll go find someone else," the tall kid had said, and he, Frankie, he hadn't done anything about it.
"You're okay though," Gerard murmured, his hand roaming over Frank's chest. It was a question.
"I guess," Frank said, although he didn't feel okay. He wasn't dead, though. That was something. He guessed.
They checked in to a Holiday Inn along the highway, maybe in Kansas, maybe in Indiana, Frankie didn't really know. Bob went in and got the rooms, and the rest of them sat in the van and didn't look at each other and didn't speak. Frank curled his hand around Gerard's wrist and pressed his fingers against the pulse there.
There were two rooms on the second floor with double beds in each, and a connecting door that Mikey unlocked and threw open immediately.
"I'm going to take a shower," Frank muttered to no one in particular.
"Oh, here," Gerard said. He handed over one of the several black duffel bags he'd carried up. Frank opened it. Clothes, his iPod, his cellphone. He felt his eyes blurring over.
"Thanks," he said. Gerard nodded.
Frank went into the starkly lit bathroom and shut the door behind him. He sat down on the toilet seat and pulled out his cell phone and took a deep breath.
He called his mom first and told her they'd left the tour for security reasons but that everything was fine. She was worried, but not too much, not after she heard that the whole band was with him. "Even Ray?" she asked. For some reason, his mom thought that Ray hung the sun and the moon. Frankie thought it might be because of the fact that, despite his crazy hair, Ray seemed like a nice responsible boy. Ray was a nice responsible boy.
"Of course Ray, mom," he said.
"Well, be careful. Check in with me."
"Love you, mom," he said softly.
"I love you, too," she answered.
Jamia was next. "What?" she said.
"Hey, it's me, um--"
"I know who the fuck it is, Frankie," she said. "What do you want?"
"Um, we left the tour," he said, trying to think of how to explain what had happened in a way that didn't sound fucking crazy.
"Okay," she said.
"See, there was this thing, a kid bit me, and it just got really dangerous and--."
"Frank, jesus. You're making no sense. Are you drunk? I thought you quit when Gerard quit?"
"He sort of started again," Frank said. "But that's not--"
"Great," she said. "The Party Twins are back in business. Look, Frankie. I have to go, okay? You can't just call and talk to me anymore."
"I know," he said, desperately, holding the phone close to his mouth. "I know, okay? But the thing is there are sick people out there, honey, and you should--"
"Frank, stop. Just stop. Stop talking, stop calling, stop everything."
"Jamia--"
"Good bye, Frank."
"Jamia--" he said again, but she had already hung up. He set the phone down on the bathroom counter and took off his clothes, piling them neatly on top of the toilet seat. He turned on the water, and pulled out the little knob that made the water into shower spray. He spread the bathmat carefully on the floor. He climbed in the tub and stood under the spray, tipping his head back so that water wouldn't run into his eyes. It was yellow in the tub, the fluorescent light dimmed by the thick yellow plastic of the shower curtain, like Frank was standing in an old photograph. He looked at his hands in the strange light, the lines criss-crossing them, the sprawl of the fingers. He wondered if Gerard had remembered to bring his guitar. Then he put one hand flat on the tile wall of the tub and used it to hold himself up. The water slid over his face and erased his tears as they came.
When he came out of the shower in fresh boxers, holding his dirty clothes in a bundle against his chest, the others were watching television. The news. And not Mtv news, which was usually all they cared about, but real news, CNN. Frank sat down on the bed next to Gerard, who scooted over for him without even glancing his way.
"...most recent in a series of reports of teenagers attacking and wounding others in imitation of vampires. Later, our experts will talk about the goth phenomenon and what you can do to prevent your child from falling victim to this strange new craze."
Gerard laughed a short bitter laugh, but the newscaster was still talking, and Frank didn't want to miss anything. "...video from the strange attack," the female newscaster was saying. "We want to warn you that this is very disturbing and is not appropriate for children."
The quality of the clip was very poor, smudged and grainy, but it was of someone playing at Warped, shot from the far right side of the stage. Someone's cell phone, Frank realized. Some kid taking video with his phone. The band, Pete's band, Fall Out Boy, was playing a song but the volume overwhelmed the cellphone's audio ability and kept cutting out and buzzing with static and Frank couldn't recognize the song. Then, suddenly, it happened, something black flying up out of crowd, a person, maybe, launching itself onstage and into Patrick, the lead singer, grabbing him, knocking him to the ground and falling on top of him. And then there were two more, just blurs really, on the far side of the stage, grabbing one of the others, Joe, the guitarist, and Frank couldn't really tell what was happening except that the first person, the first attacker--
vampire, he thought, and hugged his clothes close
--was standing up, his arms outstretched and something was falling from them, something was dripping, and then there were screams and the camera phone was jostled and the video cut off.
There was a moment of silence on the television screen. The female newscaster cleared her throat awkwardly. "Um, obviously," she said, "a very sad day for fans and relatives of the band Fall Out Boy. Police say they have suspects in custody and are investigating the cause of this terrible terrible attack. In the meantime, the search is on for the remaining members of the band, bassist Peter Wentz and drummer Andrew Hurley, who disappeared right after the incident. We'll continue to update you on this developing story as new information comes in. Paul?"
Frank looked around, but neither Pete nor Hurley were in the room. "Where?" he whispered to Gerard, who nodded toward the open connecting door.
"They're sleeping," he said.
"What are we gonna do?" Frank said.
"We're going home," Gerard answered. "We called Chris already and he's calling their manager and we're going drive that way and drop them off in Chicago and catch a flight there. It's only, like, a day or two drive at most. And this way no one can get to us."
Frank nodded. "Okay," he said, relieved. There was a plan. Gerard had a plan and managers were involved and they were going to be home in a day or two. They were fine. Frank pressed his face into his dirty t-shirt and breathed for a second just to calm himself. Fine.
They ordered pizza and beer and Frank got dressed while they waited for it to come, and they ate cross-legged on the beds in front of the television. Not the news, thank god, just some stupid movie on TBS about Julia Roberts and her abusive husband and how she faked her own death to get away. It was a total chick movie, but there was something reassuring about the stupidity of it, something that seemed normal. Frank lay down on the bed while it was on and fell asleep to the sounds of a carnival.
He dreamed of a fence made of logs, sitting on it and leaning back, the rough-hewn wood digging into his palms, until he was looking up into the branches of an old oak tree, the bare branches scratching designs on the blue summer sky, and when he woke up, it was dark in the room, the t.v. silent, the only noise the sound of breath. Gerard was on the bed with him, curled up so that Frank could only see the dark curve of his shoulder in the faint light from the parking lot. He sat up slowly, so as not to wake him.
There were two people in the bed across from him, too; Ray, obviously, his hair erupting from under the sheet, and probably Bob. Frank stood up and stretched. He felt better now that he'd eaten and slept and things were happening, now that they were going home. He padded to the open adjoining door and looked in.
The curtains were open in the other room, letting in more of the sodium light from parking lot, coloring the room orange. Someone was asleep in the bed by the door. In the other bed, there were two people and, while Frank watched, one of them rolled over and shifted toward the other under the blanket. Probably Mikey and Pete, Frank thought, smiling, and then there was more movement and the sheet slid and there was Mikey's thin shoulder, and the curve of his ear and then a hand on his neck, his arm and the rasp of breath and, Mikey's hips moving under the blanket and someone sighing "please," barely audible.
Frank took two steps back, into his own room. It made him sort of sad, seeing that, knowing that it was probably just out of sympathy and that Mikey would be embarrassed if he knew Frank had seen, because he'd never meant to sleep with Pete, never wanted more than to be his friend. Frank sighed.
He knew that he should go back to bed, but he felt awake, too awake to lie down, so he went to the window instead, pulling the thick commercial drape back and slipping in front of it, its dusty weight swaying against his back. He could see the parking lot and the field beyond and even further out, the highway; the pale headlights of the occasional semi-truck were all that moved. He stood there for a while, forehead pressed against the glass, hypnotized by the peace and quiet.
Below him, a car door slammed.
Frank jerked a little, surprised, but it was just a guy on the far side of the lot, holding a jacket or something in his hand. Frank watched as the guy crossed the lot and headed for the nearest door. He was walking past almost right beneath Frank's window when he stopped. His head lifted as if there had been a noise and Frank scanned the parking lot for someone else.
When his gaze returned, the man was staring up at the window.
Frank recoiled, wondering if the man could see him. He didn't think so, not from the ground in the dark, not when the lights were off, but he didn't know, he couldn't tell. The man in the parking lot shrugged and moved on, heading toward the door. When he'd disappeared out of sight, Frank scrambled away from the drapes, hand over his chest. He was really starting to totally freak out if just seeing some guy in the parking lot was enough to give him the creeps.
He stood in the middle of the room for a minute, wondering if running the sink for a drink of water would wake everybody else up, and then he heard it, the click and snap of the door at the end of the hall opening and shutting. The man from the parking lot, maybe.
Frank tiptoed over to the door and pressed his eye to the spy hole, hands flat against the door, wondering if he'd be able to see him when he passed. He heard the muffled sound of footsteps approaching, the low tuneless whistle of someone singing to themselves, and then the spyhole was blacked out.
He was outside the door. Frank glanced down. Locked and deadbolted with that thing that stopped maids from coming in, even if they had keys. Locked.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," the man said softly. "I know you're in there, little bird."
Frank closed his eyes and pressed his mouth shut. Stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet, he thought. No sounds, no breath.
"Maybe you should open the door," the man crooned. "Maybe just a little. You saw me, little friend, and now maybe I should see you."
Frank pushed his hands against the wood and opened his eyes. The peephole was still black, the man's eye against it, maybe. They were close enough to kiss, if the door hadn't been between them.
"Maybe not, then," the man said, chuckling to himself. "Maybe some other time, huh, little bird?"
After a second, the light returned to the peephole and Frank could hear the soft shuffle of footsteps on the carpeting. A minute later, a door far down the hall opened and closed.
Frank turned and sat heavily, his back against the door, head in his hands, mouth pressed into his palms to keep from screaming. The whole world was falling apart. The whole fucking world. "oh," someone said softly from the other room. "oh, yeah."
Chapter 6: Plague
Summary:
The scream was horrible, full-throated and terrified.
Chapter Text
VI. Plague
"...everybody knows that the plague is coming.
Everybody knows that it's moving fast."
They went down to breakfast at the hotel restaurant the next morning, all seven of them, looking out of place in their black t-shirts and tight jeans. Frank kept twisting around in his chair, surveying the whole dining room, but no one seemed to care who they were and finally Bob asked him to "please, hold still for one fucking minute," and Frank stopped looking. No one really stared at them except an old guy in a trucker looking hat at the counter and that was probably because he thought they were fags.
They went back up to the rooms and took showers, one by one, the others watching cartoons and not news on television. Frank skipped his, since he'd just had one last night, and sat cross legged in front of the television. After a little while, Pete came and sat next to him, his hair wet and dripping onto the collar of his t-shirt.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," Frank said. Then, because it seemed to require something more, "how're you doing?"
Pete shrugged, staring at the television. He looked haggard and thin and sick. Even the stubble on his chin seemed pale against Pete's normally swarthy skin. "I dunno," he said.
"Oh. Okay." Frank turned back to the television. It was one of those kid's cartoons, where there was a card game to go along with it and you had to play the card game for the show to make any fucking sense, but it was better than the news or another chick movie. It was mind numbing, at least.
When the commercial came on, Pete cleared his throat. "Mikey saved me," he said.
Frank turned his head, but Pete was still faced straight ahead, his hands in his lap, his eyes unblinking. "Oh yeah?" Frank said softly.
Pete nodded. His voice, when he spoke, was strangely flat and affectless, like a robot's voice, full of strange pauses and swallowed words. "I saw it come out of the crowd and grab Patrick and I was going over there, and then I saw its teeth and 'rick was screaming out and. You know. Had his hands out. And I was going over there to, you know. Save him. Or something. And Mikey grabbed me and we ran. We ran."
"What did it look like, Pete?" Frank asked softly.
Pete blinked three, four times in rapid succession, but his voice was still the same dead voice when he answered. "A kid," he said. "But it wasn't. It wasn't a normal kid. This cartoon sucks."
Frank bit his tongue to keep from laughing or crying out. "Yeah," he said. "It does."
The drive was just like every other road trip they'd been on except that Pete and Hurley were there. The road passed under them endlessly. They stopped to piss or eat or stretch their legs or change drivers and then they moved on. Frank dozed or listened to his iPod, his feet in Gerard's lap.
"Hey," he said softly to Gerard, just before lunch. Everyone else except Bob, who was driving, was asleep. Gerard looked over.
Frank scootched across the bench seat until he was next to Gerard. "I have a question."
"Shoot," Gerard said.
"Is there something about, like, birds and vampires? That you know of?"
Gerard sighed. "They aren't vampires, man."
"No, I know that," Frank said. "But if they think they are, what's the difference?"
Gerard shrugged, admitting the point. "Birds?" He thought for a minute. "Maybe. I dunno. I think I remember something, but not really, you know? There could be. Why?"
"I just thought I remembered something about birds," Frank said. "That's all."
"You want to stop and get some holy water or something?" Gerard murmured. He meant it affectionately, Frank could tell that by the soft smile on his face, but Frank remembered the man's voice outside the Holiday Inn door and shivered.
