12 Gauge Bride
The Road
The stolen Firebird screams out of the city, leaving the lights and the glitter and the monsters behind.
Except for the monsters in the front seat. Beyond all the pretty lights on the dashboard, there's just the long and lonely road.
LONDON: "Mind if I change the station?"
Frankie shrugs, and he fiddles with the radio.
An hour or so out, they see a car's hazard lights in the distance. There's a man in the road in a suit, no, a tux, waving at them.
LONDON: "How are you on gas?"
FRANKIE: "Pretty low."
London slows down. The cars an older model, with "Just Married" scrawled across the back window, and cans tied to the bumper.
LONDON: "Christ."
FRANKIE: "Newlyweds? I may be a monster, but I think I've got enough humanity left not to... you know."
LONDON: "I can just find a convenient cow. You can't."
They can see a woman in a white veil in the passenger seat. London pulls up behind the car and rolls down the window.
GROOM: "Thank God! Nobody's been by here for hours."
LONDON: "What's the problem?"
GROOM: "The car started making a thumping noise, and then it just stopped."
LONDON: "Where you two headed?"
GROOM: "Up to the Falls."
LONDON: "Of course. The Falls."
He rolls the window back up.
FRANKIE: "...we could at least take a look at their car."
They get out and walk around the passenger side. The door is open, and the bride is pretty much what you'd expect: Long hair, white gown, that glow they've always got. Pretty much what you'd expect. 'Cept for the shotgun.
She levels it at Frankie and London. Looking up, they see that the groom is pointing a pistol at over the top of the car.
BRIDE: "I'll need your wallets, any cash you're carrying, and the keys."
London slowly reaches for his wallet, calling on his stolen blood, reaching out to hers....
LONDON: "You don't have to do this."
The bride's eyes widen, but she resists, and panics. She opens fire, blasting London full in the chest. She starts to get out of the car, ready to fire at Frankie.
London growls and hurls himself at the open door, folding and crunching his attacker between solid steel. Her shot goes wild.
GROOM: "CHERYL!"
Screaming, he opens fire, spraying an entire clip in Frankie's general direction. Some of the shots rip through her. Others go very wide. One lodges in her chest.
The groom ducks behind his car to reload. London grabs the shotgun from the bride's spasming hands. Just as the groom is finished reloading, London drops to the ground and fires beneath the car. The groom falls back on the ground in agony.
London helps Frankie up, and they get to the business of dinner.
While Frankie goes through the couple's car, looting ammunition, loose cash, and some spare clothes, London has a look at their own car... which is leaking gas. Looks like it took a bullet through the gas tank.
And then there's the bodies.
LONDON: "Know any convenient ditches?"
FRANKIE: "Well, mine is hours away from here."
They strap the corpses into the Firebird and wedge the gas pedal on, setting it running slowly off the road. Frankie takes the cans off the back of the couple's car while London wipes up what he can of all the blood.
LONDON: "You okay?"
Frankie pokes her finger in a mostly-healed hole and licks up the result.
FRANKIE: "Just a little sore."
Getting Gas
A few hours later, they need actual gas. They pull into a filling station in the shadow of a rotting old roadside amusement park.
Frankie gets out to pay the attendent, a bored and sleepy looking teenaged boy.
FRANKIE: "Lonely out here?"
BOY: "I got the radio."
FRANKIE: "Anything good on?"
BOY: "Couple people got killed, next county over."
FRANKIE: "Really?"
The boy nods, and turns up the knob.
RADIO: "--that the notorious 'Honeymoon Bandits' may have escalated to murder. The Sheriff's office is refusing to comment at this time. In other news, a local twelve year old apparently operat--"
FRANKIE: "I'll be getting my gas."
London is already pumping.
FRANKIE: "Those people we killed- apparently they're famous. 'Honeymoon Bandits.' Radio's saying they may have stepped up to murder."
London frowns.
LONDON: "Didn't we stage that enough for them? Should be obvious. Bride and groom in the front seat...."
Frankie shrugs.