"Maybe," he said.
They didn't stop for holy water, although, in Frank's mind, they stopped for everything else. Gas, food, bathroom breaks, Twizzlers, Doritos, beer. That was the one problem with riding in a van again after the luxury of the tour buses. On the buses, there were distractions. Video games, television, art, other people, and Gerard had been able to resist the siren song of alcohol. On the van, with nothing to do but lean up against one another and try to sleep and look out the window, Frank could hardly blame Gerard when he cracked open his fourth beer. Frank was on number two himself, but that was only because they'd gotten Miller Lite, which he hated, but had been the only thing cold. Still, he found himself looking up over the bench seat at Mikey, who stared back miserably.
So they drank -- Gerard, who never drove, and Pete and Hurley, who, by some silent consensus of the group weren't asked to drive -- and Frank and Mikey and Ray and Bob switched off, sipping beers in between turns and watching the road unfold beneath the wheels.
They got into Chicago after midnight, cruising down the mostly deserted side streets in response to Hurley's murmured directions. They were going to his mother's house, a little apartment above the neighborhood bar that she owned. "It's, um," Hurley said. His hand waved sadly. Frank didn't know Hurley very well, just to say hi to around the keg in the parking lot during the afterparties, and he hadn't said much in the van since they'd left the tour, just sat quietly in his seat and looked out the window and sometimes patted Pete's shoulder. He answered questions when he was asked things, but he didn't cry and and he didn't laugh. Frank thought that maybe Hurley was what shock looked like. "She's," he started again. "We didn't have much money."
"Oh!" Frank said, suddenly understanding. "That's cool, man," he said. "None of us did."
Hurley nodded and turned back to the front, directing Ray to turn left down a narrow street. For Frank, Chicago had always been a big city, the biggest in his mind after New York and L.A., teeming and full and streaked with bright lights, but the streets they were driving down now didn't fit into that idea of Chicago at all. They were small and narrow and crowded with houses and older cars parked in front of the yards, their rusted spots absorbing the street light instead of reflecting it. The trees were strangely large and loomed over the street, branches brushing the top of the van as they drove by.
The bar was on a corner next to a gas station, a two story building, brick on the bottom and white siding on the top. It didn't have a sign or anything, just a Miller Lite neon sign in the small window and a wide open screen door. A bunch of cars were parked out front, the same kind that were parked along the streets -- older, big, dented -- and a few motorcycles. There was no place for the van, though, so Ray said he'd just stay where he was and wait for them in case a cop came.
They all clambered out of the van, Frank's hand on Gerard's back, and stood out in the street for a minute, not knowing what to do. Then Pete took a step forward and hugged Hurley tight, wrapping his arms around Hurley's neck and murmuring something that Frank couldn't make out. He looked away, down the sleeping street.
After a second, Pete and Hurley separated and they all went in, following Hurley, who smiled wanly at the big guy sitting by the front door and said "hey, George, they're with me."
The bar was like a hundred other dives Frank had been in over the course of his musical career, small and cramped, a high counter on one side of the room, a pool table on the other, low tables clustered around. There were maybe twenty people milling around, mostly men in jeans and t-shirts and motorcycle vests, although there had been only two or three motorcycles outside at most, and a couple of girls. Women, really. Older women with raggedy blond hair. A lot of them looked up when they heard people coming in.
"Hurley!" one older guy with a full beard shouted. He looked like the owner of one of the motorcycles. "Hey, motherfuckers! It's Andy Hurley! Jeanie's kid!"
"Hurley!" some of the other guys shouted and Hurley smiled and went over and got grabbed and swung around and slapped on the back. The other bar patrons sort of smiled and nodded at them, acknowledging the right of Hurley's friends to stand in the doorway like idiots.
"Well, I don't know about you motherfuckers, but I'm getting a drink," Gerard said.
"Gee," Frank said. Gerard turned. Frank sighed. He wanted to say "don't. You quit," but what was the fucking point? They'd left their tour and Patrick was dead and Gerard had been drinking all day and it wasn't like another one was even going to make a difference at this point. Frank could say something, maybe, when they dropped off Pete at his --
Someone tapped his shoulder.
It was one of the women, a short brunette, her hair teased up a good three inches off her forehead in a perfect arch. Jersey hair, in Chicago. "You guys friends of Andy?" she asked.
Frank nodded. Gerard, he saw, was at the bar already, along with Bob. "Yeah," he said.
"You play in a band, too?" She blew cigarette smoke out of side of her mouth.
Frank sighed. He so did not want to get picked up by some barfly old enough to be his mother. But there was nothing to do but wait until everyone was ready to say their goodbyes to Hurley and it wasn't like it would take very long since Ray was waiting out in the van. "Yeah," he said again. "We're not in Hurley's band. A different one."
"Oh, yeah?" she asked. "What's the name? Would I have heard of it?"
"Um, maybe," Frank said. "We're called My Chemical Romance."
The brunette thought for a minute, her palm on her forehead, her cigarette dangerously close to the hairsprayed shelf of her hair. "Nah," she said. "I don't think so. Maybe you can play us something before you go."
Frank was about to answer her, to explain how they had someone waiting in the car, when he saw it, the angry rust-colored circle on the inside of her elbow, practically black in the dim neon light from over the bar. "What happened to your arm?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said, smiling a slow easy smile. "You gotta name, sweetie?"
Frank took a step back. Gerard and Bob were at the bar, drinking beers and talking to some guys on stools over there. Hurley was still near the back tables, the bearded guy's arm over his shoulder. Mikey and Pete were closer, to his left, still near the door, hanging back the way Mikey always did. "What happened to your arm?" Frank asked again.
The woman smiled, sucking a drag on her cigarette and puffing out the smoke, trailing one finger down the front of Frank's t-shirt before answering. "I dunno," she said, eyes glinting, red and blue in the neon lights. "I think something bit me."
"Run!" Frankie screamed to no one in particular. "Run!"
It happened fast, the whole bar shifting into action. Frank leapt for the pool table, past Mikey and Pete, and snatched up a pool cue, lifting his eyes just in time to see the bearded guy sink his teeth (his normal teeth, Frank saw) into Hurley's neck. The scream was horrible, full-throated and terrified.
"Run!" Frank shouted, pushing Mikey and Pete, who still stood by the door, mouths hanging open. "Get out!" He shoved Mikey hard, just as the big guy by the door, George, stood up from his seat behind them.
"Shit," Mikey said, and grabbed Pete's hand and bolted. Frank turned away, hoping they got by, got to Ray. Hurley's screams had an awful liquid quality to them, now, high pitched and barely human.
"Gerard!" Frank screamed and suddenly they were beside him, Gerard and Bob, shoving the shocked brunette out of the way. Gerard grabbed Frank's arm.
"What the fuck!," he shouted. "Come on!"
But George was behind them, all three hundred pounds of him, looming in the doorway. There was no sign of Mikey or Pete. "Sorry, fellas," George said. He grabbed Frank by the back of the t-shirt and lifted him off his feet. Frank couldn't see, could hardly breath, the cotton of his t-shirt compressing his wind pipe, the pool cue swinging wildly. He got one whack, maybe two in, his vision dimming, Gerard's screams of his name mingling with Hurley's fading and incoherent voice, and then there was an incredible sound like the world was tearing apart, right next to his ear and he was on his knees on the floor, his t-shirt still in George's massive hand above his head.
He pushed himself up, feeling Gerard's hands on his shoulders. "Get back," he shouted at the bar patrons inching up on them, swing the pool cue. "Get the fuck back!" But there were maybe fifteen of them, not counting the ones gathered around the pool table, Hurley's feet kicking out weakly between their bodies, stuttered across the green felt. At least he's not screaming anymore, Frank thought crazily.
"Where the fuck you think you're going?" George asked, throwing the shirt to the ground. "You think you're getting out of here?"
"Fuck off, asshole," Bob said. "We'll fucking go through you."
"Yeah?" George looked supremely amused. "I'd like to see you try."
The others, the ones in the room, were closing in, starting to circle around, the way those kids in the parking lot had. Frank swung the pool cue, which made them back up a step or two, smiling. It was only a matter of time, Frank knew. Those kids had circled him in the same way and held him down and. And.
And it hit him.
"You don't know who I am, do you?" he asked the closest one. It was a guy, thin, wiry, like Frankie himself although maybe five or ten years older, his tattooed arms dark against his white t-shirt.
"I don't give a fuck who you are," the guy said. "You're dead, kid."
"Yeah?" Frank stood up to his full height. His heart banged against his ribs. The implications of what he was about to do. God. "Here," he said, tossing the pool cue to Bob, who caught it with one hand.
"What the fuck, Frankie?" Gerard hissed, but Frank couldn't answer because he didn't know the answer. He didn't know what the fuck was about to happen, he just hoped he was right.
"Yeah," he said again to the guy. "Then let's go, you fucking freak. Let's fucking go."
The guy crouched down, like he was going to lunge at Frank, and Frank would swear later that he actually snarled, but before the guy could do anything the brunette threw herself at him, grabbing him around the waist and practically pulling him over. "John!" she screamed. "Don't, John! He's one of them!"
John paused in his struggle to get free of the brunette's arms to stare at Frank.
"Yeah, that's what I fuckin' thought," Frank said. "You're not such hot shit now, are you John?"
"He's not," John muttered.
"Come take a bite, motherfucker, and find out," Frank said, smiling. His blood had turned, and was racing at them, now, John, the brunette, the others stepping back away from him.
"He is," the brunette cried, almost wailing in pain. "He is!"
"I am, you fucking motherfucker." The smile on his face felt like poison and steel. "Come on."
"Frank," Gerard said. His hand was cold on Frank's shoulder. "Let's go."
Frank twitched. He looked around the room, considering. There were still too many of them. Still so many that one could get by him and get to Gerard or Bob. "Okay," he said. They backed out carefully, sliding past George, who grimaced at Frank, but stepped aside.
"You watch yourselves, you little fucks," he said as they passed. "The bird can't protect you from everything."
"Fuck off," Frank said, shoving his middle finger into the guy's fat face. He walked backward, watching them until he was away from the door, then he turned and ran, scrambling after Gerard and Bob into the van and slamming the door behind him. "Go! Go!" he shouted at Ray, joining in the chorus of the other guys shouting and pounding on the seats.
He clambered to the back window, tripping over Mikey's feet, knocking his head on the ceiling of the van, and pressed himself to the glass as Ray peeled out. They poured through the narrow doorway, shoving the screen door aside and gathering on the corner, their faces blank and smeared with blood. He fell into the seat after the van turned the corner, shoving his hands to his eye sockets. "jesus," he whispered to himself.
"What the fuck was that, Frank?" Gerard asked, clutching at his hand. "What the fuck just happened?"
"I don't know," Frank said. "I don't know, Gerard." He didn't -- couldn't -- explain it, not now, with everyone still shouting and someone crying and his stomach still roiling with the adrenaline.
"Frank, jesus! Did you see -- what the fuck?" Gerard clawed at his arm, his fingernails digging furrows that Frank would feel the next day.
"Guys, GUYS," Ray shouted, waving his hand to shut them up. "Guys! Where's Hurley?"
Chapter 7: Fight
Summary:
The cut looked okay. It was a little black around the edges with dried blood, but it didn't seem too bad.
Chapter Text
VII. Fight
"...everybody knows that the fight was fixed."
They pulled over fifteen minutes later on the side of some anonymous street so that Frank could puke. He bent over on the tree lawn, one hand braced against a thin sapling, and looked at the patchy grass and threw up until he felt empty and clear. He spit two or three times, making sure, and then he just stood there for a second, listening to the hum of the van engine and the larger greater silence of the night. It was a little cooler out than he expected and his shirt was gone, crumpled on the floor of the bar, maybe, his "Don't Bite The Guitarist" shirt. He laughed a little, holding on to the tree, swiping tears out from under his eyes.
After a minute, he wiped his mouth and got back in the van.
"You okay?" Ray asked.
Frank nodded. "Yeah," he said.
Ray nodded back, checked in the rearview mirror, and pulled back on to the road. The other guys sat silently in the back, like dolls lined up on the seats. No one spoke. They barely looked alive, Frank thought, and that made him feel sick again.
"Okay," Ray said after a minute. "So what the fuck happened?"
Frank blinked. He didn't know. He couldn't answer that question. There was no answer.
"They attacked us," Bob said. "Everybody in the bar. They were. There was something wrong with them and they, um. Hurley's dead. That's. They got him."
Frank tried to watch Ray's profile, but he couldn't really see, the streetlights went by too quickly, like lightning on Ray's face. "Um," he said.
"They were monsters," Pete said. "The monsters got him, just like they got Patrick and Joe. They fucking ate him." Mikey put his hand on Pete's arm, but it was too late. Pete was already done.
"It's hard to explain," Frank said softly, trying to avoid having the discussion while Ray was looking for the highway, but they heard him anyway.
"It's not hard to explain," Gerard said. "It's. They're vampires. They're motherfucking vampires and they're after us."
"Gerard," Ray said, gently.
"It's true, Ray," Mikey said. He sighed. "It's true."
Ray looked over at Frank, but what was he supposed to say? That it wasn't true? That Hurley hadn't had his throat ripped out by someone's teeth? He hadn't wanted to talk about it in the van, so soon, but it wasn't a lie.