LONDON: "Let's hit the road."
From behind the gas station, a shadowed figure watches them leave. He takes one last swig from his whiskey bottle, then throws it to the ground, where it shatters.
The Diner
Around one in the morning, they get to the town where Frankie used to live. They pass a liquor store and some houses; it's the kind of place where everything is either up or down The Street, or occasionally down that dirt road.
LONDON: "Anybody going to be surprised at you turning up again?"
Frankie shrugs.
FRANKIE: "People disappear here all the time. Run away to the big city or get found in ditches. Most of them don't get up afterwards, though."
They pull up in front of the diner. The windows (the ones what aren't boarded over) flood the car with garish flourescent light.
They open the door; it rings a bell, but doesn't get more than a glance at London from the greying waitress. Inside, everything is washed out pale and sickly. London and Frankie don't stand out.
She heads over to the bar and sits down.
FRANKIE: "What's a person gotta do to get some coffee 'round here?"
The waitress looks up, then looks at her in surprise.
MAGGIE: "Frankie? My God, didn't think we'd see you back here again. What happened to you?"
Maggie's eyes flicker suspiciously over London.
FRANKIE: "I needed to move on. Went to the city. This is my friend, London."
Maggie shakes London's hand, a little reluctantly. Her eyes clearly say this isn't the guy you left here with.
FRANKIE: "What's been happening 'round here?"
MAGGIE: "Well nothing much since... my God, you left a few hours before Eric got... didn't you?"
FRANKIE: "Got what?"
MAGGIE: "There was a holdup. He went for" (she nods towards the side of the bar where the gun is) "and the guy just shot him."
Did her sire come back here?
FRANKIE: "What? Who did...? Did they catch him?"
MAGGIE: "Drifter, apparently. Charles Lee something. They caught him down the road, threw 'im in the jailhouse."
FRANKIE: "God... how's Eric's momma?"
MAGGIE: "She don't get out much anymore. Doesn't come to church much, anyhow."
FRANKIE: "God." (Pause.) "Is it loaded?"
MAGGIE: "Yeah."
FRANKIE: "Good. Thanks for the coffee. I think we'd better go find someplace to stay."
MAGGIE: (looking hard at London again, then at Frankie) "You be careful."
The Ditch
London doesn't have much trouble finding the ditch again. There's a light drizzle, but nothing like the night he pulled Frankie out.
She looks down for a moment, then climbs in and kneels in the moistening clay. She scoops it through her fingers, tries to remember....
He was tall. Very tall. His eyes. God, his eyes.
She followed him out to his car. They kissed, he pushed her up against the cold metal, the light from the diner creating a halo around the edges of him, him kissing her neck...
...then nothing, just red haze. She sobs, the blood welling at the edges of her eyes.
London climbs down into the pit, and he holds her.
The Jailhouse
The jailhouse is also the town hall, the courthouse, and the office of the town newspaper. It's what Harper Lee described as a "miniature gothic joke... complete with tiny battlements and flying buttresses."
FRANKIE: "There's a door around back."
LONDON: "You pretty familiar."
FRANKIE: "It's like the Mayberry jail. A couple free cells, and one for the town drunk. I guess they had to find a new one when my mother died. Think it's the mayor- he wears a lot of hats."
LONDON: "What'd she die of?"
FRANKIE: "Lot of things. Snorting Oxycontin, in the end. Was pretty embarrasing."
She pauses, while London jimmies the door.
FRANKIE: "I just want to know why. And where he went afterwards."
They find the records room in the second cellar. After sorting through unlabelled file drawers, they find a record on the guy who held up the diner.
LONDON: "Charles Lee Jefferson Davis. He look familiar?"
Frankie looks at the balding, sweaty man with the black eye in the mugshot.
She sets his plate in front of him. He looks nervous, sweaty. She's about to say something, but the bell on the door rings. She looks up, and forgets all about the nervous little man.
FRANKIE: "Yeah. But he was a little less beat up."
LONDON: "Is he the guy who...?"