Bob cleared his throat. "So, I suppose now would be a bad time to tell you one of them bit me, huh?"
They pulled in to the first hotel they found, a DoubleTree off the highway, and checked into two adjoining rooms on the eleventh floor, and herded Bob into the closest bathroom. It was a small bite, Frank could see from his spot on the edge of the bathtub, mostly a bruise, really, but the skin had broken across his knuckles and seeped blood onto the white hotel washcloth.
"It looks okay," Mikey said.
"We'll have to see," Gerard said. He was crouched on the floor in front of Bob, holding Bob's hand in both of his, knuckles up. "Wash it out with soap and we'll see." No one asked what they would see about, not even Ray.
Bob nodded. "Sure," he said, and turned on the tap.
"So, what now?" Ray asked.
No one knew.
Gerard waited until the rest of them were asleep. Then he inched over, pressing his nose to Frank's cheek, hooking an arm over his chest, and whispered "what was that?"
Frank, who had been lying on his back staring up at the ceiling and trying to forget the erratic thump of Hurley's feet on the pool table, sighed. "I dunno," he whispered back.
Gerard slapped his chest lightly. "Don't lie," he said.
"I'm not. I don't know."
Gerard's breath was hot on his face. "Then tell me what you think."
Frank closed his eyes. Gerard's hand stroked his chest gently, reassuringly, but it wasn't enough to protect him from the craziness of what he was about to say. "I think," he whispered. He rolled onto his side so that his lips were almost touching Gerard's and stared into the dark spots that were his eyes. "I think they can't kill me," he said. "I think I'm ..." he sighed. "Invulnerable or something. To them."
Gerard didn't move for a second, didn't blink, didn't even breath. Then he shook, quickly, like something had run through him. "You're the bird," he whispered.
Frank nodded.
"That's why you asked me," Gerard said.
Frank nodded again. "I didn't know," he said. "But those kids in the parking lot, they had me." He shuddered, remembering their hands on his stomach. "And then they just. Didn't. Something stopped them."
"And at the bar," Gerard whispered.
"I hoped it would work." Frank shrugged. "It did."
"God," Gerard whispered, curling his arm around Frank's back, his palm centered between the sharply-angled shoulder blades. "Frankie. What does it mean?"
Frank closed his eyes again. "I don't know," he whispered. "I don't know."
He slept, he must have slept because there were large patches of the night he couldn't account for, but when the light outside the curtains turned pale and grey he was already up, peering through the slit in the curtains at the speck of their van in the parking lot below. "Frank?" Gerard said, sitting up, his hair a tangled nest on his head.
Frank waved a hand at him. Tried to smile.
They were on the road by eleven, after a mostly silent breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The only time they spoke was after the waitress had come and taken their plates and left them with half-empty coffee cups and a bill that Mikey paid with his AmEx. Mikey always paid. He was stupid about that, Frank thought, because there was no way Mikey was making up in points what he lost in people forgetting to pay him back, but that was the way they did things and Mikey didn't seem to mind, just handed over his card and signed his name carefully at the bottom of the slip and folded his own copy in fours and put it in his back pocket, where he would ultimately forget about it. Some things never changed.
"So," Ray said, toying with his coffee cup. "Where are we going?"
"Home," Gerard said. "We're still going home."
"What about Pete?" Mikey asked. Pete blinked at them. Two days ago, he'd been one of the friendliest guys Frank had ever met. That Pete had told stupid jokes and would go on and on in these involved stories about the time he went camping in Yosemite or the first tattoo he'd gotten in a "personal area," his smile so big that Frank had always felt like he had to smile back. This particular Pete wasn't that guy. He's the last surviving member of Fall Out Boy, Frank thought watching Pete toy with a straw wrapper.
"He can come if he wants," Gerard said. "Or he can stay here."
They all looked at Pete, who seemed confused for a moment, blinking in the bright light of their combined gazes. Then he sighed. "I'm coming with," he said.
"Um," Bob said. "What about your mom?"
"She hasn't answered her phone for three days," Pete said.
"Maybe she's busy," Mikey said, rubbing his shoulder.
Pete nodded at his plate. "Maybe."
"So. Do you want to check or something?" Bob asked.
Pete lifted his eyes, his head turning slowly. It seemed to Frank like he was underwater. "No," he said.
They drove. The hum of the road under the wheels, the cramped and sticky nature of the van no matter how much air conditioning, the vague feeling of longing for places far away -- it was all so much the same that Frank could almost forget the way Hurley had sounded in the end, inhuman, alone. He dozed on and off, his arms folded across his chest, and when he woke up, they were at Wal-Mart.
"Huh?" he said to no one in particular.
Ray, who'd been sitting next to him, patted his knee. "We need stuff," he said.
"Oh. Okay." Frank ruffled his hair, trying to make sure it wasn't sticking up too much. He could use stuff, he guessed.
Only once he got inside he was sort of dazed by the fluorescent lights and couldn't think straight. He wandered around the CD section for a little while, but he didn't have a CD player, only his iPod, and the van was too old to have one so there was no point in buying anything. He picked up a package of underwear -- clean underwear was always good -- and some socks and a bag of Doritos and then drifted around looking at stuff until he found himself in the kitchen aisle looking at a wall of whisks and spatulas and stuff that he didn't even recognize. He was about to turn away and find the others when he saw the package of wooden spoons, three of them for a dollar. He picked them up, scrutinizing them through the plastic. His mom had a bunch of them, all stained red by spaghetti sauce, in a jar on her kitchen counter at home. He put them on top of the little pile in the crook of his arm and went to look for the rest of them.
The rest of them were hunched in the toy aisle inspecting action figures. They looked like giant overgrown kids, Gerard's face soft and clean of make up, Mikey and Pete slouched together with their hands in the pockets of their jeans. "Ready?" Ray asked him.
"Sure," Frank said, although he didn't feel ready. He didn't feel anything.
They loaded their stuff into the baggage space behind the back seat of the van (more Doritos, Little Debbie snacks and other junk food, a case of Diet Dr. Pepper, a package of socks and a Wonder Woman action figure among other things) and Frank was heading around the side of the van to get in when Bob stopped him.
"Look," he said, lifting the bandage on his hand.
Frank looked. The cut looked okay. It was a little black around the edges with dried blood, but it didn't seem too bad. "Looks good, man," Frank said, patting Bob's arm, but Bob was shaking his head.
"No," he said. "I can feel it."
Frankie blinked. "You. What?"
"I can feel it," Bob whispered. "The sun's getting brighter all the time. The smell, the way you guys all smell. Like ..." he shook his head. Frank wished he would take his sunglasses off. He didn't like looking at black spots where Bob's friendly eyes would usually be. "You," Bob said.
"Me?"
Bob leaned in until his forehead was against Frank's. "I can feel you," he murmured in a voice so low and desperate it was almost a moan. "You burn."
"What do you mean?" Frank whispered back.
Bob did moan a little then and Frank suspected that, if he could see Bob's eyes they would be closed. "It's like. You're a candle and I'm a moth, man. I want to be near you so bad, but you burn me. It hurts to look at you." His hand closed around Frank's arm.
It felt no different. Bob's hand was big and strong and warm and slightly callused and this was Bob, who had joined the band in its hour of utter darkness and who had said, after the second night they'd played out together for a stadium of screaming kids "well, this'll be okay," even though Gerard had been puking in a trash can and Mikey had been crouched behind the door pretending he didn't exist. Bob.
"Oh, man," Frank said, stepping back. "Oh man, come on."
Mikey, who had been sitting in the passenger seat in the front of the van kicking his feet idly against the door jamb, looked up. "What?" he said.
Frank lifted his head, startled. "Um," he said. "I."
"What?" Gerard said. Mikey hopped out of the seat and came over and then they were all there, surrounding him and Bob, eyes narrow with curiosity.
Frank looked at Bob, who didn't look any different than he normally did. His blond hair shone white in the sun. "Um," he said and that was all it took.
"No," Mikey said and flung his arms around Bob's neck, his long narrow back shutting Frank away. Bob hugged him back, lightly, his face angled away from Mikey's neck and Frank remembered Bob's earlier aborted description, that they smelled. He wondered what they smelled like to Bob now. He wondered if it was lunch.
Gerard lifted his chin and looked at Frankie. "Are you sure?" he asked quietly.
"He said so himself," Frank answered. "It's not me. It's him."
Ray and Pete were hugging Bob, too, resting their heads on his shoulders, the bunch of them a study in misery. Bob held them all together, his arms around their waists.
"So what do we do?" Gerard asked.
Frank shrugged. How the fuck was he supposed to know? It wasn't like this was one of those stupid movies where you stabbed somebody in --
"Oh, no," he said, stepping back from Gerard. "No."
"You're the one who bought the fucking wooden spoons," Gerard said softly.
"But." Frank stopped. But those were for other people, he wanted to say. People who he didn't know. People who hadn't carried his guitar or napped in his bunk or made him a peanut butter sandwich with honey and grapes cut into little half-circles.
"Okay," Bob said, untangling himself from the other guys. "So, um. I'm just going to stay here, I think."
Frank wanted to cry with relief. Only Bob, of course Bob, would have a way out of this mess that didn't involve murder. "Okay," he said. "Um. Okay."
"What are you going to do?" Ray asked.
Bob shrugged. "Get a hotel," he said. "Maybe it's, like. Temporary."
"Will you call us?" Mikey asked.
Bob nodded. "Duh," he said. "Just don't, you know. Tell me where you are."
"But, you know --"
Bob grabbed Mikey's forearm, squeezing firmly. Mikey wriggled in his grip. "Just don't tell me," he said softly, smiling. Mikey, who'd been distracted by Bob's hand, met his eyes.
"Okay," he said.
"All right, so," Gerard said and everyone looked at him, but he didn't seem to have anything else to say so they all stood there in the Wal-Mart parking lot with the sun beating down on them, kicking at the gravel until finally Bob cleared his throat.
"You guys should get going," he said.
Frank waited until the others had hugged Bob and slapped him on the back and (in Gerard's case) kissed him on the cheek and when they were all in the van, he went over and lifted his arms and put them around Bob's neck and hugged him tight. Bob hugged him back, picking him up off the ground and rocking him so that his feet swung back and forth.
"You take care of them," Bob said in his ear.
Frank nodded. He wanted to say something, but there was nothing he could say without crying so he just kept his mouth shut and nodded against Bob's shoulder. Bob put his hand in Frank's hair and made him look up. He'd pushed his sunglasses up on the top of his head and Frank could see the pale friendly blue of his eyes.
"I mean it," he said. "You take care of them or I'll find you."
"I will." Frank nodded. "I will."
Bob smiled his same old comfortable smile. "Cool," he said. Frank sighed and moved toward the open van door, but Bob yanked his arm. His eyes narrowed and changed, somehow, and there it was, the darkness that had never been in Bob before, the thing that smelled him. Frank yanked back, startled, hoping somewhere in his gut that Gerard wouldn't be right. Please, he thought. Please don't make me hurt Bob, but Bob was just talking, whispering something into his ear.
"You're different, Frankie," Bob said quickly, his voice ragged and harsh, like something was hurting him. "You draw me in. You should be careful of that. I can't hurt you," he said, hanging his head, squeezing his eyes closed. His last words were raspy and rough, unlike the way Bob's voice had ever sounded. "But I want to."
Frank blinked.
"You should go," Bob said, and suddenly his voice was as smooth and calm as it always was.
"Okay." Frank wanted to hug him one more time, but the darkness was in Bob's eyes and it was in the sly twist of his smile, so Frank didn't, just stepped backward and into the open van door.
"Bye!" Mikey shouted as Frank yanked the door shut. "Bye, Bob!" Gerard and Ray yelled, too, waving out the window at Bob as they pulled away. Frank tugged the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and folded his arms around his knees and didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. He was maybe ten feet behind them, maybe fifteen feet, still easily within shouting distance, but it didn't matter. Bob was already gone.
Chapter 8: This Broken Feeling
Summary:
God sees the fallen sparrow, he thought suddenly, the line from the Sunday school song floating through his head on a ribbon
Chapter Text
VIII. This Broken Feeling
"...everybody got this broken feeling
like their father or their dog just died."
They pulled over at a hotel just inside the Ohio line, a motel really, just a low one-story building where they could park the van right outside the door, because Ray was too tired to drive anymore and no one else felt up to it. The far end of the parking lot was crowded with cars, late model Pontiacs and small pick up trucks, and Ray said "Frankie," in a low voice so he didn't wake up Pete, who'd had finally stopped rocking and humming to himself about an hour ago and was passed out in Mikey's lap.
Frank clambered up to the front. "What?" he said.
Ray nodded out the window.
It was a crowd of kids wandering and out of the rooms near the cars, plastic cups in their hands, the guys in jeans and t-shirts, the girls in halters and denim skirts. They didn't seem to notice the van. "I think they're okay." Frank murmured back.
"You sure?" Ray asked.
"I'll check," Frank said.
"What's going on?" Gerard asked. His hand on Frank's back was hot and sticky.
"I'm going to check it out," Frank said. "Wait here."
Outside the van, the air was fresh and light and smelled faintly of autumn even though it was only the end of July. Frank paused for a moment and looked up at the clear blue sky. He couldn't see the crowd of kids from this side of the van, but he could hear their shouts of laughter, the hum of their drunken conversations. It sounded like summer and Frank was surprised to realize that he thought of summer as something that had already ended three days ago, the day they left the tour. He went in to the office.
There was a girl at the counter, maybe a little younger than him, her badly- streaked blond hair pulled up in a high ponytail. "Y'all need a room?" she asked, smiling.
"Two," Frank said. "Do you have connecting rooms?"
"Sure," she said. "How many people?"
Him, Gerard, Ray, Mikey, Pete. And then there were five, he thought. "Five."
"Sure," the girl said again. "We got plenty a rooms right now, for some reason. Normally, we'd be all full up with truckers and tourists and shit, but seems like it's pretty dead around here today."
Frank fought the urge to laugh as he handed over his credit card. "Well, um. There's a bunch of kids ..."
"Oh, them." The girl laughed. "Those are my friends. It's Kenny's birthday, so they're having a party. Don't worry. I put you all at the other end of the building. Numbers 127 and 129," she said pointing out the door. "Right down at the end."
"Thanks," Frank said.
"You and your friends can come if you want," the girl said. "It's nothing, you know. Just some beer and some other shit, but it could be cool. You all could come."
Frank stared at her hard, scanning her arms for bite marks, her throat, the bare knee he could see over the counter, but she seemed to be fine. She didn't have the strange slyness Frank had begun to associate with them, the feeling that they were laughing at him from behind their skins.
"Well, we'll see," Frank said.
"Sure, no pressure," the girl said. "I'm Alexis, if you need anything. Alexis Lee."
"I'm Frank," Frank said, holding out his hand. The girl, Alexis, shook it.
"Cool," she said. "Maybe I'll see you later."
Frank walked back out to the van and climbed in. He felt strange, like his normal conversation with the front desk girl was precious and valuable. "Everything okay?" Gerard asked, curling a hand over his shoulder.
"Yeah," Frank said. "Yeah, I think so."
The rooms were dingy and smelled like mildew, but they weren't the worst rooms Frank had ever stayed in, so he didn't mind. There was a single king- sized bed in one and two in the other, so they divided up Ray, Mikey, Pete in one and Gerard and Frank in the other, opening the connecting door and turning on the televisions in both rooms. It was starting to become a habit again, settling in to a strange motel, pulling back the bedspreads, turning on the televisions, washing up.
"There's a party," Frank said, leaning into the room that Ray and Mikey and Pete were sharing. "That's what those kids were."
"You think, um," Mikey said. He glanced at Pete, who was watching them intently.
"They're fine," Frank said, although he didn't know why he felt that way. There had been something so normal about them, in their t-shirts and flip- flops. Maybe everything was going to turn out okay. "I was thinking about going down."
"Really?" Mikey asked, standing up, shaking off Pete's hand. "I'll go."
It turned out they all went, because Ray didn't think it was a good idea for Frank and Mikey to go alone and Gerard wanted beer and Pete wasn't about to stay behind without Mikey, and Frank felt ridiculous walking down to the other end of the parking lot with four other guys like they were some sort of stupid gang or something. Still, he stopped them all when they were still four doors away, holding his hand out like he was their mother coming to a quick stop in a minivan. "Stay behind me," he murmured. "Don't let them surround us."
He approached carefully, trying to look cool and curious instead of freaked out. He hadn't really thought about what this meant, walking up to a group of fifty kids in the middle of the afternoon and he was suddenly reminded of the bar in Chicago, the bikers yelling out "Andy!" so happy to see them.
"--you?"
Frank blinked. It was a guy in a white t-shirt and a backward baseball hat. He looked annoyed, but only a little.
"Alexis said we could come. We're staying here," Frank said. "I'm Frank."
"Oh." The guy scratched his head up under his hat. "Okay, cool. I'm Randy. Beer's over there," he pointed into one of the open doors. "And the other stuff's in the next room."
"Cool, man," Frank said.
"So, you guys friends of hers?" Randy asked.
"No, we're um. We're in a band," Frank said.
"No shit!" Randy took a step back, looking impressed. "Really? What're you guys called?"
"My Chemical Romance," Mikey said, stepping forward, ignoring the flap of Pete's hand against his wrist.
Randy looked confused for a second. "Wait a minute," he said. "Do you guys do that 'I'm Okay' song? The one with the 'I'm not o-fucking-kay'?" He sang a little, bobbing his head. Frank smiled.
"Yeah, that's us," Mikey said.
"Cool!" Randy said. "Hey, Ken!" he called. Some tall guy turned around, a cup in his hand. "These guys sing that song you like!" He grabbed Mikey's arm and Frank tensed up, but Mikey followed willingly, stepping into the crowd like nothing was wrong.
Nothing was. Mikey walked up to the other guy, who put out his hand and smiled a normal smile and leaned down to say something in Mikey's ear. Then Mikey was shouting "hey, Gerard, come here!" and there was a small crowd around them all talking a girl touching Gerard's arm curiously and handing him a beer, and Frank felt his hands relax.
"It's fine," he said to no one, but Ray turned and looked at him.
"You sure?" he said.
Frank shrugged. He wasn't sure. But the other attacks had felt different and these kids seemed. Like just kids.
"Mikey," Pete said softly, behind them. Frank turned. He was standing with his hands balled in the pockets of his tight jeans, his greasy hair slick across his forehead, a two-day growth of beard smudged along his jawline. He was watching Mikey stand in the center of the crowd, his eyes mournful. When he noticed Frank looking at him, he spoke. "All birds fly away," he said.
"Come on," Ray said, throwing an arm over his shoulders. "You want something to drink, Pete?"
"Sure," Pete said.
Frank followed them into the first hotel room and over to the keg, surveying the room while Ray poured foaming beer into plastic cups. There was nothing to see. A couple of kids looking at them curiously, a couple more too busy with their own shit to notice at all, just a typical motel party like a hundred Frank had been to before.
"Hey," a girl said, touching his arm. "Are you Frankie Iero?"
Frank took a step back, reaching behind him for Pete. "Why?"
"Are you him seriously?" she asked, stepping forward, her eyes alight with excitement.
"Ray," Frank said. If they could get against the wall he could hold --
"MCR is totally my favorite band!" she said, her hands forming little starfish of excitement out in front of her. "Seriously! I drove all the way to Columbus to see you guys on Warped! What are you guys doing here?"
"Um," Frank said.
"We're taking a roadtrip," Ray said. "You know. Just hanging out together on our way home from the tour."
"Wow," the girl said, her attention shifting from Frank to Ray. "That's so cool. I would love to do that, but my mom is, like, totally against it. I had to sneak out to go to Columbus, which is the most boring place ever. I can't believe that you --"
"How do you feel about birds?" Frank blurted.
The girl squinted at him. "Birds? They're okay, I guess." She turned back to Ray. "So are you guys here for a while or just a night or something?" she asked, lifting her face to his in a signal Frank had seen a thousand times before. She was fine. Young and pretty and trying to get fucked by a semi- famous rock star, but not anything else.
"I'm going go outside," he told Pete, who was still leaning up against the wall and sipping his beer.
"Okay," Pete said. "I'm going to find Mikey."
"Great, fine, yes," Frank said. "Do that. I'm going to get drunk."
Four maybe five hours later (and six or seven or eight beers later), there he was, drunk, slumped in a lawn chair in the field behind the motel, watching the flickering flames of the bonfire and listening to the drone of cars passing on the highway.
Someone's fingers touched his hair, burrowed into it, slid down over his cheek. Gerard.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." Gerard crouched next to the chair, a can of Milwaukee's Best in one hand. His smile was sloppy and sexy. He pressed his face into the crook of Frank's arm and kissed the sweaty skin at the corner of Frank's elbow. "We should go somewhere," he muttered into Frank's skin.
Frank stood up. "Yeah," he said. Gerard was so beautiful in the firelight, the orange-burnished flicker of his skin, the dark sparkle of his eyes. This is how vampires should look, Frank thought. This is what the books say. Gerard caught him around the waist and pulled him close, smiling, but it wasn't safe outside, not for that, so Frank pulled away, squeezing Gerard's hand as he did.
They walked back into the sodium light of the sidewalk that circled the motel. "We're going back to the room," Frank told Mikey, who was leaning up against the wall.
"Sure." Mikey sniffed, wiping his nose with his hand.
"What?" Gerard said, dragging Frank to a stop. "What's wrong?"
"Fuckin' Pete," Mikey said. "It's nothing." He pushed off the wall and stood up straight, squaring his shoulders. "Fuck it. I'll see you guys later."
"Okay." Frank slapped him on the arm and watched him head into the beer room. "He'll be cool, right?"
"Sure," Gerard said, cupping his hands over Frank's shoulders and pushing him backwards down the sidewalk, his smile close enough to kiss. "He's fine."
Gerard had the key, but he was too drunk to work the old-fashioned lock properly, so Frank took it from him and opened the door. They didn't even bother to turn on the lights. Gerard tumbled him to the bed and then there was nothing but skin and heat and Gerard's beery breath whispering "fuck me, god, fuck me" in his ear, while Frank fucked him, his knees up against Frank's shoulders.
Frank fell away finally, gasping, reaching for Gerard's hand. "God," he said.
"Hmm." Gerard rolled over, pressing his cheek against Frank's shoulder. "Do you think there is one?"
Frank's skin went cold with dread. "What?" he said.
Gerard nuzzled him. "Do you think there is one?" he repeated. "A god. You know, after all this shit."
Frank closed his eyes. For one brief second he'd forgotten that this was happening. He'd been just another guy getting drunk at a party and nailing his boyfriend in a cheesy hotel room and not thinking about anything important like life or death or fucking god and then Gerard had to go and bring it up again in his postcoital bliss. Gerard always did think too much. Did he think there was a god directing him, looking out for him, guiding his hand. God sees the fallen sparrow, he thought suddenly, the line from the Sunday school song floating through his head on a ribbon. "I don't know," he said.
"Mmm," Gerard mumbled.
After he'd fallen asleep Frank slipped out from under his arm and groped around on the floor for his jeans. His cell phone was in the front pocket. He cupped it in his hand like an egg and crept into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly before clicking on the fluorescent light over the sink. Then he sat down on the edge of the tub and pressed *4 on his speed dial. It rang. Rang. Ra-
"Frankie!" Bob sounded the way he always did, surprised and pleased to hear from him.
"Bob," Frank said. "How you doing, man?"
"Oh, you know," he said, which was the same thing he always said.
"You okay?"
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. "Oh, I'm fine," Bob said, finally, his voice neutral and cool. Oh, I'm fine. "How are you?"
"Not so good," Frank admitted. "I just. This thing is so fucked up and we left you in a Wal-Mart parking lot, man, and I just --"
"Frank," Bob said, his voice slicing cleanly through Frank's rising panic. "You did what you had to do, right?"
"Yeah." Frank sighed. "I guess. I don't know."
"I don't know," Bob said, his voice high and squeaky and insulting. "Fuck you, Frankie. I killed four people tonight. Four. And I imagined they were all you. So you better know."
It was as if time had stopped. Frank could still see the loose threads in the weave of the floor mat, one of them almost curled around his little toe. He could see the orange rust stain in the sink, its teardrop shape the echo of each drop that had created it. He could see the next drop beginning to swell on the edge of the faucet. He could hear nothing. Four. Four.
When he pressed the phone back to his ear, Bob was no longer there, just silence and then, suddenly, a scream as if someone had a television on far away, a horror movie maybe. A fiction.
Frank pressed the "End" button, quickly, before he could think of anything else.
Jamia was next, since it was too late to call his mom, but the phone just rang and rang and rang. On the sixth try, he let it go through to voicemail because maybe she would call him back and he could tell her, warn her, but a recording came on and said that her voicemail was full and disconnected him. It wasn't like her -- Jamia checked her messages and opened her mail every day -- and for a second Frank thought of trying her again, but the thought of listening to it ring again, his call going out into the air and disappearing... it was too much. So he didn't.
He brushed his teeth instead, opening his kit and pulling out the toothbrush and the paste and squeezing the exact amount out onto the bristles and turning on the water and making sure to get every tooth individually, especially the back ones where so much bacteria could build up.
He was on his second upper canine, working from left to right, when he saw them in the mirror.
God sees the fallen sparrow.
He'd had them done a million years ago, it seemed, while the jack-o-lantern tattoo was still tingling in the final throes of healing. He'd walked into the shop on Bernard Street, just browsing, thinking of getting another one somewhere his mom wouldn't see it and freak the fuck out. He'd still been living at home, so that was before Pencey really got going, before he'd met Mikey. Before anything. He'd been looking at skulls when the design caught his eye, down low on the next wall underneath a bunch of flowers and butterflies and other girly shit. The birds hadn't been girly though.
There were two of them, facing each other, plummeting toward the earth, the design catching them mid-fall. One had Xs for eyes and a little star over its head. He didn't know exactly why he liked it so much, since he'd never had a bird or anything, but he did. It seemed meaningful to him.
"I want this one," he'd told the guy at the counter.
"The falling sparrows," the guy had said. "Very cool."
Later, while Frank had been lying in the chair, his jeans open and pulled so low that he could see the faint edge of his pubic hair if he looked, the guy (Hector, Frank remembered suddenly. His name was Hector.) had asked him if he was religious. "'Cause the birds, you know, sign of God's love and all that."