Frankie shakes her head violently.
FRANKIE: (defensively) "No, the guy who turned me was much more attractive. When he was..."
...kissing her against the car, her legs wrapped around his waist, nipping at her neck, biting her again...
FRANKIE: "...he was... everything."
London nods.
LONDON: "I know. I ever tell you about this girl? She played bass."
FRANKIE: "That's about all I know about her."
LONDON: "Me, too."
They take the file, then go outside and around to the Sheriff's Office front door. Moving through the darkened office, and to the edge of the jail. Frankie listens, hears snoring.
FRANKIE: "The deputy'll be asleep. Now that my Mom's not around anymore."
She slips in and tranquilizes the deputy with a short bite. London walks with her down to the only occupied cell. There's a figure under a threadbare blanket.
Frankie wraps on the bars. The bleary figure looks up- he's the man .
DAVIS: "Wha...?"
London pulls on the man's blood.
LONDON: "Time to wake up, Lee Harvey."
DAVIS: (mumbling) "Course."
FRANKIE: "You shot Eric."
Davis mumbles that he shot somebody, shot at somebody, that he already told the cops. Frankie remembers.
She's startled for a moment. They've been at this for so long, it feels so good. But the sound of the shots inside the diner is pretty loud. They stop, and she sinks back in...
...but gets interrupted again. A man runs into the parking lot, in a panic. Charles Lee Jefferson Davis. His eyes are wild, scared. The man she's been (kissing?) looks up, and Davis shoots him. The bullets go through the vampire. And through Frankie. All red after that.
Then she's out by the road, on the ground. A dirty, cold wrist gets shoved up against her mouth. The blood is warm, and sweet, and soothing. She's falling... asleep? No, falling into the ditch, against the soft earth where the worms are moving. Then there's dirt falling over her. Covering her, warm. Heavy. Like blankets. She sleeps.
FRANKIE: "You shot me!"
Her face contorts with rage. For a moment, she tries to compose herself, but what's the point. The anger feels good even as it burns, closest thing to a heartbeat she's felt in a month. She tears the lock off of the cage, swings the bars open, grabs Davis by the throat. All she sees is the blood pumping beneath his skin. She lifts him up, starts bashing it out of him with the cinderblock wall until he stops moving...
...London grabs her, wrenches her backwards. Davis falls to the ground, coughs blood.
LONDON: "Frankie, BREATHE."
She takes a deep breath.
FRANKIE: "I'm okay."
LONDON: "You're lying."
FRANKIE: "I just wanna little taste...."
LONDON: "No."
Frankie slackens in his arms.
FRANKIE: "I'm fine."
LONDON: "You're still lying."
They stay like that a while.
After
London goes out for a cigarette. Frankie smears some of the bastard's cold blood on the sleeping deputy, messes up the office some.
They get in the car. Only one question: which way to drive.
FRANKIE: "There's some old houses around here. Storm cellars, for when the tornadoes come through."
LONDON: "We can't do that. We can't kill people in anger."
FRANKIE: "Wasn't anger. It was revenge."
LONDON: "It's a fine line."
And then he thinks a moment. He raises his eyebrows.
LONDON: "And I think that's the wrong side of it to be on, anyway."
FRANKIE: "He killed me. And my... sire... he turned me to save me."
LONDON: "He left you in a ditch."
FRANKIE: "And covered me so I wouldn't dry out in the sun."
She looks at him.
FRANKIE: "Then you found me."
London shrugs, a little embarrassed.
LONDON: "No big deal."
FRANKIE: "He made me, and then he just left." (She frowns.) "Kinda like my dad."
LONDON: "I guess that's why they only call them 'sires'."
FRANKIE: "And Lee Harvey... he killed me."
LONDON: "You're going to have to decide which of them did worse by you. But you can't just kill."
FRANKIE: "Why not? I'm not alive anymore. Why pretend?"
LONDON: "Because it's not just that. It's who you are. You can't let go of that."
She just watches the road and the endless stream of dying white dashes.