"No," Frank had said. He hadn't known and he didn't really care; he was distracted by the press of Hector's fingers on his belly. It was strange having someone touch him. More than the buzz and prick of the needle low on his abdomen, it was strange having a guy lean over him and put his strong hands on Frank's skin.
"Cool," Hector had said. "You want a blowjob?"
Now, standing in the sickly light of the motel bathroom, Frank put his hands over the tattoos, the fallen sparrows inked on his lower belly. He'd never known what they meant. When people had asked his about them, he'd just shrugged. "I just liked them," he would say if pressed. A sign.
A sign of God's love.
He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.
He woke up from a dream about sitting in a tree to an angry pounding, the noise so loud that he thought the door might burst open, and tried to get off the bed, but his feet were tangled in the sheets and he ended up face first on the carpet, his cheek scorched with rug burn.
"Gerard!" he shouted, struggling free, kicking the sheets away. "Get my pants!"
He crept over to the door, one hand on the frame, and was just about to peer through the peephole when the banging started again, furious and fast. Frank jumped back.
"Here," Gerard whispered. He tossed Frank's jeans over the bed. Frank caught them one-handed and yanked them on, balancing by pushing his shoulders against the wall between the door and the window.
"Okay, get down," Frank whispered. "I'm --"
The banging started again, but this time there was another noise, a soft cry of something being hurt. Frank jerked the door open.
Mikey was there, still in the clothes he'd worn yesterday, his hair standing up over one eye in a point. "Where is he?" he shouted. "Where the fuck is he?"
"Oh fuck," Frankie said. "You don't know where he is?"
"No. NO!" Mikey wailed, shoving Frank out of the way and falling onto the bed, curling himself up into a little ball, his arms wrapped around his head. Gerard stroked his shoulder tentatively.
"Mikey," he said softly.
Frank stepped out onto the sidewalk. There were still a few cars at the end of the parking lot, looking dingier and more used in the morning sun than they had last night, but no one else seemed to be up. He stepped back into the room, shutting and locking the door behind him. "Did you check the other rooms? The party rooms?"
Mikey, who was breathing noisily into Gerard's bare shoulder, nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I checked everywhere. The rooms, the field, people's cars. He's not fucking here."
"Jesus." Frank sighed. "Okay, we'll go find him, okay? Just. Um, stay here." He grabbed a shirt off the floor and pulled it over his head, then his shoes without socks. "Lock the door after me."
He went back outside, pulling the door shut and waiting until he heard the snap of the lock behind him before stepping away. The door to the first party room was unlocked so Frank eased it open slowly.
The bodies were everywhere, on the bed, on the floor, in the far corners of the room, but none of them were Pete and none of them were dead, as far as Frank could tell. The room reeked of beer and sex. Frank stepped over them carefully, peering into the dark corners and around the corner into the bathroom, where the keg floated in a tub of melted ice. Nothing.
The door to the other room was ajar. There were fewer kids, and more trash, and for a second Frank thought he saw Pete curled up in a blanket on the far bed, but when he got closer he could see that it wasn't him, just some other kid with badly cut brown hair.
The field was next, the remains of the bonfire still smoldering in the gentle morning sun. Frank stepped gingerly through the long grass, but his shoes and jeans were soaked with dew before he'd gotten ten feet. It was cool out and his skin prickled up in goosebumps, but it was going to be a beautiful day. The air held the promise of warmth.
A kid was crashed out in the dirt next to the fire pit asleep on fire duty, but it wasn't Pete.
Frank walked back toward the cars, the full glare of the sunrise in his eyes. He stopped on the edge of the pavement and looked at the brightening sky and thought about going back into his dark room and telling Mikey that he couldn't find Pete, that Pete wasn't coming back. The sun glistened on his wet face.
Chapter 9: Now or Never
Summary:
"So it's up to us," Gerard said. It was sort of a question, so Frank nodded.
Chapter Text
IX. Now or Never
"...everybody knows that it's now or never.
Everybody knows that it's me or you."
When Frank got back to the room, Ray was already in there with them, sitting at the foot of bed, his hand on Mikey's ankle. Seeing them all together like that, Mikey's face in the blankets covering Gerard's lap, Ray's hair a fuzzy electric tangle around his head, Frank was reminded of orphans.
He shook his head.
Mikey sighed and closed his eyes.
"We'll have them check the rooms," Frank said, and they did, dragging the fat manager from room to room, Ray distracting him from Frank's nervous push and fall back at each door by asking him questions about his kids. But they didn't find Pete and none of the kids who started waking up as the sun crawled across the morning sky could remember seeing him leave with anyone.
"And he didn't answer his phone?" Frank asked after they'd finished the search. Mikey was leaning against the van, staring up at the sky, and the light in his eyes when Frank asked the question was brilliant and wonderful to see. Mikey yanked his phone out of his pocket and pressed the numbers.
"It's ringing," he whispered to Frank. Frank smiled.
Then, from inside the van, he heard the midi file of "I'm Not Okay" start up. Pete's ring, the one he'd picked a week ago, laughing as he finished the download while Mikey clawed at his arm and said "that's so fucking annoying, man."
Mikey heard it, too, and closed his phone quickly, like it had burned him.
Frank didn't look at his face.
Eventually, Frank said "well" without meeting their eyes and they threw their stuff in the van and pulled out. Ray drove slowly over the gravel, as if he was waiting for Pete to show up, and Frank even sort of expected that Pete would come loping out from around the corner of building shouting "hey, wait up!"
But he didn't, and soon they were on the highway again.
"It's my fault," Mikey said after a minute.
"Shut up," Gerard said. He was sitting in the seat behind Mikey, the closest Mikey would let anyone get. "Don't touch me," he'd hissed, twisting away from Gerard's hands when Gerard had tried to sit next to him.
"No," Mikey said. "It is. I told him to get lost. So he did."
"Mikes," Frank said. Secretly, he thought it was true. Mikey wasn't meant to be someone's boyfriend, someone's rock in times of trouble. Mikey was a good guy, a sweet guy, but he always ended up thinking of himself, what he needed, what he wanted. Frank had watched him dump girl after girl because they were "clingy" or "demanding" or "sappy," but Frank thought it wasn't the girls at all. It was Mikey. He wasn't reliable. He and Gerard were alike in that way.
"It is, Frank, and you know it, so shut the fuck up."
Frank did.
Eventually, Ray turned on the radio. The van was old, and the radio was one of those ones with the knob that had to be turned by hand, and Frank dialed through the hiss of static until he got to a clear voice.
"--the minions of the DEVIL are AMONG US!" the voice said. "You've seen the news, you've heard the reports. People are dying in New York, they're dying in Los Angeles, the CITY of ANGELS, they're dying in Cleveland and Chicago and soon they'll be dying among us, too, and WHY? WHY? Because there are --"
"Sorry," Frank said, twisting the knob again. "Freaks."
"It's like Children of the Corn," Gerard said, but Frank hadn't seen Children of the Corn, so he didn't know what Gerard meant. It wasn't like vampires ate corn. He found a classic rock station that was only a little staticky, and they drove for awhile, listening to Led Zeppelin and Rush and not talking. Frank watched Mikey carefully, out of the corner of his eye so Mikey didn't notice. There wasn't much to see. Mikey looked out the window, his arms folded over his stomach. From time to time, he sighed.
They pulled over at a McDonald's for lunch and ordered cheeseburgers and fries from the staring clerks at the counters. "What?" Mikey asked one of them as he picked up his tray. "You never seen a rock star before?"
The kid looked away, embarrassed. Frank grabbed Mikey's elbow. "Okay," he said softly. "Come on." Mikey followed willingly enough, although he glared over his shoulder at the clerk.
"So what are we going to do?" Ray asked, hunched over the little rectangular table so that no one else could hear him. Not that there was anyone else to hear him -- just a single mom with two kids on the far side of the dining room.
"We're going home," Gerard said. "That was the plan and that's still the plan."
"Well, that's all good and well," Ray said. "But I haven't talked to Chris in two days, have you?"
Gerard blinked.
"Wait," Frank said. "You haven't heard from Chris in two days?"
"So?" Gerard said. "He's busy. He's got a lot of things to take care of and I'm sure that-"
Frank pulled out his phone and dialed Chris' number. It rang and rang and went to voicemail. Frank hung up. "Did you leave him a message?"
Gerard nodded.
"Well. We'll just have to wait and see," Frank said. "It could be nothing. We'll just go home and see if he calls back."
Frank's phone started ringing.
"Jesus!" Frank gasped. The phone buzzed across the table like a live thing. He picked it up. Chris. "Hey, man, thank god," he said.
"Frank!" Chris said. "Where the fuck are you guys?"
"We're on the road, man. Why haven't you fuckin' called us?" Ray and Mikey and Gerard were watching him with eager eyes.
"Jesus, you wouldn't believe the shit that's going down around here, little man." Chris huffed out breath. He was a big guy and not in the best shape. Sometimes talking to him on the phone was like talking to a wind tunnel. "People are getting attacked and getting sick and it's seriously fucked up. You all need to get your asses back here pronto, little bird, because this is all going to hell in a handbasket."
"Yeah, we're a few--" Frank stopped. "We're a few days away yet, I think. Chris?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you seen Jamia lately?"
"Sure, man. A few days ago. She was out at a club or something, but Frank, man. I'm sorry, but I think she found herself a new boyfriend."
"Oh yeah?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking. His brain felt like it was spinning in his head. "Um. What's he like?"
"Oh, you know. Tall, dark, handsome. The standard prick, man, the one all the girls like. So, listen, man, you guys have to get the fuck back here, like, soon. How far are you from Cleveland?"
"Why?" Frank asked. He tried not to sound suspicious, but he must have because Chris laughed his large laugh.
"Chill, bird," he said. "Chill. I was just thinking maybe you guys should take a flight home from there. I could meet you at the airport or--"
Frank hit mute on the phone. "They got him," he said to the table. "They got Chris."
"What?" Ray hissed.
Frank nodded. He could hear Chris' voice over the phone, saying "Frank? Frank?" "He called me 'little bird,'" he said.
"Oh shit," Ray moaned. His forehead hit the table.
"So what do we do?" Gerard whispered. "Frank, what do we do?"
Frank looked at his phone. Chris' voice came out, loud and demanding. "Frank, you bitch," it said. "Answer me, you--"
Frank hit "end." "Excuse me," he said, standing up and walking toward the counter. The clerk turned around warily, probably wondering if Frank was going to punch him in the face or something. Frank smiled what he hoped was a friendly smile. "Is there a hardware store somewhere around here?"
He went in alone, leaving the others in the car making frantic cell phone calls home, and bought a dozen fence stakes and four soft rubber mallets. He also bought sixty dowel rods. They didn't have points on them yet, but that could be fixed by the four pocket knives he picked out of the glass case at the front of the store.
"You need anything else, son?" the old guy at the front asked him.
Frank smiled. "You sell guns?" he asked.
The guy didn't, and although the Wal-Mart up the highway aways did, there was a three-day waiting period, so Frank abandoned the gun plan pretty quickly. Plus, guns didn't kill vampires, at least not any vampires that he'd ever heard of. He asked Gerard when he got back in the car.
"No," Gerard said. "Silver bullets kill werewolves, but stuff like that doesn't kill vampires."
"All right then," Frank said, and dumped his paper bags out onto the seat. "We need all of these sharpened into points." He gestured at the dowel rods. "Pick a knife."
"Don't leave me the sucky one," Ray called over his shoulder.
"You seriously expect us to kill people with these things?" Gerard asked, making a stabbing motion with one of the fence stakes. It was about three inches wide and an inch thick and three feet long.
"Not people," Frank said. "And yeah. What else you want to do, Gerard?"
"We could. I don't know. But we shouldn't be killing people."
"They aren't people," Mikey said. He was considering the point of one of the stakes carefully, like it was a fine jewel.
They whittled while they drove, and Gerard gave him the low down: Gerard's mom was still answering the phone and fine, and Ray's family was booked on the next flight to Puerto Rico to stay with his Tia Lucia until everything blew over, but there was no answer at Frank's house or on Jamia's phone. They were afraid to try Bob. The one friend Mikey had been able to get on the line had been hiding in a closet and crying. "She's scared," Gerard murmured, placing his knife carefully along the edge of the wooden dowel and pushing it away from him to that the wood curled off in one clean strip. Frank should have known that Gerard would be good at carving stakes the same way he was good at everything else that required an artistic touch. "She was basically hysterical. I told her we were coming to get her."
Frank nodded, trying to imitate Gerard's smooth strokes with the knife.
"Frank," he whispered, lifting his eyes to Mikey, who was hacking away at the dowel rod in his hand with his knife. The stakes he had finished looked haggard and rough, like they had already been used. They seemed more deadly than Gerard's balanced and perfect results. "What are we going to do?"
Frank shrugged. "Same thing we've always done," he said. "Whatever we have to."
Gerard nodded like that was an answer.
They only needed one hotel room. The clerk looked at them with weary eyes and didn't register any surprise even when Frankie asked him "you ever see any birds around here." The hotel wasn't very tall -- only three stories -- but Frank made the clerk give them a room on the top floor. "Near the emergency exit," he said. The clerk sighed and flipped the envelope with the coded keys onto the counter.
"Anything else, your highness?" he asked.
"Yeah," Frank said. "Get yourself a crucifix."
He turned on the television in the room right away and there it was, on every channel, stories about how people were getting sick and attacking others. He picked the channel that had "Epidemic" written on the bottom of the screen in big letters because it seemed like it might be more accurate than the one with "Red Death!" in big black font.
"--thousands have been infected with what physicians are calling the Red Death--"
"So much for that," Frank muttered to no one.
"--symptoms include lightheadedness, skin that is clammy to the touch, and sensitivity to light. Sufferers are advised to seek medical attention immediately and in no circumstances should you try to wait out the disease. Without treatment, the disease progresses to severe symptoms and results in death."
"By stake," Mikey said, twirling one of his ragged spikes between his fingers the way Bob used to twirl his drumsticks.
The newscaster was an old guy, hair graying at the temples, one of those guys that Frank's grandpa used to like to watch, his eyes gradually drifting shut before the television set, so it was sort of comforting, listening to this guy drone on and on about "precautionary measures" and "methods of transmission." Then they had an interview from some guy from the Center for Disease Control, which was boring and Frank turned off the television in the middle.
"Well, one thing's clear," he said when everyone looked up at him. "They don't have a fucking clue."
"So it's up to us," Gerard said. It was sort of a question, so Frank nodded.
"I guess so," he said.
Ray raised his hand like a school kid. "I have a question," he said.
"Dude, you don't have to raise your hand," Frankie said, embarrassed.
Ray shrugged. "It's just. You got all freaked out because Chris called you a bird." He must have seen Frank's shoulders tighten because he held up his hands. "I'm not doubting you, Frank," he said. "But I don't get what birds have to do with this."
Frank sighed. "I don't know," he said. "I mean, not really. I have ideas. But that's what they call me."
"They can't hurt him," Mikey said from his seat on the bed. He'd given up carving for the night but he still had a stake in his hand, waving the point back and forth in front of his face. "It's like he's Buffy or something."
"I'm not Buffy--"
"They're afraid of him, too," Gerard said. "In the bar. They practically shit their pants when they figured out who he was."
"Frank, the Vampire Slayer," Mikey added.
"I'm not fucking Buffy," Frank said again. "I'm just--"
He stopped.
"You're what?" Mikey asked.
They were all looking at him, waiting for him, just like he'd known they would, and he didn't have an answer.
"Yeah, that's what I thought, Buffy," Mikey said, and turned on the tv again.
Ray sidled over to him. "Look, man, I didn't mean to freak you out or anything," he murmured.
"It's okay," Frank said.
"I just. It's weird. We're going to ... you know. Put things in people. And that's. This whole thing is seriously fucked up." Ray's eyes were big and earnest and Frank suddenly hated him a little. Ray. He hated Ray because Ray was honest enough and truthful enough to point out the fact that carving up sticks so that you could stab people with them was maybe a little fucked up in the grand scheme of things.
"We're going to kill them, Ray," Frank said. He kept his voice low and even.
"What?" Ray asked.
"We're not going to 'put things in them,' we're going to kill them. People. Including Chris and Jamia and even Bob if he shows up where we're going. And you better start getting used to it."
Ray was staring at him, eyes wide and hurt, but Frank didn't blink and eventually Ray went away to sit on the far side of the bed and listen to his iPod, his wary gaze focused on Frank no matter where in the room he went.
Chapter 10: War
Summary:
"Be careful," he said. The woman was almost out the door, her hand pushing on the glass, but she stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. There was something in the tilt of her head maybe, in the set of her shoulders, Frankdidn't know, but he felt the flash of recognition, like she was a long lost family member he was meeting for the first time.
Chapter Text
X. War
"Everybody knows that the war is over.
Everybody knows that the good guys lost."
The road goes ever on and on, Frankie thought. He'd heard that before somewhere, like in a Led Zepplin song or something, and it had sounded romantic to him then, but it wasn't anymore, not with the grey ribbon of the highway stretching out in front of the van as far as he could see. It seemed more like a resigned statement of fact; like death and taxes, the road was inevitable and there was nothing to do but keep driving.
"Ohio sucks," Mikey said suddenly, looking up from the dowel rod that he was carving. Everyone else had lost interest after the first half dozen or so, but Mikey just kept working, hacking away at the wood, his knife jerking the wood chips away from his body. Gerard had slid out of the seat near him and into one closer to the front, after Mikey's flailing knife hand had come a little too close to his eyes.
"No shit," Frank said. He found himself peering out the window, scanning the passing fields for any sign of trouble. He didn't know what he expected -- zombies to come tearing out of the ditches alongside the pavement or vampires swooping out of the trees, or something -- but he couldn't stop himself. He felt stupid, but he kept looking out the window.
They passed a sign for a rest stop and Mikey said "Hey, I gotta piss," to no one in particular. Ray pulled off into the parking lot. The inside of the van had been dark, so the late morning sun made Frank squint and blink. It was so quiet. Frank had always been amazed by the wide open parts of the country, where there was nothing but a farmhouse in the distance and the thin cable of the power lines to show that anyone even existed. New Jersey had been deathly boring a lot of the time, but it hadn't ever seemed quiet, not like Illinois or Ohio or Indiana.
The rest stop was one of those modern ones, low to the ground and filled with flourescent light. Frank stopped at the large map of Ohio between the first set of outside doors and the doors leading into the lobby and traced his finger along the blue line that was I-80 until he reached the red star. "You are here," he murmured. Mikey stepped up behind him, reaching over his shoulder to do the same thing. Through the wavery glass of the door, Frank could see Ray and Gerard standing next to the van talking, Ray tossing the keys from hand to hand.
Somewhere down the hall a door slammed.
Frank turned, yanking his head around, banging his cheek against Mikey's shoulder. It was a woman and a little girl, holding hands. Frank backed up against the wall, glancing at his fingernails, trying to seem casual. Mikey stood alert at his side, dowel rod quivering slightly. The woman paused for a split second when she saw them, her step faltering, then kept going, lifting her head, meeting their eyes.
"She's fine," Frank whispered, pushing Mikey's hand behind his back to hide the stake from the little kid. "She's fine." He didn't know how he knew that the woman's fear was different from the fear he'd seen in the eyes of the things at the bar, but he did. She wasn't one of them.
"Hi," he said as she strode past, the little girl's hand tight in hers.
"Hi," she said brusquely, not looking at him.
"Be careful," he said. The woman was almost out the door, her hand pushing on the glass, but she stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. There was something in the tilt of her head maybe, in the set of her shoulders, Frank didn't know, but he felt the flash of recognition, like she was a long lost family member he was meeting for the first time. Bird, he thought.
"You, too," the woman said, and before he could say anything else, she was gone, taking the girl out the door across the parking lot to a blue Toyota, scanning the parking lot nervously before opening the passenger side door.
"Come on," Mikey said. "I gotta piss."
Frank followed in a daze. There were more of them. He wasn't the only one. There were others like him, birds, people who could help him. People who would fight. He released his breath, feeling lighter and more hopeful than he had since this whole thing had started. There were others.
Mikey pushed into the men's bathroom and clanged into a stall at the very end. It was a typical rest stop bathroom --cement block, polished metal plates instead of mirrors, cobwebs in the corners. Someday, Frank thought, unzipping his fly, he was going to buy a house and have a huge bathroom with a giant tub in the middle of it and mirrors all around and a dozen lights everywhere. He'd talked about that with Jamia a couple of times, his dream bathroom, especially once the band had started making money, and she had been enthusiastic about it, jumping in with questions of color scheme and layout so complex and technical that Frankie hadn't been able to answer them. He was pretty sure that Gerard wouldn't care about the giant tub and wouldn't like the mirrors, but he didn't really know. He had never --
The door of one of the stalls banged open knocking him out of his reverie, and Frank turned slightly, still peeing, to see what Mikey's damage was. Not enough toilet paper perhaps, or --
It wasn't Mikey.
It was a guy maybe around Mikey's age, but he was shorter and his light grey sweater was stained with something along the collar and over one shoulder. He stumbled out of the stall and lifted his head to look at Frank.
"Hey," he said, and smiled.
Frank shuddered. The guy's mouth was rusty and red, like it had been filled with blood and left open. His teeth were outlined in it. His tongue looked black. Frank yanked the zipper of his pants up, one hand protectively over his cock. "Hey," he said, taking a step back. Of all the fucking times to be caught by one of these motherfuckers, while he was taking a piss, and of course he didn't have anything with him, the fence posts and stakes sitting in a heap in the back of the van, and didn't this just fucking suck? Frank wished, watching the guy move slowly toward him, that Mikey had been right and he'd suddenly developed super-human strength like Buffy, the better to take this guy out. Reality sucked.
"I'm the bird," Frank said, taking a step toward the door. If he could lure the guy out, then Mikey could sneak out behind him and they would be home free.
"Oh yeah?" the guy said. "I'm the fuckin' tooth fairy." He lunged.
Frank grabbed the guy's wrist and twisted him to the side, pushing him at the same time, and there was Mikey, a dowel rod in his raised hand, his scream of rage echoing on the cement block walls.
The stake, when it went in, made a surprisingly loud sucking noise and Mikey's scream was cut short by a spurt of blood that arced over his chest and face. "Holy shit, Frank," he screamed, although they were no more than two feet from each other, "they bleed!"
The guy writhed and snapped at Mikey's throat and Frank had to jerk him back and force him to the floor, and when he snatched the dowel rod from Mikey and plunged it into his back, it broke against the thing's rib, the broken half skittering away on the cement floor.
"They bleed!" Mikey was crying. "He bled on me!"
Frank yanked the guy's arm up behind his back, keeping him on his knees, the guy's thick wristwatch digging into his palm. He was still bleeding, blood pulsing from around the wound in his chest like air from a balloon, but Frank didn't know if it was even possible for vampires to bleed to death. "Get me the stake," he said to Mikey, pointing to the broken end of the rod. It had rolled under one of the sinks.
"It bled on me!" Mikey said again, drawing his hands over his face.
"Motherfucker!" the vampire said, trying to wrench himself away from Frank's hand. Frank kneeled on its back and yanked the arm up, making it howl in pain. The vampire's skin was hot against his leg. He had hoped that the killing would be easy, like on Buffy. A stake through the heart and then a cloud of dust, not this squirming struggle.
"Get me the fucking stake, Mikey!" Frank shouted.
"Frank!" someone shouted and there were Ray and Gerard in the doorway and someone shoved a stake into his hand, one of the large ones, the fence posts, and Frank lifted it above his head with both hands and brought it down right above his own knee, feeling the resistance as it pushed through flesh and between ribs. The vampire arched up, almost throwing Frank off, its mouth open in a hissing cry, and then fell forward onto the floor, its face hitting the concrete with a crack. Then there was no sound but the soft echoes of Mikey's crying and Gerard's murmured consolations.
"What the fuck?" Ray asked.
Frank, who was still kneeling on the thing's back, his hands on the stake just in case, sighed. "It lived in here, I guess," he said.
"Jesus," Ray said. "That's a lot of blood. I didn't know they bled."
"Yeah, me neither."
Mikey had calmed down a little and was standing at the sink with Gerard, washing his face. "We'll have to keep an eye on him," Frank murmured to Ray. "It really got blood on him. I don't know if that's enough but --"
Ray nodded. "Jesus. That fucking sucks."
"I know," Frankie said. "But we have to."
Ray nodded again, urgently this time, his hair bobbing in time. "I get it, man," he said. "I get it."
"So we should get him to a motel or something," Gerard called softly from over by the sink. He had his arm around Mikey's shoulders. "If that's cool. He's pretty freaked out."
"I'm fine," Mikey said raggedly. He wiped his face with a paper towel. "Let's just go."
"Sure," Frank said. "Let's go."
He herded them out of the restroom, holding the door open with his foot, watching the body carefully. It didn't move -- even the pool of blood beneath it had stopped seeping out from underneath the chest -- but he didn't take his eyes off of it, not until Gerard slipped past him, one hand on Mikey's back. They walked down the hallway quickly, almost running, and Frank couldn't think why they weren't actually running after what had happened. He could hear Mikey's harsh snorting breaths through his nose and Gerard's nervous humming and the slap of their shoes on the linoleum floors. Ray shoved against the glass doors and that was when Frankie heard it.
He turned, lifting a hand instinctively, and there they were.
Three of them, two men and a woman, their eyes lit with desire and hunger, maybe two or three feet back. Almost close enough to grab him. The men were older and fat and wore jeans, like truckers maybe, or farmers. They had a kind of lived-in strength to them. The woman was blond and thin and wore a strand of pearls and her bare arms were covered in ragged bites marks, most of them old and on their way to healing if that was what you called it when these things did it.
"Where's Alan?" she said, and her voice was high and sad and lonely sounding. It was a sweet voice, but her mouth was stained with blood.
"He's in the bathroom," Frankie said. "You should go look for him."
"Alan?" the woman called, looking back over her shoulder. She turned back to Frank. "Did you see him?"
"Oh, I saw him," Frank said. He took a step backwards. Ray was there, in the atrium space between the two layers of glass doors, holding the inside door open for Frank.
"I didn't know there were more," he whispered in Frank's ear. "Gerard went to get stakes."
"You're red," the woman said dreamily, reaching out as if she were going to touch Frank's shirt. Frank backed up another step. "Why are you so red?"
"Ask Alan," Frank said. She was the closest, just an arm's length away, but it was the two big ones he was really worried about. He was pretty sure he could take the woman, but Alan, if indeed the thing in the bathroom had been Alan, had been hard to kill, and these guys were much bigger than he had been.
He didn't know how smart she'd been before she was bitten, but the woman didn't seem too quick on the uptake. She was staring at the splotches of blood on his t-shirt like they were hieroglyphics. "Alan?" she said again, her voice high and wavery, and Frank couldn't take it anymore, the plaintive quality of her voice and the sneaky silence of the men, creeping up on him the way they did, it wasn't fair. It wasn't right. That they should be able to crawl up behind him and then make him feel bad for stabbing someone in the bathroom. It wasn't right.
"Alan's dead, bitch," he said. "He's dead on the bathroom floor."
Her speed was stunning: before he could blink she was on him, her hands around his neck, and he was stumbling backwards, slamming his shoulder against the door frame, her body thudding into his. "You burn," she hissed in his ear. Her tongue lapped at the side of his face, horribly wet and hot. "You're on fire."
He was. He could feel his blood boiling in this veins, his skin heating, particularly under her hands. Her hands were on his neck, but he could hardly feel them; they exerted no pressure against the throbbing in his veins. He was going to explode and he would take her with him. Her breasts pressed against his chest, full and intimate. He could feel the unnatural coolness of her body against the heat of his own skin, and he liked it: it was arousing in the same way that playing guitar in front of ten thousand screaming fans was arousing -- it made him feel invincible. He stared into her eyes, so close to his, and saw the web of blood-laced veins in the whites throbbing at him, beating in time with her undead heart.
"Let's go," he whispered to her, and threw himself backwards, his shoulder blades slamming against the final glass door, his momentum propelling him over the threshold and onto his back on the pavement into the afternoon sun.
She came with him, her hands still around his throat, her weight landing on top of him. One of her elbows thudded into his ribs and her thigh racked him in the balls, shooting pain up into his stomach, her mouth an O of surprise.
It only took a second for her skin to start smoking. Her hands burst into flames, and she pulled them away from his neck to look at them. "What?" she said, softly.
Frank pushed himself away from her smouldering body. The reek was awful, the smell of burning clothes and meat and something richer, darker. Bloody. She was kneeling now, staring at her blackening hands, the fire shooting up from her fingertips. The other vampires, the truckers, stared at her from the shadowy doorway of the rest stop, their eyes wide with horror.
"Help me," she said to Frankie, holding her burning hands out to him.
Then she exploded.
For a second, everything was silent and dark.
Then Frank came back into himself. He was sitting on the sidewalk, his ass and hands sore from landing there, a dull ache in his nuts. The woman, the vampire, looked like a pile of blackened hamburger heaped on top of khaki pants and a sweater set. A clump of blond hair lay neck to Frank's hand on the pavement.
He looked around, but the trucker vampires were gone from the doorway, back into the shady safety of the rest stop, probably. Gerard was standing in the open door of the van, a fence post in his hand. Ray was already almost back to Frank, his own fence post still raised high to strike. Mikey wasn't in sight.
"Jesus," Ray said. He crouched down, and hooked a hand under Frank's arm to pull him up. "That's fucking disgusting."
Frank turned his face up, closing his eyes against the brightness of the sun, and started laughing.
They checked into the next roadside motel they came across, one by the side of the highway without even a town attached. Frank showered quickly, scrubbing his hair with the bar of hotel soap to get rid of the smoky smell, and collapsed onto the thin sheets.
"Are you okay?" Gerard whispered, his hand brushing over Frank's still-damp hair.
"I'm tired," he answered. Sleep seeped out of his skin, eased out on his breath. He hadn't been tired before, but now he felt like he'd played fourteen nights in a row without sleep, like he'd never slept before.
"Okay," Gerard said. Frank felt Gerard's lips touch his cheek and then he felt nothing.
In the dream it was summer just like it was now, and Frank was sitting on a split log fence in front of a white farm house.
"Hey," Gerard said, and he was sitting there too, suddenly, his pale hands on the rough wood.
"What are you doing here?" Frank asked, which was a strange question because Gerard was always with him, late and soon, and they were never apart.
Gerard smiled. He didn't have any makeup on and his smile was sweet on his naked face. "You brought me here."
Frank looked around. There was a tree just behind them, its branches spread over Frank's head as if it was sheltering them from something, although it didn't have any leaves. "Do you like it here?" Frank asked.
Gerard laughed. "I never want to leave."
Frank leaned back as far as he could while maintaining his grip on the fence. "Maybe we won't have to," he said.
When he woke, it was dark and Gerard was asleep next to him. He sighed, feeling fully rested and tired at the same time. His body was utterly at peace.
Frank's eyes were drifting closed again when he heard it, the soft intentional tap on the door, the rattle of the knob being twisted. His eyes snapped open.
"What?" Mikey mumbled from the other bed.
"Shh," Frankie said, his arm flailing out to stop Mikey from talking.
The tap came again, a gentle cautious rapping, like a polite maid, only this place didn't have maids, and Frank wondered if the others had been coherent enough to put the chain on the door.
He sat up, and saw in the faint light filtering through the curtains that Mikey had sat up as well, his bare chest shining, his naked eyes glittering. "What do we do?" he whispered, his voice mingling with the steady breathing of the others.
Frank made a cutting motion with his hand, lifting the sheet off of his feet.
The knock came again, more insistent this time, but still soft. Frank wondered where Ray had put the stakes he'd brought in, carrying them heaped in his arms like a stack of firewood. Maybe on the other side of the bed, or somewhere near the door? He couldn't turn on the li-
"Open up," someone said on the other side of the door. "Guys, it's me. It's Pete."
Chapter 11: Live
Summary:
After a while, he stopped crying.
Chapter Text
XI. Live
"Everybody knows that you live forever."
In the end, it happened too fast for Frankie to stop it. He saw Mikey lunge from the bed to the door and even though he was closer, Mikey's arm slipped through his fingers and he got tangled in the bedclothes and then Mikey was fumbling with the lock, throwing the door open, his arms wide, shouting "Pete! Thank God! Where the fuck --" before Pete's teeth were in his neck and Mikey was screaming and Frank was on his hands and knees groping for something, anything to kill the motherfucker with.
And then Pete was standing over him, a fence post in his hand, smiling. "Oh, I don't think so, bird," he said, and swung, and everything went black.
His face was wet. His face was warm and wet and something smelled like wet pennies.
Pete.
Frank leapt to his feet almost before his eyes were open, groping for the edge of the bed to steady himself. He flailed around blindly for the light, hitting the switch on the wall almost by accident, blinking against the sickly yellow cast.
The room was empty.
The door hung open a bit, wind and rain seeping in through the crack onto the ugly carpeting. There was a splash of blood, dark and dried, on the mirror over the bureau where Mikey had been pushed when Pete had come in, and there was another one on the pillow on the other bed that had been Ray's, but there was nothing else. No other signs to tell him what had happened. He didn't know what time it was, whether he'd been out for hours or days. He didn't know where they were. Frank went to the door. The van was still out there, silent and white in the darkness. He pushed it shut with one hand, feeling the latch click under his palm.
Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his hands against his face, breathing deep and slow. His stomach trembled with the effort it took not to cry. They were gone, all of them. Gerard. Gone. Gone and turned ... turned or dead.
"What the fuck good is it?" he said softly into his palms. "What the fuck good is it?"
No one answered.
Eventually, he got off the bed. He would keep driving. There was nothing left to do but keep going, back to New Jersey. Maybe his mom was okay, although she hadn't answered her phone the last time he called. Maybe Jamia. Maybe he would see the woman and her little girl again and they could form a team. A flock of birds. He laughed weakly into his hands. A flock. He was so fucking stupid.
He packed his clothes into his duffel bag and piled the stakes on top of the bedspread. He'd have to keep them handy, now that he was alone. Gerard's black hoodie was crumpled in a heap near the head of the bed. It was the one he wore everywhere, because he got cold in the overly air conditioned restaurants and buses and he hated to be cold. Frankie put it on over his t- shirt and zipped it up.
He went into the bathroom to grab his toothbrush and fell back against the doorframe, his hands clapped over his mouth.
Mikey.
mikey.
He was in the rust-stained motel bathtub, his head tipped back over the lip of the tub, the gaping wound on his neck exposed. His skin was pale and blue, paler then he'd ever been. Paler than Gerard had ever been. He'd lost his glasses.
"Mikey," Frankie said sadly. Mikey had been his best friend in the world, better even than Gerard. He remembered moving into Mikey's little apartment in Belleville, the two of them hauling a ratty brown couch off the curb to use in their living room. Mikey had been at the bottom of the couch because he was taller and they had to go up three flights of stairs, and Frank remembered his face, red from exertion, his glasses askew.
"fff..." the body in the tub said.
"Mikey?" Frank asked.
Mikey's eyes opened.
"frank," Mikey said. It was more of a groan.
"Jesus." Frank dropped to his knees next to the tub, his hands curling around the cool ceramic. "Mikey?"
"Pete," Mikey said. Frank could see the muscles in his neck move through the bloody wound in his neck, like a Discovery channel video about surgery, only maybe six inches from his face. He tried to ignore it. Mikey.
"He's gone," Frank said. He touched Mikey's hair up by his forehead. It wasn't bloody, just slick with product, the way Mikey's hair always was.
"I. I ... uhh ... I." Mikey's breath gurgled and gasped. His eyelids fluttered.
"No, no," Frank said. "It's okay. You didn't know." He stroked Mikey's hair. "You didn't know."
Mikey sighed. "guh," he said. "grr."
"He's fine," Frank said. "We're getting ready to go. He's. Um. He's in the van."
Mikey nodded, his head jerking like it was on a string.
"So," Frank said. His voice sounded abnormally loud in the little bathroom, strangely cheerful. "You ready to go, Mikey? You have your stuff packed?"
"No," Mikey said, clearly. His hand flopped onto Frank's knee. Frank fought the urge to jerk away -- Mikey'd been bitten, after all -- but Mikey's hand just unfolded to reveal the familiar brown pharmacist's bottle. Frank looked. Gerard's antidepressants.
"How many?" Frank asked, grabbing Mikey's wrists. "How many did you take?"
Mikey shrugged, one shoulder going up, his mouth slanting into a smile, and for a moment he was himself again. Shy, sly Mikey. "all of 'em," he said, his voice no more than a sigh.
Frank bowed his head to the edge of the tub, breathing in and out through his nose. He could smell mildew, and Mikey's blood, and death. Mikey's hand thudded against his shoulder. When Frank lifted his head, Mikey was looking at him, his eyes clear in his bloody and battered face.
"guh. Go," he said. "yuh an' Gee. Sa' the worl'." His eyes drifted closed. Frank watched him for a while, the rise and fall of his thin chest. Then Frank stood up and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
It was still dark when he stepped outside the room, pulling the door shut behind him. The rain had stopped for the moment, and the air smelled fresh and clean after the blood-drenched stench of the room. Frank stopped for a moment to breathe it in, his lungs swelling, his eyes sinking closed.
He pulled open the rusty van door and dumped his stuff on the passenger side floor, making sure to put one of the fence posts on the seat where he could reach it in a hurry. Out here, there wasn't anyone around, but when he got to New Jersey. There were a lot more people in New Jersey, that was all. He patted the stake once, like a child, before shutting the door and heading around to the driver's side.
There was a bloody handprint on the door, black in the sodium lamp light, as if someone had groped for the door handle and missed. Frank took a breath and put his hand over it and pulled the handle. It tingled under his palm, a vaguely electric sizzle.
For awhile Frank just drove, focusing his eyes on the dark wet road in front of him, hypnotized by swipe of the windshield wipers. His mind was blank. He had no plan -- Gerard was the planner, he thought once, blinking water from his eyes -- and no place to go, but there was no point in stopping either, so he didn't. He cried a little, for Mikey mostly, lying alone in a bathtub in a cheap motel, but also for the others: Bob, lost to the demon that had gotten inside him while he was fighting to get to Frank; Ray and Gerard, who were simply lost. He hoped they were dead, and then cried some more for even thinking that. What good was this thing that he had, this power to resist them, when everyone he loved was dead anyway? All he had been given was the power to witness their deaths. It felt like a sick joke.
"Maybe if we stayed in one place," he said to himself. Maybe stockpiled some food, barred the windows and doors, maybe then he could have protected them from --
"It probably wouldn't have helped," Gerard said.
Frank screamed.
Frank yanked the van to the side of road, tires spinning on the gravel of the berm, and leapt out the driver's side door, falling to his knees and scrambling into the wet grass before looking behind him.
Gerard was leaning out the door. "You okay?" he asked.
Frank squinted at him. The rain had started up again, a steady fall, and it flooded his eyes. "Um," he said. "Are you okay?"
Gerard smiled. "Never better," he said.
"How did you get away from Pete?" Frank asked. Water was soaking through the knees of his jeans, the canvas of his tennis shoes, chilling him. "Did you kill him?"
"Eventually," Gerard said. He smiled again, and that was when Frank knew. He thought of Bob's face, pale in the sunlight of the parking lot, and the coppery smell of Mikey's blood and Ray. What had happened to Ray? And Gerard. The only person besides Jamia and his mom that he'd ever loved. Gerard, who was so good at everything and thought he was good at nothing. Gerard, who was leaning out the door of the van, one hand draped over the window frame, angular and artistic, fingers curled slightly.
Gerard was changed.
"So how long are you going to stay out there?" Gerard asked.
"Until the sun comes up," Frank said. Gerard craned his neck and looked at the sky, the paler blue that was creeping over the horizon, and there it was, the bite mark, the dark circle of fate.
"Oh," he said. "Well, the van is pretty dark. I'll wait inside." He shut the door, and Frank could hear the thunk of the door locking. The keys were inside. The stakes were inside, and his cell phone (as if there was anyone he could call), and his clothes and his toothbrush and --
Gerard popped out of the door again. "It just seems like there's no point," he said. "Are you just going to walk? To where? You might as well get in."
Frank stood up brushing his hands against the thighs of his jeans. He looked around. There was a barbed wire fence running along the side of the road, separating the berm from a field of something green and knee-high, but there wasn't any other sign of people. No farmhouse. No barn. And even if there were, what would he find there? How would he defend himself? He had no answers to the questions. He had nothing. He was empty. Frank sighed, and headed back toward the van.
"That's my boy," Gerard said happily.
He backed up as Frankie approached, retreating into the dark belly of the van. Frank climbed in and turned in the driver's seat. "What now?" he said.
Gerard shrugged. "It's not really up to me," he said. "You're the bird."
Frank touched the steering wheel with both hands. "Yeah," he said. He turned the key in the ignition.
While he drove, Gerard moved around in the back of the van, sitting in the seat right behind him and then moving to one of the seats in the far back, then after a few minutes coming back up to the front. It had unnerved Frank at first, the shuffle and rustle of Gerard behind him, but then it had stopped frightening him and started annoying him.
"What the fuck, Gerard?" he said finally. "Sit still!"
Gerard moaned, a strange sexual sound. "I can't," he said softly. He was in the seat behind Frank for the moment, his voice low. "You're so. You burn me."
"I'm thinking about it," Frank muttered. A wave of guilt washed over him. "Is there. Do you know of any way to...cure this?" he asked.
Gerard shrugged. "Kill the original vampire, I guess," he said. "That's the only way I've ever heard of."
"I don't suppose you have any idea who that is?"
"Nope," Gerard said. "I'm not telepathic. Just hungry."
Frank shuddered.
When the sun came up, Gerard hung shirts and other clothes over the windows, taping them up with a roll of Bob's beloved duct tape, and lay down. Frank watched carefully, hoping for some sort of unconsciousness that would allow him to pull over and remove the shades from the windows. But that would...he could take Gerard out of the van so that it wouldn't be ... full of him, and then he could keep going. But Gerard didn't really sleep, just lay there with his arms crossed over his chest, humming to himself. It was a new song, something he'd been working on with Ray on the tour, something for the next album.
The sob surprised him, catching in his throat, and then his tears were flooding his eyes and he had to pull over, steering with one hand, the other clapped against his mouth.
"Frank?" Gerard said. He was up again, moving toward the front of the van. "Baby, are you okay?"
But he wasn't okay. His friends were gone and his boyfriend smelled of old blood and there wasn't going to be another album, not ever again, not by anyone. The world had ended and he had been forced to watch.
After a while, he stopped crying. Gerard was leaning over him, wanting to touch him, his hand hovering over Frank's shoulder. Frank lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped his face off with it. "I'm fine," he said over his shoulder. "Get the fuck away from me."
Gerard retreated a couple of steps. "Okay," he said.
Frank wiped the last few tears off his face and pulled back onto the highway. He felt strangely better.
"Can I ask you something?" Gerard's voice was cautious.
"Whatever."
"What. Um. What happened to Mikey?"
"He's dead," Frank said. "He died in a bathtub in a crappy hotel room."
"Oh," Gerard said. "Um."
"What?" Frank snapped.
"It's just. Are you sure? He didn't ..."
"I'm sure," Frank said. "He took your pills."
"Oh," Gerard said. He sounded relieved. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Frank said. He didn't feel better anymore.
They drove. When the sun began to set, Frank pulled off to get food at a rest stop plaza. There were a few other cars there, but Frank didn't see anyone inside except the clerk, a fat girl whose face was missing a big chunk and who had bled out behind her counter. He grabbed a couple of boxes of pop tarts and a large bottle of water without really looking at her. He ate a package of the pop tarts sitting on top of a metal picnic table, considering the bug-spattered front of the van.
When it was almost completely dark, Gerard stepped out, stretching, his pale stomach showing under the hem of his t-shirt. The gesture was heartbreaking in its familiarity. Frank turned away.
"It's a nice night, huh?" Gerard said.
"Yeah, great."
Gerard came over and hopped up on the table next to him. "I didn't do this on purpose, you know?" he said. "It wasn't my fault."
That was true, Frank thought. It wasn't Gerard's fault. It was his. "I know," he said.
"Okay," Gerard said.
They sat there for a minute, like they used to when the band first started, when all they had were their instruments and a crappy white van. Fucking irony. Frank watched bugs circle the parking lot lights, swarming dizzily, bouncing off of the glass. "Why?" He sighed. He didn't want to ask, but he couldn't help it. He asked Gerard everything, before. "Why do you think it's. Why do I have this?" He waved his hands at his chest.
Gerard tipped his head to the side and stared off into the darkness beyond the edge of the parking lot. It was his thinking look, the look he always had when he was puzzling something out. "I don't know," he said finally. "It hasn't really worked, has it?"
Frank laughed a little at that, surprised. "No," he said.
"I dunno," Gerard said again. "Maybe it's because people used to believe in shit like this."
"Huh?"
"Well, like, okay," Gerard said. His pale hands made shapes in the air, painted out the words "Gerard Has A Theory" in the white fluorescent light. "In the olden days, when people like you were, like, invented or made or whatever. If someone had showed up and bitten somebody, they wouldn't take them to a doctor, man. They'd have sent you out to chop the guy's head off and then they'd burn the corpse and scatter the bones. There wouldn't have been any of this 'see a physician' crap."
"So there were fewer vam--guys like you."
Gerard nodded. "Probably. And more belief. It's, like, a balance. That's completely fucked up now." He smiled at Frank, his broad bright smile. His teeth looked normal. Frank smiled back. They were so close that their shoulders were almost touching. Frank could feel the electric tingle of Gerard on the skin of his arm. "You're beautiful," Gerard said.
Frank laughed, a harsh bitter laugh. "Yeah, thanks," he said.
"I mean it," Gerard said. He was leaning in, his mouth near Frank's. "You always were."
Frank closed his eyes. It wouldn't be so bad, would it? If he just -- He opened his eyes. "You're cold," he said.
Gerard blinked. "What?" he said.
Frank grabbed Gerard's wrist. The pain was immediate, the electric tingle he'd felt soaring into hot agony, but the flesh of Gerard's wrist was cool to the touch. Cold.
"Jesus!" Gerard screeched, yanking away, cradling his wrist in his other hand. The skin was red and raw, like it had been burned, the outline of Frank's hand plainly visible. But once he'd let go, Frank's own pain had disappeared. "What the fuck, Frank?"
"Nothing," Frank said. "I'm going to bed." He picked up his pop tart wrapper and got in the van, locking the door behind him. It was almost completely dark inside, the fluorescent light of the parking light barred by Gerard's makeshift shades. Frank made a bed of sorts in one of the back seats, fumbling around in the dark for clothes to use as covers. He lay down on his side, his back pressed up against the back of the seat, his arms folded over his chest. He didn't feel tired. He felt alone and desperate. He wanted his guitar. He wanted his guitar and his mother and his girlfriend and his friends and Gerard, and he was asleep in minutes.
He was looking down at the ground from high up, branches between his feet and his view of the grass. A fresh breeze lifted his hair from his forehead. He could feel bark rough under his fingertips. He smiled.
"Hey!" Mikey said. Frank could see him standing at the base of tree gazing upward, his glasses shaded from the sun by one long hand. Bob was on a blanket next to him; Frank could tell from his pale blond hair. "What are you doing up there?"
Frank spread his arms out, only his fingers touching the trunk of the tree.
"What are you doing up here?" Gerard asked. Frank turned and there he was, sitting on a branch up and behind him, his black tennis shoes dangling in the air, his eyes merry. Frank smiled at him.
"I'm flying," he said, and stepped off the branch.
Frank woke gasping, hands out. One swept through the chilly air, but the other thudded into something solid and cool. Gerard.
"Are you okay?" Gerard asked softly. He was no more than six inches away, sitting on the floor between Frank's seat and the one in front of it. Frank could make out the pale circle of his face, the faint red glimmer of his eyes. His red eyes. Frank scrambled back toward the window.
"How did you get in here?" he demanded. "What are you doing?"
"I had the keys," Gerard said, holding the key ring up. The keys jangled faintly.
"Oh," Frank said. "Oh. What are you doing?"
"Watching you sleep," Gerard said.
Frank blinked. "Well. Don't." He slid to the end of the seat and got up, staggering down the aisle to the driver's seat. "Gimme the keys." Gerard leaned forward and handed them over.
"You can sleep more, if you want," Gerard said. "You seem tired."
"I'm fine."
"What were you dreaming about?" Gerard asked. "You were smiling."
The image came back to him suddenly, Gerard sitting on a tree branch, his eyes dark and happy, his feet swinging in the breeze. "Nothing," he said.
"You're such a bitch," Gerard said.
"Yeah," Frank said. "Whatever."
"God, Frank! What the fuck?" Gerard said. "I don't know what your problem is! All I'm trying to do is-" He stopped.
Frank backed out of the parking spot and pulled away from the rest stop. His eyes ached from weariness, but he must have slept for a while, because the edge of the sky was getting light. "You can't hurt me, Gerard, you know you can't. So what do you want?"
Frank could see the flash of Gerard's white teeth in the rearview mirror, but he didn't take his eyes off the road. If he drove fast enough, far enough, this would all be over. He knew it. He could feel it.
"Who said I wanted to hurt you?" Gerard asked. There was shifting noise and then the cool brush of breath on Frank's neck. It smelled like meat that had been in the refrigerator for too long. Frank closed his eyes briefly. Gerard, he thought. "It doesn't hurt. Not after."
"Fuck off, Gerard," Frank said. He didn't turn his head.
"Fuck off, Gerard," Gerard repeated, his voice high and mocking. "The way I see it, you got two choices, Frank. Let me help you out." His hand slid over Frank's t-shirt, inching toward his neck. "Or pull the car over and let's go. Me and you."
"What part of 'bird' don't you understand?" Frank asked. "You can't hurt me."
"No," Gerard whispered. Frank felt the prick of something cold near his ear. A knife. A fucking Swiss Army knife that Frankie had put on his fucking credit card not three days ago. Tears burned hot in his eyes. "I can't bite you," Gerard whispered.
Frank sighed. "That's what you want?" he asked. "You want to turn me the way Pete turned you? You want me to be a fucking monster?"
"No, Frank, no. Come on," Gerard said, his cool hand on Frank's shoulder, squeezing. "I just want you to be with me. You remember. Better a vampire than dead," he said, and laughed.
The way he laughed sounded the same. The thing in the backseat with the red eyes and the bloody teeth and the rotten breath had Gerard's voice and Gerard's laugh and Frank couldn't help the tears that welled up in his eyes, because it had all those things Gerard used to have, and that was a fucking rotten memory to have of person he'd loved most in the world.
He saw it then in the faint light of dawn, the white farmhouse set back from the road, the lawn sloping down toward them, toward the little split log fence. There was an enormous tree in the front yard, so old and tall that it looked like a giant. It was bare of leaves, even though it was only late summer, and it seemed to Frank that maybe the tree hadn't ever had leaves, not for years. It was eternal. As they roared toward it, Frank saw something flutter up out of the branches, a hundred somethings, a flock of sparrows.
"I'd rather be dead," he said, and turned the van toward the edge of the road, the fence that separated him from the tree. He stood on the gas pedal, clenching the steering wheel so hard that the cords on his arms stood out. There was an enormous crash and Frank felt a thousand tiny pin pricks of glass against his face, his hands, and the van lurched over the fence rail and hesitated and Frank thought for a second we're not going to make it and he heard the thing that used to be Gerard howl -- in triumph or fear, Frank couldn't tell -- but then that was it, they were through, and the van arched off the edge of the road over the culvert and toward the trunk of the giant tree, its branches reaching out to him, and the air rushing at Frank through the broken windshield and ripping him from his seat, windshield glass showering down on his face, his hands jerked from the wheel, and he was up, he was free. He was flying.
The End
trekinist on Chapter 11 Wed 03 Sep 2025 10:09PM UTC
Comment Actions
synchronik on Chapter 11 Wed 03 Sep 2025 11:42PM UTC
Comment Actions
callherblackmariah on Chapter 11 Wed 03 Sep 2025 10:50PM UTC
Comment Actions
synchronik on Chapter 11 Thu 04 Sep 2025 12:04AM UTC
Comment Actions
partypoisonous on Chapter 11 Tue 09 Sep 2025 07:37PM UTC
Comment Actions
synchronik on Chapter 11 Wed 10 Sep 2025 11:22AM UTC
Comment Actions